‘I–I’ve been very stupid.’
Hook nodded. ‘You’re beginning to be more realistic now. That’s a good thing, because we don’t like wasting our valuable time. I’d say you’d been very stupid indeed.’
Sam nodded, wishing he hadn’t got this camera recording how abject his capitulation was. He wondered what would happen to the video after this. Surely they couldn’t use it in a court of law? He licked his lips and said, ‘Is there no way out of this for me?’
Rushton raised his eyebrows, as if surprised that a man in his position should even suggest such a thing. ‘Afraid I can’t see one, Mr Hilton. It’s so black and white, you see. Actually offering to sell drugs to a police officer. The Crown Prosecution Service likes things to be black and white; not much room for manoeuvre for the defence counsel in court, you see. I should think in this case they wouldn’t even contest the guilty verdict; they’d probably confine themselves to a plea for mercy on the grounds of your youth. Unfortunately, though, both judges and juries tend to take a very hard line with drug dealers. I can’t see any way for Mr Hilton to help himself. Can you, DS Hook?’
‘I’m afraid not, sir. A black and white case, as you say. Plead guilty and beg for mercy will probably be the legal advice. Unless. .’ He let his last word hang in the air, like a fly three inches above a starving trout.
‘Unless what?’ The trout was hooked in a flash. The young eyes were wide with appeal and a sudden, desperate hope.
‘Well, I suppose if Detective Inspector Rushton and I were able to say that you’d given us every assistance, that you’d seen the error of your ways and given clear evidence of your wish to assist the law, that might just count in your favour. We’d need to be clearly convinced of that before we could offer any such assurance of course. Do you think that might be a possibility, sir?’
Rushton pursed his lips and looked doubtful. ‘I think the CPS boys would be very reluctant to abandon such a cast-iron case, you know. Lawyers are like that, I’m afraid, Mr Hilton; they hate letting go of an easy case. DS Hook always wants to help, but he can be something of an optimist. Still, if you’re prepared to give clear evidence of remorse, in the form of helpful information, I would certainly be prepared to report as much and put in a plea for you.’
Bert Hook leaned forward, avuncular and concerned. ‘It’s an evil industry you’ve got yourself entangled in, Sam. But you’re not stupid. You must have realized by now that it’s the bigger fish who make the real money out of drugs. And cause the real damage. I don’t know how much you’ve seen of heroin addicts. They first become scarcely human and then die horribly.’
Sam had reached much the same conclusion about the trade he’d been practising through the long hours of a night in the cells. He couldn’t agree with them openly, though. At the furthest recess of his mind but increasingly vivid nonetheless, there remained a memory of the final injunction from his supplier, in that briefing which had made it all seem such easy money. “You won’t be caught. But if you ever are, you say bugger all. You keep shtum and give the pigs nothing. If you give them anything, anything at all, you’ll be dead meat. If you forget everything else, boy, remember that!”
Sam looked into Hook’s concerned, experienced face, which was within two feet of his. He wanted to give everything he had, to have this over with and be away, whatever the cost. But that face belonged to a copper; a pig; a piece of shit who would promise you the earth and then laugh in your face once he had what he wanted. Sam tried to summon the worst student and football crowd obscenities about the police to stiffen his resistance. ‘Piss off, pig! I don’t know anything. And I wouldn’t fucking tell you if I did.’
DS Hook was distressingly unshaken. Apparently he rated this performance disappointingly low in the range of opprobrium he had endured over the years. ‘You’ll please yourself, lad, in the end. We don’t beat people up in the cells, whatever colourful tales you’ve heard. There’s nothing we can do to save you, if you won’t help yourself.’
DI Rushton nodded and said ‘I think it’s time we returned Mr Hilton to his cell and got on with preparing the charges against him.’
Sam said desperately, ‘I don’t know anything. I’ve got nothing to give to you.’
Bert Hook paused in the process of gathering his papers together. ‘Nothing at all, Sam? Not even the tiniest crumb of information that we could cite as evidence of your good intent?’
Sam shook his head miserably. ‘They don’t tell you anything. That’s the way they work. If you ask them anything, you’re out on your ear.’
‘Which in your case would have been a very good thing, wouldn’t it? For a start, you wouldn’t have been sitting here facing very serious charges and a prison sentence. You wouldn’t have been squirming on that chair and trying to account for yourself to DI Rushton and me.’ Hook shook his head sadly.
‘I want to help. I can see the sense in what you’re saying. But how can I help, when I really don’t know anything?’
Hook nodded several times, as if accepting the logic in this. ‘Sometimes people know a little more than they realize. When did you begin dealing, Sam?’ They watched the young, too-revealing face as Hilton struggled with conflicting emotions. Then Hook added in a low voice, ‘I should warn you that if you try to piss us about in this, we’ll throw the book at you.’
‘January the tenth.’
‘That tallies with our information. Carry on.’
Sam had no idea whether they had any information or not. He said desperately, ‘I’d snorted a bit of coke at a new year’s party. I bought a small amount a day or two after that, in a pub. I remember being appalled by how much it cost.’
Hook nodded. ‘What do you do for a living, Sam?’
He wanted to tell them that was irrelevant, wanted to avoid the sniggers and contempt which would be the inevitable reaction of the pigs. But his resistance was exhausted; he wanted only to convince them that he was being honest, when he knew he had so little to give them. ‘I’m a poet.’ He waited for the uproar of derision, but there was only silence, with perhaps the slightest nod from Hook. ‘I’ve had a few things published and I make a bit from poetry gigs, where I read my stuff and talk about it. But it’s not easy to make a living from poetry.’
This time Hook definitely nodded. ‘Even T.S. Eliot had to get himself a job with a sympathetic publisher, didn’t he? Even Philip Larkin had to be a university librarian in Hull to support his writing. Is that why you started to deal, Sam? To support your poetic career?’
Sam Hilton’s mind reeled. A copper talking about two of the men who had made him want to be a poet himself. He said limply, ‘Yes. I realize now it was daft, but the man made it seem so easy.’
Hook smiled sadly. ‘Tell us about the man, Sam’
‘I don’t know his name. He had blue eyes, I think, and a flattish nose, which might have been broken at some time. He was burly. Just above average height, but thickset. A bit like your build, but younger.’
The smile this time was from the otherwise immutable DI Rushton. Hook said only, ‘What did he wear?’
‘Jeans, trainers, a blue quilted anorak. He wore the same every time I saw him afterwards, whatever the weather and the temperature.’
‘And who pulled his strings, Sam? Who supplied him?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t even know his name. The first rule he gave me was that I shouldn’t ask any questions. No one asked questions if they knew what was good for them, he said.’
The old story. And it wasn’t a false threat. Many a dealer who had said a little too much had ended up with a bullet through his head or at the bottom of a river, or simply never been seen again. Hook said quietly, ‘It’s not much, Sam. What else can you offer us to try to protect you from the law?’
‘Nothing. I can see it’s not much, but it’s all I know. And I’ll never deal again. You have to believe me.’ The desperation and fear almost oozed through his pores as he strove to convince them.