Defending the Guilty by Alex McBride

Author:Alex McBride
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141951409
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2010-02-12T16:00:00+00:00

10. Disclosure: Friends in High Places

The hot stillness of the August morning was about to be broken. Two cops holding a stubby battering-ram known as a ‘red rooster’ silently counted to three, and attacked the door. On the third bang they were through, a wave of police officers washing in behind them. Linda, a black woman in her early twenties, half asleep in bed, heard the noise and sat up. A boy in his late teens called Michael was asleep on a chair beside her; he knew exactly what was happening. ‘It’s a bust,’ he said, slipping a wedge of banknotes, his proceeds from drug dealing, under the mattress. A few seconds later the cops were in the bedroom. ‘Police, nobody move!’

I met tearful Linda the next day in the cells. Her husband and two small children didn’t know she was in custody, charged, as was Michael, with possession with intent to supply Class A drugs. Linda did not look like a dealer or a user. She was healthily plump, had no previous convictions and had tested negative for drugs in the police station. My initial job was to get her bail. The judge heard my application and granted her bail on condition that she surrender her Jamaican passport to the police. That was a problem. Linda couldn’t surrender her passport because it was somewhere in the bowels of Lunar House – widely referred to as Lunatic House – in Croydon awaiting a visa stamp. She would have to stay put, perhaps for months or, if convicted, years.

Linda was inconsolable. It was the need for extra money that landed her in jail. Her husband, a native Brit, had been making her feel bad that she wasn’t contributing to the family’s finances. She cut hair part-time but it wasn’t bringing in much. She had resolved to do better. It was a stroke of luck when Linda’s friend Coral invited her to come and make some quick money in the provinces. Coral worked as a prostitute to feed a voracious crack habit. Without telling her husband, Linda went up for a visit. The idea, as she euphemistically put it, was for her ‘to fix the prostitutes’ hair’. For the first few days all had gone well and Linda made money hand over fist. She stayed with Coral at her flat, which ever-enterprising Coral let other crack addicts use in exchange for free drugs. Linda quite understandably hid her takings in her pants. On the third day, to Linda’s mild surprise, Coral, a late sleeper, and her crack buddies got up early, locking the flat door from the outside as they left. Linda assumed she wouldn’t be gone long and drifted back to sleep. The next thing she knew the police were standing over her asking about the drugs strewn around the room and the cash in her knickers.

The Premises Search Book, in which the police record where items have been found during a search, revealed something peculiar: the wraps of heroin and crack cocaine appeared to have been sprinkled on and around the bed like fairy dust.

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