Alex Howard - Time to Die

A hint of a smile now played around Cunningham’s tight, bloodless lips. George noted, slightly to his surprise, that Cunningham was almost shaking with suppressed eagerness. George knew a lot of people with big drug problems; he hadn’t expected Cunningham to be one of them. You’ve got it bad, mate, he thought to himself.

‘Thank you very much, George,’ said Cunningham. Like Toby, his accent was privately educated, expensively vowelled. George noted with amusement that he was trying to look nonchalant while trembling, practically shaking, with coke desire. ‘Toby did say it was going to be exceptional. I hope he’s right.’ His voice tailed off. He was salivating. ‘If you’ll excuse me.’

Cunningham disappeared, practically ran, into the toilets with his coke. George raised his eyebrows; drugs were a great social leveller. It really doesn’t matter where you’re from, an addiction is an addiction, an addict, an addict. George recognized that semi-insane look of overexcited eagerness in Cunningham’s eyes, and it wasn’t the look of a casual user. The lawyer was a man with a monkey on his back. He took a slow mouthful of beer and thoughtfully picked up Cunningham’s paper.

A while later Cunningham came back into the bar. George was still at the table, reading the lawyer’s paper.

‘Everything OK?’ asked the dealer without looking up from the paper.

‘Fine. Exceptional even,’ said Cunningham, his eyes glittering. George raised his eyes, then his eyebrows. Cunningham was wired, coked out of his mind. How much did he just do? wondered George. The lawyer’s jaw was rotating like he was chewing invisible gum. His eyes were starting out of his head as if they’d grown and the sockets had shrunk. Sweat beaded his forehead. Coke sweat. George knew that if he put his head close to Cunningham he’d be able to smell the metallic tang in his perspiration from the drug.

Cunningham stood smiling down at him, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He was so out of it he really didn’t know what to do. God alone knew what was happening to his brain; synapses were exploding like fireworks. ‘Tell Toby, next week, same time, same place,’ said Cunningham, self-importantly. He grinned wildly again. His nose ran and he sniffed loudly.

Jesus Christ, thought George. And this is supposedly one of Britain’s finest legal minds. ‘OK,’ he said mildly. ‘Take care.’ As he watched Cunningham’s back disappear through the frosted glass of the pub’s Victorian doors — a suitable image, thought George, for the man’s brain — he wondered if the lawyer were due in court that day. He guessed the judge might not notice, but Cunningham’s low-life clients certainly would. Oh well, he thought. That’s his problem, not mine. He went back to the paper. The headline read:

‘Burnt girl not “witchcraft” killing, say police.’

Cunningham left the pub, stepped off the pavement and was very nearly hit by a four-by-four he hadn’t seen, as he euphorically strode into the road without looking. He was finding it very hard to focus. The driver angrily sounded the horn. Cunningham gave him the finger. He crossed over to his Carrera and climbed inside. He closed his eyes momentarily and told himself to concentrate. As he sat on the leather-upholstered seat, sweating in his expensive suit, the temptation to do another quick line before driving back to his office was overwhelming. No one will notice, he thought, and even if they do, fuck ’em. His hand made contact with the envelope in his pocket.

A tap on the driver’s window made him jump. For a second he wondered what the noise was. He also wondered how long he’d been sitting there staring into space. He’d lost track of time. Momentarily he was disorientated, wondered where he was. He looked up and around, half expecting to see George, and instead saw the dark blue uniform of a policeman. His heart started pounding and he felt an unpleasant lurch in his bowels. He didn’t want to be dealing with the police. Whenever he usually saw them, they were safely in a witness box or deferentially escorting him to a witness room in a police station. Not like this. He opened the window.

‘Would you mind getting out of the car, sir,’ said the officer politely.

He did so, now extremely conscious of the curious glances of passers-by on the pavement. Man in a Porsche being pulled over. Good, they probably thought. He was also extremely conscious of the presence of enough quantities of a Class A drug on his person to be facing jail time. Oh shit, thought Cunningham.

Half an hour before, Hanlon had looked approvingly at Detective Sergeant Whiteside as he shrugged himself into the brown suede jacket that felt as soft as warm butter and slipped a pair of Armani glasses on where they rested comfortably on the slight ridge in his nose from one of the three occasions it had been broken, twice in the line of duty and once in his own time.

Hanlon had borrowed the clothes from the property store of goods confiscated from convicted criminals that were awaiting auction. The sergeant was dressed in the seized goods of a busted drug dealer the same build as Whiteside. It seemed appropriate to Hanlon that if Whiteside were impersonating a drug dealer he might as well dress the part. She felt it was a kind of poetic justice. The dealer’s wardrobe collection seized by the police, not including shoes, was probably worth a conservative fifty thousand, or would have been, when new. Whiteside loved clothes. Having the opportunity to wear an entire new outfit without worrying about the cost was a welcome novelty.

‘Do I get to keep these?’ asked Whiteside.

‘Why not?’ said Hanlon. The evidence storage manager shrugged. ‘Fine by me. Just submit a report later saying they’ve been damaged in police use and are no longer suitable for resale, so it’s all kosher. If DI Hanlon signs it, that’ll be good enough.’

‘There’s your answer then,’ said Hanlon.

Whiteside grinned happily. The civilian in charge of the confiscated goods in the property room, Dan Brudenell, was the brother of the PCSO whose life Hanlon had saved. It was Dan who had come to her after the event to say if ever she needed a favour, no matter what, just to ask. He’d been delighted to help when asked to kit Whiteside out. Whiteside’s own wardrobe was carefully selected and good quality, but Hanlon wanted him in the trappings of the genuine dealer. Whiteside wouldn’t spend three grand on a jacket even if he could afford to. ‘George’, his new alter ego, would.

Hanlon now watched with amusement as Whiteside rubbed his short, clipped beard while he studied his appearance in the mirror of the sun visor of the unmarked police car. ‘I should have requested a Rolex,’ he said. Sergeant Thompson and Constable Childs, sitting in the back, studied the rear of his head.

‘You look so gay, sir!’ said Childs. Thompson put his hand over his mouth to mask a smile. Whiteside was actually gay, a fact known to just about everyone he worked with, but obviously not Constable Childs.

Hanlon’s expressionless eyes met Whiteside’s. The sergeant decided to spare Childs’ blushes. His hard brown eyes rested on the reflection of the two policemen in the rear of the car. Childs was kind of cute, thought Whiteside speculatively. The prospect of action always made him horny. ‘Well,’ said Hanlon, as if divining his thoughts, which wouldn’t have surprised Whiteside. It was as if the woman was psychic sometimes. ‘Off you go, George. Time to make your dope deal.’

Whiteside got out of the Ford and closed the door gently behind him. Hanlon watched his muscular back stretching the fabric of the jacket as he walked to the upmarket Notting Hill pub where he was about to sell ten grams of coke to one of London’s top criminal defendants. It was coming up to half past twelve and already the lunchtime customers were beginning to stream in to the gastropub. In half an hour it would be packed.