Already Dead(7)

A full-scale operation had been launched after the trail led to a cannabis factory in a house in the eastern borders of Derbyshire, which turned out to have links to growers across the country. A search of the house found more than four hundred cannabis plants being tended by an eighteen-year-old Vietnamese man, who tried to hide in the attic when police arrived. Officers guarding the house on the night of the raid had noticed a suspicious car which drove past several times. They stopped the vehicle and found eight thousand pounds in cash, as well as more mobile phones and SIM cards. Phone records and text messages linked the people in the car to the cannabis gardener and other members of the gang. Warrants had been executed at two other addresses, in each of which a Vietnamese teenager was found hiding out with hundreds of cannabis plants he’d been responsible for.

As a result, a gang involved in growing hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of cannabis across four counties had been jailed for a total of twenty-two years between them. They had more than a thousand plants under cultivation at addresses in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, and even down in the West Midlands. Their assets had later been confiscated under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

But the operation had left a few remnants of the drug trade still in existence. Somewhere in their area, at least one more Vietnamese was believed to be holed up in a house full of plants. The sad thing was, those cannabis gardeners were at the lowest end of the food chain in the illegal drugs trade, forced to live in squalid conditions and working practically as slaves for their masters. Fry couldn’t imagine what it would be like for him now, with his contacts gone, his supplies dried up, just spending his time waiting for a knock on the door.

‘So have we got any new leads?’ she asked.

‘No. But Special Operations Unit have got appropriate resources deployed in the Vietnamese community to gather information,’ said Hurst, as if she was quoting from an emailed memo.

‘Appropriate resources?’

‘CHIS, I should imagine.’

‘Of course.’

Covert Human Intelligence Sources. They used to be called informants, snouts, narks or grasses – at least until political correctness became the rule, rather than the exception. They were part of an age-old tactic. Get your information direct from the horse’s mouth.

‘So we’re waiting for SOU?’ said Fry.

‘Unless you have any other suggestions?’

‘Just keep on it.’ She paused. ‘Is there actually a Vietnamese community in Edendale?’

‘Not that you’d notice.’

Murfin raised a hand like the clever child in class.

‘I’m trained in multiculturalism,’ he said. ‘In fact, I was on duty at Mix It Up in June.’

‘At what?’

‘Mix It Up. The community festival, you know.’

‘No.’

‘It’s all about the meeting of cultures, experiencing the differences. We were there on a community relations exercise. But you get the chance to try things out too.’

‘So what did you try out, Gavin?’ asked Hurst.

‘Cossack dancing.’

‘Really? So there’s a thriving Cossack culture in the Eden Valley, is there?’

‘You’d be surprised.’

‘Yes, I would.’

Fry clenched her fist in her hair, wishing she’d kept it longer and had more of it to tear out.

‘Luke,’ she said.

Irvine’s shoulders had stopped shaking by the time his head appeared from behind his computer screen. In one way, Fry had something in common with Irvine. He wasn’t local. At least, he wasn’t Derbyshire through and through, the way a lot of their colleagues in Edendale were. He came from a Yorkshire mining family, but had Scottish blood a generation or two back and liked to talk about his Celtic heritage. Maybe he was the one who ought to be a redhead, but he wasn’t – he had a much darker look, as if one of those Spanish sailors who’d landed in Scotland from the doomed Armada was also in his bloodline.

‘Yes?’ said Irvine.

A less eager response. Fry suspected he might turn a bit bolshie, if he wasn’t reined in soon enough. She’d overheard political arguments between him and Hurst, and Irvine was definitely out on the left wing.

‘Luke, I want you to get out and interview this youth who had the iPod stolen,’ said Fry. ‘Poor little sod must be traumatised.’

Irvine sighed. ‘Okay.’

‘I’d lay ten to one he knew the lads who took it,’ put in Murfin. ‘I reckon he probably swapped it for some E.’

Fry turned back to him, only now remembering that he was there.

‘And why would you jump to that unfounded conclusion, Gavin?’ she said.