Nick Oldham - Dead Heat

He drove back to the Hilton Hotel on North Promenade, glad to see that Tara Wickson’s car was still there. She was probably killing time with friends in the bar, he guessed, until it was time to pick Charlotte up from the disco. Henry wondered if there was any value in hanging around to see her. He drove around the hotel car park and decided not to stay. He was going to go and do what he intended to do that evening, when Tara emerged from the front door of the Hilton, hand in hand with a man Henry did not recognize. He swerved into a parking bay and adjusted his rear-view mirror to watch the couple walk across to Tara’s Mercedes.

Suddenly she broke away from the man.

They spoke a few words.

Seconds later they were in her car, kissing, silhouettes from Henry’s viewpoint. Then her reversing lights came on and the Merc reversed quickly out of the bay. She drove north along the prom.

Henry followed. She went through Bispham, continuing north through Cleveleys and up into Fleetwood, working through the streets of the old fishing town before stopping outside the North Euston Hotel on the front. Tara and her man went arm in arm into the hotel and Henry let it go at that. He did not have the time or inclination to stay with her, as interesting as it was, though not, he thought, all that surprising. Tara had a lover. Whoopee-do, fancy that.

In a puff of black smoke he shot past the North Euston and headed back to his happy hunting ground of Blackpool and, in particular, to the drug-infested South Shore.

He felt comfortable here. It was like putting on an old pair of slippers. He had done much of his police work on the streets of South Shore. He had dealt with dozens of people around here, arrested lots of them, protected many of them. When he got out of his car it struck him he wasn’t actually far from being one of them. As a cop he had been part of the fabric of life here, a denizen of the jungle.

The thought made his stomach churn. At least he was one of the predators, though.

It was 8.45 p.m. He had wasted an hour and a half already. He would have to leave the area by 10.45 p.m. at the latest to be in time to pick up Leanne from the youth club. Two hours. Not much time to mooch around, show his face, ask a few questions, ruffle a few feathers.

The evening had gone chilly. That good old Blackpool wind was starting to whip in from the Irish Sea as the tide came in; spats of rain were dripping in from a cloudy sky. He hunched down into his denim jacket, hands thrust deep into his chinos.

He started to wander.

The streets were as cold as the night, the dark skyline dominated by the structure that was the Big One on the Pleasure Beach, one of the world’s most terrifying roller-coaster rides. A light at the top of the framework blinked its warning to planes wishing to land at nearby Blackpool airport: ‘Don’t hit me, it’ll hurt.’

Henry sauntered along a few terraced streets. Much of the housing was now given over to customers of the DSS. There was a high level of unemployment in the area, which was one of the country’s most deprived.

Near a corner shop, Henry paused in shadow. A group of teenage kids, some on mountain bikes, hung around outside the door, harassing customers who looked like easy targets, and generally behaving badly. Henry thanked his lucky stars his two girls hadn’t gone down this route. He had been fortunate with his kids, despite his neglect of them over the years. Kate had done a fine job with them.

He watched the group. He would have liked to go and remonstrate with them, but it would have been useless and possibly dangerous. Good people had been killed making a point.

A scruffy-looking cop car — obviously from the same stable as his borrowed Astra — crawled past, two officers on board. The youngsters stopped and watched and when it had gone, behaved even more outrageously than before, dancing around as though on the grave of law and order. Why hadn’t the cops stopped and spoken to them? Henry wanted to know. His mouth turned down with distaste. Were they afraid?

Another pedal cyclist appeared from around the corner. This was an older youth, maybe eighteen or nineteen. He cycled towards the group by the shop. One member detached himself from them and met the newcomer.

It happened quickly. The handover. The payoff. A drug deal completed in less than the blink of an eye. Then the older boy — the street dealer — was away on his bike whilst the younger lad — the buyer — sauntered calmly back to the main gang, smirking as though he’d won the lottery.

Street life, Henry thought.

The dealer had disappeared from the scene. Henry knew who he was and maybe what he had witnessed would come in useful at some later date — if he ever got reinstated.

He did not know the name of the buyer, but watched as he now became a street dealer, handing out tiny packages to several outstretched hands. Henry doubted it would go any further than this. These guys would be the end users. The consumers of a product which could well have originated on the other side of the world. Passed through countless hands, making huge amounts of money along the way for the suppliers, middle men and deal makers. But not the users. These were the ones who ultimately provided the money on which the whole business was based. And where did that money come from, Henry thought cynically. High-volume crime: auto theft, burglary, street robbery. Crime that had spiralled out of control and there was nothing the police could do to stem its relentless progress.

Truth was, as Henry knew, that the government had missed the opportunity through a very short-sighted approach. Performance targets were easy in terms of crimes such as stealing from vehicles, and police forces had been bullied into dealing with this type of crime by the Home Office. The reality was that, on the whole, crimes like these were purely driven by one thing: drugs.

Now it had hit home that drug abuse was the actual cause of the problem, it was to late too do anything meaningful about it. The drug trade was so sophisticated that when a dealer or supplier was taken out, a replacement was operating in a matter of hours, or less.

Because the boat had been missed by not disrupting the trade twenty years ago, it was now impossible to claw anything back. Society was stuck with it.

Henry shrugged. Not his problem. He stepped out of the shadow and walked purposely through the cluster of youths outside the shop. They watched him with suspicion and their loud chatter ceased. They did not hassle him, stepped aside and let him pass.

He walked on and turned into the first pub he came to, the King’s Cross. Not long ago a gangland killing had taken place here when three drug dealers lost their lives. The place had closed down for a short time after that, reopening with the fanfare of high expectation. Within weeks it had reverted to what it always had been: a hang-out for losers, druggies, prostitutes and gays.

Henry eased his way to the bar. Heavy-metal rock music pounded out from speakers hung from the ceiling. The smoke-filled atmosphere reeked of cannabis and human sweat. Henry had a bottle of Bud, ignoring the grubby glass proffered by the barman, choosing to sip from the bottle. It tasted sweet and light. He leaned on the bar. He recognized about a dozen people. Some he’d arrested. Others he’d dealt with under different circumstances.

Some eyeballed him.

He smiled at one man in particular, raising his bottle to him. The man single-fingered Henry and turned away in disgust. A cop in the place!

Henry didn’t give a fuck. The guy he was actually looking for was not in. He necked the Bud and continued the trawl.

The next pub was smaller, but catered for a similar clientele. Except for gay people. It was a venue notorious for queer-bashing and some homosexuals had been severely beaten in the pub’s car park. One had been raped by four heterosexual men. Nice folk, Henry thought as he recalled the incident. He had caught all the men responsible. Their prison sentences had been derisory.