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“Look at this one. Grantley Adams. Isn’t he the bloke whose son nearly killed himself wi‘drugs. ‘It’s not our policy to donate to organisations which are not long-established charities.’ These beggars are screaming for computer literate staff and here we are trying to train some of them and all we get is a kick in the teeth. What’s the matter with these people? They don’t seem to see the co
“Of course it is,” Joyce said. “They’re frightened of the Heights, a lot of them. Scared witless, always have been. You give a neighbourhood a bad name and it’s impossible to get rid of.”
“But they’re going to regenerate the bloody place,” Do
Joyce looked weary and could offer no reassuring counter to that analysis. Increasingly she believed it was true.
Do
Just before lunch-time Dizzy B Sanderson put his head round the classroom door to whoops of delight from the girls, ready for any distraction now.
“Is Kevin around?” he asked.
“Should be in any time,” Do
“I’ll wait out here,” the DJ said, ducking back out of the door, to dramatic groans of disappointment from the class.
“Come on girls, finish off now. We all need a break,” Do
“Police,” the evident leader of the group said loudly. “Everyone stay exactly where you are.”
Joyce Ackroyd pushed herself painfully to her feet from the chair at the back of the room where she had been sitting next to one of the girls.
“Can we see your identity cards, please,” she said firmly. The leading police officer glanced at her with something close to contempt and flashed a warrant card in her direction.
“And your name is?”
“DI Ray Walter, drugs squad,” he said. “Now just sit down, Gran, we’ve a warrant to search these premises.”
“Whatever for?” Joyce said, still standing.
“That’s for us to know,” the officer said. “For now I want all of you sitting exactly where you are while we look round. Then we’ll want names and addresses.”
The girl next to Joyce began to sob noisily as one of the officers picked up her bag and began to root through it. Joyce’s lips tightened and she glanced at Do
“Right,” he said. “We want you all down at the station for questioning. Now.”
With her arm round the girl whose sobs had now become hysterical Joyce stood up again.
“On what grounds?” she asked.
“On suspicion of handling Class A drugs, which were found on these premises,” Walter said.
“Are you arresting us?”
“We’ll deal with the formalities at the nick,” the DI said.
“What drugs?” Do
“You telling me we don’t know a kilo of heroin when we find it?” Walter sneered. “Get real. Now let’s have you. All of you.”
From his car parked some hundred yards away from the Project, Sergeant Kevin Mower watched in fascinated horror as a procession of girls, closely followed by Do
“Hell and damnation,” he said softly to himself as he pulled his mobile out of his pocket.
“Laura?” he asked as his call was answered. “Can you meet me at the Lamb? The shit seems to have hit the fan”
Grim-faced, DCI Michael Thackeray replaced the receiver on his desk and gazed at the two visitors who had just arrived in his office.
“They’ve been taken to Eckersley,” he said. “Apparently the drug squad’s ru
“I’ll go to Eckersley then,” Laura said angrily. “I’ll get Victor Mendelson to go down and play hell with them about Joyce. But what about the rest of them? They won’t have any big guns out on their side, will they?”
Thackeray swung round in his chair to face Kevin Mower, who was sitting as far away from his boss as he could manage and studiously avoiding catching his eye.
“What the hell have you been playing at, Kevin?” Thackeray demanded. “What was wrong with telling me what you were doing? It’s not as if it’s illegal. Or did you have some idea of what’s been going on up there? That there was likely to be a kilo of heroin stashed away in the kitchen? Did you know that? It won’t just be me asking when it becomes known you’ve been working there. They’ll want you down at Eckersley too. Tell me you were playing some devious game of your own to find the pushers and I just might believe you, but Ray Walter won’t. You can bank on that. He’ll chew you up and spit you out. Is this how you want your career to end?”
Laura and Sergeant Mower’s meeting at the Lamb had been brief. Five minutes discussion had presented them with only one course of action and they had walked across the centre of town to police headquarters together in gloomy silence to see Thackeray. The DCI had listened in increasing disbelief as Laura spelt out what little they knew before making the series of phone calls needed to discover where those arrested at the Project had been taken.
Mower gazed at his Timberlands without answering Thackeray’s tirade. Then he shrugged wearily.
“Anyone could have stashed heroin at the Project. The estate’s awash with the stuff. But I don’t believe for a moment Do