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“I only came home because of the girls,” she had said. “I ought to be at the hospital. I shouldn’t really have let you in. Grantley would be furious …”
“Your husband couldn’t have cancelled his meeting, with Jeremy so ill?” Laura asked curiously, but Mrs Adams simply shrugged.
“It was very important,” she said.
“You don’t work yourself,” Laura asked.
“I used to before we were married. I was an accountant. I worked for Grantley for a couple of years, that’s how we met. But there’s no need now and with three children there’s a lot to do here.” She smiled faintly. “Grantley’s first wife had her own career but I don’t think that worked out very well. He’s a very demanding man. I should know. I worked for him before his divorce.”
“And neither of you had any idea Jeremy was into drugs?”
“No of course not,” Mrs. Adams said sharply. But when Laura suggested that a profile of the family might help others in a similar situation, she panicked.
“Grantley would hate that,” she said. “In fact he’d hate you being here. Perhaps you’d better go now.”
And with that Laura had to be content, although she knew it would in no way satisfy Ted Grant’s desire for an in-depth interview for the next morning’s first edition. But before she could get too broody about the fragile state of her career, her mobile rang and she heard her grandmother’s voice again, full of emotion.
“Have you got time to come up to the Project after work, pet?” Joyce asked. “I won’t keep you long but there’s someone I’d like you to meet.” Laura had smiled to herself as she agreed. Even at almost eighty her grandmother, with the bit between her teeth, was a formidable force. So for the second evening ru
“This is Dr. Khan,” Do
“Do
“I know there’s been a spate of deaths from overdoses … .”
“Twelve years old one of them was,” Khan said, evidently outraged. “But there have been other deaths. The boy who went over the top of the flats the other day, another who was killed by a car. I think they are all co
“The younger children carry knives, some of the older ones have got guns,” Joyce broke in.
“My nephew was fourteen,” Do
“Murder?” Laura concentrated on the doctor with exhaustion written all over him. “What makes you say that?”
“I’ve no evidence,” Khan said. “Just rumours, sideways looks. I wasn’t called to all the deaths, but I’ve treated some of the bereaved families. Everyone assumes that all the kids who have died brought it on themselves. That they were rubbish because they were junkies. But that is not my impression. The mother of one of the boys who died of an overdose says he was not on drugs, that he hated them, that he worked hard at school and had ambitions. The boy who fell off the roof was not a user, apparently. They haven’t held the inquest yet so I don’t know what they found at the post-mortem. But his mother is adamant he was not a junkie now, even if he had been once.”
“You think there’s some sort of war going on between dealers?” Laura asked doubtfully. “No one’s suggested that publicly. There’s not been any shooting.”
“Yet,” Do
“I don’t know what’s going on, and I don’t see any signs of anyone trying to find out either,” Khan said. “What we really need to do is get a campaign going to tackle the problem up here. Some of the families are keen to help …”
“If you can do it without using their names,” Do
“But we need some backing,” the doctor went on. “Not a lot but some funds to get started, and we need some publicity. That’s where we thought you could help. You could write about it in the Gazette.”
Laura had listened to Dr. Khan’s complaints with a growing sense of unease. She thought of the effort the police seemed to be putting into investigating the incident at the Carib Club, and about Thackeray’s scarcely veiled lack of faith in the drug squad’s efforts on the Heights, and wondered if she could persuade Ted Grant to let her write about Do
“Where’s Kevin Mower today?” she had asked, a germ of an idea forming in the back of her head.
“He doesn’t tell me what he’s doing,” Do
Laura had taken that unasked for piece of information on board with no more than a sympathetic glance. It was not the time, she thought, to fill Do
In the end the decision was made for her. She had cooked a meal without much enthusiasm but Thackeray was late and she ate alone, too hungry by nine o’clock to wait any longer. It’s a bit soon to be behaving like an old married couple, putting the di
He flung himself onto the sofa beside her, lit a cigarette and zapped the TV off.
“Where would you run to if you had two young babies and no obvious means of support?” he asked.
Laura shrugged.
“Some sort of women’s refuge?”
“I’m not sure she was ru
“Perhaps she’s got money. What makes you think she hasn’t?”
“Because this is Barry Foreman’s girlfriend we’re talking about and I don’t reckon he’s the sort of man who’d let her have more than peanuts for spending money. And according to her mother she’s never ever had two pe
“New boyfriend?”
“With two tiny babies?”
“Some men like babies,” Laura said, and could immediately have bitten off her tongue. She turned to Thackeray and reached out a hand which he avoided.
“Sorry,” she said. “That was stupid of me.”
Thackeray looked at her for a long moment, although what he saw was not Laura’s stricken face but a peacefully sleeping infant in another mother’s arms. He shook himself sharply.
“I’m the one who should be sorry,” he said. Impulsively she leaned over and kissed him and the kiss turned into a longer embrace.