him six little packets. ‘Is asthma cure,’ he said, grinning proudly.
‘You’re for the cells,’ said the Law.
‘But no! Why? This is not weed. Is National Health medicine, I swear it on my mother’s life!’
‘We’ll see what the magistrate says to that,’ the Law replied, and dragged him off.
‘Poor foolish boy,’ said Johnny softly. ‘This asthma trick is one he play once too much. And surely when he appears in court, the evidence by then will be real weed and not this asthma cure.’
‘You mean they’d switch that stuff for something real?’
‘That is their usual way back home, where their stores of impounded stocks are used for such a purpose.’
‘But this is England, Johnny. Our coppers don’t do that.’
He looked at me blandly. ‘Oh, is that so? Then I have much to learn of England …’
The Law now returned. ‘We won’t keep you much longer,’ it said to me, ‘but perhaps you’d step into the next room a minute?’
I waited for fifteen. Then the plain-clothes man came in and offered me a cigarette.
‘Of course, you’ll understand, Mr Pew, why we had to search you too. We know a man in your position wouldn’t probably be mixed up in anything dubious, but there it is.’
‘There is what?’
‘We have to take precautions. And also, of course, we don’t want to be accused of discrimination, do we.’ He gave me an oh, so friendly smile. ‘As a matter of fact, Mr Pew, I was wondering if a man with your connections mightn’t be willing to do us a good turn now and then.’
I looked blank.
‘You see, between you and me, this colour problem’s becoming quite a problem for us, too. Particularly in the matter of dope. Of course, these boys, it doesn’t do them much harm, I don’t suppose, they’re used to it, even though it’s not within the law. But the girls, Mr Pew, the younger girls they give it to! It’s corrupting them. Yes, corrupting them and making them serve these black men’s evil ends.’
His eyes shone, like some fake cleric’s, with a slightly mad, holy zeal.
‘What has all this to do with me, officer?’
He leant forward at my face. ‘I’ll ask you, Mr Pew, if in your position you don’t think it your duty to pass on any information that may come your way about the sources of this drug traffic.’
I got up.
‘Officer, I have no such information. And if I had, frankly …’
‘Yes?’ (A monosyllable heavy with malice and with menace.)
‘I’d not at all feel it my duty to pass it on to you.’
‘Oh, would you not.’
He slapped his hands on his knees, smiled most unpleasantly, and rose. ‘I only mentioned it, sir, because sometimes we coppers can do a good turn in return for one that’s done to us. And a friend in need can sometimes be a friend indeed.’
‘Yes, I see your point.’
He opened the door. ‘At any rate, remember what I say, in case you might find you’d better change your mind. Just ask for the Detective-Inspector of the CID – the Vice Inspector,’ he added with taut official grin.
In the corridor outside his office, I caught a glimpse of a Negro loitering. Who was it? Yes! The boxer Cannibal who’d helped steal my lighter at the Moorhen. When he saw me, he turned hurriedly away.
Johnny was waiting in the street outside. ‘What keep you so long?’ he asked – suspiciously, I thought.
‘That Vice Inspector tried to sign me up as a nark.’
‘And you accepted the offer of this Mr Purity?’
‘My dear Fortune!’
I was quite offended, and we walked two blocks in silence.
‘It seems to me, Johnny,’ I said at last, ‘that you’re very well informed about the police force and their habits.’
‘I should be. I’m a policeman’s son.’
‘But you told me your father was in business.’
‘He serve one time when a younger man in the Force back home. I know the Law – I know it both sides round. In Lagos, as anyone will tell you, I was something of a bad boy in my way. What they call one of the waterfront boys … up to various tricks, and often encountering my own dad’s former friends …’ He stopped and rubbed his stomach. ‘Oh, heavens, I don’t like the taste of that brown paper I have to swallow down when I eat those sticks of charge I had about my person.’
‘I thought that might be it. I wish I had your nerve …’
Another coloured man was lurking at the next corner: haunting the city thoroughfare