‘Where did it happen?’

  ‘Your sister? A house not far from here. It was used as a shooting gallery but it was shut down after your sister died.’

  ‘Shooting gallery? She was injecting?’

  ‘You thought she was chasing the dragon? No, she was injecting. Had been for months, according to the coroner. She was clever – she was hiding the track marks in her feet, so she was no novice.’

  Standing could barely believe what he was hearing. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he said.

  ‘There’s nothing to say,’ said the detective. ‘It happens. Nice kids from nice families take drugs. In fact, it’s usually easier for kids from nice families to get drugs because they usually get lots of pocket money and have parents with busy social lives.’

  ‘But heroin … In my day the naughty kids smoked cigarettes. I didn’t know anyone who did drugs.’

  ‘I did,’ said Kaiser. ‘I knew kids at my primary school who smoked weed. And glue-sniffing was big when I was a boy. Now, with the price of drugs down and them being so readily available, the kids that used to sniff glue go straight to E or smack or coke. It’s endemic.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Why are drugs endemic? Because people like to take them, end of.’ He held up his cigarette. ‘My drug of choice. Nicotine. They’re not illegal – not yet, anyway – but if they were made illegal, would I stop? Probably not.’ He waved his hand at the people around them. ‘One in three people have tried drugs and there’s maybe three million in the country who regularly take them. There’s a need, so dealers move in to fulfil it. You can’t blame them for looking to widen the market, and they do that by getting kids hooked. They’re already breaking the law selling to adults so selling to kids is no big thing.’

  ‘And you’re not trying to stop them?’

  ‘The Drugs Squad is, but they’re going after the big fish. No one gets pulled for personal use, these days. But, sure, if we found a guy selling drugs to kids we’d throw the book at him.’

  ‘And after Lexi died, you didn’t go looking for her supplier?’

  ‘I’m sorry, no. I know you want some sort of retribution, but your sister injected the heroin into her vein herself. Her fingerprints were on the syringe.’

  ‘But you could have gone after her dealer.’

  ‘After she died, everyone ran from the house, like rats leaving a sinking ship. Her friend was the only one who stayed.’

  ‘But you should have been able to get her dealer’s number from her phone. She must have called him, or messaged him, right?’

  ‘We never found it,’ said the detective. ‘It wasn’t on her and we didn’t find it in the house. We figured someone must have stolen it.’ They had arrived at the Tube station and the detective nodded at the entrance. ‘This is where I leave you,’ he said. ‘Really, I’m sorry for your loss.’

  ‘You said the house where she died is near here. Can you show me?’

  The detective glanced at his watch. ‘I’ve really got to go,’ he said. ‘My wife’s gonna have my guts for garters.’

  ‘I’d just like to see where it happened.’

  ‘It’d be a pointless exercise. The owners cleared everything out and boarded it up.’ He could see from the look on Standing’s face how much it meant to him so he sighed. ‘Okay. Come on.’

  He walked away quickly and Standing hurried after him. They crossed Kilburn High Road, went down a side street and took another turn. It was the fifth house along, a terraced house over three floors. Corrugated-iron sheets had been fixed over the windows and there was a large metal plate covering the front door. Bright yellow stickers announced that the building was under the care of a local security company.

  ‘There were squatters in it – security was nowhere near like it is now,’ said the detective. ‘It was a one-stop shop for pretty much any sort of drug you wanted. Weed, heroin, crack. They didn’t keep the drugs on the premises. The users would turn up and pay and the drugs would be delivered. Everyone on the premises only had enough for personal use, so it was difficult to bust them. Until your sister OD’d, when all hell broke loose, obviously.’

  ‘Who was running the place?’

  ‘It was a local gang. They split after it happened.’

  ‘Asians?’

  Kaiser nodded.

  ‘They weren’t arrested?’

  ‘Mr Standing, arrested for what? Organising a drugs den? With only a relatively small amount of drugs on the premises?’

  ‘My sister died.’

  ‘Yes, she did. But she injected herself. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.’

  Standing nodded slowly as he looked up at the house. ‘What floor was she on when she died?’

  The detective looked pained. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘I just want to know.’

  The detective swallowed. ‘She was there. On the pavement.’ He pointed near the front door.

  ‘The pavement?’

  ‘Her friend tried to get her outside. She thought she could walk it off. But she collapsed and that was when they called an ambulance. She was dead when it got here.’

  ‘Was the friend Zoë Middlehurst by any chance?’

  Kaiser looked at Standing sharply. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I think Mrs Chapman mentioned it,’ Standing lied.

  Kaiser nodded. ‘Yeah, that was her.’ He looked at his watch again. ‘Look, I’m sorry, but I’ve really got to go.’ He patted Standing’s shoulder and hurried off.

  Standing stood staring at the pavement. Tears pricked his eyes and he blinked them away. He took deep, slow breaths, four seconds in, hold, four seconds out. He did that for a full minute, then swore out loud and stepped forward, slamming his fist into the metal plate that was covering the door.

  The cabin that Minister allocated to Shepherd was bigger than the whole of Willoughby-Brown’s yacht. There was a double bed, a built-in wardrobe with mirrored doors that made the cabin look even bigger, an armchair, a large TV and an ensuite shower room. Unlike Willoughby-Brown’s yacht, the catamaran barely moved during the night and he slept so deeply that he didn’t wake up until Minister banged on the cabin door. ‘Wakey, wakey, rise and shine!’ shouted Minister. ‘Breakfast’s ready and I want mine.’

  Shepherd pulled on his clothes and went through to the galley where Minister had put plates of scrambled eggs, bacon and toast on the table, along with mugs of coffee. ‘So what’s the plan?’ asked Shepherd, as he sat down and picked up his knife and fork.

  ‘We’ll take her out and put her through the paces,’ said Minister. ‘She’s easy enough to sail single-handed but you need to be fairly nimble. Usually you’d have a captain, a first mate and a deckhand if you were carrying guests, plus a chef and maybe a waitress-chambermaid. But I’ve sailed her to the West Indies and back with no bother, and I could probably sail her around the world if I wanted to.’

  The two men finished their breakfast, then Minister washed up while Shepherd shaved, showered and changed into clean clothes. By the time he was back in the cockpit, Minister had the engine running and was consulting a screen that gave the local weather conditions.

  ‘Have you got a local chart?’ asked Shepherd, as he took the chair next to Minister.

  Minister tapped on another screen, which filled with a chart showing the water depth and the location of the buoys at the entrance to the marina. Shepherd memorised it without any effort. ‘We tend to rely on the GPS here,’ said Minister, ‘but the chart’s useful just in case the system ever goes down. Right, you untie us and then I’ll let you take us out to sea.’

  Shepherd stepped onto the jetty, untied the cat and climbed back on. Minister ran through the controls with him, then talked him through guiding the vessel away from the jetty and out to the sea. Despite its size, the boat was responsive, and Shepherd had no trouble negotiating his way through the marina. Once out in the open sea, Minister showed Shepherd how to unfurl the sails and the cat was soon slicing through the waves. There was none of the pitch and roll Shepherd had experienced on Willoughby-Brown’s yacht – the cat was much more stable and the visibility way better.

  ‘I don’t see the telltales,’ said Shepherd, looking up at the sails.

  ‘Telltales are for wimps,’ laughed Minister. ‘Plus they’d be difficult to see from the cockpit. We don’t need them. You can tell from the way the sail is behaving whether you’re doing it right or not.’ He clapped Shepherd on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, mate, I’ll see you right. I bet Willoughby-Brown uses telltales.’

  ‘He does, yes.’

  ‘Fucking fair-weather sailor.’

  ‘What do you think of him?’ asked Shepherd.

  Minister looked across at him. ‘As a sailor?’

  ‘As a … whatever he is.’

  ‘You want me to tell tales out of school?’ He grinned. ‘I told you, I’m not a fan of telltales.’

  ‘I admire your loyalty,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘You sound like you’ve got reservations about the guy.’

  Shepherd shrugged. ‘I’ve known him a long time, but I hardly know him, if you get my drift. He keeps his cards close to his chest.’

  ‘Meaning you don’t trust him?’

  ‘Trust has to be earned, right?’

  Minister nodded. ‘Always a good technique, answering a question with a question.’

  Shepherd laughed. ‘Sorry. Force of habit.’

  ‘I’ll be honest, I don’t know him that well. He was fine to work with back in the day. He knows his tradecraft. He’s a pro.’

  ‘That’s true enough,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘But he’s not one of those driven guys, you know, the type who are on a crusade. The DEA is full of them. Guys who truly believe that drugs are the work of the devil and would turn in their nearest and dearest if they found them with a joint.’

  ‘And you don’t?’

  ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘Think that drugs are the work of the devil?’

  Minister smiled slyly. ‘I can see I’m going to have to choose my words carefully,’ he said.

  Shepherd laughed. ‘You’re among friends.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll trust you. Drugs cause a lot of misery, but so do cigarettes and booze, and everyone knows that far more people die from alcohol than drugs. No question of that. Drug-taking is rife among the sailing community, especially out in the islands. And why not? Why can’t a guy sit on his own boat and smoke a joint as he watches the sun go down? Who’s he harming? And suppose you’ve got a lot of water to cover, you’re on a deadline. What’s wrong with a guy doing a line of coke just to keep his spirits up?’

  ‘I guess if you’re in international waters, nothing.’

  ‘Exactly. There isn’t anything morally wrong with drugs that I can see. It’s just that at the moment we have laws against them, same as the Yanks used to have laws against alcohol. Most of the DEA know that all they’re doing is enforcing the law, and I get that. It’s the ones who regard it as a crusade that I have a problem with. Most of the agents I deal with are just regular guys earning a pay cheque. I’ve smoked dope with several, when we’re well away from land. They’re not against drugs per se, and they all realise the futility of what they’re doing, but it’s how they pay their mortgage. I always wondered how the people who worked for Five felt about being told they were joining the war on drugs.’

  ‘That was before my time,’ said Shepherd. ‘It was after the Soviet Union fell apart and all the spies had nothing to do. The Security Service was looking for something else to occupy its time and the powers-that-be settled on the IRA, drugs and organised crime. But, yeah, it was a big change.’

  ‘How do you feel about drugs cases?’

  Shepherd frowned. ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, I’m guessing the case you’re on involves drugs. That’s why you need this crash course in sailing. I’m guessing you’re trying to bring down a big-time smuggler.’ He held up his hands. ‘Stop me if I’m being too nosy,’ he said. ‘Willoughby-Brown told me nothing and I’m just curious.’

  ‘I can’t tell you about the case, but happy enough to talk generally,’ said Shepherd. ‘I know what you mean. I was a cop before I joined Five and I worked a lot of drug cases. When you go after a murderer or a rapist, you know they need to be put away. If you don’t catch them they’re going to hurt or kill someone else. Armed robbers hurt and terrorise civilians so they need to be behind bars, and obviously terrorists are the scum of the earth. When it comes to people killing and maiming civilians just to prove a political or religious point, then I guess you can count me as a crusader. But drug dealers, the big guys who arrange the major shipments, in a way they’re just businessmen who are breaking arbitrary laws. Some of them, anyway. Some are vicious scum and need locking up. The Colombians and the like, who use terror and violence to grow their business. But the big-time marijuana importers, I’m not sure they deserve twenty-year sentences. Not if they haven’t hurt anybody. But then I don’t get to make the laws, and I don’t get to choose my cases.’

  ‘Did you read that Howard Marks book? Mr Nice?’

  ‘Yeah. He was a character.’

  ‘The DEA went after him, and he got twenty-five years. He never did more than a few in the UK. I heard he worked for MI6 for a while.’

  ‘So they say.’

  ‘It’s a messy business, isn’t it?’ said Minister.

  ‘We operate in a grey area, that’s for sure,’ agreed Shepherd.

  ‘I can tell you one thing about Willoughby-Brown. He was always driven – not like a crusader, but driven to get to the top. He was a big networker while he was out here. DEA, CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, he was always making contacts. It’s obviously paid off. He seems to have managed to climb the greasy pole, all right, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Yeah. He knows how to play politics. And he’s not averse to climbing over others to get to where he wants.’

  ‘He’s a fan of yours.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yeah, he said he was sending over one of his top men and that I was to take good care of you.’

  Shepherd laughed and shook his head.

  ‘What’s funny?’ asked Minister.

  ‘If I know Jeremy, he was well aware when he said it that you’d tell me.’

  ‘He’s that devious?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Bastard,’ said Minister. ‘Okay, interrogation over. Now we’ll run through some reefing. Look over at the leeward hull. See how it’s being pushed down into the water? And look at the scoop. There’s water up to the steps. Now, you can’t tell from the position of the boat that we’re overpowered, but those are two signs that we need to reef. Basically we let the apparent wind speed make our reefing decisions. If we don’t, we’re always going to be late to the party. There’s an old sailor’s saying – if you think you should reef, you should have done it already. Words to that effect, anyway. So, on a cat like this, you put in your first reef anywhere between eighteen and twenty knots. When we get to twenty-five you want reef number two, and put in the third when we get close to thirty knots. Now, in the unlikely event we find ourselves in a wind of more than thirty knots, we put away the jib and sail with a fully-reefed main. Any worse than that and we’d be looking at spilling wind by luffing. Did Willoughby-Brown cover that?’

  Shepherd shook his head.

  ‘It’s simple enough. You steer towards the wind to disrupt the airflow over the sail. That will make the sail flap, or we call it luffing. Luffing also happens when the boat is tacked.’

  ‘Ah, I get it,’ said Shepherd. ‘I saw that when I was out with Willoughby-Brown. Just didn’t know it was called a luff.’

  ‘There’s a lot of jargon, and unfortunately you’ll have to remember it all,’ said Minister. ‘It’s a sure way of spotting a beginner or a wannabe. Anyway, luffing lets you sail in very strong winds without damaging the sails or the lines. Okay, let’s get to it.’

  Minister spent the next hour showing Shepherd how to reef the cat, and the effect it had on the boat’s handling. Shepherd eventually got the hang of it, and Minister nodded his approval. ‘Right. I’ll show you now how to park the cat. It’s the equivalent of heaving to in a monohull. It’s a phrase you want to drop in, if you can.’

  Shepherd nodded. ‘Park the cat,’ he repeated.

  ‘Basically you deep-reef your main, drop the traveller all the way to leeward, then pull the mainsheet hard in. Once you’ve done that, you point the bow into the wind and you can sit there quite nicely, no matter what’s going on around you. Say you’re sailing at night and you’re taking a pounding, you can park and get some rest. We do it if we need to make repairs at sea.’

  Shepherd grinned and Minister looked at him quizzically. ‘Something funny?’

  ‘Yeah. You just gave me a whole raft of jargon and I understood every word. I think we’re making progress.’

  Standing arrived at Dr Doyle’s office at eight thirty but, although the receptionist had said first thing, it wasn’t until nine o’clock that he was shown into her inner sanctum. ‘Sorry to have kept you waiting,’ she said. She was already sitting in her armchair with her notepad on her lap.

  Standing sat down opposite and crossed his legs. ‘No problem,’ he said. He wondered if keeping him waiting was a test to see if he’d get angry. He smiled at how wrong she was. Waiting wasn’t a problem for him. If it was, he wouldn’t have been able to spend days on end in unpleasant ops, rationing food and water, and shitting into plastic bags. A half-hour wait in a room with comfortable chairs and a pile of magazines was no hardship.

  ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘All good,’ Standing replied.

  ‘You’re sticking with the exercises? The square breathing?’

  ‘Yes, no problem.’

  She smiled. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Now, I’ve been giving some thought to your father.’

  ‘That’s more than I have,’ said Standing. ‘But you knock yourself out.’

  ‘I was thinking you should go and see him. Talk to him. Is that possible?’

 

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