You Can't Make Old Friends

by Tom Trott

  Drug dealers are bad friends, and as his old friends gave up on him, he made new friends, and now everyone he knew was a criminal or lowlife.

  Caught in a strong current, like all the others, he moved on to coke. He got to know the dealers, and being a likable bloke, and being able to count, was soon one of them. Like all of them he skimmed a little for his own use. No harm in that.

  At least that way he was out of the streets. It was posh idiots who bought coke. Middle class people. Londoners down clubbing for the weekend, and businessmen, lawyers, PR types, the type of people who think they have it all sussed out. They know what life is about. Anyone who thought they were god’s gift to whoever they thought they were god’s gift to. It wasn’t a real weekend in Brighton to them without some drugs thrown in.

  And Rory and his like, they could make even more money, these idiots didn’t know what they were cutting it with, how diluted the stuff was. And when he spent too much one month on gambling or drinking, he could cut it down from fifty-percent pure to forty-five, and write off his debts. No harm in that. But then soon it was thirty-five, then twenty. And people don’t want to pay much for eighty-percent veterinary painkillers and who-knows-what-else.

  So you come up with a gimmick. He started making his wraps out of lottery tickets and scratchcards. That was Rory’s smart streak. Not only were you getting coke but a shot at being a millionaire. It was enough to make his awful product worth it.

  But soon he was spending more and more on gambling and booze. It didn’t matter how much he was making, he always spent more. So then the purity dropped to less than ten percent and suddenly people aren’t buying anymore. I mean, in Brighton it’s a buyer’s market.

  So then profits went down again, and he had to beg more and more from his suppliers. He got in deeper and deeper, racking up bigger and bigger debts. Until he was sitting in his rotten one-room, trying to shut out the sound of the girl through the wall that was fucking to pay for her fix. And he could hear those kids again. But this time they were crying. They were her kids, in the other room, through the other wall. They wouldn’t be kids for long. He would drown it out with the radio or the television if the bailiffs hadn’t taken them. He would listen to music but all he had was a burner phone. He needed to get out of here. Out of this life. But how do you do that?

  ‘We’re all in our own private traps,’ someone told him, ‘and no one can pry them open from the inside.’

  That’s when that someone asked him if he wanted to push a legal high. Perfectly legal. And all you have to do is hang out in clubs slipping bags into pockets.

  I’d been to the clubs myself. After I first found that packet of starz in Jo Whiting’s room I wanted to see how ubiquitous they were. I trawled every club on West Street, and in every one I found the sweaty man in the corner, looking around for undercover police.

  I would shuffle up. ‘What are you selling?’

  They would give me a sideways look. I’m not a clubber, and I refuse to dance just to look like one.

  ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about, mate.’

  ‘Drugs.’ I would say, staring right at them. ‘What are you selling?’

  ‘What? I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ they would pretend.

  ‘Drugs!’ I would shout as loud as I could. Pretending to think they couldn’t hear me.

  This would then go one of two ways. The first way they would tell me to keep my voice down and we would retreat to an even darker corner where he would offer me ecstasy, or something better. It was basically ‘super-ecstasy’, he would say. Kicks in quickly, and the comedown is gentle. No crashing.

  ‘Normally I sell them for twenty quid a bag,’ a bag of five, that is, ‘but since I can tell this is your first time, you can have it for fifteen.’

  I’d tell him I would think about it. ‘I might come back later.’ Just like you do in a shop.

  If it didn’t go this way then they would deny they had a clue what I was talking about, and then they would head quickly for the toilets to flush their stuff. They never kept much on them and would re-up regularly, that way if caught they could pretend it was for personal use. I would follow them into the cubicle and shove their head down the toilet whilst I went through their pockets. I would always find starz. The drug problem was more like an epidemic. And a monopoly, considering starz were only coming from one source. Then I would flush it for them. Any one of them could have been Rory, but fate hadn’t lined us up yet.

  And yet for him it was more than just a better job. Much more than that, the person would tell him. You’ll be fixed up with a flat. A posh new-build. They’ll even pay for a cleaner. This could be an opportunity to turn your life around.

  So how did that lead to this? Standing over the body of a young woman. Surrounded by blood and vomit. Picking up the pills she didn’t take, because she didn’t need them anymore. They were killing people. It had to stop. But how? Nothing illegal was happening. Perfectly legal.

  That only left one option. Put them away for pushing the stuff that was illegal. Weed and coke. Plus the ecstasy. Ketamine. Heroin. Whatever pies they had their fingers in.

  He walked back to his posh new-build, on the top floor. Pale white. Empty. He could never bring himself to fill it. He had traded one trap for a posher, more modern, minimalist, open-plan trap. He had to get out of here too. But if he went to the police, and if they cared, it would be a long operation. Huge. They would start surveillance and take their good time gathering evidence. And he would have to testify, the trial would take months. He would be dead within a week.

  No, the police could only be involved at the very end. The day they arrested them. The day Rory disappeared for good. He would have to bring the noose to them. A complete case. Open and shut. Water tight. Then mum and Thalia would have to disappear too. He would be putting every friend he had in danger. Good thing he didn’t have any.

  Until then, he couldn’t go to the police. Who could he go to? He used to know a private detective. A good one. One who worked with the police sometimes. But he hadn’t seen him for ten years. He probably wouldn’t even take his call. No, he was going to have to do this himself.

  Evidence was needed, so he bought a notebook, the robust hardback type used for important work. And in it he recorded every sale. The little ones in clubs, and the big wholesale stuff. He would memorise it through the night, jot it down in the morning. And soon it wasn’t just the pills. It was the weed, coke, ket, E’s, and smack. He was rising through the ranks, becoming Coward’s protégé, getting his eyes into every deal. And getting every deal into his notebook.

  He was dedicated. Cleaning himself up. Not using. Getting to know his sister again. Doing everything right that he had done wrong. He was being a detective, and how do you learn how to do that? You need a role model.

  So he followed me, taking photos, learning my trade, learning some of my methods. And probably my bad habits too. Redeeming himself in my eyes until he thought I would take him seriously. I would have to be involved eventually. Who better to take the evidence to the police, to negotiate his way out of there. Maybe he wouldn’t have to disappear after all? He would turn up at my office. Clean shaven. Hair in a neat ponytail. And present me with a notebook full of evidence. Everything he had done wrong would be forgiven. I would embrace the best friend I had lost. The good man I always knew was still inside. And things would be like they were supposed to have been. Grabarz & Sweet, taking down the bad guys together.

  Things never got that far. Rory wasn’t a detective. Just a good person who had made bad choices, trying to make them right. He had tried to be covert, but all his behaviour had changed, cleaning himself up at the same time he was getting more involved than ever. These people will kill you just for thinking of going to the police. Just for having a friend or a brother in the police. Just for talking to them. You get arrested, get interviewed for too many hours, and they’ll kill you just to be sure. Some officers played this game themselves with the you
nger ones. Bring them in, buy them a burger, and parade them out the front door with a pat on the back and a smile. Dead by close of play. They even called it the “last meal”.

  Someone in Coward’s crew had got suspicious of something and that was enough. Rory hid the notebook. And just in time. I couldn’t help wondering what he thought when they kicked down his door. Did he know he was going to die? Did he think it was all a waste? Did he pray they wouldn’t kill Thalia? Did he beg them not to?

  It was at this point that I realised I was crying into my drink. It was night now. I had got out of bed and gone to the sofa in the other room. I had ignored Thalia crying the night before, I couldn’t lie next to her and start blubbing. It was too embarrassing.

  ‘Can’t sleep?’

  I jumped. She was in the doorway, in nothing but one of my tops, as always. She didn’t even have any underwear anymore.

  ‘I was dreaming,’ was about all I could manage.

  ‘Bad dream?’

  ‘About your brother.’

  She flicked on the bedroom light, which threw enough onto me to reveal my bloodshot eyes.

  ‘So at least part of you cares.’

  She turned back into the bedroom but I was up and had her by the arms.

  ‘Thalia!’ I was up in her face, ‘He was an idiot,’ she tried to pull away but I wasn’t going to let her, ‘He was a pushover. A flake. And a drug dealer.’ She was staring deep into my eyes, anger filling her face, ‘But he was always my friend.’

  The anger melted into tears. The tears ran down to her mouth. And soon that mouth was on mine. I pushed her backwards, down onto the mattress. Kicking away the duvet. All over her.

  The sex was quick, each of us using the other to get what we needed. For her it was connection, emotional release, to share pain, that sort of stuff. She cried through a lot of it. For me, it was sex.

  Afterwards, I laid there, starting to feel guilty that it didn’t mean more to me, but far more occupied with the joy and pain of having my best friend back. He hadn’t been dead, he had existed. Now he didn’t.

  As I stared at shadows dancing across my cracked ceiling I swore a simple oath:

  Rory, you wanted this to stop. I will make it stop.

  12

  A Time to Do Things Properly

  i woke up more rested than any time I could remember in the last few months. I knew exactly what I was going to do with my day. I had a plan.

  I left Thalia in the land of nod whilst I showered, shaved, and lightly breakfasted on the last of the leftover pizza in the fridge. I had been surviving on two slices a day. Then I dressed in what was clean in the wardrobe and threw on Rory’s old coat. She was still asleep when I left.

  I jumped on my bike and headed for George’s house. Presumably through some lucky inheritance, he could actually afford a house. A house. In Brighton. He lived in Patcham, which back in the day when people travelled by stagecoach used to be the last stop before Brighton. The parish church actually dates from the eleventh century, and parts of that old village can still be seen in cute cottages. But most of Patcham is now pure suburbia. Just the northern most tip of a growing Brighton. You can’t go any further north because the Downs are in the way. Between them and the sea they were the only two things reigning the city in. The sky isn’t even the limit now.

  I rode up Surrenden Road through chill air, underneath a threatening swell of cloud that covered every inch of sky like a blanket about to smother the city. It looked like the underside of some huge ocean, with us on the seabed. The bottom feeders. Storm Joseph was shaking his fist at us, but he wasn’t going to strike just yet.

  Once I had made it over the hill and into Patcham, I pulled up in the driveway of George’s mock-Tudor monstrosity. It even had those leaded diamond-paned windows, like he was an Elizabethan or something. Without a wife or kids he always seemed out of place there to me. There was a token gate, and two stone lions guarding it, but they both looked cheap. Just for show. A fake CCTV camera sat above the door. Of course it was fake, there were no wires. Again, just for show. I was pretty sure that if I knocked on the lions I would hear they were hollow inside, just like everything in suburbia.

  I rang the doorbell and was treated to a sickening, electronic rendition of Ode To Joy. Soon I heard a shuffling sound and the door was ripped open from the inside. It took him two seconds to recognise me.

  ‘You can fuck off,’ was his way of welcoming me.

  ‘Your doorbell seems in a much better mood than you, George.’

  ‘Stupid thing came with the house.’

  He wiped his nose, then coughed a couple of times without covering his mouth.

  ‘What the hell do you want?’

  ‘I’ve got something for you.’

  ‘What the fuck do I care?’

  I pushed my way in and marched into his living room. It was a chintzy nightmare. Like someone had let off a grenade packed with doilies. I didn’t feel like George had made a single design choice in the room. Except maybe the floor made of empty bottles. In front of the television was an arm chair, a side table, an ash tray, and an open bottle of beer. He saw what I was looking at.

  ‘Want one?’

  ‘Coffee, George, for me.’

  ‘Make it yourself.’ He sat down in the arm chair.

  ‘Enjoying retirement?’

  ‘How many times are you going to make me say fuck you, Joe?’

  I decided to perch on an arm of the sofa. ‘What happened?’

  ‘You know what happened.’

  ‘How did it happen, then?’

  He frowned at me at first, but every person wronged loves a chance to tell the story. To moan. I was lucky this was going to be the one time, I’m sure his friends had heard it several. That said, he seemed to give it to me in bullet points, the same way he rattled off witness statements or crime scene details.

  ‘The Chief didn’t even do it himself,’ he started, ‘the Super called me into his office, showed me a copy of the email that the Chief had sent to all officers telling them not to consult with any private investigators. That it was a capital offence. Then he asked if I had seen the email. I told him I had. Then he fired me.’

  ‘How did he find out?’

  ‘You were on the front page of the Argus.’

  ‘Only in silhouette.’

  ‘Tough. He recognised you.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘That’s it. Pressures on them because of the cuts. There’s good Sergeants that haven’t been promoted because there’s no money for DI salaries. But they hired her. As a DCI! For one of her that means they’ve got to get rid of two of me. I gave him an excuse to get rid of someone, which is exactly what he wanted, thanks to you.’

  ‘Thanks to me?’

  ‘I haven’t said this before, have I?’ he said with a smile just creeping into sight.

  ‘Said what?’

  ‘You blacklisted yourself, Joe.’

  That’s not the way I experienced it. ‘How exactly did I do that?’ I asked.

  ‘You did something stupid. And nobody made you do it.’

  ‘That kind of depends how you look at it.’

  ‘You can’t get away with everything. You should’ve learnt that by now.’

  I looked around again at the dump this nice house had become, ‘Hey, I’m still in business, aren’t I?’

  He picked up his beer and downed it in one long set of gulps, never breaking eye contact with me. Then he dropped it on the floor.

  ‘You’re not my friend, Joe. What are you doing here?’

  I threw the notebook in his lap. He had to catch it. That should have given him some adrenaline to wake him out of his stupor. He peeled open the pages, not sure what he was going to find, and not sure what it was once he had.

  ‘What the hell is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Dealer. Buyer. Amount. Price. Date. A record of every deal Coward’s men have done over the last few months.’

  When he heard this he shut the book.
As though it was something serious that he shouldn’t be looking at. ‘What do you want me to do with it?’

  ‘You’re still a policeman, aren’t you?’

  ‘Is that a joke?’

  ‘Get your job back. This is exactly the sort of thing they brought her in to do and you’ve done it yourself. It’s the best Christmas present you or them have ever had. It could do real damage to Coward, maybe even to Max.’

  ‘Not that rubbish again.’

  He needed more convincing, so I continued, ‘I’m sorry, ok? I do try and do the right thing occasionally.’

  He nodded to himself a few times, and then a moment later he stood up. I almost took a step back, I didn’t know what he was thinking. But to my surprise he reached out a hand for me to shake. Which I did. But I didn’t let go.

  ‘Just do me one last favour.’ He tried to pull his hand away but I held on to it, ‘Wait till tomorrow.’

  He frowned.

  ‘That’s all.’ I smiled.

  We said a few more words. And I left. Now the plan was in motion, it was time to keep going.

  I roared back over the hill until I could smell the sea, coasting downhill until I hit the centre and my office. My mouth was already salivating with the thought of all the avocado toast and street food I could afford with the money that was finally coming my way. Just the ability to see something that costs a couple of quid and be able to buy it without an existential crisis should not be underestimated.

  I parked up, and round the corner found Lenny in his usual spot. He was wearing his ushanka with the ear flaps down, and his camo coat. He was dressed to fight Storm Joseph.

  ‘Good day, Lenny?’ I asked.

  ‘Good day, chief,’ he answered in the affirmative.

  I loved how someone in such dire straits could always be in a better mood than me. Than most people really. If that doesn’t teach you to just cheer the fuck up, I don’t know what will.