Gerald Seymour - Home Run

The ACIO had his preliminary report brought over the river by courier just as his secretary was bringing him his afternoon pot of tea and a buttered scone.

He read.

Initial study showed that the probable origin of the 34 packets, total weight at 2 kilos and 742 grammes, was Northern Iran. Attention was drawn to a stencilled marking on each plastic packet, a small symbol of a dagger. The symbol had been observed on other hauls over the past six years. The quality of heroin in packets stamped with the symbol of the curved blade dagger was invariably high.

He rang Parrish's office on the floor below.

"Don't you worry, love… Just leave him to me."

Park pushed himself up from his chair. The front door was already open, Ann was putting the key back into her handbag, her head was down, and his father was standing behind her.

He was all puffed up, chest out, back straight, as if he was going on duty. Maybe he was, because he wore his navy blue trousers, and a white shirt and black tie, and his old anorak in which he was always dressed when he was either on his way to the station or when he had just clocked off. His father was a big man, and Park reckoned that because he sat all day either in a Panda or in the station canteen, he had a gut on him. Since his father was a policeman David had gone into Customs and Excise, a sort of bloody-mindedness, and he had had a bellyful as a kid of hearing his father moaning about the force.

He led them into the living room and closed the file that he had been reading.

Inside the room he could see clearly into Ann's face. She was red-eyed. His lip pursed. She had no business taking their marriage into his parents' home, and crying in front of them.

"Very nice to see you, Dad… Mum well, is she?… I was catching up on a bit of reading. We had a late night up in town and they sent us all back with a day off…"

"It's freezing in here…" Ann strode forward, snapped on both bars of the electric fire.

He paid the electricity bill. The last bill had been?148.74.

He remembered that. He had had to pay the electricity in the same week as the telephone that had been?74.98, and the car service that had been?101.22. He had gone overdrawn.

He looked steadily at his father. "As I said, I was catching up on a bit of reading. I'm doing a paper for the ACIO. What I really want is to get out of heroin and join a team who do cocaine. This paper is to persuade the ACIO to put a man into Bogota…"

He wondered if his father knew where Bogota was.

"… Bogota is the capital of Colombia, Dad. We've got a Drugs Liaison Officer in Caracas, which is the capital of Vene-zuela… but I reckon that Caracas is too far from the action.

We need much more hard intelligence on the ground. Colombia exports 80% of the world's cocaine. I rate heroin as peaked, but I ocaine is really growing up. I mean, last year's heroin figures were just about the same as the previous year, but cocaine was going through the roof. There could have been half a billion pounds' worth going through the UK system last year. Do you know, there's a place called Medellin in Colombia where the big traffickers live quite openly. We've got to get in there after them. Having a DLO in Caracas means that too much of our intelligence is secondhand. Do you know, Dad, that last year the Drugs Enforcement Agency made a seizure in Florida of ten tons of coke? That's worth fifty million dollars on the street.

That's where the action is. What do you think, Dad?"

"What I think is that you're getting to be the biggest bore I've ever met."

"That's not called for."

"And the biggest prick."

" Then get out of my house."

"I'm here at Ann's invitation and I'm staying until I've done some talking." A flush was in his father's face, big veins leaping in his neck and his forehead. "Is that all you do when you get home, bore on about drugs?"

"It matters."

"Do you think Ann cares two pins about drugs?"

"She's made her feelings plain."

" There's nothing else in your life, it's getting to be an obsession."

"What do you want me to do, chat up bloody geraniums in a bloody greenhouse?"

"Look after your wife – try that for a change."

"Don't lecture me on how to look after Ann."

"If someone doesn't have a go at you, you won't have a marriage to worry about. You don't deserve Ann."

"You're out of order."

"Not as out of order as the way you treat your wife."

He exploded. "Something you never learned, Dad, but if you don't do a job with commitment then it's not worth doing at all. In ID we don't just clock watch, we're in the front line.

We're not just handing out parking tickets and checking shotgun licences, and taking down the details of people's bloody cats that have got lost – we're in the front fucking line.

If we all go home when the bell rings then there's no line left, and all that filth is swimming in here. Got me? Have you the wit to comprehend that? You know what I did this morning when you were watering your bloody geraniums before another second rate day, what I did while she was painting her face before getting into her posh little office, you know what I did…? I beat shit out of a man. I hit Leroy Winston Man vers every place where the bruises don't show. I kicked him, punched him, till I was fucking tired… until he gave me a name. Isn't that what you 'old fashioned coppers' used to do? Hand out a bit of a belting, in the good old days. I smashed up Leroy Winston Manvers because he's a heroin dealer, and he fixed up the pusher, and the pusher sold to some government crap artist's daughter. I hit shit out of Leroy Winston Manvers because I hated him. I hated him as much as I wanted the name of his distributor… That's what it does to you, that's the fucking filth you get into when you're hunting the distributors. You don't have an idea, do you? Not a fucking idea. I could go to gaol for five years for what I did this morning… I tell you, I enjoyed hitting the black bastard.

I loved hitting him. You know what? He gave me the name.

He was such filth. He's a pig. He makes more money in one month, probably, than I can make in ten years. He's a rat from a sewer… They don't ask you to do that, do they, Dad? They don't ask an old fashioned constable to be Case Officer when we're talking heroin, do they, Dad?"

"Like you said, David, out of order." His father stood.

Ann said, "I'm sorry, Pop, for asking you."

"I can't walk away from it," David said. "You can follow me if you want to. If you don't want to then I go on by myself. That's fair warning. You do what you like, I'm not quitting."

"Do you want to come with me, love?"

David saw his wife shake her head. She was muttering on about getting some supper, and she was gone out of the room and heading for the kitchen.

"We love that girl, David, your mother and I. We love her like she's ours."

"I don't hold that against you, Dad. I'm glad of it. But don't turn her against me. There's enough to contend with without that. It's a war we're in, do you see that, goddammit, a war."

But his father's face was set, astonishment, fear, disgust.

And then he was gone.

It was a game to them. He thought at the end he would get what he wanted and they would concede. He played the game.

He even rose off the carpet and walked out of the house and into the dirt street, stood in the moonlight and listened to the dogs yelping and the distant wolf howl. All part of a game because they were all tired and looking for sleep, then they would give him the whole of the seventh kilo.

They could have taken Charlie's money and put him down an old well or dug him into a field.

The thought was in Charlie's mind, but not uppermost. He reckoned on their greed. He believed the squirrel mentality of the headman preserved him. They would want him back.