Acid Row (8 page)

The madness died in Wesley's eyes as suddenly as it had flared. A slow, peaceable grin spread across his face. “I'm OK,” he said. "Youse don't have to call me a moron, Kev. I got it. It's just a march."

His face fell into the sweet lines that had already fooled a number of magistrates. "We just gonna let the vampires know we've sussed 'em right?"

“Right,” said Kevin, letting Wesley go and gripping his hand in a raised salute. “Go on, Col, give him a high-five,” he ordered the younger boy. “We're mates, ain't we?”

“I guess,” said Colin, taking a stinging slap on the palm. But he wasn't so drunk that he didn't notice the flick knife that Wesley was twirling in his other hand.

Flat 506, Glebe Tower, Bassindale Estate “I have to go now,” said WPC Hanson to the senile old man in the dingy fifth-floor flat in one of Bassindale's tower blocks. "I'm sorry I haven't been able to help." Depression weighed upon her like Sisyphus's stone. It had been a wasted visit, just like the others she'd made that day. Nothing she did was valuable. She was a cipher ... an officer without authority.

The air in the flat was claustrophobically stale, as if the windows and doors were never opened. Mr. Deny sat in permanent gloom, with the curtains closed to keep out the sun, his eyes fixed on the flickering images of the muted television in the corner as if soap-opera characters were his only point of reality in a confusing world. Talking to him had made her depression worse, because whatever spark of lucidity had encouraged him to phone the police that morning had died the minute he hung up.

He fiddled with his hearing aid. “What's that?”

She raised her voice. “I have to go now.”

“Did you find the boys?”

She'd answered the same question patiently for thirty minutes, but this time she ignored it. It was pointless talking to him. He had reported the theft of 200 in cash from the tea caddy in his kitchen, but he had no idea when it was taken or who was responsible. All he could tell her was that three boys had rung his doorbell one day but, as he hadn't liked the look of them, he hadn't let them in. She pointed out the discrepancy if they weren't allowed in they couldn't have stolen the money but the old man was insistent. He could spot a wrong 'un a mile off.

She made a pretence of investigating by poking around the filth in his kitchen. But there was no tea caddy just a cardboard box of Tetley bags that had passed their sell-by date months ago and no evidence there had been any money or that anyone other than she had disturbed the dust in this place for months. He might have been talking about something that happened yesterday ... or fifty years ago .. . because his brain was shot and his memory locked in a tiresome dementia that made him replay his obsessions in loops.

How did he look after himself? Who cared for him? She felt swamped by misery as she stared at the accumulated years of grease on the cooker and the tidal mark of scum in the sink. She wanted to cleanse her hands but the smell from the drain made her nauseous. There were germs everywhere. She could feel them burrowing under her skin, attacking her brain, undermining her resolve. Where was the point in living like this? Where was the point in living at all?

That thought had circled her head all the time she was speaking to him and now she wondered if she'd voiced it aloud, because he rounded on her impatiently. “What's that?” he demanded again, saliva shooting from his mouth in droplets. “Speak up, girl, I can't hear you.”

“I have to go,” she repeated, pronouncing her words as carefully as a drunk.

He frowned. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

How many times had he asked her that? How many times had she answered?

“I'm a police officer, Mr. Deny.”

“Did you find the boys?”

It was like listening to a cracked record. She shook her head. "I'll be putting in a request for a health visitor to come and talk to you,"

she told him. "She'll assess your circumstances and probably recommend a move to sheltered accommodation, where you'll receive more care and protection than you have here."

He turned back to the television. “They should have sent a man,” he said scathingly.

“I'm sorry?”

"I wanted a real copper .. . not a namby-pamby creature who's scared of her own shadow. It's no wonder there's so much crime in this place."

It was the last straw. Her head had been splitting since she came on to the estate, and shouting through Mr. Derry's deafness had made the pain worse. She wanted to scream at him, tell him what she really thought, but she was too repressed to do anything so dramatic. "A man wouldn't have bothered to listen to you," she said tightly, preparing to stand up.

"You think so, do you? Well, maybe I'm not bothered about lazy little chits who'd rather sit around than do their jobs. What do you say to that, eh?"

She hated him with a passion. He was senile, he was rude and he was filthy. Everything she'd touched in this disgusting place had left its mark on her. “What do you expect me to do?” she asked. "Go out and arrest the first three boys I find just because you say your money's been stolen? There's no proof you even had it." She stood up abruptly and swept a trembling arm around the room. "You wouldn't be living like this if you'd had 200 in a tea caddy."

Her sudden movement frightened him. He seized the heavy, antiquated telephone on the table beside his chair and brandished the receiver at her. “Get away from me,” he shouted. "I'm calling the police. Who are you? What are you doing here?"

She knew she was going to faint, but there was a moment of clarity when she saw the funny side. “I am the police,” she heard herself say with a laugh in her voice, before her knees gave way and she fell towards him.

Flat 406, Glebe Tower, Bassindale Estate The elderly woman in the flat below Mr. Deny paused in the middle of her telephone call to listen to the noisy banging from upstairs. "That senile old bugger's up to something again," she told her friend crossly. "He's going to bring my ceiling down if he's not careful.

What do you suppose he does? Throw his furniture about whenever he has a tantrum?"

The friend wasn't interested. “Oh, for goodness' sake, Eileen!” she wailed anxiously from five storeys up. "Why won't you listen? There's something terrible going on. I've been looking through Wally's binoculars and there are boys everywhere. Do you think they've been drinking?"

“How would I know?”

"I wish you'd look out of your window. There's hundreds of them.

They're turning cars over at the entrance to Bassindale Row."

Eileen Hinkley was curious enough to peer round her curtain, but she was lower down and her view was obscured by roofs. "Have you called the police?"

“I can't get through. The lines are jammed.”

“Then dial 999.”

“That's what I've been doing,” her friend protested, 'but every time I get transferred to the police, there's a message saying they know about the disturbance in Bassindale and not to bother reporting it."

“Good heavens!”

“Exactly. But I can't see any policemen through the binoculars.” Her voice rose in fear. "We're all going to be killed. What do you think we should do?"

Eileen glanced towards the ceiling as a slamming door set her china rattling. “Lock ourselves in and wait for the trouble to pass,” she said firmly, crossing her fingers for luck. "You never know ... we might hit the jackpot. Maybe the thugs'll kill each other .. . and give us a bit of peace."

Police Message to all stations >28.07.01 >13.55 >Bassindale Estate >Milosz Zelowski (a.k.a. Nicholas Holds), 23 Humbert Street, requests protection or removal to safe house Advised police resources stretched EMERGENCY LINES AT FULL CAPACITY >28.07.01 >Bassindale Estate Anonymous call barricades being erected on Bassindale Row Believed intention -to prevent access to patrol cars EMERGENCY LINES AT FULL CAPACITY >28.07.01 >14.08 >Bassindale Estate URGENT Patrol car 031 reports all access routes to Bassindale blocked EMERGENCY LINES AT FULL CAPACITY  

Saturday 28 July 2001 - Bassindale Estate

THE TWO POLICEMEN in patrol car 31 watched the blockade-building from a safe distance. They had exited the estate on Forest Road South with the intention of driving along the main road and coming back up Bassindale Row North to check on Zelowski in Humbert Street. But it was too late. Bassindale was already impassable and a retracing of their steps showed that all four points of entry to the estate had been blocked.

“Serves them right,” said the older officer, switching the radio to stand-by. "I said it could be turned into a fortress if the bastards got angry enough." He lowered the window and spat on to the grass verge. "I blame the planners, myself. They should've asked the police what they thought before they built a concrete jungle and filled it with villains."

“Yeah, yeah,” said his partner, who'd heard it a thousand times. He was scanning the scene through a pair of binoculars. "It's well organized .. . must have been coordinated for two o'clock." He whistled through his teeth. "I reckon we got away lightly .. . five minutes longer with the MacDonald woman and we'd have been trapped." He lowered the glasses. “What the hell's going on?” he demanded. "I mean, if Amy ism there, why are these idiots trying to keep us out?"

His mate gave an exasperated sigh. "She's not in there. If the woman had been able to tell us something about the style of T-shirt the kid was wearing, I might have been convinced'

he shrugged 'but what sort of answer is: it was blue? She was giving us what she'd heard on the telly."

They'd been over this once already. "What we think isn't the issue George, the issue is what does that lot' he nodded at the youths manning the barricade 'think? Assuming they think at all, of course."

He raised the binoculars again. "Shit! Get on to the guvnor and tell him to shift his arse if he doesn't want the whole estate burning down.

The stupid sods are siphoning petrol into bottles, and half of them've got fags in their mouths. Jee - sus! He watched a child no more than twelve years old toss a bottle towards his friend. "What the fuck do they think they're doing?"

The same thought was in Sophie Morrison's mind as she braked sharply to avoid a gang of drunken youths in Glebe Road. One of them raised two fingers at her as if it was her fault he was too drunk to negotiate the road properly, and she mouthed wanker at him through the windscreen.

She half-expected him to retaliate by bringing his fist down on her bonnet a standard response in Acid Row but one of his friends pulled him towards the pavement and she drove on, waving two fingers of her own. She saw the friend grin amiably in her rear-view mirror and turned the two fingers into a salute of acknowledgement as she recognized one of her patients.

She had a healthy respect for the inhabitants here as did all professionals but she wasn't intimidated by them. Of course she took precautions. She drove with her windows closed and her doors locked secured her mobile telephone in a medical case, made it clear to her patients that she never carried drugs or credit cards or large amounts of cash, always parked in brightly lit areas and never walked down dark alleyways at night. She also carried a slimline pepper spray in her trouser pocket which, to date, she hadn't had to use.

In the two years since she'd qualified and joined the practice, she'd grown surprisingly fond of Acid Row. At least the people here were open and unashamed about their ailments usually depression, loneliness drink-, drug- or prostitution-related while the wealthier end of the catchment area insisted on claiming its alcoholism, Valium dependency and STDs were symptoms of 'stress'. She found the waste of time pandering to their respectability both tedious and irritating, and preferred the more straightforward approach of the estate dwellers.

"Give us some Prozac, doctor, my man's in the nick and the kids are doing my head in .. ."

It didn't make them any easier to treat, though. As with all patients most of her effort went into persuading them that a change of lifestyle would be of greater benefit than drugs, but positive responses in Acid Row were more rewarding because they were harder for the patients to achieve.

By the laws of nature most of her older patients were women, and when she first arrived she'd heard the same thing from all of them. Their husbands were dead. Their friends were in homes. They never went out because they were disabled or afraid. Or both. Their only conversations were with carers who were too young to know what they were talking about, or too impatient to listen.

She had realized very quickly that all they wanted was a little gossip with their peers from time to time, and by persuading three of the most active to compile a bank of well-guarded telephone numbers, she had created a growing network of chat lines which allowed them to do it.

It was known as "Friendship Calling', and interest in the scheme had now crossed the Atlantic with the most recent inquiry coming from a housing development in Florida.

Her telephone rang twice, and she gave a groan of irritation before pulling into the side of the road. Two rings was the surgery, three was her fiance. She spun the cases's combination lock, flicked the mobile open and pressed the '!“ button. ”It had better be good," she said to the receptionist at the other end, 'because I promised Bob I'd be in London by six."

“It depends whether you're still in Bassindale,” said Jenny Monroe at the other end. "If you're not, I'll try and reroute John. The chap sounded pretty desperate."

“What's wrong with him?”

"It's his dad, says he can't breathe. He's an asthmatic and he's going blue. Mr. Hollis at 23 Humbert Street. They're new patients, only registered a couple of weeks ago, so we don't have any notes yet. The son says he's seventy-one and not in the best of health. I told him to call an ambulance but he said he's already done that and no one's turned up. He's obviously panicking. Can you do it?"

Sophie glanced at her watch. She was already two hours over her shift but Humbert Street was round the corner. It was one of the transverse roads that linked the two through routes, Bassindale Row and Forest Road. She worked out directions in her head. Left at the end of Glebe into Bassindale North, right into Humbert, then right on to Forest South at the end. She'd be halfway home. Not much of a delay, then assuming the visit didn't take too long. “Where's John?”