Cry Justice

Book 4: Charlie George

by Colin Falconer

Genres: Police Procedurals; Mystery; Craft & Hobby Cozy Mysteries

Synopsis

'Dripping with authenticity. Packed full of characters you genuinely care about . . . I didn't read the last few chapters, I devoured them. An absolute triumph' M. W. CRAVEN

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Most acts of violence are pretty random. But murdering someone and impaling their head on the railing outside the Royal Courts of Justice... that takes planning.

And when the pathologist finds a page from a book rammed down the dead man's throat, DI Charlie George thinks it's safe to assume that someone, somewhere, wants to send a message.

But people who have the resources to plan a murder like that also have the smarts not to get caught. So Charlie knows he has a problem.

Whoever the killer is, he doesn't think they've finished handing out their version of justice just yet. He just wishes he could summon the enthusiasm to stop them. Because sometimes people really do get what's coming to them.

And Charlie and his team are left wondering which side of the law is justice really on?

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Praise for Colin Falconer

'Once you read [a] Colin Falconer [book], you'll want to read everything he's ever written' Crystal Book Reviews

'Falconer's grasp of period and places is almost flawless ... He's my kind of writer' Peter Corris, The Australian

'You are in for a real roller-coaster ride of never ending intrigue'History and Women

'Falconer demonstrates exceptional characterization' Bookgeeks

Release date: October 14, 2021

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 90000

Sample

The head had been impaled on a railing outside the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand in the early hours of a cold November morning. There was a fine dusting of frost on the corpse’s hair and eyelids which gave it a festive touch.

The dead man looked disconsolate. Reasonably so, in the circumstances, Charlie thought.

Jennings, a DC with the Homicide Assessment Team that had been one of the first police at the scene, stood at Charlie’s shoulder, his hands in his pockets, his breath forming little clouds in the air. ‘We’ve ruled out suicide,’ he said.

‘On what basis?’ Charlie said, going along with it.

‘He didn’t leave a note.’

According to Jennings, the couple who called it in thought it was a prank, and one of the young women had even taken a selfie with it. Alcohol will do that to you. When her male companion put his fingers in the deceased’s mouth, he sobered up quite quickly and then fainted. His girlfriend put him in the recovery position and dialled 999.

Jack, the head of Crime Scene, saw Charlie and headed over, pulling back his mask. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘This is very medieval.’

‘Not your usual,’ Charlie said, and wondered what his DCI was going to say when he found out about this. It was going to make the dailies. His boss hated being in the papers unless it was in a photograph taken at a Masonic dinner.

Jack’s team had put up a tent to stop people taking videos and posting them on YouTube. The influencers on Instagram would have had a field day. Use them to promote weight-loss programmes. People were like that.

Charlie stepped outside and took a deep breath. There was a real bite to the air this morning. Red and blue strobes flashed up and down the street, Charlie could see people milling about beyond the cordons. Half of London would grind to a standstill if they didn’t get this sorted and out of the way. It would be rush hour soon, long before the sun came up.

He stamped his feet against the cold. At least there weren’t any flies, not in this weather. He didn’t think he could do this job if he lived somewhere hot, like India.

He was desperate for a coffee. Jack came out and joined him on the pavement.

‘Anything?’ Charlie said to him.

‘There’s something in his throat.’

‘What is it?’

‘Looks like a scrap of paper. When the photographer’s done, one of my lads is going to extract it and bag and tag it for you. Five-star service, this.’

They went back inside the tent and waited. Finally, one of Jack’s Scene of Crime Officers retrieved the piece of paper, unfolded it, and placed it inside a clear plastic evidence bag. It was smeared with blood and fluid, but the printing was clearly legible. It was a page, torn from a book, and two lines had been highlighted.

This is the reason that you see this man fallen here.

I am he who planned this murder and with justice.

‘Sounds like Shakespeare,’ Jack said. ‘Macbeth or something.’

‘It’s Aeschylus,’ Charlie said. ‘From an old Greek play. Agamemnon. Part of a trilogy called The Oresteia.’

‘Fuck me. Whatever you say, Charlie.’

‘How do you know this stuff, guv?’ Jennings said.

‘Google,’ Charlie said. Because it was easier than explaining.

‘Who was Aga Memo?’ Jack said.

‘Agamemnon. He was a king. Got drowned in his bath by his missus.’

‘What for?’

‘Usual thing. Jealousy. Also, I think she had a better offer.’

‘So this note, Charlie. How is it relevant?’

‘It’s complicated, Jack. What happens, the son murders the mother for killing his father.’

‘Sounds like a Tarantino movie.’

‘An early version of one.’

‘So how does it finish?’

‘Lots of people die. Finally, the son is pursued by the Furies, the three infernal goddesses of vengeance.’

‘Kill Bill with togas.’

Charlie was about to say, no, only the Romans wore togas, but he let it go.

‘There you go,’ Jennings said. ‘They left you a clue. Dead simple this. You’ll have this all written up and the file closed by lunchtime.’ Jennings thought he was being funny.

Charlie closed his eyes. One step at a time, Charlie son. Treat it like it’s another stabbing on one of the estates. First principles.

‘Where are our eyewitnesses?’ he said.

Jennings nodded at an ambulance parked outside the Pret on the other side of the Strand. Charlie went over.

There was a clown with an axe through his head sitting in the back. A nun in a tight black skirt was with him. Her face was made up to look like a skull. He reminded himself it was Halloween. Not everyone worked impossible hours and had no time for messing around, like him.

The clown was shaking and throwing up into a sick bag. The nun had her arms around him, stroking his orange wig in a kindly way. There was a paramedic with them. He gave Charlie a look, like: I’ve got better things to do.

Charlie showed the nun and the clown his warrant badge and the paramedic got out and let him sit in his chair. ‘I won’t be long,’ Charlie said to him.

‘You take your time. I need a gasper.’

It amazed Charlie how many paramedics smoked. You’d think they’d know better after the lung cancers and emphysemas they had in the back of their vans. Perhaps it was the stress.

Charlie settled himself, took out his notebook, in case the clown said something that was worth writing down. ‘Do they know who it is?’ the nun asked him, nodding towards the white tent on the other side of the road.

‘Too early to tell. Can I have your names, please?’

‘Sophie. Sophie Lyons-Hatton. This is Will. Will Tarrant.’

‘You were the ones that found the … remains.’

‘We thought it was a joke, you know? Here.’ She held out her iPhone. It was a selfie of Sophie and Will proper mugging it for the camera, in front of the railing and what they now knew to be the deceased, or what was left of him.

‘You took a selfie?’

‘We didn’t know the head was real.’

It crossed Charlie’s mind to ask her if that would have made any difference, but he let it go. ‘Do you mind if I take this?’ Charlie said, holding up the phone. ‘We might need it as evidence.’

Sophie nodded. Jennings was standing outside with an evidence bag, and Charlie leaned out and dropped it in. ‘Sophie, before you came across the remains, did you see anything, anyone? The person responsible for this might have run past you or near you.’

‘There were a few people. Dressed up. We’d been drinking. I don’t really remember anything.’

Will looked up from his sick bag. ‘There was a witch,’ he mumbled, and then he threw up again.

‘A witch?’

‘That was Katie, Will,’ Sophie said. ‘She went home early.’ She turned to Charlie. ‘Sorry, he’s not much good at the moment.’

‘When you saw the head,’ Charlie said, ‘what did you do?’

‘I stuck my finger in his mouth,’ he said, and started blubbing again.

‘You did what?’ Charlie said.

‘I didn’t know it was a real head, did I? I thought it was a joke.’

‘It’s so horrible,’ Sophie said, and she started to cry as well.

‘We’ll need statements later,’ Charlie said.

He got out of the ambulance, stood there a moment, watched the light leaching back into the night sky, what stars there were over London fading away. He looked up at the towers of the Royal Courts. It was a beautiful building, if you liked over-the-top Gothic. Like something God might use as a townhouse.

He saw his outside DS, Grey, making his way through the cordon. About time. Charlie went over, walked him through the crime scene, showed him where to find the rest of Sophie and Will’s friends, huddled in their zombie costumes next to a patrol car, still yet to be properly interviewed; he pointed up at the CCTV cameras on the Gothic facade. That evidence could be key.

‘Why would someone do something like this?’ Grey said.

‘To make a statement, I suppose,’ Charlie said.

He told him about the note the SOCOs had found in the dead man’s remains.

He said they would need statements from Sophie and Will and the rest of the zombie apocalypse, as well as DNA swabs as they had tampered with the remains and would need to be excluded from the investigation. And he wanted that CCTV footage urgently.

He left him with it and went back to his car. His caffeine debt was reaching emergency levels. He wondered if anywhere would be open in the centre of London at half past four in the morning. Bugger reversing cameras and climate control, what he needed in his car was a barista.

When Charlie walked into the incident room, he spared a glance at the flat screen at the far end. There was a live report from the law courts, a talking head with the white tent prominent in the background. The reporter was providing a salacious description of the murder scene for the rest of Britain to enjoy while they scoffed their breakfast; but then this was London, and most Londoners wouldn’t look up from their fry-up for anything less than a multiple stabbing.

Jayden Greene was back from stress leave and Charlie had assigned him as his new office manager. His long-time inside DS, Dawson – ‘the skipper’ – had taken a turn at his desk a few days before, heart attack they said. So, he’d got Greene back, strict orders to keep him off the street because of his post-traumatic stress. At least that’s what Greene was calling it.

Greene was busy, marking out a column in black felt tip on the whiteboard, putting crime scene pictures under Charlie’s name.

‘That’s what I missed about being on your team,’ Greene said. ‘You get all the good ones.’

‘I don’t know that’s quite what I would call it, Jay.’

‘Who’s the pathologist?’

‘Middleton.’

‘Hope he’s going to bill the post-mortem at a reduced rate.’

‘Give it a rest, Jay,’ Charlie said.

‘All right, no need to bite my head off.’

DCs Wes James and Rupinder Singh looked up from their desks, but no one laughed. Greene didn’t seem to care. Charlie was missing the skipper already.

The rest of the crew gathered in a semicircle around the whiteboard for an informal briefing. Charlie told them what he knew so far: at around three o’clock that morning, person or persons unknown had placed a male human head on the railings of the Law Courts in the Strand.

‘First thing we have to do is ID the …’ Charlie stopped himself. He nearly said ‘body’. Greene would have had a field day. ‘The victim. The remains have been transported to the mortuary, hopefully we will be able to make an identification through dental records. The DCI has promised me that it will be fast-tracked through the system, but as you all know it could still take some time.’ Weeks, possibly. Or never. Charlie was hoping that someone would find the rest of their John Doe long before then.

‘We’re going to give the media an identikit reconstruction of the deceased,’ Charlie said and held up his iPad so they could have a look. ‘Perhaps someone will recognise him.’

‘Looks like that bloke from EastEnders,’ Greene said. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Tony King,’ James said.

‘Every corpse looks like Tony King,’ someone else said, from the back. James said to Singh, in a voice loud enough for them all to hear: ‘Police are looking for a man between thirty and forty years with a vacant expression, dead from the neck up.’

‘Half of London fits that description,’ Greene said.

‘Enough, people,’ Charlie said. ‘Concentrate. Let’s talk about the note.’

Singh’s head shot up. ‘He left a note?’

‘A piece of paper had been placed in the victim’s throat, presumably post-mortem. It’s been sent to Lambeth for further investigation, but it appears to be torn from a book.’

‘What did it say?’

Charlie pretended to consult his notebook, though he had already committed the lines to memory. ‘“This is the reason that you see this man fallen here. I am he who planned this murder and with justice.”’

‘Very poetic,’ DC Lubanski – Lube – said. She’d been ‘Lube’ to everyone in the squad for so long, he wasn’t sure anyone even remembered her first name any more.

‘It’s Aeschylus,’ Charlie said.

‘Who’s that? A rapper?’ Greene said.

‘No, Jay. He’s Greek. He is considered the father of Tragedy.’

‘Never heard of him,’ Greene said.

‘That’s impressive, guv,’ James said. ‘I mean, that you know this stuff.’

‘I may not have had a private school education, Wes, but it doesn’t make me a complete Neanderthal.’

Charlie looked at Grey, who had just walked in. ‘You know about Aeschylus, right? You and the DCI must have done the classics at St Michael’s.’

Grey looked uncomfortable. ‘I was never all that interested in the Greeks.’

‘Well, all you need to know, people, is that the words are from an ancient play about revenge. Now it’s very important that no one starts blabbing about this note outside of this room. We don’t want the media getting to hear about it. My gut feeling – we are going to have every nutjob in London confessing to being the perpetrator after it goes public. So this little detail we keep to ourselves.’

He looked around the room, made sure they understood. They all nodded.

‘Until we have established the victim’s identity, we can’t draw up a list of suspects. So that’s a priority. And as soon as we get the CCTV from the Law Courts we have to establish the exact time that the head was impaled on the railing. ‘Wes, you and Rupe canvass the area around the Law Courts for more CCTV. Take it wide, very wide. The first responders found a witness who claims he saw a bloke with a backpack fleeing the scene on foot. We need to verify this and establish where this person came from. There should be hours of viewing pleasure in that part of London. Check the local ANPR cameras, see if we can get a visual. We need to track any motors in the vicinity at that time, interview the drivers, find out if they saw anything.’ Charlie turned to DS Grey. ‘What else do you have, sergeant?’

‘We have statements from the five young people who found the …’ He glanced at Greene, who was ready to pounce. ‘The remains. They don’t remember seeing anyone else near the Royal Courts at the time. But they were all pretty drunk.’

‘Well, it’s Halloween,’ James said. ‘Our man could run down High Holborn with the head under his arm, people would think it was a joke. They’d pay no attention.’

Charlie tapped the map on the whiteboard behind him. ‘The question we have to answer is: where did he or she come from and how did they get away? Was it in a car, on a bike, on foot, what?’

‘The CCTV should tell us that.’

‘It’s the Law Courts,’ Lubanski said. ‘They must have more cameras than Steven Spielberg.’

The phone rang on Greene’s desk. He snatched it up and put it to his ear.

Charlie went on: ‘We are about to issue a press release that will include a dedicated hotline number. Hopefully, that will give us some more leads. We will have a formal briefing this evening at six o’clock and by then I anticipate that the investigation will have a clear focus. Until then …’

Greene raised a hand to beckon him over, the phone still to his ear.

‘Just a minute, Jay,’ Charlie said.

‘No, you’ll want to hear this first,’ Greene said. ‘We’ve got our murder scene.’

Everyone in the room turned and looked at him.

‘HAT have a headless corpse in a flat in Kentish Town. It was rung in about an hour ago.’

Charlie put his jacket on.

‘Is it the victim?’ one of the trainee DCs said.

‘Don’t worry, the guv’nor will be taking the head with him,’ Greene said, ‘to see if it’s a match. Like Cinderella.’

The poor bastard gave Charlie a look. He was only two weeks out of CID and he wasn’t sure if Greene was messing with him. Charlie clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Take no notice, son. Jay, stress leave has done you no good at all.’ He turned to Grey. ‘Grab your car keys. We’re going to Kentish Town.’

Grey turned the wipers on. As they drove down the Essex Road, plastic bags and bits of newspaper swirled across the street in a sudden gust. A street cleaner in a dirty fluoro vest sucked on a cigarette and threw the butt in the gutter. That’s the way, Charlie thought. Love to see someone taking pride in their work.

‘Where were you this morning, sergeant?’

‘Sir?’

‘Half an hour I was at the crime scene and no deputy to help me out.’

‘Sorry. I realise I was a bit late getting there. Won’t happen again.’

‘I hope not. I don’t expect my outside DS to be last out the door when we’ve got a major flap on. Doesn’t set a good example.’

Grey didn’t say anything. No explanation, nothing.

‘You look worn out. Everything all right at home?’

‘Everything’s fine, thank you, sir.’ Grey was a rotten liar. But if he didn’t want to talk, that was his business.

Charlie looked out of the window. London, on a cold November morning. Buses nudged their way through the mist, black bin bags spilled rubbish into the streets. A sleeping bag littered a shop doorway, surrounded by lager cans and takeaway boxes.

‘The human stain,’ Charlie said.

‘What’s that, guv?’

‘Does my head in, all this. Stop here, I need a coffee. Want one?’

‘No thanks, sir.’

‘Suit yourself.’

Grey parked on a yellow line outside a Costa.

‘Why are you stopping here? There was a proper coffee shop back there.’

‘Coffee’s coffee, isn’t it, sir? There was nowhere else to park.’

There was no way to explain coffee to people who didn’t understand, Charlie thought. It was like trying to explain democracy to Donald Trump. Charlie took his coffee cup out of the console and went in, ordered a flat white with a double shot.

As he came out, he saw the entrance to the Wetherspoons next door was occupied. Poor bastards were everywhere these days. He could make out a dirty mop of ginger hair sticking out from under the zipper of a red nylon sleeping bag. He had change from a tenner in his hand, so he tucked it under the zipper.

‘What did you do that for?’ Grey said, when he got back in the car. ‘He’s only going to spend it on booze.’

‘What do you think I was going to spend it on?’ Charlie said. He took his first sip of coffee for the day and groaned. Coffee, beer, the Arsenal. Made life worth living. And a good woman, of course. But where was he going to find one of those?

‘Get 50p off, did you?’ Grey said, nodding at Charlie’s keep cup.

‘I don’t do it for the 50p, I do it for David Attenborough.’ He took out his phone and read out: ‘“But there where criminals are slain or mutilated is meet abode, and the feast ye love, ye loathsome goddesses!”’

‘Jeez guv,’ Grey said. ‘What website are you on?’

‘It’s Aeschylus,’ Charlie said. ‘It’s when Apollo urges the Furies on to vengeance.’

‘Right,’ Grey said. ‘Well done. Impressive.’

‘You mean impressive for someone who never went to a public school?’ Grey coloured up and Charlie wished he hadn’t said it. He wasn’t a bad lad, really. He should get off his case. ‘I read a lot.’

‘I actually meant impressive for an Arsenal supporter.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Well, you know.’

‘Nick Hornby’s an Arsenal supporter. So is Piers Morgan.’

‘Piers Morgan,’ Grey muttered. ‘Proves my point.’

‘“There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.”’

‘Is that Aeschylus as well?’

‘No, that’s every Arsenal fan you’ll ever meet. At least we beat Blackpool last night. Spurs next, in the quarter final. Any luck, we’ll catch the psycho who put the head on the railing in the next couple of days and then I’ll be off the roster and me and Ben can go and watch it. See this?’ Charlie held up his phone.

‘Not when I’m driving, guv.’

‘It’s a picture of my niece. Just came through on my WhatsApp. My sister had another baby a couple of months ago.’

‘Nice. What did she call her?’

Charlie didn’t want to say. A bitter pill, this.

‘Sir?’ Grey said.

‘Jocaster.’

A beat. ‘That’s unusual.’

‘Unusual. Code for “stupid”. You’re right, why couldn’t they give the kid a real name? Why does everything have to be a fucking statement? If you call your kid Jaxon with an X or spell Lucee with two EEs, you might as well put “CHAV” on their forehead with a branding iron and mark them for life.’

‘Takes all sorts.’

‘Jocaster. It’s about as clichéd as a pikey in Burberry. She’s going to grow up to have fake boobs and hair extensions. She has no chance. Watch where you’re driving. Where did you get your licence, sergeant?’

***

Kentish Town was London in spades, all garages and garden centres: white collar professionals in Georgian terraces on one side of the high street, with Remain posters in their sash windows; council blocks and Poundstretchers on the other side, landlocked by railway lines and building sites. Charlie and Grey drove past the stone turrets and chimneys of a Gothic church. There was a sign with ‘Jesus Answers Knee Mail’ outside and a Neighbourhood Watch sticker on one of the glass windows. A clutch of delinquents were hanging around one of the street corners, getting ready for a casual afternoon of shoplifting at Tesco.

Their crime scene was a ground floor flat on one of the estates, a spit in the wind from the Queen’s Crescent Market. There was the usual flotsam hanging around the cordon, even a couple of tourists looking thrilled and taking selfies.

‘Wait up,’ Charlie said as they pulled up outside, ‘what’s that geezer doing?’

‘Who’s that, sir?’

‘That dodgy looking bloke over there.’

The character Charlie had clocked looked a bit like Rhys Ifans from his Notting Hill turn. He was wearing a long khaki overcoat with most of the buttons missing and his ratty hair was hanging off his collar in greasy strips. But it was the way he was prairie-dogging over the heads of the crowd around the cordon that made Charlie look. When he saw Charlie get out of the car and start towards him, he took off. Only blokes with plenty of priors know a cop in plain clothes that fast, Charlie thought, and he went off after him.

In the movies Charlie watched when he was a kid, cops yelled ‘Stop, police!’ when some low life hoofed it, but personally he never saw the point of that. If they were intending to hang around for conversation, they wouldn’t have scarpered in the first place. The bloke was nimble on his feet, he’d give him that.

Charlie was about to give up and let him go when he heard someone steaming up behind him and DS Grey shot past. Not often he saw anyone who could run that fast, certainly not when he was watching Arsenal every week, and the rugby tackle Grey followed up with was sheer poetry. He had the bloke down and the speed cuffs on before Charlie could get his warrant card out.

The two uniforms standing at the end of the street barely had time to react.

‘Well come on then,’ Charlie yelled at them. ‘This is your job, this.’

‘Sir,’ Grey said, ‘look at this.’ He had already done a quick body search and held up a baggie of white powder.

‘Get in,’ Charlie said, but privately he was a bit disappointed. A few grams of coke was all well and good, but what he had been hoping to find on the geezer was a bloodied knife. Still, that wasn’t the way life worked.

The flat smelled faintly of mould tainted with the distinctive coppery smell of blood. Charlie stood in the middle of the carpet, in his plastic bodysuit and boots, and watched the CS team at work. The photographer was still shuffling around, making a video record of the scene, and two fingerprint techs were dusting the windowsills; the filmy grey dust they used shimmered in the halogen gleam of two arc lights.

Their victim had been done for in the kitchen; the landlord would never get that stain out of the linoleum. The place was pretty much as Charlie had anticipated before he walked in, not too many surprises: empty vodka bottles, some drug paraphernalia, video games. A life well lived.

No Jack today, he was still busy down the Strand. The CS manager was a heavy-set man with a moustache and bifocals, Lewis. He nodded at Charlie and pulled down his mask.

‘Hello Nick,’ Charlie said. ‘This is my new deputy, Matthew Grey. What do we have?’

Lewis held up a plastic evidence bag; inside were three parts of the locking mechanism from the front door. ‘Looks like the killer used an adjustable wrench and a screwdriver to get in. Something like this, if you know what you’re doing, would take you less than ten seconds. We found the body in the kitchen, looks like he was eating his tea when it happened.’

It was a tiny flat and there were SOCOs everywhere, there was hardly room to move. The CS photographer swore at two DCs who were too slow to get out of his way. There was a sheen of luminol on the doors and the kitchen bench. The Formica table had been overturned, baked beans and bits of toast had stuck to the tiles in pools of blackening blood.

‘Lovely,’ Charlie said.

‘Puddles of Blood,’ Lewis said. ‘Be a good name for a punk band.’

‘No one listens to punk any more,’ Charlie said.

Fenwick, one of his fellow DIs from the team at Essex Road, was already there. He had been called in by a HAT team when the body had been found. It hadn’t taken him long to work out that the body was part of Charlie’s case.

Charlie nodded to him. ‘How are you then, all right?’

‘Not really. I’m ambivalent, Charlie.’

‘Ambivalent, that’s a good word.’

‘Looks to me like this is your crime scene now. Pity, it looks interesting. So me, I’m back to the domestics and the gangbangers in Tottenham.’

‘Some guys get all the luck. Who found him?’

‘It was an anonymous tip-off. Someone rang it in to the local nick.’

‘That’s nice of them.’ They went outside. Two paramedics and the mortuary crew were smoking cigarettes, joking with one of the borough detectives. A uniformed sergeant was standing to one side, with one of his constables, watching them. Charlie introduced himself. ‘The bloke in there. Do you recognise him?’

The sergeant gave him a look. ‘Not without his head.’

‘I mean, you or any of your boys ever been called to this address?’

He shook his head. ‘We’ve rung the council for you.’ He took out his notebook. ‘It’s rented to a Michael Richard Grimes.’ He tore out the page and handed it to Charlie. ‘I checked. He has previous. His prints will be on file.’

‘Any luck tracing whoever called it in?’

‘Unregistered phone. We’ll go through the motions but my guess is the SIM is at the bottom of a canal somewhere. What you reckon this is all about? We haven’t got any of them ISIS in Kentish Town, have we?’

‘No, mate. We do not believe this is terrorist-related.’

‘What was the little set-to outside? Hope you’re not upsetting the local citizens?’

‘Some bloke got as far as the cordon and ran for his life. He had some blow in his pocket. . .