Hell on Earth

by Philip Palmer

  ‘Morning bways,’ Dougie shouted out.

  ‘Crap accent,’ one of the youths muttered. And Dougie grinned at that.

  ‘Do you know what would look fantastic on you? ME,’ said Angela.

  ‘Tango Delta Two from Tango Delta. Urgent assistance, 43 Priory Road, street fight in progress, Over,’ sputtered the radio.

  ‘Tango Delta Two, show as attending. Out,’ said Dougie, and the area car jerked into action.

  Angela revved, and took the car up on to the kerb, beeped away the pedestrians. Then bumped back on the road and rejoined the traffic flow at Judd Street. Dougie turned the lights and siren on.

  ‘If you were a lolly I’d be licking you all night,’ said Dougie.

  ‘We’ve finished that game,’ Angela pointed out. ‘Finished. Finito! You dumbfuck.’

  ‘How about you sit on my lap, and we’ll see what’s the first thing that pops up?’

  ‘Enough!’ But she was laughing.

  ‘I’m just like a takeaway pizza, if I don’t come within thirty minutes the next one is free.’

  ‘Enough, you dick!’

  Skip forward seven years.

  ‘Interview concluded three forty-two pm,’ said Dougie, and turned the tape machine off. It was Wednesday the ninth of June, 2010. He was in interview room 2, Carter Street nick. Learning to do what he would one day do best.

  Joe Jacob stared at him. Joe was a wiry little fucker. Balding, tattooed, hyper-active. A tireless villain whose prior convictions dated back to before his eighth birthday. Joe was in his late thirties now but could pass for much older, thanks to a life of crime, hard liquor and recreational heroin.

  Joe’s wrinkled, pock-marked face was, and had been for some time, locked in muteness. His eyes were focused elsewhere. His habitual fidgeting was being kept under rigid self-control. But when Dougie concluded the interview with the words ‘three forty-two pm’, Joe turned his head and stared at Dougie with contempt.

  Dougie didn’t falter. He held the pause.

  Dougie sustained this silence for one hundred and forty-one seconds.

  ‘What the fuck?’ snapped Joe, eventually.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I said – you haven’t – you didn’t –’

  Joe flashed a look at his brief, a severe business- suited woman in her late 40s with a face as angular as a Modigliani. Mary Harrison.

  Mary was a criminal lawyer in both senses of that phrase. Villains like Joe kept solicitors like Mary on a permanent retainer basis, usually in the form of used twenties in a bag in the office safe. Mary, however, failed to respond to Joe’s baffled look. Dougie guessed she was daydreaming.

  ‘You didn’t ask me any fucking questions,’ Joe said accusingly.

  Dougie smiled, but didn’t reply.

  ‘I think we’re done here,’ said Mary crisply. Automatic pilot, she still didn’t realise what danger her client was in.

  ‘Would you have actually answered any of my questions? If, that is, I’d asked any?’ Dougie asked, innocently.

  Dougie’s interview, as it appeared in the transcript, was: ‘Interview with Mr Joseph Jacob commences three oh five pm, officers present are Detective Sergeant Douglas Randall and PC William Flanagan, also present is solicitor Mary Harrison, of the firm of Harrison and Lamb.’ Followed by: ‘Interview concluded three forty-two pm.’ In between, not one word. Just two thousand two hundred and twenty seconds of silence.

  Dougie had never tried this technique before. He was awed at how well it was working.

  ‘No fucking way!’ roared Joe Jacob.

  ‘Then why bother asking them?’ Dougie asked, reasonably.

  ‘Cause it’s your fucking job to fucking ask them!’

  Dougie made a face. ‘Sounds like a bit of a waste of time to me,’ he said, mildly.

  Joe clenched his body with anger, making him look even more like a ferret yearning for a hole.

  Dougie stood up and nodded to the uniform PC, Bill Flanagan. ‘Show Ms Harrison the way out would you, Bill?’

  Bill nodded amiably. He stood up. He was tall, backed up with muscle, with big jowls but no trace of flab on the rest of his body. Joe stood too and barely reached Bill’s chest. Then Dougie stood up and he was taller even than Bill Flanagan. Joe skilfully avoided all eye contact, so that he wouldn’t have to peer up at the two giant coppers.

  Mary stood too, gathering up her papers, which she hadn’t needed. ‘If you have no evidence against my client, you’re obliged to release him,’ she said briskly.

  ‘In your dreams, darling,’ said Dougie. ‘We’ve still got five hours on the clock.’ He opened the door and beckoned Joe out, then Mary and Bill. Dougie followed, standing just a bit too close to Joe as they both left the room.

  In the corridor, as instructed, Bill led Mary back to reception, with a ‘This way love.’ She bustled off down the corridor, mentally billing with every stride.

  Dougie and Joe were left alone.

  ‘I’ll walk with you,’ said Dougie, casually, gesturing at the corridor that led to the custody area.

  But Joe stood his ground. He stood it with two fists clenched and he stared up at Dougie with angry pugnacity.

  ‘What the fuck’re you playing at, pal?’ said Joe. His voice was a soft rasp, barely audible. ‘I mean, are you fucking, what is your fucking problem?’

  ‘Easy, son. Potty mouth, that won’t impress anyone. This way.’ Dougie patted his arm, with offensive familiarity: now standing much too close.

  Joe slapped the pat away.

  ‘You stupid - cunt!’ Joe rasped. ‘You total – You’re too stupid to be a stupid cunt, that’s what you fucking are! You can’t just - You’re supposed to put up a fucking show! For the record, and for the brief! Jesus Christ! Hasn’t no one told you fucking nothing?’

  Dougie froze. His strategy unpicked, in an instant.

  His plan had been to use silence as a means of softening up his hostile suspect. Before, in time-honoured fashion, engaging in some shabby horse-trading during the walk and talk back to the cell. Instead he was being accused of not play-acting his role correctly.

  ‘I could help you here, Joe,’ Dougie said, in an attempt to return to his Plan A.

  But Joe’s rage was unabated.

  ‘I don’t need your fucking help, you shitbrained twat. I’m fireproof,’ said Joe, arrogantly.

  Fireproof.

  ‘We got forensics on you, you fool!’ Dougie said, throwing interview technique to the winds. ‘On the gear. Flip or you’re fucked.’

  Joe looked suddenly cautious. ‘What gear?’ he said, slyly.

  Dougie suddenly realised he was drowning.

  Joe smiled. It was a winner’s smile. He looked up at Dougie, the brazen little mongrel dominating the big thoroughbred Alsatian. Dougie couldn’t meet his gaze.

  ‘Let’s get you tucked away,’ muttered Dougie.

  Dougie led his scornful suspect to the custody area, where he passed him over to Freddy, the custody sergeant, with a nod. Then he hurried off.

  Carter Street nick – officially it was now Walworth Road Police Station but no one ever called it that – had access via a basement to the new state-of-the-art South East London Exhibits Store. Half a mile of tunnels with impounded drugs, boxes of evidence, lab reports, guns, and drugs. This was the secure repository for six South London nicks; a brand new yet already musty basement full of criminal artefacts.

  Dougie caught the elevator down to the repository reception area. The Repository, to him, resembled an airport terminal in terms of ambience, i.e. it had zero. And it was eerily silent, rarely used except on raid days, and lightly staffed.

  He signed in and was accompanied into the stacks by a young female PC in plain clothes, her blonde hair in a bouncy pony-tail, who was acting duty officer.

  ‘I have to watch you,’ the PC said brightly over her shoulder as she walked, hair bouncing against her back.

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘No offence.’

  She
stopped a moment and turned, and smiled. But Dougie forgot to smile back.

  ‘None taken,’ he said.

  Dougie followed as the pony-tailed PC swiftly tracked a route through the maze of aisles. Past shelves stacked with plastic boxes of bagged and tagged crime scene exhibits, and sealed metal canisters filled with drugs, guns, money, and even a few grenades.

  Pony-Tail stopped and gestured at a shelf, and Dougie pulled out the metal exhibits box for the raid on the crack house in which Joe Jacob had been tugged. Pony-Tail unlocked it, and Dougie removed a sealed bag, and read the typed label: CRACK COCAINE, IMPOUNDED 3/4/09. He checked the bag; it was empty. In faint pen underneath the words CRACK COCAINE, IMPOUNDED 3/4/09 were written the words TRACE SAMPLES ONLY; MAY BE TALCUM POWDER. He checked for the cash – one hundred and nine grand in all had been counted at the scene – and found no cash, and no bag with a label saying CASH IMPOUNDED 3/4/09: £109,000.

  Dougie put the bags back in the box and relocked the padlock.

  ‘Everything in order?’ said Pony-Tail, brightly.

  ‘Yeah of course.’

  Dougie walked back to the elevator, then up to the canteen and bought a coffee and sipped it. It was cool, and tasted like liquid shit, which was par for the course. He thought about what Joe had said.

  He got up and strolled across to the other table, where two DCs, Jack Markus and Kim Holliday, were talking.

  ‘Lads.’

  ‘Yeah, Doug?’

  Dougie tried to be casual, though the muscles in his back were knotted like a fist.

  ‘I need to update my pocketbook. How much crack did we take in that raid last night?’

  ‘Alison’s the exhibits officer,’ said Jack, warily.

  ‘Ask her, she’ll know,’ Kim concurred.

  ‘Roughly. About twenty wasn’t it?’

  Kim had a cautious look; like a nurse talking to a certified lunatic. ‘Nah, we looked but the drum was clean. A bust.’

  ‘Was it? I thought - And there was cash too, remember? With Joe Jacob’s dabs over all of it. We found fingerprints on the polythene bags full of crack and on the money bags too, and even on the notes. Joe Jacob’s prints. We checked them against the computer.’

  ‘Don’t remember that.’

  ‘We were there. Me and you, Kim. Me and you.’

  Dougie stared at Kim accusingly.

  Kim stared back without a trace of guilt.

  Dougie cracked. ‘Help me here, Kim, eh?’ he said matily. ‘That bastard Joe Jacob’s going to walk.’

  ‘Sorry. I’m not, you know.’ Kim smiled. ‘Falsifying evidence.’

  Dougie shrugged: mock defeated.

  ‘Wouldn’t ask you to.’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘Can’t blame a man for trying, eh?’

  Dougie winked. Kim grinned. All was good.

  Dougie walked away, grim. Realising the truth. The entire station was bent. He was in a rats’ nest.

  When the end of shift came, he drove home to Angela and the kids. They had a flat on Bell Road now. Their baby Daniel was four and a bit months old.

  Angela was breastfeeding when Dougie let himself in. He smiled at the sight. It was beautiful.

  ‘Good day?’ Angela asked.

  ‘So so,’ Dougie said casually.

  Then he shrugged, rolled his shoulders, made a face. Finally, he smiled. But inside, he was festering with resentment.

  ‘I took Dan to the surgery,’ Angela said.

  ‘Oh yeah? What percentile?’

  ‘They’re not really worried.’

  Dougie was alarmed.

  ‘Christ! He drinks enough milk, he should be putting on the weight by now,’ Dougie raged.

  ‘They said he’s fine, there’s nothing to worry about,’ Angela said placatingly.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Dougie. Lighten up.’

  ‘Me, I’m a ray of sunshine, I am,’ Dougie lied.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ she taunted. ‘Look, the baby’s fine. Just not a big fat useless lump like his dad.’

  ‘I was thirteen stone when I was born,’ Dougie alleged.

  ‘Your mum said you looked like a bloody gorilla. She said, they had to shave you when you were two days old.’

  Dougie was shocked.

  ‘She never said that?’

  ‘She did.’

  ‘But it’s not true,’ he said.

  ‘I know, but she said it anyway. She’s a right bitch your mum.’ Angela grinned in delight. Her family were bad enough, but Dougie’s lot were worse. That amused Angela hugely.

  ‘A mum should never say a thing like that about her own flesh and blood,’ said Dougie bitterly.

  ‘It was Christmas. She was drunk.’

  Dougie recalled that Angela’s dad had once missed Christmas Day and Boxing Day and half the following week because he was so drunk. In her family, it counted as a valid excuse.

  Dougie sighed and sat down and read the paper. Ten minutes later he hadn’t absorbed a single word. He put the paper down. Angela was tucking her huge breast away.

  ‘Want a drink?’

  ‘Not when I’m breastfeeding.’

  ‘You just finished breastfeeding.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  Dougie got up, went in the kitchen, cracked open a can of lager. Carried the can back in.

  ‘Glass.’

  ‘Doesn’t taste the same.’

  ‘Glass!’

  Dougie sighed, went and fetched a glass, and poured the beer in. He fucked it up and got a head three inches deep. He went back to the living room. Sat down. Picked up the paper again.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What’s wrong, Dougie?’

  ‘Not in front of the baby.’

  ‘He’s too young to know. What’s wrong?’

  Angela was focusing intently on Dougie now, to the exclusion of all else. It was one of her knacks. Normally he loved it, but today it made him tense.

  Dougie sighed. And went for it.

  ‘It’s Roy,’ said Dougie. ‘Detective Inspector Roy The Boy Hall. He’s bent.’

  Dougie was silent, expecting a big reaction. But Angela just stared at him, as if he’d just suggested that babies never get cranky and she was trying to break the news that he was bonkers.

  ‘What?’ said Dougie. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Dougie read the body language. ‘You don’t seem surprised.’

  She shrugged. ‘Nothing surprises me. Not any more.’

  He thought hard. Putting it together. He knew that Angela had served in Carter Street CID for several years before switching to the area car. She’d been on the outside enquiry team for several on Roy’s big cases. Ergo, she knew Roy well. She had been, for several years, one of his crew.

  ‘You knew,’ he said eventually. ‘You knew.’

  Angela stared at him a long time. ‘Course I knew.’

  ‘You knew Roy was bent.’

  ‘Everyone knows.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  Angela was silent.

  ‘I’m a bloody detective sergeant, and I didn’t – no one told me – I had no fucking idea that –’

  Angela was silent.

  ‘Jesus, Angela.’

  ‘Don’t blame me.’

  ‘You worked with him in CID for four years. Are you telling me – ah fuck.’ It hit him. ‘You. You too. You were bent too.’

  ‘It’s called peer pressure.’

  Dougie stared at her with horror. ‘Jesus. My fucking wife’s a crooked cop!’

  Angela flared: ‘Don’t you dare, don’t you DARE swear in front of my baby.’

  ‘Is it true though?’

  ‘I can’t say.’

  ‘Then it’s true.’

  She tried not responding.

  He played the ‘silence to be filled’ gambit on her.

  She crumbled.

&
nbsp; ‘You can’t be left out, Dougie. You just can’t.’ Angela was crying now; holding Daniel in one arm, with tears rolling down her cheeks and leaving damp streaks on her cream top.

  ‘Fuck you, Angela.’

  ‘Don’t. Don’t don’t.’ Tears turned to rage. ‘Don’t ever swear in front of little Danny.’

  Dougie was full of rage too, but he reined it in. He got up and took baby Daniel from his wife. He kissed his darling’s sleepy milky face.

  ‘How bent?’

  ‘We did stuff.’

  ‘How bent?’

  ‘Money. I took money.’

  ‘Drugs?’

  ‘We sold drugs.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Nothing else.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing Dougie, trust me, nothing.’

  ‘You ever hurt anyone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How bad?’

  Angela took a while to answer; recovering the details from their grubby hiding place in her memory.

  ‘Very.’

  ‘How much is very?’

  ‘A pimp. He was a scumbag. Roy told me what to say, what to do. He said we had no choice.’

  ‘You scared him.’

  ‘We killed him.’

  Dougie heard but didn’t believe. Then, with a crashing of mental gears, he believed.

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’ he asked.

  ‘To warn you.’ Angela’s tears were gone now. There were damp circular patches on her front of her cream cotton top where her nipple milk had spurted out from the stress. And there was fear in her eyes. ‘If you go after Roy, you’ll bring me down too.’

  Dougie denied it to himself.

  Then he admitted it to himself: he was fucked.

  ‘The man is bent. He deserves to go down.’

  ‘Yeah, but I’m your wife. Mother of your children. And it’s your job to protect me.’

  ‘No! Fucking no! You take your chances, you stupid bloody tart!’

  He didn’t mean it. She knew he didn’t mean it.

  ‘I love you, Dougie.’

  Dougie still had Daniel in his arms. And now he kissed his baby; again, and again, and again. Then he nestled Dan on his shoulder. And he paced and bobbed back and forth on his feet, like a comic Gilbert and Sullivan rozzer, to lull his baby asleep.

  ‘Say you love me,’ Angela insisted.

  Dougie said nothing.

  ‘Dougie, I need to know you love me. Say you love me.’