Federica led me to a corner and we sat on the bare, dirty floor. I was glad to do so—my knees were shaking. I could not comprehend the utter wreck of the humanity around me. For a second I thought of Luke, the spoon on his coffee table, the rubber rope fallen on the floor, and the old tree of my sorrow shed a few leaves, but I pushed the thoughts away.
Not now, Lily Strom. Not now.
After a few minutes I came to realize that there was no talk of family or hobbies or work. Nothing. Just drugs. The only topic of conversation was about gear—they spoke about it endlessly. It was the only thing they lived for. And everybody’s main preoccupation was to know when the dealer would be arriving. Every once in a while someone would ask, ‘When’s he coming?’ and the answer was always, ‘Soon, man, soon.’ I felt incredibly sorry for them, for their wasted lives. I thought of their parents and their sisters and maybe even their children.
Every few minutes more junkies knocked on the door. The place became more and more packed.
A gaunt man and his friend turned to me.
‘Where you from, girl?’ he asked.
It was only junkie small talk. Who were we? How did we hear about the house? The kind of thing that Robin had already briefed me I might be asked, but I was terrified I would slip up, or my accent would sound too forced and fake. So I started to pretend to be suffering from withdrawal systems, twitching, jerking, pulling faces and looking generally unwell, or I bit my nails furiously.
Federica fielded their questions expertly.
‘Soon’ turned out to be hours. I was exhausted from pretending to be in withdrawal. The longer I remained in that room the more anxious and worried I became. Finally, Samson announced that the dealer was five minutes away. The room became charged with an electric excitement; the mass began to prepare for its feast of delight.
Then a whisper spread like wildfire. ‘He’s here. He’s here.’ And everybody scrambled up from their sitting positions. Ready.
We heard the three bolts slide back, and the door opened.
The dealer, a strutting East Ender, in a Nike tracksuit, came with two minions. They immediately started dishing out the drugs to the addicts who had the presence of mind to line up as if they were in a supermarket queue. But some of them were so desperate by then that they lit up or stood against the walls shooting the drug into their veins instantly. Standing in the queue I gazed at one boy, high as a kite, bent from the waist swaying like a plant in the wind. Robin, Federica and I produced our crumpled tenners and got our little rocks of crack.
When it was my turn the minion looked directly into my eyes and my throat constricted. An Eastern European boy. He couldn’t have been more than nineteen. I held out my two tenners.
‘One of each, please.’
I noticed the notes were trembling, but he snatched them from me, and gave me a tiny white rock (crack) wrapped in white plastic and a small brown rock (heroin) in blue plastic. I closed my fingers around them and… Suddenly all hell broke loose.
The riot boys were coming in. The door imploded with an enormous crash at the same time as the windows were being smashed to smithereens. To the sound of splintering glass they were pouring in screaming,
‘Police, police,’ ordering everyone to, ‘Show your hand.’
It was like being caught in a tornado. I had never seen anything like it before. Helmeted, flameproof balaclavas and massive in their heavy-duty uniform, some were wearing glass suits (special material that protected them when they climbed windows full of glass splinters). They mowed into the gaunt addicts, screaming, ‘Get on the fucking floor. Now.’ And beating them with batons. The poor junkies! The war on drugs was total crap! A political sleight of hand.
Both the drug dealer and I had frozen in terror. He looked at me—his eyes were wide with fear. In that second I realized that he was no tough kingpin, but a frightened little boy who was as much a victim as the desperados he served. The small-time drug dealers were just as vulnerable and in need of real help as the addicts were. He, me, Luke we were all victims. At that moment: did he know? Who I was?
Then he was running to flush the drugs. He didn’t know Federica had already blocked the toilet. He ran straight into a beefy figure in black. One second after he was pushed face first into a wall. I was toppled. A large officer pressed my face into the ground and I felt the grit and the dirt from the filthy floor scrape into my skin. The two rocks in my hand fell out.
The cuffs were on me in seconds. ‘You’re nicked. Possession of Class A drugs,’ the officer gleefully proclaimed.
‘Just do exactly as you are told,’ Federica muttered under her breath next to me.
I went limp.
Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, it was all under control. They had completely trashed the place and everybody was in cuffs. Incredibly, it had all lasted only seconds.
I could see Robin play-acting, calling the cops ‘cunts’, and Federica was yelling abuse in Italian, but I could also see that they were high on the adrenalin of a successful bust-up. Of knowing they had closed down another despicable crack house. I knew I should have felt the same, but I was too much in shock. I could not forget the look in the drug dealer’s eyes. None of those arrested would be given the help that they desperately needed, and were too ill to obtain themselves. They would simply be holed up somewhere for some time and then released, and the whole cycle would repeat again. This was a war where there would be no winners, only ‘good’ crime figures, praise from superiors, and more funding for the drug squad.
Out through the smashed door I staggered in the bright light of the afternoon. I could have wept from the relief of the light. I took deep gulps of fresh air and turned my face upwards as if in prayer. For a few seconds my soul blossomed and then I was roughly uprooted as if I was no more than a dandelion that does not belong and pushed into a waiting drug squad car. I looked out of the window and saw that neighbors had gathered to watch. One of them met my eyes. There was no pity or compassion, only condemnation and disgust in her face. I was just another junkie fouling up her neighborhood.
I turned to the arresting officer. ‘I’m a cop. I’m a UCO.’ It ran hollow. So hollow it echoed in my brain.
And so hollow the cop said sarcastically, ‘No doubt.’
I said nothing else until Robin came to get me at the local police station where we had been taken.
‘We got them,’ he said, still buzzing.