Too Much of Water (24 page)

It could not have been more than two minutes until his man came out from the pub, looking studiously at the night sky until he was sure that they were alone here. He was a student from the university. But because he was not in Martin's department, they had had no dealings with each other in that other, more innocent world.

‘Did you shift the stuff?' asked Martin Carter. He stood ridiculously beside the urinating young man in the darkness.

‘Most of it.'

‘You want more? I've got good stuff. At good prices.'

‘No. I only sell to students. You know that. The next two months will be a slack period for me.'

It was so exactly what Martin had told Roy Hudson about his own situation that he could scarcely raise the will to argue, but he tried. ‘There'll be others home from the holidays, from other universities and colleges. And you shouldn't confine yourself to students, you know. There are plenty of other people out there who want what we can give them. They won't beat our prices.'

The boy shook his head in the darkness. ‘I'm not making much out of this. Not for the risks I take. I'm only selling pot. My people don't seem to want anything but grass. And there are too many people offering that. There's not much profit in it, unless you can move bigger quantities than I can.'

‘You want to get them onto coke and ecstasy. That's where the big profits are to be made. I can get you quality stuff and—'

‘I can't move coke. Not in any quantity. I've tried. I'm not making enough to warrant taking the risks I take. I was hoping I'd have cleared my student loan by now, but I'm nowhere near doing that.' He paused, blew out a long breath, which drifted the sweet scent of cannabis over the man next to him. ‘I think I want out, Martin.'

Martin knew that he should pressurize him, that he must lean hard on him, the way Roy Hudson had leaned on him when he had suggested quitting. He tried, but his heart wasn't in it. And he had no real threat to offer. This lad knew nothing: he wasn't important. No one would have thought it worth liquidating a part-time, amateur dabbler in the trade like him.

Martin told him that he had done the hard work, that once he had learned the rudiments of selling there was easier money to be made, that he had a foothold in the market which he could now develop. But he was no salesman himself, he realized now, and his blandishments to the younger man rang hollow. In three minutes more, he was alone again, contemplating the prospect of losing a member of his diminishing and ineffective sales force, when he had been hoping to expand it.

He waited in vain for the other contact he had seen inside the pub to present himself out here, feeling an involuntary shiver shake his chest, which had earlier in the evening been so overheated in his anorak. He wondered bleakly if Roy Hudson had been bluffing, if he would simply have accepted Martin's departure from the organization if he had insisted upon carrying it through.

Martin wasn't good at judging people, he was realizing belatedly, so he wasn't sure. But he wouldn't fancy testing out the idea that Hudson was bluffing. Those anonymous people behind him dealt out violence without a thought. His shiver turned into an unambiguous shudder of horror.

Martin was trying to compose himself to go back into the pub when another man came out. He did not seem very old, though with the light from the pub behind him Martin Carter could see little more than an outline. He had an anorak on, like Martin; it was the first one he had seen tonight apart from his own.

Martin had been about to re-enter the pub when the door opened and this man came out. He glanced at Martin, called a greeting, went into the urinal, carried on a desultory conversation about the sweltering evening as he performed in there. It was quite ridiculous, but Martin found that he could not leave him there without seeming rude.

And suddenly, he did not want to leave the man. Perhaps it was the fellowship of the anoraks: Martin's nervous giggle on that thought told him how much on edge he was, should have been a warning to him. But he could think only of what Hudson had told him about developing new markets. This might be an opportunity to move outside the university ambience and into new and richer markets. This man surely couldn't have come out here by chance.

As if responding to that thought, the man said through the darkness, ‘Smell of pot in here, if I'm not mistaken.'

‘Oh, I don't think you are. The fellow who was out here just now had been smoking grass, I'm sure.'

The man finished his leisurely evacuation, shook himself unhurriedly, said amiably, ‘Bit of an expert on that sort of thing, are you?'

‘I suppose you could say that.' The giggle came again, too loudly through the darkness. Martin worked his brain furiously. This man must surely be in the market for drugs, or he wouldn't have come out here and begun to talk like this. And you had to speculate to accumulate: that meaningless phrase bounced into his head from some forgotten evening of gambling. ‘I can supply pot, if you're interested. And other, much more interesting things.'

‘Can you, indeed? I'd certainly be very interested to see what you have to offer.'

It was strange, indirect phrasing. Most people were straight in with questions about price and quality. But they were both feeling their way, weren't they? It would be good to have someone working for him who was a little older than his previous operatives, who would exercise an appropriate caution like this. Martin had the feeling that this might be the beginning of a productive relationship.

‘I can do horse, coke and ecstasy. All at good prices. Even better prices, if you can shift certain quantities.'

‘Crack?'

‘As much as you want. And better quality than you'll get anywhere else round here.'

‘LSD?'

‘Sure. You name it, we can do it. What sort of quantities are you thinking of?' Martin could feel the excitement rising within him. He leant a little nearer to the man's face, saw that he was unshaven, with the kind of lean face which often sat upon a heroin addict. ‘We can even do Rohypnol. That's in short supply, but we can do it for you.'

The date-rape drug. They all wanted that. You could shift that without trying: it said something about the decadence of modern society, but there was unlimited money in Rohypnol, if you could get hold of it. Perhaps he imagined it, but he thought he caught a sharp, excited intake of breath from his new companion when he mentioned it. This might be the clincher in his recruitment.

The man said, ‘I'll need to see the goods. Need to have evidence of the quality you can offer.'

Martin nodded, telling himself that they were almost there, that the man was hooked. Perhaps now he should back off a little, should seem a little less eager, if he was to drive the best bargain with this new member of his sales force. There was a low wall beside him, the remnants of what had once been a wash-house behind the pub. He dug deep into the pockets of his anorak, produced examples of everything he had named. ‘These are only samples, mind. We'll discuss the quantities you think you can shift. Then we'll agree a price and I'll see you here on Friday. You bring the cash, I bring the drugs. Cash on delivery, that's the way we work.'

He felt in control of himself and the situation, now, as he issued this series of orders. It had been much easier than he could ever have anticipated. He felt in his bones that this man was going to be a serious dealer, was going to shift the quantities Martin needed to move if he was going to appease Roy Hudson. He produced the tiny torch he carried in his pocket, flicked its beam over the array of drugs he had set out on the little strip of felt on the wall. In the sudden bright light, they looked like jewels displayed on velvet.

Martin did not think of the misery this array could usher into the world, of the lives he would never see ruined by this lethal array. He thought not of the victims but of the man who had threatened him, of Roy Hudson and the warnings he had issued so unequivocally.

Fear is always the worst, most dangerous motivation.

His new recruit bent to examine the wares, noting each of the drugs but saying nothing as Martin conducted his sales pitch. The words came more easily now. He was gathering the confidence he needed at last. Perhaps, as Hudson had implied, it was just a matter of perseverance. Perhaps in a few months' time he would be grateful to the man whom he had begun to hate.

And then, as if he spoke from some echoing cave, the man beside him was pronouncing the formal words of arrest, telling Martin that he had no need to say anything but that it might prejudice his defence if he did not state facts which he would later rely upon for his defence in court.

Martin found a second man at his elbow, restraining him gently, even though he could not summon into his limbs the faintest impulse to escape. He was led past the white-faced student who had said he wanted out, through a pub lined with curious faces, outside to a police car whose blue light winked silently, mockingly at him as he approached.

Martin had never been in a police car before. He sat on the rear seat, needlessly handcuffed to the plain-clothes officer beside him, seeing but scarcely hearing the city as they drove slowly through it. A car horn seemed to sound from some remote distance; it took him a long time to realize that the faint, melancholy sound he could hear was a church clock tolling eleven.

They made him sign for the few pounds he had in his pockets and the torch, as well as the drugs. Then they took away the shoelaces from his trainers and sent him shuffling to the cells.

The first sound which Martin Carter had heard clearly since he had been arrested was the harsh clang of the steel door of the cell closing upon him.

G
eoff Harrison, the farmer who employed Denis Pimbury, was not at ease with the police.

He had been in trouble in earlier years for employing illegal immigrants, for not checking closely enough on the backgrounds of his workers. Now, when a chief superintendent and a detective sergeant asked to see him in private, he was shrewd and experienced enough to realize that something serious was in hand.

‘You people just don't recognize the difficulties of recruiting seasonal labour,' he grumbled automatically. ‘You can't just go into the job centres and recruit a hundred people to pick fruit for a month, you know.'

Lambert said dryly, ‘We try to make sure the law is observed, Mr Harrison. That's what a police service has to do.' He had some sympathy for Harrison, but didn't want to get into arguments about casual labour when he had bigger fish to fry.

‘Sometimes I think some of these busybodies would rather watch good food rot in the ground than see it picked and taken to market. I pay the proper rates and provide the proper breaks, unlike some I could name. No one seems to take any account of that!' Harrison looked out over his sheds and the long, impeccably straight rows of strawberries and raspberries, nodding his resentment.

‘We're not here to check on the details of your working practices,' said Lambert stiffly. He wanted to say that they were here in pursuit of something much more important: a murder enquiry. But the man they wanted to question already had enough things stacked against him in life. If in the end he proved not to be a murderer, he could do without the residual slur of being an alien suspected of the worst crime of all. Lambert said to Harrison, ‘We need to speak to you in confidence about one of your workers, Denis Pimbury.'

‘I've offered Denis a permanent job. He's a bona-fide worker, with his card properly stamped.' Harrison's mind was immediately on his own situation, not that of the man working outside beneath the baking sun.

Bert Hook smiled at the farmer, his countryman's face pulsing with sympathy for rural industry, festooned with red tape by bureaucrats in city offices. ‘Good worker, is he, your Mr Pimbury?'

‘Excellent worker. I wouldn't have offered him permanent employment otherwise. As a matter of fact, I'm thinking of putting him in charge of a gang when it comes to apple-picking later in the year.'

‘Honest, then, I expect.'

‘Honest as the day is long.' Harrison wasn't a man who threw out compliments lightly; not many farmers do. But it was a relief to be talking about someone else, to find that his own employment practices did not seem to be the issue here. ‘You'll understand that with a casual workforce recruited from a lot of different backgrounds, I have to give a lot of attention to these things.' He spoke a little portentously, delivering a sentence he had prepared for officious councillors: you hadn't to mention foreigners, or some of them would accuse you of prejudice. ‘Denis not only won't rob his fellow-workers, he won't rob his employer. You can leave him to work on his own, without coming back to find that he's been slacking.' Finding that he was enjoying the unaccustomed pleasure of praising one of his workers like this, he allowed himself to be carried even further than he had intended. ‘I'd trust him with my life, Denis.'

So the ring and the brooch the man had taken to the pawnshop hadn't been acquired round here. Lambert said heavily, ‘Thank you for being so frank with us, Mr Harrison. And please don't allow any of this discussion to reach your other workers. Now, if you'll be kind enough to allow us the use of this room, we'll see Mr Pimbury in here immediately, please.'

The man who had told them he was Denis Pimbury came into the room with his normal sharp-eyed air of suspicion and sat uncomfortably on the wooden chair in front of Harrison's battered and paper-strewn desk. He had never been into the boss's office before, but he had eyes not for his surroundings but only for the two men who had brought him into the room for questioning. The dark, deep-set eyes watched them unblinkingly; when his lank black hair dropped momentarily over his forehead, he brushed it angrily aside, as if it was affecting his vision when it needed to be at its sharpest.