Stuart Pawson - The Picasso Scam

"A name, Lee."

"No."

"One little name, and I'll go away and take the deps with me and no one will ever know I've been."

He shook his head. I reached across and turned the top sheet over.

Across the middle it said "Parker'. The effect was electric.

"I didn't write that!" he exclaimed.

"Thanks, Lee, that should do nicely." I took the fake depositions back and put them in my pocket. "You won't be needing these any more," I explained.

"I didn't write it, I didn't write anything." He wiped his nose on his sleeve.

"Of course you didn't, but your face told me what I wanted to know.

Don't worry about it, Lee, we've had his name from several sources, I just wanted confirmation."

His agitation died down when he realised that we already knew the name.

What he didn't know was how useless that piece of information was to us.

"This Parker…" I tossed the question in as casually as tossing a cigarette butt into a fire, 'is he black or white?" No harm in answering that; it only narrows the field down to half of the world's population.

"White," he said, gazing at the table like a shell-shocked survivor.

The dam was cracking. Some judicious leverage could give us a torrent.

"Do you fancy another tea?"

He nodded. I fetched the same again and we sipped and munched in silence for a while. "Big money in dealing," I stated. "What's he drive BMW? Merc? Porsche?"

"A Porsche."

"Fabulous. A black one, no doubt."

"Yeah, how did you know?"

"Just a guess, black ones look best."

If it really was a black Porsche we probably had enough to pin him down; on the other hand Lee could be smarter than the average junky.

Might as well go for gold. "Where does he hang out, Lee?"

"All over. Sometimes in the Penalty Spot, sometimes in the Fireplace."

The Penalty Spot was the pub outside the football ground, the Fireplace was a nightclub of some repute.

"On match days?" I asked.

"I think so."

"You think so. Don't you deal with him?"

"No."

"Then who do you get your works from?"

He looked down at the table. He'd clammed up again.

"Lee, look at me. Are you telling me that Parker is the big fish, the pusher who supplies your dealer."

He lifted his head and nodded.

"Any idea where he comes from?"

"Manchester, I think."

"Thanks, Lee. I'll see what I can do for you."

The drug network is long and tortuous. Between the hill farmers and chemists who produce the stuff and the street-corner dealers who peddle it are chains of middlemen, each raking off a percentage of the final price. What starts out measured in tons, selling for peanuts, finally lands on the streets in twists of foil selling at twenty-five pounds a go. At each transaction the quantities are divided into smaller units, and the price increases by two or three hundred percent.

A heroin junky needs between one and two hundred pounds every day to pay for his habit. The easiest way to get this sort of money is to become a dealer. He'll buy an ounce at a time and sell individual doses of half a gram, probably diluted with something like baking soda.

He's a victim, dealing to pay for the crocodile in his head that needs constant feeding. The people he buys from don't touch the stuff. They haven't got long hair; they wear blue suits, not Funky Junky T-shirts, and do their deals via mobile telephones in their up-market cars. The more middlemen they can bypass, the bigger the profit. But that makes the risks greater, too.

Where Parker fitted in I didn't know, but I was sure of one thing he'd been very careless.

I was struggling to write a letter to the Crown Prosecution Service in an attempt to obtain light sentences for the Mountain Bike Gang, on the grounds that they had proffered valuable information, but I kept being interrupted. First it was Sparky.

"Are there two ns in fornication?"

"Only if they're lesbian 'ens, usually it's just one 'en and a cockerel."

"Cheers."

"You're welcome."

Then it was Mike Freer, at last, on the telephone. "Shagnasty! How y'doin'?" he boomed in my ear. There was a ritual to be gone through before we got down to business.

"Not bad, Fungus Features, how're you?" I replied.

"Oh, fare to Midlands. Listen, Super Sleuth, I want you to know that we're ignoring the rumours and we're all standing by you in spite of everything."

"Gee, I'm… I'm really choked. I don't deserve friends like you."

"Just tell me one thing," he went on, 'was it a very old man?"

"It wasn't an old man," I replied. "It was an old English Sheepdog."

"Ah! Then that explains why you were in the City Square toilets."

"Precisely. Is somebody trying to sully my reputation?"

"Don't worry about it. In twenty years it will be considered perfectly normal behaviour. You're just ahead of your time."

He could go on for ever; I'd had enough. "Listen, Fungus, I need your help. When can I see you?"

"Soon as you like."

"Tonight?"

"Sure, where?"

"My place, about seven. You know I'm back at my mother's house now?"

"Yes, I'm sorry about her. She was a grand lady, I thought a lot of her."

"Thanks," I said, 'and now I've got some information for you." I told him all about Parker.

"Parker? It could be his pen name," he suggested. He was stealing my material.

"In that case, he's a pen pusher I countered.

"Well let's see if we can pension him off."

"To the penitentiary?"

"Pentonville, of course."

"Let's make that the penultimate comment."

"Thank God for that. Will your boy give evidence?"

"No way, Pedro!"

"Have you been bending the rules, Charlie?"

"Mmm, massaging them, a little."

"Listen, Charlie; listen to Uncle Mike. It's not worth it, there's too much at stake. The days have gone when you could give them a clip round the ear and they'd say, "Thank you sir, I deserved that," and send you a Christmas card."

"Ah, those were the days. You're right, but it's good info. However, whatever you do, keep it to yourself as much as possible somebody in the Force is involved." No need to tell him just yet that it's only our Chief Constable.

Mike's voice fell an octave. "Oh dear, are you sure?"

"That's why I want to see you tonight. Then, when we've sorted that lot out, I'll take you to Kim Limbert's promotion bash. She's coming to the city."

"So I've heard. Actually I'm supposed to be going to a do over here.

One of our number has just become a dad after trying for fifteen years, so we're wetting the baby's head."

"Lovely. What did they do change their milkman?"

"Probably," Mike replied. "I've only to throw my shirt on the bed and the wife's pregnant. He's got a little girl, so they're calling her Mira."

"Myra? After the Pontefract Poisoner?"

"No, after the electric shower manufacturers. Apparently she was conceived under one of their products."

We drove up towards the Coiners in my car, out of the decent weather into the perpetual rain of the high moorlands. Every schoolboy learns that Lancashire got the cotton because of the damp atmosphere on their side of the hill, whilst we got the wool due to the softness of the water in our streams. Nobody mentions the slave trade, of course. We weren't taught about the merchants from Liverpool and Manchester who financed slave ships to plunder Africa. They carried their wretched cargo to America and returned laden with cotton for their almost-as-wretched mills. The merchants grew fat and wealthy, gave their names to various philanthropic projects and bought respectability.

"We could have a pudding while we're here," said Mike, with the enthusiasm of the ill-fed, when he saw the sign.

"No way," I stated.