Williams was after him now. ‘How we gonna get close enough to follow him without showing out?’
‘He’ll take the rat-runs as much as he can,’ he explained, ‘and so will we.’
They tailed Weller for almost a quarter of a mile to the other side of the estate, always staying close to the building lines, looking for shadows to hide in, alcoves to conceal them, until finally they spied him climbing to the second floor of Abbey Mead – a long, low-rise block of flats with sweeping communal walkways made from dull grey bricks, where he stopped outside a flat. They hid behind a car in the building’s car park and waited, although it was already clear from the state of the front door that the flat was semi-derelict and probably being used as a squat. After a few seconds the door was opened by a white man in his mid-twenties who looked gaunt and neglected – the yellowness of his skin clear even from a distance.
‘D’you know him?’ King whispered.
‘Nah,’ Williams admitted, ‘but he looks like a scag or crack-head.’
The gaunt figure ushered the youth inside and closed the flimsy-looking door. ‘I’m liking this more and more,’ King told him, just as they saw an equally emaciated-looking white man appear from the stairwell carrying a thin plastic bag loaded with what looked like groceries and head towards the flat. He fumbled for a key in his trouser pocket before finally opening the door and disappearing inside.
‘These are definitely our boys,’ King insisted. ‘Have to be.’
‘I agree,’ Williams whispered, ‘but we haven’t got a warrant and we haven’t seen any stolen goods yet.’
‘We don’t need a warrant to search the flat if they’re already under arrest,’ King reminded him.
‘That’s all fine if the stolen stuff’s inside,’ Williams argued. ‘If that’s the case we can make up anything we like – make the facts fit the arrest – but if it’s not, people might ask what power we had to search it in the first place. Maybe we should get a warrant.’
‘It’d take too long,’ King dismissed it, ‘and there’s no guarantee they’d give us one anyway. Trust me – the stuff’s inside that flat and so are the burglars.’
‘OK,’ Williams reluctantly agreed. ‘We’ll do it your way.’
The single lock holding the door closed was wholly inadequate and unable to stand up to even one kick from Williams’ boot as he and King seemed to charge through the small space simultaneously, screaming ‘Police!’ at the tops of their voices as they ran into the sitting room with truncheons drawn, catching the two men and the youth by complete surprise as they sat on the only sofa in the flat – a filthy remnant salvaged from a skip somewhere and dragged to the squat that stank of hard drug use, human desperation and impending death. It was also now filled with the stench of human excrement as the drug users struggled to control their bowels with muscles wasted by years of abuse with serious narcotics. On the battered table in front of them lay the remains of their latest attempt to escape the awful pointlessness of their lives – a homemade glass crack-pipe stained with over-use and numerous pieces of old tinfoil riddled with the track marks of burnt heroin. The drug users’ eyes were wide open and vacant – as if they’d been hypnotized – whereas the local feral youth had the look of someone who realized they were just unlucky to have been caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.
‘Nobody fucking move,’ King screamed at them, making one of the men begin to shake uncontrollably and grimace as he tried not to foul himself. ‘You’re all under arrest for the two burglaries that happened on the estate last night. I’ll assume you all know the caution off by heart so I won’t waste my time explaining it.’
‘I ain’t done no fucking burglary, man,’ Weller protested his innocence.
‘Shut the fuck up, Stuart,’ Williams told him, prompting him to exhale in exasperation and sink further into the reeking sofa.
‘Get up and turn around,’ King told the silent men who obeyed like lambs heading to the slaughterhouse as they secured them with quick-cuffs and sat them back down. ‘You just stay there,’ he told Weller, who knew there would be little point in running.
The suspects safely trussed, King and Williams began to look around the spartan flat, but it was immediately clear the drug-ravaged men hadn’t even bothered to hide their stolen booty and had merely piled it in the corner of the front room – TVs, laptops, booze, everything. Even the jewellery lay on the floor.
‘Fuck me,’ Williams tormented them. ‘You could have made an effort.’ But still they said nothing, occasionally looking to one another as if they were communicating telepathically – their plight about to get significantly worse as King pulled open the only fitted cupboard in the room and stared inside almost disbelievingly.
‘Danny,’ he called over his shoulder without looking away from the contents of the cupboard. ‘You’d better take a look at this.’ Williams could tell by his tone that he’d found something even more serious than the stolen goods and approached almost in trepidation until he too stared into the cupboard and let out a long whistle before turning back to the men.
‘You two are well and truly fucked,’ he told them as King pulled the two black balaclavas, baseball bats, knives and – almost most damning of all – a roll of thick black gaffer tape from the cupboard and laid it all out neatly on the floor for the men to see.
‘Things just got very serious, gentlemen,’ King told them. ‘This isn’t just burglary any more – this is aggravated burglary. You could get life imprisonment for this.’ Still they said nothing and King wondered whether they even cared. Their lives had been over the minute they started smoking crack and heroin. ‘All right,’ he told Danny, the excitement in his voice suddenly replaced with a resigned sadness. ‘Call up some transport for the prisoners, will you? And you’d better let CID know what’s coming their way. It’s all over for these boys. By the look of them, has been for a while.’
King was in the custody suite back at Canning Town Police Station, having just finished booking in the last of the three prisoners from the estate, when Marino appeared quietly on his shoulder.
‘That’s a top job you’ve brought in there,’ Marino told him as he began to examine the paperwork on the prisoners. ‘Two for aggravated burglary and one for handling. Very nice. But I don’t see a search warrant anywhere here.’
‘Didn’t need one,’ King answered with a stony face. ‘We had reasonable grounds under Section 17 to enter and arrest, which then gave us power to search the flat under Section 18.’
‘Reasonable grounds?’ Marino looked him in the eyes.
‘We followed Weller from a well-known handler’s address to the squat and while we had it under obs we saw one of these slags approach and enter carrying a flat-screen TV I recognized from the crime report.’
‘Uh huh,’ Marino smiled. ‘Good work. We’ll take it from here.’
‘I’d like to keep the job,’ King asked, but Marino shook his head.
‘Sorry, Jack,’ he explained. ‘Aggravated burglary is strictly a CID matter. They may be good for a few clear-ups elsewhere on the borough as well. Don’t worry – I’ll make sure you and your team get full credit for the arrests.’ King shrugged disappointedly. ‘You’ve done your job and you’ve done it well,’ Marino tried to encourage him. ‘You should be proud of it.’ Still King said nothing. ‘And I for one am certainly looking forward to seeing what else your team can bring in. Now finish up your arrest notes and drop them on my desk when they’re done.’
King again remained silent as he watched Marino walk away with the paperwork for the job that he felt should have been his. He quelled his rising