Lisa appeared to mull this over for a few moments. ‘You buying?’
Winsome sighed. ‘I’m buying.’
‘Grande latte?’
‘You drive a hard bargain, Lisa, but a grande latte it is.’
‘And one of those big chocolate chip cookies.’
‘Enough,’ said Winsome. A few moments later, she pulled into the shopping centre car park and found a spot on the fourth level. From there, they could walk straight through to the floor they wanted. The coffee shop at the far end was busy inside, but there was a table free out front, where they could watch the crowds of shoppers come and go to Next, Argos, Boots and Curry’s Digital. She told Lisa to go and sit down and went inside to buy the coffees, keeping an eye on her as she waited. She didn’t expect Lisa to make a run for it, but she didn’t want to seem like a fool if that did happen. She had brought down a runner with a rugby tackle in Marks & Spencer once and never lived it down back at the station. It was almost as notorious as the so-called drop kick she had used to knock a troublesome drug dealer off a third-floor balcony on the East Side Estate.
When she saw the cookies, she decided that she might as well have one herself. A treat for doing a miserable job on a miserable day. There were umbrellas and wet coats all over the place, but the smell of hot coffee and fresh ground beans overwhelmed it all, for which Winsome was truly thankful.
‘Service with a smile. And from a copper, no less,’ said Lisa, who seemed a small, shrunken figure huddled at the table. Conversations and children’s cries buzzed around them, and the hissing and sputtering of the espresso machine vied with the grinder in the background to make conversation almost impossible. Eventually, Lisa pulled her hood back and Winsome got a full view of the pretty pixieish young face with the large grey-blue eyes. Lisa’s dyed blonde hair was cropped short and streaked pink and yellow here and there, which somehow made her appear even younger than her twenty-three years. She also looked odd enough, with her various piercings on display, that one or two people glanced over at them, the big black woman and the skinny punk, and turned away quickly. Winsome wondered who frightened them the most.
‘I know you, don’t I?’ said Lisa. ‘You’re not DS.’
‘I’m sure we’ve seen one another around town from time to time. Actually I am DS. Detective sergeant that is, not drugs squad. DS Jackman.’
‘Yeah. I’ve seen your picture in the papers, too. I know you. You’re the one who drop-kicked the Bull over the balcony of Hague House, on the East Side Estate, aren’t you?’
Winsome sipped her coffee and smiled at the memory. ‘Yeah, well, he did ask for it. But it wasn’t a drop kick.’
‘Awesome,’ said Lisa. ‘He was a real mean bastard. Used to beat up the girls. But what do you want with me?’
‘Your name came up,’ said Winsome. She wasn’t here to persecute Lisa. Her name was on the list of people Gavin Miller had called over the past month, and the drugs squad had picked her as the most likely person to be supplying Miller with small amounts of cannabis, even though she wasn’t a dealer herself. She knew people, they said, she could get her hands on small amounts, act as the middleman, put people in contact with those who had what they needed. A facilitator. The drugs squad kept an eye on her in case she led them to any of the bigger players, but they had no particular interest in her themselves. What also caused them to pick Lisa was that she had a connection with Eastvale College and had taken courses with Gavin Miller four years ago, during the academic year of his humiliation and dismissal. ‘I need information,’ said Winsome. ‘I want to talk to you about Gavin Miller.’
Lisa sipped some latte. It left a line of froth on her upper lip that almost covered the ring that was stuck through it. She wiped the foam off with the back of her hand. Winsome noticed a tattoo of an angel on her pale, thin wrist. ‘Poor bastard,’ said Lisa. ‘I heard what happened to him.’
‘Did you know him?’
‘Of course I did. You already know that, or you wouldn’t have brought me here, would you?’
‘That’s the way I like things to be,’ said Winsome. ‘I ask questions and you answer them. That way we don’t need to go down the nick.’
‘No skin off my nose. I told you, I’m clean. And anything incriminating you claim I told you, I’ll deny it.’
‘Nobody’s interested in arresting you, Lisa. Not even the drugs squad. We know what you do. You’re not a big enough fish.’
‘Yeah, right... well, just so’s you know. How did you find me?’
‘You talked to Gavin Miller on the phone recently, and the drugs squad have heard of you.’ She paused. ‘Let’s get this straight before we begin, Lisa. They say you’re not exactly a dealer. You say you’re not a dealer. I’m not interested in what your business is. I’m only interested in Gavin Miller. Not only did you supply drugs to him, which, by the way, makes you technically a dealer, but he was your teacher at Eastvale College four years ago, and if you find it hard to be frank about all this, then we’ll go to the nick right now.’
Lisa held her hand up. ‘OK. OK. I get it. Fine. I’ve got nothing to hide. But if you know all that already, what do you need me for?’
‘What happened?’
‘What do you mean, “what happened”?’
‘You were in college, doing well, as I heard it. What happened?’
‘Oh, you mean why am I wearing a hoodie and mixed up with drugs, not to mention covered in tattoos and piercings?’
Winsome couldn’t help but smile. She might be a moralist and a bit of a prude at heart, but she admired true spirit and individualism. Lisa could be a challenge. She bit into her chocolate chip cookie. It was good. An elderly lady passed them on her way to the toilet and cast a look of unmistakable hatred at them both. Neither could fail to notice.
Lisa turned to Winsome. ‘Tarred with the same brush, huh? Sorry, I didn’t mean anything racist by that.’
‘I know what you meant. I’ve been getting that sort of treatment all my life.’ She looked Lisa up and down. ‘It seems as if you’ve had to work a bit harder for it.’
Lisa seemed surprised for a moment, not sure whether to be insulted or not, then she burst out laughing and reddened. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Yeah, you got that right. I suppose you could say that.’ When she laughed and blushed she looked like an innocent teenager, but the hard expression quickly returned.
‘So what happened?’ Winsome asked again.
‘Nothing happened. Not in the way you mean it. I didn’t suddenly get abused by my uncle or raped by a gang of retards or anything. Things changed in my life, that’s all. For the worse. And that fucking place was full of phonies. I suddenly saw through them, is all.’
‘A revelation?’
‘Yeah. Like Saul on the road to Damascus. A blinding light.’
‘Did you graduate?’
‘No.’
‘You chose to get involved with the fast crowd instead? Was that another sudden conversion?’
‘Something like that. Anyway, what’s it to you? I don’t deal drugs, but if I did, I’d argue they’re a commodity like anything else. I’d argue that I was supplying a need that would only be supplied elsewhere if I didn’t do it. It’s one of the basic functions of capitalism, an open market, a choice of products and suppliers. I’d also argue that what I’m selling, or facilitating, is pretty harmless, probably less so than alcohol and cigarettes.’
‘But it’s still illegal.’
‘So was booze in America during Prohibition, and Coca-Cola used to have cocaine in it, and you could buy laudanum at the local chemist’s. I could go on. Anyway, who are you? Eliot Ness or something? Are you on some sort of moral crusade?’
Winsome shook her head. ‘No, I’m not on any sort of crusade. Just curious what sends someone with so much potential as you obviously have down a wrong turn, that’s all. What can you tell me about Gavin Miller?’