It was an uphill battle to get them to use clean needles and sterile water; too many of them had not the slightest idea of medical hygiene. He lived in their half-world on the fringes of crime where even the Soho prostitutes took a high moral tone and considered that the addicts lowered the gentility of the neighbourhood. It was enough to make a man laugh – or cry.
Warren made no moral judgments. To him it was a social and medical problem. He was not immediately concerned with the fundamental instability in a man which led him to take heroin; all he knew was that when the man was hooked he was hooked for good. At that stage there was no point in recrimination because it solved nothing. There was a sick man to be helped, and Warren helped him, fighting society at large, the police and even the addict himself.
It was in this pub, and in places like it, that he had heard the three hard facts and the thousand rumours which constituted the core of the special knowledge which Hellier was trying to get from him. To mix with addicts was to mix with criminals. At first they had been close-mouthed when he was around, but later, when they discovered that his lips were equally tight, they spoke more freely. They knew who – and what – he was, but they accepted it, although to a few he was just another ‘flaming do-gooder’ who ought to keep his long nose out of other people’s affairs. But generally he had become accepted.
He turned back to the bar and contemplated his glass. Nick Warren – do-it-yourself Bond! he thought. Hellier is incredible! The trouble with Hellier was that he did not know the magnitude of what he had set out to do. Millionaire though he was, the prizes offered in the drug trade would make even Hellier appear poverty-stricken, and with money like that at stake men do not hesitate to kill.
A heavy hand smote him on the back and he choked over his drink. ‘Hello, Doc; drowning your sorrows?’
Warren turned. ‘Hello, Andy. Have a drink.’
‘Most kind,’ said Andrew Tozier. ‘But allow me.’ He pulled out a wallet and peeled a note from the fat wad.
‘I wouldn’t think of it,’ said Warren drily. ‘You’re still unemployed.’ He caught the eye of the barman and ordered two whiskies.
‘Aye,’ said Tozier, putting away his wallet. ‘The world’s becoming too bloody quiet for my liking.’
‘You can’t be reading the newspapers,’ observed Warren. ‘The Russians are acting up again and Vietnam was still going full blast the last I heard.’
‘But those are the big boys,’ said Tozier. ‘There’s no room for a small-scale enterprise like mine. It’s the same everywhere – the big firms put the squeeze on us little chaps.’ He lifted his glass. ‘Cheers!’
Warren regarded him with sudden interest. Major Andrew Tozier; profession – mercenary soldier. A killer for hire. Andy would not shoot anyone indiscriminately – that would be murder. But he was quite prepared to be employed by a new government to whip into line a regiment of half-trained black soldiers and lead them into action. He was a walking symptom of a schizophrenic world.
‘Cheers!’ said Warren absently. His mind was racing with mad thoughts.
Tozier jerked his head towards the door. ‘Your consulting-room is filling up, Doc.’ Warren looked over and saw four young men just entering; three were his patients but the fourth he did not know. ‘I don’t know how you stand those cheap bastards,’ said Tozier.
‘Someone has to look after them,’ said Warren. ‘Who’s the new boy?’
Tozier shrugged. ‘Another damned soul on the way to hell,’ he said macabrely. ‘You’ll probably meet up with him when he wants a fix.’
Warren nodded. ‘So there’s still no action in your line.’
‘Not a glimmer.’
‘Maybe your rates are too high. I suppose it’s a case of supply and demand like everything else.’
‘The rates are never too high,’ said Tozier, a little bleakly. ‘What price would you put on your skin, Doc?’
‘I’ve just been asked that question – in an oblique way,’ said Warren, thinking of Hellier. ‘What is the going rate, anyway?’
‘Five hundred a month plus a hell of a big bonus on completion.’ Tozier smiled. ‘Thinking of starting a war?’
Warren looked him in the eye. ‘I just might be.’
The smile faded from Tozier’s lips. He looked at Warren closely, impressed by the way he had spoken. ‘By God!’ he said. ‘I think you’re serious. Who are you thinking of tackling? The Metropolitan Police?’ The smile returned and grew broader.
Warren said, ‘You’ve never gone in for really private enterprise, have you? I mean a private war as opposed to a public war.’
Tozier shook his head. ‘I’ve always stayed legal or, at any rate, political. Anyway, there are precious few people financing private brawls. I take it you don’t mean carrying a gun for some jumped-up Soho “businessman” busily engaged in carving out a private empire? Or bodyguarding?’
‘Nothing like that,’ said Warren. He was thinking of what he knew of Andrew Tozier. The man had values of a sort. Not long before, Warren had asked why he had not taken advantage of a conflict that was going on in a South American country.
Tozier had been scathingly contemptuous. ‘Good Christ! That’s a power game going on between two gangs of top-class cut-throats. I have no desire to mow down the poor sons of bitches of peasants who happen to get caught in the middle.’ He had looked hard at Warren. ‘I choose my fights,’ he said.
Warren thought that if he did pick up Hellier’s ridiculous challenge then Andy Tozier would be a good man to have around. Not that there was any likelihood of it happening.
Tozier was waving to the barman, and held up two fingers. He turned to Warren, and said, ‘You have something on your mind, Doctor. Is someone putting the pressure on?’
‘In a way,’ said Warren wryly. He thought Hellier had not really started yet; the next thing to come would be the moral blackmail.
‘Give me his name,’ said Tozier. ‘I’ll lean on him a bit. He won’t trouble you any more.’
Warren smiled. ‘Thanks, Andy; it’s not that sort of pressure.’
Tozier looked relieved. ‘That’s all right, then. I thought some of your mainliners might have been ganging up on you. I’d soon sort them out.’ He put a pound note on the counter and accepted the change. ‘Here’s mud in your eye.’
‘Supposing I needed bodyguarding,’ said Warren carefully. ‘Would you take on the job – at your usual rates?’
Tozier laughed loudly. ‘You couldn’t afford me. I’d do it for free, though, if it isn’t too long a job.’ A frown creased his forehead. ‘Something really is biting you, Doc. I think you’d better tell me what it is.’
‘No,’ said Warren sharply. If – and it was a damned big ‘if’ – he went deeper into this then he could not trust anyone, not even Andy Tozier who seemed straight enough. He said slowly, ‘If it ever happens it will take, perhaps, a few months, and it
