Josh paused to emphasise the importance of what he was about to say. ‘Millions of pounds’ worth of equipment is still on site. So, we’re conspicuously retreating in the hope that they come back to collect. I’ll get into why that’s so important in a minute. During lockdown, this gang forcibly took over empty hotels, B&Bs, restaurants and cafés. With empty streets there was nowhere to hide, so they have laid low and used wherever they could as temporary dealing hubs. Things have opened up again now and so they’re back on the streets, peddling their gear and spreading the word. This isn’t just London I’m talking about, this is national. The regional figures are in the file. An operation of this size is complex and, just like in the US, many of the dealers we come across first, those on the front line doing the selling, are themselves victims.’
Josh scanned the room, looking every man in turn in the eye. ‘I’ll repeat that. They’re kids. Or users. We help them. We turn them. We use them... which brings us back to DS Warr’s crime scene. An undercover team is watching. If they come back to collect their equipment and their drugs, we’ll be waiting.’
Jack loved Josh’s decisiveness. He dealt in facts based on first-hand experience, and that gave him an unequalled authority.
‘In the US, we’re focussing on the big telecom companies. Tracking pay-as-you-go cell phones that are racking up hundreds of calls per day as dealers communicate with supply on the one hand and demand on the other. We know London is talking to Norfolk in a big way, ’cos we’ve intercepted more than 700 calls from hundreds of different cell phones. Heroin, cocaine and fentanyl shipments have been seized to the tune of around £20 million, but there’s more. And it’s getting worse by the day. Fentanyl, as you all know, is a hundred times more dangerous than morphine. Well, get this... we just got word of another drug that’s a hundred times more dangerous than fentanyl. Carfentanyl is used to tranquillize elephants. And it’s on your streets, killing your children.’ Josh clicked his fingers. ‘Like that. Emergency responders cannot save people from these new drugs.’
He took a few seconds out, to pace the small area at the front of the room in silence.
‘The codename for one of the mixers is Scramble. We caught two of the main men up in Manchester with the intention of turning them. Both OD’d in police custody.’ A murmur went around the room like a Mexican wave, as every officer tutted at how incompetent the Manchester custody sergeant must have been to allow that to happen. Twice! ‘One guy,’ Josh continued, ‘had taped five milligrams of fentanyl to the inside of his wedding ring. The cops never did find where the second guy hid his little suicide dose. So, we start with the little people. The people who are not willing to die for this cause. They’re our way in.’
Jack was gripped by how passionately Josh spoke. In fact, Jack was listening so intently that he physically jumped when a hand landed on his shoulder. It was the nameless guy in the hoody, carrying two mugs of coffee.
Jack was led back along the windowed corridor, then up two flights of stairs. The higher they went, the grubbier the building got. Visitors clearly never came up this far. The floors were scuffed, the walls were scratched, and the doorframes were chipped.
As they approached the final set of double doors at end of the last corridor, the young man in the hoody turned to Jack and smiled for the first time, showing off a missing canine tooth. ‘They keep us up here, out of the way.’ He then pressed the intercom button on the wall next to the double doors and they were buzzed in.
Beyond the double doors was a small reception area with desk, sofas and a kitchen tucked away in the corner. There were four doors, three with glass in them, so Jack could see that the rooms were empty. But the fourth door was blacked out, and this was the room the young man in the hoody headed for. The large room had blackout blinds on every window and was lit with strip lights that were just bright enough to see with, but not bright enough to give you a headache. There were six monitors, set out in twos, with each pair angled slightly inwards to surround the user. And there was a huge amount of electronic surveillance equipment. One man sat with his back to Jack, working two screens and two keyboards at once. Moley sat at another pair of screens with Anik by his side attentively watching his every move.
Steve Lewis dashed across to Jack, shook his hand and thanked him for making the trip to their HQ. He pointed to the man who had his back to the room. ‘Edgar Matthews, tech wizard. And you know Mark Sinclair, aka Moley. They’re civilians. You’ll only ever see the backs of their heads whilst you’re here. No one actually knows what Edgar looks like.’ Steve gave a silent laugh at his own joke, ‘And the guy who brought you up here is Sergeant Mike Tulley.’
Mike grabbed Jack’s hand and began furiously shaking it. ‘Oh shit! Did I not say that? I did. Didn’t I? Sorry, Jack.’
‘So, Jack,’ Steve continued, ‘in the interest of sharing, this room and everyone in it is at your disposal for the rest of today. But first, you’re going to tell Mike, Mal and I everything you know about your dead woman.’
Jack bristled at the fact that Steve still didn’t know the names of the murder victims. ‘Which dead woman are you referring to, sir?’
Steve wasn’t making a joke when he replied, ‘The chopped-up one.’
In that moment, Jack decided that he hated Steve Lewis. A murder victim to him meant a druggie, or a dealer, or some other waste of space. Not a human being. He clearly put Avril and Jessica into one of those categories and that made them forgettable. Ignorable.
Jack now realised Ridley had been spot on to hand the lead to Steve, so that his own team could focus completely on getting justice for the two women who had died so brutally at the hands of men who would also not have cared less what they were called.
Chapter 13
Across London, Ridley was giving his morning briefing to a skeleton squad of seven officers. Despite their efforts, no one had any news on the whereabouts of Adam Border. It was hugely frustrating.
The photograph of Avril as a young woman standing next to a small boy in school uniform had been left in the hands of Laura. Using a blow-up of the badge on the boy’s blazer, she’d tracked the school to Leeds and was now explaining to Ridley that the current school principal had only been there for a couple of years and so wasn’t able to recognise the boy.
‘They have copies of all school year photos going back decades, so he’ll do some digging for us. And he’s going to ask the geography teacher if she can help, because she’s just hit seventy and has been there all her working life, so might know the boy by sight.’
‘Let’s hope it’s Adam Border.’ Ridley hadn’t broken a smile yet this morning. His face looked tight, almost pained. On her way into work, Laura had called Jack to relay everything that she knew he’d miss in this morning’s briefing, so Laura knew that Ridley had been drinking with Jack until the early hours. She put his dour look down to this and hoped that his mood would become more positive as the morning progressed and he got more caffeine inside him.