Home Run

2

The detective had led the way up to the attic. During that day he had become familiar enough, as familiar as he wanted to be, with the cramped space under the slope of the roof. He cased back against a wall, brushing against the peeling paper.

Below him the stairway protested at the weight of the two that followed him. The local detective thought it understandable that the Secretary of State would have his own man from Protection with him. The bodyguard would have lived long enough in the Secretary of State's pocket to have become a part of the retinue, almost family. He understood that the Secretary of State needed a face to trust. The Secretary of State emerged into the attic, white dust and cobwebs on the collar of his black overcoat. The detective had taken to the furthest corner, he left the centre ground to the Secretary of State and his bodyguard. He had seen them all. The ones on the breadline, and the most powerful in the land. They all came bowed and subdued to witness the place, the stinking corner, where their child had died. Usually the mothers came too. He knew that some would be aggressive, some would be broken, some crippled with shame. Their child, their future, blown away by a hypodermic syringe. The room was pitifully bare, and even more confused than when the police had first been alerted by the ambulance team because his squad had turned the place over and ransacked every inch of it. The mattress had been taken apart. The girl's clothes had been put into a black plastic sack after examination. Her papers were collected into a cellophane bag which would go to his office for further examination.

The bodyguard stood at the top of the stairway. He gave the sign with his eyes, he told the local man to get on with his talk. The Secretary of State was known to the policeman only through the television in his living room and the photographs in the newspapers that he never seemed to find time to read but which were kept for lighting the fire before he went to work. The Secretary of State was not a pretty sight, looked like a man who had been kicked hard in the testicles an hour before. He could stand, but the colour was gone from his face.

He'd done well, the local man, he had had the name, alerted the Metropolitan, and now had the parent where the parent wanted to be, and all this before the rat-pack had wind of the excitement. Drily he thought to himself, if nothing else went right on this one then getting the Secretary of State into and out of this crap heap before the photographers pitched up was good going. He took the lead from the bodyguard.

"Lucy had been living here for several weeks, sir, at least she was here for a month. Only known means of support, the Social Security. Preliminary post mortem indicates that she was a serious victim of addiction – we don't regard users as criminals, sir, we tend to refer to them as victims. Her wrist veins have been used, no good anymore, and her thigh and shin veins have also been used. She had taken to using the smaller veins in her feet as an injection route. I am assuming that you were aware that she was addicted, sir – I mean, it must have been pretty obvious, obvious that is if you were still in touch with your daughter… "

The Secretary of State had his head down, made no response. Just like all the rest of them, feeling it a duty to get some feel of where their child had died. Christ, the room stank.

"… We cannot yet be certain of the cause of death, not in exact terms, that will come later when Pathology have had their full whack, but the first indicators are, sir, that she took a rather pure dose. What she took was just too much for her system. That causes a coma, and then vomiting. Blocked windpipe does the rest – I'm sorry, sir."

The Secretary of State's voice was a flat monotone. "I've an old chum, medic in London. I talked to him right at the beginning. I said, 'Whose child becomes an addict?' He said,

'Your kid.' He said, 'No one worries when the addict is that nice kiddie from next door, but by Heavens they worry when it's the nice kiddie upstairs.' We thought that we had done everything for her. She went to the best schools, when she went onto heroin we sent her to the best withdrawal clinic.

Just a waste of money. We cut her allowance, so she sold everything we'd ever given her. She moved out, then came back and stole from us. Can you imagine that, officer, stealing from her own parents… of course, you can imagine it, you are accustomed to the misery caused by this addiction. The last thing we did was have the Ministry's own security system in our own house changed. I mean that's coming to something, isn't it, when the Secretary of State for Defence has to have his own alarm system changed because his own daughter might want to break in… Her mother will want to know, can't hide much from her mother, would she have been in pain?"

"Coma first, sir. No pain." The detective was past shock, past sympathy, and way past apportioning blame. He could be matter of fact. "She had the stuff. It's if she hadn't had the stuff that she would have been in pain."

"How much would it have been costing her?"

"From what we've seen, anything between a hundred and two hundred a week – when it's got that bad."

The local detective wondered how the politician would survive it. He wondered whether he would shut himself away from public life once the storm blew, the headlines tomorrow and the Coroner's Court reporting. Whether he would carry on as if his public and private lives were separate compartments. He wondered if the pursuit of his public life could have so damaged a private life that a lone, lost child took to a syringe for companionship, for love.

The Secretary of State had a good grip on himself, his voice was clear. Nothing staccato, nothing choked. "A colleague of mine said recently, 'This abuse brings hardened criminals and indulgent users together in a combination that is potentially lethal for good order and civilised values – the price of ultimate failure is unthinkable.' That was before Lucy had her problem, I didn't take much notice of it then. What are you doing about it, officer, this lethal combination?"

The local detective swallowed his first thoughts. Not the moment to spit out his gripes about resources and priorities, and bans on overtime payment which meant that most of his squad clocked off on the dot of office hours. He said, "Gather what evidence we can, sir, try and move our investigation on from there."

"Do you have children, officer?"

"Yes, sir."

"What age?"

"About half your Lucy's age, sir."

"Could it happen to them, what happened to her?"

"As long as the stuff's coming in, sir, flooding in like it is

– yes, sir."

"What would you want done, officer, if she had been yours?"

"I'd want to get to the fuckers… excuse me, sir… to the people who made the stuff available to your Lucy."

"You'll do what you can?"

"Bluntly, sir, that's not a lot. Yes, we will."

The bodyguard had flicked his fingers, a small gesture close to the seam of his trousers. The local man had the message.

He moved around and behind the Secretary of State, to the head of the staircase. The bodyguard was already warily descending. There was music playing on a lower floor. The detective had had one session with the other residents of this terraced house, and he would have another later that afternoon when he had got himself shot of the big man. He hadn't been heavy with them, the others in the squat, not once he had discovered who Lucy Barnes' father was. Counter productive, he would have said, to have leaned too hard on them right now. He wanted their help, he needed all they could give him.

From the top of the staircase he looked back. The Secretary of State was staring down at the mattress, and the bag of clothes, and the junk litter that might the previous week have been important to a nineteen-year-old girl.

He paused at the bottom of the stairs.

"What does he think I'm going to do about it?"

The bodyguard shrugged.

Two, three minutes later, they heard the creaking of the stairs. The detective thought he saw a redness at the eyes that were distorted by the Secretary of State's rimless spectacles.

On the pavement the Secretary of State paused beside his car. The chauffeur was holding open the back door. "Thank you again, officer. I am not a complete fool, by the way. I understand the very real difficulties that you face in your work. I can promise you one thing. I will, quite shamelessly, use every vestige of my authority and influence to ensure the apprehension and prosecution of those responsible for Lucy's death. Good day to you."

He ducked down into the car. The bodyguard closed the door on him, and slipped into the front passenger seat.

The detective saw the Secretary of State lift from a briefcase a portable telephone, and the car was gone, heading away last.

He went back upstairs. In a confined space he preferred to work alone. Half an hour later, under newspapers, under a loosened floor board, a long way back in a cavity, he found Lucy's diary.

"This is a great deal better, Mattie. Much more what I've been looking for."

"I'm gratified."

"I'll explain to you my assessment of Iran theatre… "

Mattie studied the ceiling light. It was not so much an impertinence, more an attempt to avert his eyes so that the impatience could be better disguised.

"… We are talking about the region's principal geopoliti-cal and military power, sitting astride the most important petroleum trade routes in the world. We are talking about the country with the potential for regaining its position as thirteenth in Gross National Product, with the largest army in Western Asia, with no foreign debt, with the capacity to blow over every other regime in the area… "

"I have specialised, Director General, in Iranian matters since 1968 – I have actually lived there."

"Yes, yes, Mattie. I know you are close to Iran. Short service commission in the Coldstream liaising with the Imperial army,

'65 to '67; Station Officer '75 to '78; Bahrain and Ankara after the Revolution. Give me the credit, Mattie, for being able to read a personal file. I know you were familiar with Iran before your entry to the Service, and that since entry you have specialised in that country. I know your file backwards and I'll tell you what I think: you're probably too close to your subject. My training is as a Kremlinologist, I'm a Cold War freak, and I should think you have a clearer view of how we should be targetting the Soviet Union and its satellites than I have. Just as I believe I have a clear idea of what's required from Iran. It's time we understood each other, Mattie

… "

Mattie no longer stared at the ceiling. He looked straight ahead of him. He hadn't his pipe out of his pocket, he hadn't his matches on the mahogany table. He had his fists clenched.

He could not remember when he had last felt such anger.

"You're in a rut. That's why I've been brought in to run Century. There are too many of you in a rut, going through the motions, never questioning the value of material. I won't accept paper pushing… This is the best material you have supplied me with."

Mattie squinted his gaze across the table, across to his rewrite of Charlie Eshraq's report. Good, but not that good.

A useful start for something that would get better.

"… It's crude, but it's factual. In short it is the sort of material that crosses my desk all too infrequently. There are live valuable pieces of information. One, the movement of the 8th and 120th Battalions of the IRG 28th Sanandaj Division from Ahvaz to Saqqez, movement by night indicating that this was not simply a tactical readjustment, but more the reinforcing of a particular sector prior to using those Guards in a new push. The Iraqis would like to know that. .."

"You'd pass that on to the Iraqis?" A hiss of surprise.

"I might. Good material earns favours… Two, the German engineer on his way to Hamadan, and at Hamadan is a missile development factory. Good stuff, stuff we can confront our friends in Bonn with, make them quite uncomfortable

… I've marked up all of what I consider to be relevant, five points in all. The training camp at Saleh-Abad north of Qom, that's useful. Fine stuff."

The Director General had carefully placed his pencil on the table. He upturned a glass and filled it with water from a crystal jug.

"And who is going to emerge as the power among the clerics, and how long the war is going on, and what is the state of disaffection amongst the population, am I to presume that is unimportant?"

"No, Mattie. Not unimportant, simply outside your brief.

Analysis is for diplomatic missions, and they're good at it. I trust there will be more of this."

"Yes."

"Who is the source?"

"I think I've got your drift, Director General."

"1 asked you, who is the source?"

"I will make sure that a greater flow of similar material reaches you."

The Director General smiled. The first time that Mattie had seen the flicker of the lines at the side of his mouth.

"Please yourself, Mattie, and have a good trip."

Charlie Eshraq was personal to Mattie, and would not be shared with anyone. He stood, turned and left the room.

Going down in the lift he wondered what the boy was making of his present. It was personal and private to Mattie that on his last journey inside Charlie had killed two men, and equally personal and private that on this journey he would kill another.

They had been colleagues since University, since the youth section of the Party, since sharing an office in the Research Division headquarters in Smith Square. They had entered Parliament at the same election, and the Cabinet in the same reshuffle. When their leader finally determined on retirement they would probably compete in the same dogfight for the top job. That time had not yet come, they were close friends.

"I'm dreadfully sorry, George."

Once the Home Secretary's assistant had brought in the coffee, placed it on the desk and left, they were alone. It was rare for two such men to meet without a phalanx of notetakers and agenda minders and appointment keepers. The Secretary of State sat exhausted in an easy chair, the plaster dust and the cobwebs still on his overcoat. "I want something done about this stinking trade."

"Of course you do, George."

The Secretary of State looked hard into the Home Secretary's face. "I know what you are up against, but I want them found and tried and I shall pray you get them convicted and sentenced to very long terms, every last one of the bastards that killed Lucy."

"Very understandable."

"My detective told me that we are stopping one kilo out of ten that comes in…"

"We have stepped up recruitment of both police drugs officers and Customs. We've put a huge resource at the disposal… "

The Secretary of State shook his head. "Please, not a Party Political, not between us. I've got to go back to Libby tonight, I've to tell her where her – our – daughter died, and then I shall have to leave her and put on a cheerful face for dinner, ironically enough with some bigwigs from Pakistan, from the heart of what I expect you know is the Golden Crescent. I don't think, and I mean this, I don't think Libby will survive lonight if I cannot give her your solemn promise that Lucy's killers will be found and brought to book."

"I'll do what I can, George."

"She was a lovely girl, Lucy, before all this… "

"Everything we can do, that is a promise. You'll give my love to Libby. I'm so very sorry."

"Oh, you'd by God be sorry if you had seen how Lucy died, how she was – dead – and where she died. Libby will need the strengh of twenty to survive this. In my heart of hearts I have known, for almost a year, how it might end but I couldn't imagine the depths of it. You must see it day in and day out, but this time the minuscule statistic on your desk is my dead daughter and I am going to hold you to your promise."

The detective worked his way steadily through the diary. He found an asterisk in red biro on every third or fourth day of the last few weeks, the last against the date on which the girl had taken her overdose. There were also telephone numbers.

There was a string of seven-figure numbers, almost certainly London numbers, which for the moment he discarded. He had wrung from the others in the squat that Lucy Barnes had not been away from the town in the last days of her life.

The local numbers were five-figure numbers. There was one number underlined in the same red biro. The local detective worked to a formula. He would work into the early evening, and then lock away the papers on his desk, put on his coat and drive home. What other way? If he and his two juniors worked 25 hours in the 24 they would still make no noticeable dent on the narcotics problems that had spread even to this country town. Where did the bloody stuff stop? The detective went to the area seminars, he had heard endlessly of the big city problems. And their problems, the problems of the major city forces, were his. If he hadn't shut it away, locked it into the drawer of his desk each evening, then the scag and coke would do for him too.

Before he put the key back into his pocket, he told the better of the two juniors to get onto the telephone exchange and cut all incoming and outgoing calls from the underlined number.

He wished them well, bade them a "Good evening", and left for home.

"The gloves off, is that what you're asking for?"

He was a former Chief Constable. He had seen it all and heard it all. He wanted the guidelines crystal clear, and from the horse's mouth. He headed the National Drugs Intelligence Unit, based on New Scotland Yard, with responsibility for co-ordinating efforts to stem the flow of narcotics into the country.

"Yes, I suppose that's it. Yes, that is what I am asking for."

The Home Secretary shifted in his seat. His own Private Secretary was busy at his notepad, and at the back of the room the policeman's aide was scribbling fast, then looking up to see whether there was more. The Home Secretary wondered how similar their two notes would be.

"What I could say to you, Home Secretary, is that I might be just a little concerned at hard-pressed and limited resources being diverted on to one case, however tragic, merely because the victim happened to be well connected. You would understand that I could say that, would be entitled to say that."

"It's no doubt a straightforward case. It's nothing that hasn't been successfully dealt with countless times. I just want it solved, and fast," the Home Secretary said.

"Then I'll tell you, sir, what's landed on our desks over the last few days… Four Blacks bullock their way into a house and shoot the mother and her schoolboy son, the boy's dead.

That's drugs related. A blind widow is beaten up in the West Country, for a hundred pounds in her pension book. That's to pay for drugs. Twenty-eight policemen injured in two months in West London in one street, in 150 yards of one street, because we're trying to put a stop to trafficking in that street. What we call designer drugs, cocktail amphetamines, there are at least 1 wo new laboratories in East London which we haven't found.

A six-year-old kiddie who's hooked on reefers, and his Mum's come in to tell us that he pinched?150 out of her handbag to pay for them. .. That's what's hitting our desks at the moment.

Now do I hear you rightly, sir? Do I correctly hear you say that that type of investigation, pretty important to the men and women involved, goes on the back burner?"

"Yes."

"… because the daughter of a Cabinet Minister is dumb enough to squirt herself an overdose?"

"Don't let's play silly buggers."

"Thank you, sir, I'll attend to it."

"And be damn certain you get a result."

There was a wintry smile on the policeman's face, a smile that sliced the Home Secretary's defences. He looked away, he didn't want to see the man's eyes, the message of contempt that a man in his position could break the civilized order of priorities because he had given his word to a colleague.

"You'll keep me informed," the Home Secretary told his Private Secretary. "And you can ring down for my car."

''Charlie Eshraq rang," Harriet Furniss said.

Mattie was heaving out of his overcoat. "Did he now?"

Reaching to hook it tidily behind the front door. "And what did he have to say for himself?"

It was Mattie's way that he did not bring his office home.

He had told his wife nothing of his dealings with the boy, nor that Charlie, whom Harriet Furniss treated as a son, had killed two men on his last journey home. They had been married for 28 years, and he had spent 21 of them as a member of the Secret Intelligence Service and he had stuck to his rule book, and the rule book said that wives were no part of the Service.

"He said that he was sorry that he had missed you. He was off tonight… "

"Was he now?" Mattie made a poor fist of unconcern.

Harriet would have noticed, but she would not have commented. Harriet never attempted to draw him out.

"He said that he had a rather good job for a few weeks, something about playing courier to tourists in the Aegean."

"That'll be nice for him."

"He said thank you for the present."

"Ah, yes. Just a little something that I saw, and posted to him," he said, too fast. He could lie with the best of them at Century, and was a miserable failure at home.

"He said it would be very useful."

"That's excellent. The country this weekend, I think, Harriet. Some reading to be done."

He kissed her on the cheek, like it was something that he should have done earlier. In all his married life Mattie had never looked at another woman. Perhaps he was old fashioned.

He thought a little more each day of his advancing years – his next birthday would be his 53rd – and happily acknowledged that he was just damned lucky to have met and married Harriet (nee Owens) Furniss.

He opened his briefcase, took out the black cloth-bound book that was all of its contents. He went to work each morning with a briefcase, as if it were a part of his uniform, but he never brought it home filled with office papers. He showed her the elegant lettering on the spine, The Urartian Civilization of Near Asia – an Appraisal. She grimaced. He opened the book and showed her the receipt from the anti-quarian bookseller.

"It had better be your birthday present."

His birthday was not for another nine weeks. She would pay for the book as she paid for most of the extras in their lives, as she had paid the girls' school fees, as she had paid the airfare for Charlie Eshraq to come over from California to London years before. Mattie had no money, no inherited wealth, only his salary from Century, which looked after essentials – rates, mortgage, housekeeping. Their way of life would have been a good deal less comfortable without Harriet's contributions.

"How did Charlie sound?"

"Sounded pretty good. Very buoyant, actually… Supper'll be frizzled."

They went down the hallway towards the kitchen. He was holding his wife's hand. He did it more often now that the girls had left home.

"You'll have something to get your teeth into for the weekend?"

"Indeed I will… That wretched man who's bought the Manor Farm, he's ploughed up the footpath across Ten Acre.

I'll have plenty to keep me busy."

God help the poor bastard, Mattie thought, the newcomer from the big city if he had come down to the countryside and ploughed up a right-of-way and made an enemy of Harriet Furniss.

She looked into his face. "The Urartians, aren't they Eastern Turkey?" She saw him nod. "Is that where you're going?"

"Gulf first, but I might get up there." There were times when he wanted nothing more than to talk through his days, to share the frustrations and to celebrate the triumphs. But he had never done it and he never would.

In the kitchen he made himself a weak gin and tonic, and gave Harriet her schooner of Cyprus dry sherry. Supermarket gin and cheap imported sherry, because drinks came out of the housekeeping. He was quiet that evening. While she washed up the pots and loaded the dishwasher, Mattie sat in a chair by the window, and saw nothing through the opened curtains, and wondered how far on his journey Charlie Eshraq had travelled.

"Come on, Keeper, for Christ's sake… get a wiggle on."

The pub was full, getting near to closing time, and the swill underway before "Time" was called.

David Park was away from the bar, outside the group. He stared back at them.

"Bloody hell, Keeper, are you in this round or are you not?" There were six of them up at the bar, and some had shed their jackets, and all had loosened their ties, and their faces were flushed. A hell of a good evening for all concerned, except for David Park. He hadn't made his excuses and gone home to Ann, but he hadn't played much of a part in the piss-up that had been inevitable after Mr Justice Kennedy's remarks following the sentencing.

"Keeper, it is your round."

True, it was David Park's round. He drained his bitter lemon. He made his way to the bar. In a quiet voice, and the barmaid had to heave most of her bosom onto the beer mats to hear him, he ordered six pints of Yorkshire bitter, and a bitter lemon with ice. He passed the beers from the bar to the eager waiting hands.

"Bloody good, Keeper… Cheers, old mate…'Bout bloody time too… Keeper, my old love, you are something of a wet towel tonight… "

He grinned, fast, as if that were a weakness. He did not like to acknowledge weakness.

"I'm driving," he said calmly. He slid away from the heart of the group, back to the fringe. His radio call sign was Keeper, had been ever since he had been accepted into the Investigation Division. He was Park, and so some bright creature had labelled him Keeper. Mucking in, getting pissed-up, falling around, they weren't Park's talents. He had other talents, and Mr Justice Kennedy had remarked on them and commended the April team's dedicated work, and to everyone else in April that was reason enough to be on their seventh pint with a cab home at the end of it. Mr Justice Kennedy had handed down, late that afternoon, a Fourteen, two Twelves, and a Nine. Mr Justice Kennedy had called for Bill Parrish, Senior Investigating Officer and in charge of April team, to step up into the witness box so that the thanks of "a society under threat from these hellish traffickers who deal in wickedness" could be expressed. Bill Parrish in a clean white shirt then had looked decently embarrassed at the fulsome praise set out by the old cove. Parrish earned, basic, ?16,000 a year. David Park earned, basic,?12,500 a year. The bastards who had gone down, for Fourteen and Twelve and Nine, were looking at a couple of million hidden away in the Caymans, and not touchable. It would take Park 40 years to earn what the bastards had waiting for them after their time, less remission, and by then he would be retired with his index-linked pension to cuddle. He liked the chase, cared little about the kill, couldn't care less once the 'cuffs went on.

Parrish would get a great welcome from his wife when he made it home after closing, and she'd pour him another jug full and sit him down on the settee and roll the video so that he could belch his way through the recordings of the two main news bulletins of the evening and hear the message to the nation that Customs and Excise was super bloody marvellous, and keeping the nation safe, etc, etc. Park hoped Ann would be asleep.

April team was Iranian heroin. Park had been four years with April and had an encyclopaedic knowledge of Iranian heroin. He had been the front man in this investigation, deep inside the guts of the organisation that was doing the running of the scag, he had even driven for them. Ann knew sweet nothing about what he had been at. Best if she were asleep when he reached home.

He watched the group. He thought they looked stupid and very drunk. He couldn't remember when he had last been the worse for wear in public. One of the reasons he had been selected, that he could be relied upon invariably to stay the right side of the bottle. To be less than 1000 per cent, clear-headed on a covert operation would be real bad news, like a shotgun barrel in the back of the neck. He didn't tell Ann what he did. He told her the generalities, never the details. He couldn't have told her that he was insinuated into a gang, that if his cover were blown he'd be face down in the Thames with the back of his skull a bloody remnant. He thought one of the guys was going to fall over.

Bill Parrish had detached himself from the group at the bar session, made his way stiffly to Park. An arm looped around his shoulders. He took the weight.

"Mind if I say it…? When you want, you can be awe-somely priggish, David."

"You can say it."

"April's a team, a shit hot team. A shit hot team stands or falls on being together. Being together doesn't match with one bugger on the edge and looking down his nose."

Park disentangled the arm, propped it onto the mantelpiece of the bar's fireplace. "Meaning what?"

"Meaning that this has been a great scene, worth celebrating…

"

Park dragged the breath down into his lungs. Parrish had asked for it. He'd get it.

"Did you see them in there? Did you see them when they were being sent down? They were laughing at us, Bill. One Fourteen, two Twelves and a Nine, and they were looking across at us like it was some sort of crack. Did you see their women in the gallery? Deep tans from the Costa. And that wasn't paste on their fingers, ears, throats… Hear me, Bill.

What we are at is a confidence trick. We aren't even scratching at these pigs, and here we are pretending we're winning. It's a confidence trick the Judge plays too, and that way the British masses go to their beds tonight thinking everything is hunky-dory. We're kidding ourselves, Bill. We're not win- ning, we're not even doing well. We're drowning in the bloody stuff…"

"That's daft talk, David."

"How's this for daft talk? Heroin's an explosion, cocaine's gone through the roof, 'phets are up, with cannabis we're talking tonnage not kilos. We're deluding ourselves if we pretend we're on top of it. We're down on the floor, Bill. Yes or no, Bill?"

"I've drink taken, I'm not answering."

"Sorry, out of order. You know what I think…?"

He saw Parrish roll his eyes. Wouldn't be the first time that Keeper had spouted his view of salvation.

"Give it me."

"We're too defensive, Bill. We should be a more aggressive force. We should be abroad more, we should be ferreting down the source. We shouldn't just be a line of last resort with our backs against the wall. We should be out there and after them."

Parrish gazed into the young face in front of him, into the coolness of the eyes that were not misted with drink, at the determined set of the youngster's chin. He swayed. "And where's out there? 'Out there' is the arse end of Afghanistan, it's the happy little villages of Iran. My darling, you go there on your own. You don't go there with your old Uncle Bill."

"Then we might just as well give up – legalise the stuff."

"For a joker who's going to get a Commendation, who's just had the Judge's praises sung up his bum, you are mightily hard to please, Keeper… You should go home. In the morning, a good shit and a good shower and a good shave and you'll feel no end better."

Parrish had given up on him, headed back for the group.

He stood a few more minutes on his own. The rest had now forgotten him. He could not help himself. He could not turn it off, like they could. He was right, he knew he was right, but none of them came over to join him, to hear how right he was. He called across to say that he was on his way. None of them turned, none of them heard him.

He drove home. He observed the speed limit. He was stone cold sober. It meant nothing to him that the Judge had singled him out for praise. It only mattered that there was a war, and it was not being won.

Home was a two-bedroom flat in the south-west suburbs of the city. He could afford to live in the flat because of his overtime and Ann's work in a local architect's office. He garaged his Escort at the back of the block. He felt half dead with tiredness. He was a long time selecting the right key.

What made him tired, what made him want to throw up, had been their looks from the dock as they had heard sentence.

The bastards had laughed at April's best effort.

Inside there was a note on the narrow hall table.

" D. I've gone to Mum's for the night. Might see you tomorrow if you've the time, A. "

The detective, bright and early, thanked the supervisor at the exchange. A small country town, of course there were easy and unofficially good relations between the exchange and the police. The number that had been disconnected last evening had been reported out of order three times during the night.

One caller had left his name and telephone number. And not a name that surprised him. Young Darren was quite well known to the local detective. He suggested to the supervisor that it would be quite in order for the telephone to be reconnected.

In his office he told his subordinates when they came in not to take their coats off, and he handed them the address, and told them to bring in Darren Cole for a chat.

He was whistling to himself, Gilbert and Sullivan. He would enjoy talking old times to young Master Cole, and talking about Lucy Barnes' purchases. A fine start to the day until his clerical assistant informed him that he was required in the Chief Superintendent's office, and that two big shots were down from Constabulary Headquarters.