Rough Treatment

Thirty-three

Loscoe Miners’ Welfare Silver Band. the bottom edge of the poster, yellow over-printed in black, curling away now, catching in the shrill wind. Last concert of the previous summer. The sun was out, January warm for the time of year didn’t have to mean warm, not when you were sitting on a bench facing the deserted bandstand, waiting for somebody who might never show.

It had taken forty-eight hours to set up the meeting and there hadn’t been one of those in which Grabianski hadn’t felt his mind changing, regretted what he’d agreed to do.

Wearing a wire, wasn’t that what they called it?

He remembered a television program, documentary, two detectives leaning on a prisoner to give them information, neither of them knowing of the hidden tape recorder, evidence against them spooling unseen. A film, also, more than one, TV again, Cagney and Lacey, Hill Street Blues, the cop pretending to be the bad guy, going in with a microphone taped to his chest. Sometimes they were found out, sometimes got away with it. A.45 Magnum in the face on a citation from the commissioner, a medal-the way it went depended on status, who was playing you this time around. Whether you were needed for the next episode or not. Exactly who you were in this story: hero or villain.

Late morning and there weren’t too many people around. An elderly man in a raincoat sitting, hands in pockets, at the other side of the circle, staring off into nothing that was there. Two girls from one of the nearby offices taking an early lunch, baked potatoes forked from pale plastic boxes. A ragged crocodile of primary-school kids was making its way along the steeply angled path towards the castle; pieces of paper flapped back from their hands, duplicated questions about Mortimer’s Hole, a space to make a sketch plan of the moat and bailey. The teacher was hanging back, discouraging one of the boys from digging up the early crocuses with his foot.

Look at it this way, Resnick had said, people like Stafford, you don’t want them out on the streets any more than we do.

“Look at it this way …” Resnick was standing behind the chair, hands in pockets, waiting until Grabianski did just that, looked at him at least. “People like Stafford, they’re as close to vermin as you can get; you don’t want them out on the streets any more than we do.”

“Who’s arguing?” Grabianski said. It was the same dim room, the same claustrophobia. Gray smoke collected beneath the low ceiling in coils: Norman Mann chain-smoking now, lighting one from the nub of the other. “You’re right. What you’ve told me, he should be put away …”

“He’s a piece of shit,” put in Norman Mann.

“Arrest him,” Grabianski said. “Lock him up.”

“We need your help.” Resnick lifted one leg, set his foot down on the seat of the chair, holding Grabianski with his eyes. Grabianski knew what he was trying to do, this Polish cop with the edges of an East Midlands accent; trying to make him feel guilty, that’s what he was doing, wanting to get him involved. What was it to be? Solidarity? Poles apart?

“You’ve got the cocaine,” Grabianski said. “Harold Roy, Maria, they’ll testify Stafford was selling the stuff, that he’d been supplying them.” He looked from one detective to the other. “I don’t see your problem.”

“Problem is,” said Norman Mann, “if we go that way, the only thing likely to stand up is letting this Harold have a few grams here and there and maybe, if we’re lucky, possession of a kilo.”

“So?”

“So what’ve we got to sit on Stafford and squeeze him? Next to nothing. He comes across as strictly small time, pleads guilty and waits for his parole. What do we learn?”

The drugs-squad detective used his middle finger and thumb to make an emphatic zero. He ground his cigarette out beneath his shoe and headed for the door. “I’m going for a piss,” he said.

Strange how one person saying it, thought Grabianski, makes you want to go yourself.

“The cocaine that comes into the country,” said Resnick, “the shipments that matter, two to three hundred kilos at a time, they’re broken down and spread out, city to city, broken down again. Someone like Stafford, in that process he’s not major, but we think he is big enough to know names, contacts, procedures. Putting him away for a few years isn’t enough. Nobody that matters will get touched. As far as they’re concerned there’s a hundred Staffords each way you turn; they’ll sacrifice him as soon as spit on the street. They can trust him not to talk and as long as we’ve nothing more on him, they’re right.”

Grabianski didn’t like the way Resnick was looking at him, expecting some response; he wasn’t comfortable with it. He’d look away, but whenever his head swung back again there was Resnick, staring, waiting.

“I don’t see it,” Grabianski said. His hands should have been sweaty, but they were dry, the palms were dry circles, beginning to itch. “Even if I wanted to, I don’t see what I can do.”

“If we could help you with that …?”

“Help?”

“Find a way where you could help.”

“No.”

“No?”

“Forget it.”

Resnick moved close and Grabianski rose to his feet: two men, big men, tall. Less than an arm’s length apart. “All we need is proof that Stafford’s part of something big. Not unwittingly, knowingly. That’s all.”

“Proof?”

“A tape.”

“No.”

Resnick touched Grabianski on the arm. “Jerry, you said you don’t want him on the streets any more than we do. Vermin. Worse.”

“Next you’ll be telling me it’s my duty.”

“Isn’t it?”

“As an honest citizen,” Grabianski laughed.

“Why not?”

Grabianski could feel Resnick’s breath on his face, feel the inspector’s hand on his arm, increasing the pressure. “You’re already helping us with a large number of previously unsolved crimes; if you were instrumental in a major drugs arrest …”

“I’d have my face razored before I’d been inside an hour.”

“Then we must do our best to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“Once I’m in there, there’s nothing you can do.”

“I meant, to make sure time isn’t what you do.”

Grabianski held a breath, turned slowly away, released it. From somewhere there was a dull humming in his ears, making it difficult to think.

“You’re serious?”

Resnick didn’t need to answer.

Still Grabianski shook his head. “I’m not sure.”

“It’s not just Stafford. There’s people behind him making millions. You’ve got no more time for them than I have. You’d feel good, knowing they were locked away.”

“Stop accusing me of morality.”

“Why else jump in front of an ax for a woman you’ve never seen before? Why risk prison giving artificial respiration to a perfect stranger?”

“Because I didn’t think about it. I was there, in the situation. I did what I did. What you’re asking, it’s different.” Grabianski looked past Resnick towards the door. “I need the toilet,” he said.

“Right.” Resnick opened the door and nodded at the young constable standing there. He had escorted Grabianski out of sight when Mann came back in.

“He going to do it?”

“He hasn’t said so yet, not definitely, but yes, I think he’ll do it.”

“’Course he will. He’s banking on being convicted of nothing less than a public-service award. He’s down there now, taking a slow piss, betting the judge is going to fall in love with his conscience.”

What Grabianski was hoping was that Stafford wouldn’t keep him waiting much longer, stand him up altogether. What he was praying was that the whole business would get done without delay, without any trouble, without anyone getting hurt.

“Any sign?” Resnick asked.

Norman Mann shook his head. “Nothing.”

Officers wearing dark blue overalls were stretched flat on the roof of People’s College opposite; more were stationed behind the turrets of the Castle’s East Terrace. Either side of the bandstand, where Grabianski was sitting, they were looking down through high-powered field-glasses, stills cameras on tripods, ready to catch anything and everything at a hundredth of a second.

Resnick and Norman Mann were hunched together in a temporary workman’s hut beneath the bridge at the center of the Castle grounds. Although they were less than a hundred meters away, their view of the scene came via a video camera, also on the terracing, played out to them on a twelve-inch black-and-white monitor. Whatever was picked up by the microphone beneath Grabianski’s shirt was relayed to them through a single speaker: so far there had been a certain amount of rustling, a lot of strong breathing.

“Bloke’s got the heart of an ox,” Norman Mann remarked.

“And the balls of a rhino?”

“The woman obviously thought so. Mary?”

“Maria.”

“Couldn’t get enough.”

“You going to charge him? Harold?”

“You going after her? Obstructing the course of justice?”

Resnick shook his head. “Not if this works out. Grice we’ve already got dead to rights. Savage is back-pedaling so fast we’ll have to test him for steroids.”

“How about this Fossey?”

“Still claiming regular consultation work. Admits he may have let his tongue slip once or twice a week over a drink. Swears there were no kickbacks.”

“Can you break him?”

“Difficult. At least two of the most recent cases, he was on his honeymoon. Savage is the one who met with Grice, passed on whatever was passed on.”

Norman Mann shrugged. “Either way, you come out of it smelling of roses. That’s a lot of burglaries off the file.” He cracked his knuckles, grinned lopsidedly. “Get this one, too, you’re flavor of the month, no mistake.”

“Let’s wait and see what happens.”

“He’ll show.”

Resnick wished he could be as sure. Gazing at the monitor, Norman Mann pursed his lips into a slow whistle.

“Charlie?”

“Yes?”

“See that?”

“Uh-huh.”

“That I wouldn’t mind a taste of. How ’bout you?”

A young black woman, Afro-Caribbean, wearing a smart dark suit, white blouse, black heels, walked in front of Grabianski and the camera panned with her, steadying as she sat down at one of the benches. Watching, Norman Mann whistled again as she crossed her legs; smiling, he blew on the screen as if to cool it down.

“No, Charlie? Expect me to believe that?”

“No.”

“You surprise me, Charlie. Never struck me as prejudiced before.”

Resnick straightened and arched his back; they’d been cooped up inside for too long.

“Shit,” murmured Mann. “Why can’t he keep the camera still?”

“Good reason,” Resnick said, bending forward again. “Look.”

Taking his time, not a care in the world, Alan Stafford was strolling along the avenue of trees towards the glassed-in bandstand, hands in his blue car-coat pockets.