Adobe Flats (25 page)

22:00 hours

Adkins was in the
bathroom. Grant could see the light through the open door at the top of the stairs. Not the landing light, the bathroom light spilling out onto the landing. The front door smashed backwards against the side of the hallway, its frame splintered to oblivion. Shards of wood stood out like porcupine quills around the lock. The house was clean and tidy, in contrast to the drug addicts' homes that Adkins supplied. It smelled of soap and air freshener. Radio traffic squawked on Grant's shoulder, the rest of the shift going about its business, unaware of the drama unfolding at number 5 Edgebank Close.

Grant flicked the hall and landing lights on and took the stairs two at a time. Speed was key once you'd forced the breach. Speed and light. He didn't want to be stumbling through the shadows with his target holding the high ground. He might have been here many times before, but you had to expect the unexpected. The roller skates on the stair bed or the tripwire across the risers. He reached the landing before the front door had stopped quivering.

Adkins stood up from the sink, his face dripping water.

Grant leaned on the bathroom doorframe.

“Cut yourself shaving?”

The water swirling down the plughole was pink. Splatters of red dotted the washbasin. Adkins held a white towel in one hand, the knuckles stained with Sharon Davis's blood, the towel painted in the stuff. Grant leaned forward, turned the tap off, and put the plug in. He snatched the towel out of Adkins' hand.

“You missed a bit.”

He indicated the blood splatters on the side of Adkins face. He'd beaten the girl with such ferocity that the blowback had spread way beyond the knuckles that caused the damage. Blood that would tie him to the assault and prove the case if Sharon Davis hadn't been too frightened to bring a case against the burgling drug dealer. Grant made a snap decision. The blood on the towel and Adkins' knuckles would be enough.

He whipped his free hand up and grabbed Adkins behind the head. The leather glove snatched a handful of hair and slammed the burglar's face down into the sink. His nose and lip exploded. One eye swelled shut immediately.

“How do you like it, fuckface?”

Adkins was about to reply but Grant smashed his face into the sink again.

“That was a rhetorical question.”

Adkins' knees buckled, and he flopped to the fluffy beige carpet that was now speckled with fresh blood. Grant was thinking clearly. He saw the drug dealer kneeling on the floor and the stripped pine bath panel in the background. He'd tried to get a search warrant for this house a dozen times but couldn't get the paperwork past the magistrate. There had never been enough evidence to prove that Adkins was involved with all the crimes he was involved in. The spoils of those crimes were hidden in this house. The drugs and the money.

Grant back-heeled the bath panel.

“Oops.”

The top of the panel opened slightly, leaving a two-inch gap. The preferred hiding place for drug dealers ever since the toilet cistern had been exposed on too many TV shows. Grant heard footsteps charge through the front door and made another snap decision. He didn't want Hope getting caught having to lie about Adkins' injuries. He pressed the transmit button on his shoulder.

“Stop resisting.”

Adkins threw Grant a confused look from the bathroom floor.

Grant kept his finger on the transmit button and spoke into the open mike.

“Put the weapon down. Don't—”

He turned his face to one side and head-butted the wall. The porcelain tiles cracked and cut his forehead. Releasing the transmit button, he reached down and grabbed Adkins' right arm, twisting it behind the fallen burglar's back. The footsteps bounded up the stairs. Grant could hear Hope shouting into his radio.

“Officers need assistance. 5 Edgebank Close.”

He didn't need to say urgent. Jane Archer knew that an officer-needs-assistance call was always urgent. The radio controller relayed the request over the airwaves, and every copper in Bradford stopped what they were doing and headed towards Ravenscliffe. That's the way it worked on the frontline. Grant felt a pang of guilt at setting that in motion but was already looking at the bigger picture.

Jamie Hope burst into the bathroom.

Grant held up one hand to calm the probationer's approach. He got to his feet, dragging Lee Adkins with him. He caught sight of his reflection in the wall mirror. Blood trickled down the side of his face from an ugly swelling above the right eye.

Hope's mouth dropped open.

“Are you all right?”

The most ridiculous question but also the most obvious. Grant decided to cut Hope some slack and not fire a sarcastic reply. He simply blinked his eyes instead of nodding, then jerked his head towards Adkins.

“You should see the other fella.”

Hope regained his composure.

“I can see the other fella. What happened?”

“Resisted arrest.”

Hope showed again why he was a prospect for the future. He moved so that Grant blocked Adkins' view and lowered his voice.

“Arrest for what?”

Grant pointed at the gap in the bath panel and pulled it open another couple of inches. Careful not to disturb any fingerprints that would prove Adkins had opened the panel before. The rolls of banknotes were barely visible through the gap, but the bags of white powder stood out even in the dim bathroom light.

“Eureka.”

Hope proved he had a sense of humor to match his smarts.

“Wasn't that to do with water displacement in the bath? Not hidden drugs underneath it?”

Grant wiped the blood from his eye.

“Calculating weight by measuring displaced water. Something like that. I'll bet there's enough weight in there to send this little bastard back to Her Majesty's school of hard knocks.”

Adkins moaned. Hope kept his voice low.

“A bit careless of him, leaving it open like that.”

Grant shrugged.

“Probably got dislodged during the struggle.”

Grant could see where Hope was going with this and headed him off at the pass. He didn't want the young constable giving Adkins ideas for his defense. He held the bloodstained bus pass up.

“This is what got him arrested. The rest is just good luck.”

Hope nodded that he understood. Another tick for Grant's tutor report. He put the plastic wallet back in his pocket.

“I'll bet a pound to a pinch of shit whose blood it is.”

“Sharon Davis.”

“You win. Now let's cuff this twat and cancel backup. We only need transport and an ambulance. Just make sure it's not the one that took her. We don't want to be accused of cross-contaminating blood samples.”

Hope went outside to make the calls. The blood was a moot point since Grant had comforted the bleeding Davis at the crime scene. She wouldn't make the complaint anyway. It was the drugs that would send him to prison. Grant handcuffed Adkins's hands behind his back as blue lights began to flash in the street.

22:30 hours

“You know as well
as I do that calling it forced entry to preserve evidence isn't gonna fly.”

Sergeant Ballhaus stepped back from the landing to let the SOCO get to work with the blood samples trapped in the U-bend. The scenes-of-crime officer was careful where he knelt as he unscrewed the waste pipe. He wasn't dressed in the full forensic paper suit—this wasn't a murder scene—but he didn't want to get blood on his trousers.

Grant had bagged the bus pass for DNA testing himself to at least preserve the illusion of avoiding cross-contamination. Having the samples from the waste pipe and the bloody towel booked in by the same officer who had seized the bus pass at the crime scene would make it too easy for the defense solicitor to pick holes. There were enough holes already.

Grant stood in the doorway to the front bedroom.

“Worked, though, didn't it?”

He pointed towards the bathroom.

“The evidence is preserved.”

Then he nodded at the bath panel, still open a few inches at the top.

“And I'm telling you, we're gonna hit the evidence jackpot.”

Ballhaus let out an exasperated sigh and glanced over his shoulder to make sure that Jamie Hope had gone downstairs. He jerked a thumb towards the bedroom.

“Fuck me, Jim. Ways and Means Act doesn't work anymore.”

Grant followed his sergeant into the front bedroom. He knew he was skating on thin ice but was confident that Ballhaus was a practical copper and not the pencil-pushing desk jockey that most supervisors became once they were off the frontline. A shift sergeant at Ecclesfield Division was about as frontline as it got.

“Sarge. There's always a way of getting the job done. Nose to the grindstone trumps thumb up the arse every time.”

Ballhaus stood by the bedroom window and looked down at the sea of blue flashing lights. The paramedics had taken Adkins away but there were still three patrol cars and the divisional van choking the cul-de-sac. It was a testament to the code of the streets. When you called for backup, everyone responded. Ballhaus appeared to fill with pride that his boys honored that code. He turned back to face Grant.

“Jim. Grow up. This is the modern police force. There are more thumb-up-the-arse types than there are practical policing types. So let's not give them anything to poke shit-fingers at.”

Grant nodded his understanding.

“Okay. Let's shape this right.”

He rubbed his chin for a moment before clarifying the first point.

“Entry to preserve evidence is out. Right?”

“Right. There is no power of entry to gather evidence for a crime if there is no complaint of assault. The girl isn't going to cooperate. Is she?”

Grant shook his head. He should be annoyed that Sharon Davis was unwilling to accuse Adkins of assault, but he understood her reasoning. Police officers could deal with confrontations, then go back to the safety of their own homes. People on Ravenscliffe estate had to live among the thieves and burglars. If they gave evidence against them, they were easy targets for intimidation. That was a lot to ask of a nineteen-year-old girl.

“What about entry to prevent a further breach of the peace? An officer—that's me—fears for the girl's safety. Forced entry to preserve life.”

Ballhaus smiled but shook his head.

“Good try. But the girl was taken away in the ambulance. Remember?”

Grant raised his eyebrows.

“I knew that. Could have been discharged after treatment, though.”

“At the BRI? You kidding? Takes three hours just to get through triage.”

Grant scratched his head since rubbing his chin hadn't worked. Then he stopped and clicked his fingers.

“Okay. Evidence of an assault at the rugby club. Officer—that's me again—believes a crime has been committed, which will only be disproved when Davis declines after treatment. Officer has reason to believe that Adkins committed that crime”—he held up the sealed evidence bag with the bloodstained bus pass in it—“and pursued the suspect to his place of residence. Suspect goes into house and locks the door. The officer, in continued pursuit of the felon, forces entry in order to effect the arrest.”

Ballhaus nodded his approval and finished the chain of evidence.

“After making a lawful arrest, search of any premises that the prisoner has control over is allowed to preserve evidence for that crime.”

Grant pointed at the SOCO under the sink.

“Including blood on the towel and in the sink.”

Ballhaus smiled.

“Eureka.”

Grant held up a hand. He wasn't finished yet.

“And during that search, evidence is uncovered of other crimes, namely drugs and money pertaining to illegal supply of Class A drugs.”

Now that they'd got their story straight, Ballhaus stepped onto the landing and nodded towards the bathroom.

“You know, if you fell in a pile of shit, you'd come up smelling of roses.”

Grant squeezed past the burly shift sergeant and stood in the bathroom doorway. The SOCO had almost finished with the sink. Now it was time to draw his attention to the bath panel.

It took over an
hour before Drug Squad detectives arrived at the house and took over. By that time SOCO had photographed the contraband in situ. Standard shots of the bath with the panel partly open, then with the panel removed. Then establishing shots of the sheer scale of the discovery followed by close-ups of the individual bags of white powder and rolled-up banknotes.

There were six large sealed bags of white powder, like five-pound bags of sugar only you wouldn't want it in your tea. Behind the bags was a cardboard tray containing 150 dealer bags, little self-sealed plastic baggies with individual portions ready for sale. Beside the tray were twenty-five thick roles of banknotes held together by elastic bands.

Twenty-five thousand pounds, it would turn out later.

The lead detective looked excited but weary. There was hours of work ahead seizing and labeling the evidence. Counting the money. Weighing the drugs. Making sure that the chain of evidence was observed. SOCO would have to fingerprint the bath and the panel. The bags would have to be removed and examined. They wouldn't bother with the money. Everyone who'd ever handled the banknotes would have left a trace.

This was a big find for a council estate. The value of the drugs would far outstrip the quantity of money they'd recovered. The rest of the house would have to be searched just in case there was more, but Grant told the lead detective there wouldn't be any. Adkins kept the house spotless for just that reason—so that no visiting police officers could stumble across his stash by accident while harassing the local villain. Grant should know. He'd been harassing Adkins for over a year.

The blue lights in the cul-de-sac thinned out. The rest of the shift went back to chasing the radio calls. Grant had a quiet word with his probationer. The only thing that Hope needed to be clear about was the continued pursuit from the rugby club to the house, which wasn't a stretch since Grant had come straight here after they'd taken the report. He left Hope watching the evidence being gathered in the bathroom and joined Ballhaus, who was still waiting in the front bedroom. The sergeant appeared to be having more fun than a shift supervisor normally got on a half-night tour.

Grant stood beside his sergeant in front of the window.

“Like they used to say in
The A-Team
.”

Ballhaus followed Grant's train of thought.

“I love it when a plan comes together.”

The only thing Ballhaus was missing was a big fat cigar.

Grant let out a sigh.

“Thanks, Sarge. It's nice to know the good guys get to win now and again.”

Ballhaus was about to reply, then his face stiffened.

“Thumb-up-the-arse brigade.”

Grant followed his gaze through the window.

“What the fuck's he doing here?”

Down in the cul-de-sac an unmarked Astra pulled up behind Grant's patrol car. A tall, well-dressed man got out and strode towards the house. D & C's top bulldog, Inspector Nelson Carr. With two gold fillings in his false smile.

The question was, what was Discipline and Complaints doing at the scene of a routine drug seizure?