Evilheart

Evilheart

by

Steve Evans

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Steve Evans

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover image courtesy of Mettus and Dreamstime.com


Cover by Joleene Naylor

This book is written with New Zealand spelling. Enjoy the difference.

Other books by Steve Evans on Smashwords are:

The Kleiber Monster

Demented

Savonarola's Bones

****

Evilheart

Zurich Run

i

That March day Alex wasn’t thinking about Lisa…Lisa…or Kathleen – or about Stewart, Lachlan, Jennings…or Jennifer Prout, Karl Schwitters, Hugo Grun, the addict in Zurich…Paul Schmidt…none of them. He didn’t know them then, know anything about them - but he would, and soon.

So he didn’t know, couldn’t know, who would live and who would die - who among them he would kill. He wasn’t a killer either, not yet.

He did know Clark – Clark who was about to set everything off…but he wasn’t thinking about Clark even, though he should have been.

He was thinking about how bad he felt. Another rough outing – hash, beer, whisky…with Willie in Tollcross, with Joe in the West End. He couldn’t remember how he got home; his last glimpse of the night was a fleeting one, throwing down a whisky at that pub and following Joe outside for a blow on another hash joint…then nothing.

He was also thinking about how bad he looked. The face in the mirror was wrecked. Alex stared at the rough black stubble of beard, the pallid skin gone lumpy from too many drugs and too much drink, puffy eyelids surrounding bloodshot eyes with pupils so small they looked as if they would disappear into the sockets - all that under a dirty mass of unkempt black hair laced with sad, tired grey streaks, as if they were just waiting for the rest to go that colour so he would die. He said to himself out loud, Get yourself sorted.

The eyes bothered him. The tiny pupils peering through the puffy lids made his face narrow and suspicious. Alex had a belief that the eyes were mirrors of the soul; it was a commonplace among the ancient philosophers he’d read and it sounded right, felt right; it was a way he judged other people…how they looked at you; whether they looked at you…the size of the pupils…big was friendly, small distrustful. His own eyes seemed to have shrunk into vivid paranoia, the pupils pinheads in self-defence against an overtly hostile world. Yes, the old nervous intelligence – that was still there, though he wondered whether the quickness of mind that had got him out of so many scrapes had gone, and for good. He wasn’t feeling very onto it at the moment, and hadn’t for some time.

Something had gone wrong somewhere – three months ago maybe. He’d just stopped caring, about anything, as if he was waiting for something to happen, something bad…and by doing nothing, making it happen. He woke up to hash, started drinking early, didn’t take care of business, any business. He let everything and that was just everything slide away, and now he was facing disaster. He was broke, hadn’t paid bills for all that time, could lose his flat - and worse, oh yes a lot worse. Alex knew he was in deep shite, and he had no idea what to do about it.

He decided not to shave that day, splashed some cold water on his face, and stumbled out into the kitchen. He felt really ragged. He looked out the window at the grey Edinburgh day…it would rain; when and if he went out he should remember to take his parka.

A rank smell rose from the dishes in the sink they’d been there that long. Alex looked in the fridge hoping for a forgotten yoghurt – for a forgotten anything – and closed it with a sigh. Get dressed, he thought. He wandered into the bedroom. His clothes from the day before were scattered on the floor and he began to pick them up and put them on. They’d do again, as they had the previous day - and the one before that? He couldn’t remember. Anyway, it didn’t matter, not really – he always dressed the same: black shoes, jeans, a jersey over a striped shirt, and if he was going somewhere nice, a sports jacket…

When the phone rang the clock above it in the tiny entrance alcove showed 10.42. It might have been right. It was Clark’s minder Mick.

This wasn’t a call he was looking forward to.

Clark needs to see you, bud, Mick said without any preliminaries. He was always like that. So was Clark, but it was usually Mick…Be at the usual in say half an hour ken?

Alex mumbled he would and Mick rang off. Better shave after all…find some clean clothes, if there were any…

Alex owed Clark big money, at least big money by Alex’s standards – over 3000 quid, and he didn’t have it. He knew he was – or at least had been – in a privileged position with Clark; so far as he knew the Glaswegian didn’t deal directly any longer except for Alex, who’d been selling hash for Clark since he’d first got started in Edinburgh over a decade before.

Nowadays Clark worked through intermediaries, wholesalers, and even they didn’t see him. He wasn’t the biggest dealer in the city but he was big, big enough to afford Mick and a Merc and designer clothes…which was all that Alex saw him in any more.

He knew he lived somewhere posh, but didn’t know where. And they didn’t socialise as they used to, just a few laughs when they did business. If he met Alex in the morning as that day he was dressed in athletic training gear that looked new, and went on about the gym, sometimes about fishing, at that run he’d bought into up toward Braemar, past Balmoral. Alex guessed he exercised very little when he was at the gym – like many men in his mid-40s who drank beer more than a little, Clark was going to fat.

What Clark liked about the gym was the opportunity to show off, talk big…he’d always been that way. When he’d started out he talked about how big he was going to be; now that he was big, he talked about how big he was, about the things his money got him - which wasn’t much in Alex’s mind. Going to the opera on a first name basis with chartered accountants or partners in law firms...he guessed they despised him at least secretly. Anybody who boasted about wealth, in whichever way, which was what Clark did, would be poison to people like that.

Alex had always dealt hash for Clark. He’d turned down the offer to sell heroin – where the real money is Clark had said but had accepted Alex’s refusal and never raised the issue again. Alex was afraid of H, afraid he would start taking it himself like he did with the hash, that he would like it too much. Sometimes with mates he snorted it, or smoked it, but never too much and not too often. He had never stuck a needle in his arm and wasn’t going to - he had enough self-discipline for that, just.

When crack had got big time Alex had sold it for a while but had quit that too and Clark hadn’t complained then either. He was moving plenty of hash through Alex. Ecstasy, acid…Alex dealt those occasionally, on request mainly, but he was really a hash man and Clark seemed satisfied.

Alex dealt in Edinburgh, but casually. Mainly he dealt in Glasgow. He had connections there – the student crowd hanging round the pubs on and just off Byres Road in Hillhead, close to the university. He’d take the train over on Thursday night or Friday morning, go into one of the pubs, buy a beer and wait; he didn’t have many customers and didn’t need them – they were doing what he was doing on a smaller scale, buying from him, breaking it up, keeping some for themselves and selling the rest to pay for it, maybe pocket a few quid.

Alex kept more than a few quid…it was a nice earner. By the end of the night he usually would have sold whatever he’d brought with him. If not he’d crash at one of his customers’ places or stay in a backpackers’ hostel and finish up the following day before taking the train back to Edinburgh.

The way it worked with Clark was this: Clark would give him a block of hash, Moroccan usually, and set a price on it, usually 1500 quid. Alex would break it up and sell it, give Clark his 1500 and keep what was left – 350 or thereabouts. Alex would keep enough hash for himself too. It was cosy, it was easy, it had kept Alex in pretty good money right through his twenties and mid-way through his thirties.

Alex knew he was privileged too because Clark gave him the stuff and was content to wait for his money; he never asked even when Alex had once taken a second block without paying him for the first one. With anyone else he would have insisted on the money up front. We go back, he said. It seemed to be important to Clark to look as if he looked after those who’d started out with him, or it did till maybe two, two and half years ago.

Lately when he said it, it seemed to Alex as if he was trying to persuade himself, or maybe saying it for other reasons. Clark could be really devious. He had a way of saying things that were true but that meant something completely different from the words, even the exact opposite. It was a skill; Alex admired it and thought he had it too, if in a different way.

Now though Alex had got short and had sold a small block for 250 and kept the money. Then he’d smoked all of a 1500 pound block, him and mates…or what he called mates, people like Willie and Joe he hung round with in pubs. And then Clark had given him another block, and he’d meant to go to Glasgow and sell it but hadn’t, but had just hung around Edinburgh drinking and smoking.

He didn’t know what had got into him, why he’d got like that, but he had…now he owed Clark over 3000 and he didn’t have the money, didn’t have any money. He was skint, totally. And he had this feeling Clark wasn’t going to be so forgiving this time, wasn’t going to say We go back as he left an envelope in a newspaper on the table in the pub after a beer and some laughs.

It was cold even for March and Alex wished he’d worn a heavier jersey under his parka as he headed from his flat in Tollcross toward the Grassmarket and the pub where he would meet Clark. Alex really liked his city, Edinburgh, liked the way the stone buildings seemed to grow up from the ground beneath them, even though they could be so different, especially in the Old Town with its winding alleyways and streets…there were blackened churches from the 16th and 17th centuries, their knobbed spires twisting up into the mist, rough brown stone pubs from the 18th and neat grey stone block government buildings from the 19th and 20th, all jumbled together, pushing against each other for space on the crowded hillside crowned by the Castle, Scotland’s symbol, yet they all seemed to fit there somehow. The New Town, on the other side of the hill and across broad green gardens from the castle, was different again, one style – Georgian – from the late 18th century…laid out formally, like a toy town…but it worked…he liked that too.

Above all he liked the scene. He knew other cities – not just Glasgow but London, Paris, Zurich – and they were ok. Edinburgh was different, small like Zurich but lively, really lively. Those ancient stones played host to throngs of party-goers, housed great art, great music from rock to jazz to classical bounced off those stones, echoes of the present mingling with the ghosts of the city’s dramatic history. New jokes that would later make audiences around the world choke with laughter spun through the mist…yes, the city buzzed, most obviously at festival time in August when the place was packed with people from everywhere that was a where, but it hopped the year round really, if you knew the place, knew what you wanted, knew who to see.

He’d been born and brought up near the city, in Marchmont across the vast park called The Meadows from the Old Town, but as soon as he’d escaped from home at 18 he started living right next to the Old Town, in Tollcross, and he’d been there in one flat or another ever since.

He liked Tollcross because from there he could get anywhere in the central city on foot, easily. He could go down Lady Lawson St, pass under the castle to the main shopping boulevard, Princes St, that fed into New Town’s West End with its clubs and pubs and the five-star Caledonian Hotel…it was lively. Shoppers crowded along the New Town side of Princes St’s broad expanse, and strollers and dawdlers mooched on the other side in the Gardens, under the shadow of the Castle alongside the rail tracks, or just sat on benches near the impossibly dour towering monument to Walter Scott.

From the Scott monument you could cross Waverley Bridge, above the rail lines, and reach the Royal Mile that ran the length of the hill whose jewel was the Castle…or you could go up the road called The Mound further west, past the Royal Academy of Arts and the National Gallery to the Mile – either way you were in the Old Town then. Or you could go further along Princes St to Calton Hill, with its classical acropolis and 19th century observatory…there was a good view of the city from there, looking toward the castle or out to the Firth of Forth toward the sea, or across to Holyrood Park, Alex’s favourite place outside the town itself…

Alex did the circuit from Lady Lawson St to Princes St to The Mound, the Royal Mile and down into the Grassmarket area a lot. It was a nice walk. But more often he’d head straight, across Lady Lawson St, and be at the heart of the Old Town in minutes; narrow alleyways the locals call closes and twisting streets running down from the Castle’s hill, from the Royal Mile, into the Grassmarket, a kind of basin. From the Grassmarket you could head along Cowgate toward Holyroodhouse Palace at the other end of the Royal Mile, or veer off Cowgate along Candlemaker Row to Greyfriars, the ancient church or kirk as Scottish people say, with its mouldy tombs…the Old Town had a mystery, an elegance, and yes a decadence that Alex loved.

That was his route that day - heading for the Grassmarket.

The Grassmarket was one of Alex’s haunts; he really liked hanging out there though in a sense it scared him too. One side, nestled under the castle, a line of pubs and cafes catered for every taste from tourists to locals; the other had a new hotel but was really a cluster of second-hand shops and hostels for down and outs. Beggars would sit on the footpath along the pub side, or in the oblong tree-lined square in the centre, calling out to passersby for spare change.

Alex liked the scene, enjoyed bar-hopping along the castle side of the square, but when he saw the beggars – addicts and alcoholics trying to get enough to hit up or for another drink – he had an uneasy feeling that he might end up there too.

That day the pubs and cafes were optimistic despite the cold; they’d put tables and chairs along the broad cobbled footpath for those wanting very fresh air. A young man wrapped in a tattered red and yellow blanket leaned against a tree in the square and whimpered something about spare change as Alex passed. He ignored him. Anyway, he didn’t have spare change, indeed any change, any money at all. Maybe his fear was closer to reality than he’d thought even last week - begging in the Grassmarket at 36.

It was an Adidas day for Clark. He was wearing blue and white trainers, grey track pants, and a blue sweatshirt, all with the famous logo. Alex had also seen him kitted out in Nike and Reebok gear, all colour co-ordinated or so Clark believed, all new-looking, all pricey. He bet it was all Clark could do not to leave the price tags on. He was sitting on a stool at a counter facing the window of the pub so his back was to the bar. The pub was a local, not one frequented by tourists, or by the drugs crowd – Clark didn’t go to drug pubs. Mick was sitting next to him, wearing a white windbreaker puffy enough to conceal his body-builder’s physique. Clark might not be fit, Alex thought, but Mick…his stomach knotted up. He thought of Mick burying his fist in it…he was scared.

Mick stood up when Alex came in and ambled toward the bar.

Beer, Alex? Clark said genially, motioning Alex to sit down. Alex had hardly nodded before Mick came back with a pint – a single pint. Clark was nursing a half and Alex had never seen Mick drink alcohol. Mick set the pint in front of Alex and moved off to play the poker machine a few yards away.

Clark sipped his beer. His round face had got rounder in the past few years as he’d put on weight; it had a slight reddish tinge too that heavy drinkers picked up with time – Scotland was full of them. But the curly black hair was still black; he had it done, styled, not cut like most people; to Alex he looked like a pretentious imp, but this wasn’t a time for criticism…

You got a problem, Alex, Clark said. It wasn’t a question. Alex said nothing.

You and me, we go back, he went on.

"Back to the beginning.

And I like you, Alex. You know that. You got a humour.

Not today I don’t, Alex thought. He took a gulp of beer and thought how good it tasted, how much better it made him feel. He would like to drown in it…

The problem is, Clark continued equably, is that you owe me – 3250, that’s right, 3250 – and you haven’t been to see me so I figure you haven’t got it. That’s right too, isn’t it.

Alex felt sick all over again.

I can make it up… he began but Clark lifted his hand. Shut up. Listen.

"You won’t have to, Alex. I got a plan for you – an opportunity, understand?

I like to help my friends.

Uh-oh.

Another friend of mine’s left something for me in Zurich. A parcel. I don’t have the time to go over there and pick it up myself – so I thought of you.

Double uh-oh.

Clark smiled and fished under the Adidas logo on his chest and pulled out a fat brown envelope. He pushed it across to Alex.

Here’s your tickets. Go over the day after tomorrow, come back the next day. There’s 200 quid in there too – give you a nice hotel.

And the parcel?

There’s a locker key in there – the rail station. You pick it up on the way out to the airport, see? Enjoy your stay in Zurich first.

Clark smiled again.

Only Alex – don’t enjoy it too much. Understand? Keep yourself clean till you go and while you’re there, ken? You don’t want trouble they give you a urine test – do you?

Clark finished his beer.

"Everything goes ok you get 10,000 and we’ll forget about the 3250. All right?

You get back I’ll be in touch.

Clark stood up to go, straightening his sweatshirt down over his bulging belly. Mick saw him and cashed out of the fruit poker machine, scooping up a small handful of coins.

Enjoy the trip, Alex, Clark said. Take out a girl…have a good time. Just remember – clean, right?

He turned to go, then turned back.

Oh, and you wouldn’t want to do anything else foolish, Alex. You’re smart. Really smart. I know it and Mick here knows it and you must know it too. But there’s smart and smart, you know what I mean? Sometimes too smart is stupid. Like getting curious and opening things up. You know what happened to that cat. Just pick up that parcel, take it on the plane with you, and everything will be fine.

Alex watched Clark and Mick saunter out of the pub and head in the direction of Tollcross. The dark blue Merc would be parked somewhere nearby, on a side street. He stared at the brown envelope for a minute before putting it in his shirt pocket; it just fit.

Then he took another gulp of beer.

Alex knew Clark one way – the old mates way, personal. That’s how he had been with him just then, or had seemed to be – friendly, looking after his best interests, doing him a favour, giving him advice. There was another way he knew Clark though – he had heard a lot about him from others in the drug scene, and seen things too. Over the years Clark had developed a reputation, in particular about people who’d crossed him, or who he thought had crossed him. Alex knew about dealers who’d tried him on in one way or another.

Clark had connections too, Alex had heard that. Detectives in the drug squad, customs officials…somehow when there was a bust the dealer Clark was supplying got sent down, but Clark always seemed to get his stuff back. The word out there was that Clark set up troublesome people for the bust and Clark got their drugs to sell all over again…and he, Alex, had become a troublesome person. He felt sure Clark meant him never to see the 10,000 – what he would see would be the inside of Saughton gaol for a long, long time. All that friendly advice about staying clean was a smokescreen.

He thought about the other times he’d been scared – that time in the Paris Metro when a gang of young Algerians had beat him up and he’d been so lucky, the knife meant for his belly had been pulled away at the last moment…and the time there in Edinburgh when a bunch of Glaswegian football hooligans in the city for a Celtic-Hibs match had taken a fancy to him and he’d just made it into a pub; they’d loitered outside for half an hour…and he could see the hatred in their eyes. He’d just said Grow up because they were kicking a beggar around – beggars weren’t allowed in Glasgow like they were in Edinburgh – and they’d turned on him.

But both those times were different, instant things. One second everything was fine, the next you were up against it, then it was over. He was scared now in a new way, as he’d never been in his life, really terrified – deep in his guts, a gnawing dread, and it would be staying there for a while. He felt trapped and totally vulnerable, a character in one of Celine’s novels – Celine, his favourite writer. He didn’t have any choice but to go to Zurich, no option at all. And at the other end, back there in Edinburgh, grim prison gates clanking shut behind him.

He needed to think, to clear his head. He finished the beer and went out into the cold grey day, shivering in his too-light jersey. He wanted to take a walk, to Holyrood Park, where he could sit and look at the city from Salisbury Crags or the ruins of St Anthony’s Chapel and think, as he often did, but went back to the flat in Tollcross instead - too cold.

He made himself a cup of instant coffee and stared at the mess in his sitting room. Last week’s newspapers were strewn across the tattered carpet, and on top of the pc sitting on a small table by the window – Alex didn’t own or want a tv – were two empty wine bottles, also relics of the week before…those crumpled fivers in his pocket had been burning to get out. The small bookcase in the corner was stuffed to overflowing and books were stacked several feet above those crammed onto the top shelf, while others loitered nearby on the threadbare carpet. Next to the pc was an ashtray and Alex suddenly realised there were roaches in it, the fag-ends of hash joints smoked over the past three weeks. He could break them down, roll up a new joint, and get off…then he remembered Clark’s warning to stay clean, realised he really did need to do that, and stayed where he was, drank his coffee and thought.

And thought. And thought.

The fear did something to him – it shot adrenalin through his veins, it was something like he imagined heroin would feel if he injected it. His head was suddenly clear, yes onto it for a change. The hangover just vanished. His mind raced along, hitting obstacles, sussing them, dealing with them, jumping ahead. It was like the old Alex, getting all the pieces of the puzzle and then, as if his mind were a magic box, throwing a completed jigsaw on the table. And it happened, just like that; he suddenly he realised what he had to do, what he could do, to pull himself out of the deep black hole he’d dug for himself.

Alex jump-started himself into action and cleaned the flat from top to bottom, taking great care to collect every scrap of hash deposited around the place and putting it into the ashtray by the pc. When he had finished the flat was tidy and he had over 40 roaches, the remains of hash joints he’d smoked over the past – what, month, six weeks? He carefully dumped them into a plastic bag, tied it carefully, put that into another bag, tied that one, and then strolled down toward the Grassmarket. He hid the bag in long grass in a carpark on Lady Lawson Street, a block up from the addicts’ needle exchange. Then he went back to the flat.

The postman had been – bills; their red ink swirled off the page and Alex sat down, dizzy. He hadn’t eaten for eighteen hours at least. He remembered the brown envelope in his pocket, took it out and opened it.

Inside were the tickets, a locker key, and ten 20 pound notes. Alex took one of the notes, went across the road to the dairy and spent 5 pounds on half a dozen eggs, milk, and some tobacco. At the flat he scrambled and ate the eggs, made himself a coffee, and rolled himself a cigarette.

Then he rang the airline. Yes, he could change his departure date and go that day – there was a flight later that afternoon he could just make. Alex rang off and began to pack…

ii

Zurich hadn’t changed much since Alex had last been there years before. One thing he knew in advance was missing - the canton’s hands-off drugs policy had created a vast drug scene in those days, centred on a park not far from the rail station. You could get anything in Zurich then – hash, speed, acid, ecstasy, cocaine, heroin…even magic mushrooms and peyote, smuggled in from Mexico. Too many addicts, too many local kids into it, a public outcry over the flamboyant drug-crazed flotsam beaching in the park and surrounding streets, and the canton changed its mind and got tough all over again the extra-sober, extra-clean Swiss way. The park was closed down. Alex hadn’t been back since; he kept in touch with a few people by email; there were others he’d lost contact with. But he wasn’t going to be checking any of them out.

It was cold and grey and when he went down to the lake the wind drove him away. He wandered up the river in the old part of the city, found Spiegelgasse, and went to number 14. He’d been to Spiegelgasse before. Lenin had lived there before the revolution, just where the narrow alleyway broadened into a small square…he’d worked as a waiter; Alex imagined him coming back late at night to heated political arguments with other Russian emigres and his wife Krupskaya, then sitting down to write and write and write. When Lenin had died the autopsy had revealed that one side of his brain had shrunk to the size of a walnut – Alex thought it was the result of the man’s ferocious concentration, day after day, year after long exiled year, and then through the heady days of 1917 and after. It was said he didn’t like listening to music because it made him uneasy; Alex thought that was because music interfered with his non-stop terrifically disciplined thinking. Even in his sleep Lenin was probably wrestling with some knotty theoretical or practical political problem.

A shop on the ground floor of the plastered block building displayed Lenin head and shoulder busts split vertically into red and green halves. Alex smiled at the attempt – forlorn surely in this day – to remake Lenin to suit contemporary political tastes. He’d been a communist once, back in his teens when things had seemed simpler, had admired the discipline and dedication of the comrades till he’d found it otherworldly, unreal…and had found something else he liked better. He smiled in self-mockery at the naïve enthusiasm he’d had till the penny had dropped. Gorbachev had been right, he thought. The west had been right. Celine had been right. Communism in practice sucked.

Wandering up a path to a park overlooking the city not far from the kunsthaus – the art gallery, packed to the brim with Picassos, Legers and a beautiful Kandinsky, all bought with bankers’ billions – Alex stumbled onto two youths smoking hash on a bench near the park gates. They were in their late teens or early 20s, slight, pale, spotty - addicts, he thought. They turned away when they saw him. He walked past and sat on a bench with a good view of the townscape not far away. For a split second he considered hitting them up for some of their smoke – if he asked they would have to give him a toke or two. But he knew Clark was right about that. Stay clean.

It had got dark and cold. The city below was no longer a pleasant-enough if uninspiring mixture of the ancient and modern but a multi-coloured lightshow, neon ads glowing from high buildings and the bahnhof, the rail station. Alex rolled a cigarette and sat smoking and thinking – thinking especially about Clark.

The more he thought about Clark, the more sure he was that he was being fitted up. If he did what Clark had told him, he would pick up the parcel, take it on the plane, and get arrested at the airport in Edinburgh. He would go down for a long lag and Clark would pay off one of the Customs officials and get his drugs, likely to be heroin. He knew Clark had that kind of connection, it wasn’t just drug scene gossip. He had even heard him once obliquely boast about it – I’ve taken the trouble to stay out of trouble, he’d said. It costs me but it pays off. I’ve got friends in the right places now; they can square anything for me…

Yes, the 10,000 would go into the pocket of some one at Customs, or in the drug squad – maybe the person who arrested him.

So he had to get that parcel back to Edinburgh without getting caught, and get it to Clark in a way that made sure he got paid. He needed the money, desperately. Otherwise he would have told Clark to take a jump and headed for the Grassmarket with a tin cup – bad as that was, it was better than staring at cell walls for a decade or more. It meant going against Clark’s instructions, opening the thing up, checking it out, doing something different with it. He would be off Clark’s dealer list for good. But that couldn’t be helped.

Alex had a plan but he wanted to see the parcel first, see if he was right, know what he was dealing with. It could be Clark was being straight with him and if he was he would do as he asked and pray that all would be well. But he just didn’t believe it. Clark wasn’t like that. Once you were offside with him, he gave you rope, helped you hang yourself, and then kicked your corpse. He’d seen it with other dealers. If they didn’t go down, they got burned.

Unfortunately he would probably have to wait till the time Clark had told him to get the parcel. Presumably he wouldn’t have it left in the locker till just before Alex was due to pick it up. If Alex opened the locker he would have to reset it, and it would be just like Clark to have the counter monitored. Clark really was devious. The fact that Clark had a spare key meant that Clark probably had a man at the bahnhof, or knew some one who did. And Alex didn’t want Clark to know he’d come early to check things out unless it couldn’t be helped. Even that could set Clark off.

Alex did want to check the locker out – that was why he’d come two days ahead. It could be that the parcel would be put in early, the day before, and he was willing to sit nearby and watch in case. If it was he was in luck. Even a quarter of an hour could make all the difference, though he’d like longer; if he was able to take it out as soon as it was put in he could get it back to his hotel and look it over…

He finished his smoke and headed back to the park entrance and the pleasant stroll down the hill to the city. The two young men were gone.

He had found a hotel near the bahnhof that wasn’t too dear by Swiss standards – about 40 pounds a night – and passed by it on his way to the station. The lobby looked tired, careworn - sad 1930s furniture right at home in the faded yellow light from the bare bulbs of the three aged wooden floor lamps near the window. There was a far cheaper backpackers – half the price – but Alex needed a room of his own for what he had in mind.

The storage lockers at the station ran along one side of an underground mezzanine. The mezzanine was relatively new, a retrofit dug in under the vast platform of one of the busiest rail centres in Europe. Fluorescent lighting shed surreal shadows along the grey locker bays and the matching metal benches spread around a square hole looking down on a brightly-lit cluster of shops and up to a bustling promenade on the main level. Alex’s locker was in the bay farthest from the escalator and was midsized – the parcel could be as big as a small suitcase, an overnight bag say.

Alex found he could just see the locker from one of the benches near the escalator, and sat down to watch, think and wait. He thought it unlikely the parcel could be there already, and unlikely to be put there that night – Clark would not want it lying around. But it was worth staying at least for a while…checking himself out for staying there all day the next day, and the night if necessary. No one would worry him, he thought; the station was just too chaotic. There were too many people waiting and waiting, and he would just be another one.

He was wrong about the parcel, was just about to leave when a slight stooped man in his 30s, about Alex’s age, headed for the bay carrying a small blue oval suitcase, a woman’s case. Alex knew a junkie when he saw one; - the hollow cheeks, the pale spotty skin like those lads at the park, nervous edge in everything, and the 50s beatnik clothing that had the virtue of anonymity – dark blue jersey, blue jeans, and a pair of worn black shoes, not unlike what Alex habitually wore. The man had dark brown close-cropped hair; a scar six inches long stretched along one side of his skull, upsetting the symmetry of his narrow face and long nose. Alex watched him from the side of his eyes, pretending to be busy reading a Swiss newspaper he’d picked up, though he didn’t understand much German. He had a feeling that the blue suitcase case was Clark’s parcel…

Sure enough, the man went up to the locker without checking the number, fished around for the key, and without looking around opened the door and shoved in the suitcase. He fished around again for some coins, re-set the locker, shut the door and then came out of the bay quickly, staring at the floor ahead of him, walking fast without seeming to. Alex realised the man was really early – the locker rental was only good for 24 hours. He would need to come back the following day and put more money in. He wanted to get rid of the thing.

Alex followed him at a good distance, waiting 30 seconds or so before running up the escalator. He just caught sight of him heading out into the night through the broad opening that led toward what once had been the drugs park. He walked as fast as he could through the station and into the night, getting within 50 yards of the man, who had slowed down outside the station to a normal walking pace, ambling toward a tram stop.

Alex considered joining him, taking the tram with him to see what he did next, but instead stayed in the darkness watching till the man got on a tram headed away from the lake. Alex went back to the station, took the escalator down to the mezzanine, and resumed his seat.

It was late – past 11 – and there were only a few other people there on the benches, waiting, he supposed, for their trains. He looked them over carefully, decided they were genuine travelers seeking respite from the hubbub upstairs, and went to the locker with his key and some Swiss francs in his hand. He opened the locker, took out the blue suitcase, re-set the locker with a five franc coin, shut it, and turned and headed for the escalator at an unhurried pace.

It was a woman’s case all right, made of hard plastic, and light – as if there were nothing in it. It made Alex even more certain that Clark was setting him up. That would be just like Clark – little things you might not think too much about yourself that would give HM Customs a reason to shake him down, that could go into the evidence in court – Yes, M’Lud, I became suspicious when it was a woman’s suitcase, and more suspicious when the case was apparently empty.

Clark would want Alex to think he’d had nothing to do with it, would pay for his solicitor, solicitously, try to get him bail and fail, send some one to see him, oozing sympathy and understanding about how something had gone wrong, Clark was devastated, with a winked commitment to look after him in exchange for his silence. And if he wasn’t silent...Alex understood Clark – after all, he smiled to himself, we go back.

The night clerk at the hotel didn’t bat an eyelid at the case; it wasn’t that kind of hotel. He handed Alex his key with a bored look and went back to watching the miniature television on the counter. Alex took the small lift to the 3d floor and his room, letting himself in without putting down the case, even though no one else was in the narrow corridor. This wasn’t paranoia but training, Alex reasoned – get used to doing something all the time…never letting the thing go…

He put the suitcase on the narrow single bed and sat in the worn easy chair wedged under the window for a few minutes looking at it. Then he closed the faded yellow curtains, reached over, and pulled the case to him.

Locked. He should have known. More evidence for the court – The accused did not have a key for the case, M’Lud. And of course Clark wouldn’t want him poking around in the case anyway.

Forty-five minutes later Alex finally sprung the lock with a bit of wire. As the case had felt, it was empty. Nothing in the plush-lined main compartment, nothing in the ruffled pockets running along the edge. He gently prodded around the edge with his fingers, then along the plush cover of the bottom. Nothing…

It was under the lid, sandwiched between the padded lining and the hard casing, just a slight extra thickness compared to the bottom. It was very well done. Perhaps he was actually being too paranoid about Clark? By pressing hard against the edges he was able to slide the lining out, and there it was, a large flat clear plastic sachet taped to the casing, filled with a white powder.

The powder was also on the outside of the sachet. No, he wasn’t being paranoid about Clark. Just a little something for the drug detection dogs…

Alex didn’t touch the sachet. He took a postal scale, piece of cardboard and salad tongs he’d brought with him out of his suitcase, put the cardboard on the scale, adjusted to zero, carefully pried the sachet loose with the tongs, and put it gingerly onto the scale. 750 grams. He took a tissue and dabbed the powder coating on the sachet, then put a tiny amount on his tongue.

It was heroin all right. Though Alex had never injected heroin, he knew it, understood it, had seen it enough to know what was good and what wasn’t good, and this was good. It was pure or close to it; cut to the usual 6-10 per cent Clark would make a fortune.

Taking a plastic oven bag from his suitcase, Alex very carefully lifted the sachet off the cardboard and stowed it in the bag. He tied off the bag, put the bag into another bag, tied that one off, then did it again – and again, and again. Still using the tongs he fed the bundle into a large plastic envelope with a zip flap for sealing. He closed the flap and, using