surveyed the desk. ‘What’s the trouble, Ben?’
‘You’d never believe it if I told you,’ said Ben Bryan. He scrabbled about in the papers, ‘I’ll have to show you. Where the devil is it?’
Warren dumped a pile of books off a chair and sat down. ‘Take it easy,’ he advised. ‘More haste, less speed.’
‘Take it easy? Just wait until you see this. You won’t be taking it as easy as you are now.’ Bryan rummaged some more and papers scattered.
‘Perhaps you’d better just tell me,’ suggested Warren.
‘All right … no, here it is. Just read that.’
Warren unfolded the single sheet of paper. What was written on it was short and brutally to the point. ‘He’s throwing you out?’ Warren felt a rage growing within him. ‘He’s throwing us out!’ He looked up. ‘Can he break the lease like that?’
‘He can – and he will,’ said Bryan. ‘There’s a line of fine print our solicitor didn’t catch, damn him.’
Warren was angrier than he had ever been in his life. In a choked voice he said, ‘There’s a telephone under all that junk – dig it out.’
‘It’s no good,’ said Bryan. ‘I’ve talked to him. He said he didn’t realize the place would be used by drug addicts; he says his other tenants are complaining – they say it lowers the tone of the neighbourhood.’
‘God Almighty!’ yelled Warren. ‘One’s a strip joint and the other sells pornography. What the hell have they to complain of? What stinking hypocrisy!’
‘We’re going to lose our boys, Nick. If they don’t have a place to come to, we’ll lose the lot.’
Ben Bryan was a psychologist working in the field of drug addiction. Together with Warren and a couple of medical students he had set up the Soho Therapy Centre as a means of getting at the addicts. Here the addicts could talk to people who understood the problem and many had been referred to Warren’s clinic. It was a place off the streets where they could relax, a hygienic place where they could take their shots using sterile water and aseptic syringes.
‘They’ll be out on the streets again,’ said Bryan. ‘They’ll be taking their shots in the Piccadilly lavatories, and the cops will chase them all over the West End.’
Warren nodded. ‘And the next thing will be another outbreak of hepatitis. Good God, that’s the last thing we want.’
‘I’ve been trying to find another place,’ said Bryan. ‘I was on the telephone all day yesterday. Nobody wants to know our troubles. The word’s got around, and I think we’re blacklisted. It must be in this area – you know that.’
Something exploded within Warren. ‘It will be,’ he said with decision. ‘Ben, how would you like a really good place here in Soho? Completely equipped, regardless of expense, down to hot and cold running footmen?’
‘I’d settle for what we have now,’ said Bryan.
Warren found an excitement rising within him. ‘And, Ben – that idea you had – the one about a group therapy unit as a self-governing community on the line of that Californian outfit. What about that?’
‘Have you gone off your little rocker?’ asked Bryan. ‘We’d need a country house for that. Where would we get the funds?’
‘We’ll get the funds,’ said Warren with confidence. ‘Excavate that telephone.’
His decision was made and all qualms gone. He was tired of fighting the stupidity of the public, of which the queasiness of this narrow-gutted landlord was only a single example. If the only way to run his job was to turn into a synthetic James Bond, then a James Bond he’d be.
But it was going to cost Hellier an awful lot of money.
Warren was ushered into Hellier’s office in Wardour Street after passing successfully a hierarchy of secretaries, each more svelte than the last. When he finally penetrated into the inner sanctum, Hellier said, ‘I really didn’t expect to see you, Doctor. I expected I’d have to chase you. Sit down.’
Warren came to the point abruptly. ‘You mentioned unlimited funds, but I take that to be a figure of speech. How unlimited?’
‘I’m pretty well breeched,’ said Hellier with a smile. ‘How much do you want?’
‘We’ll come to that. I’d better outline the problem so that you can get an idea of its magnitude. When you’ve absorbed that you might decide you can’t afford it.’
‘Well see,’ said Hellier. His smile broadened.
Warren laid down a folder. ‘You were right when you said I had particular knowledge, but I warn you I don’t have much – two names and a place – and all the rest is rumour.’ He smiled sourly. ‘It isn’t ethics that has kept me from going to the police – it’s the sheer lack of hard facts.’
‘Leaving aside your three facts, what about the rumour? I’ve made some damned important decisions on nothing but rumour, and I’ve told you I get paid for making the right decisions.’
Warren shrugged. ‘It’s all a bit misty – just stuff I’ve picked up in Soho. I spend a lot of time in Soho – in the West End generally – it’s where most of my patients hang out. It’s convenient for the all-night chemist in Piccadilly,’ he said sardonically.
‘I’ve seen them lining up,’ said Hellier.
‘In 1968 a drug ring was smashed in France – a big one. You must realize that the heroin coming into Britain is just a small leakage from the more profitable American trade. This particular gang was smuggling to the States in large quantities, but when the ring was smashed we felt the effects here. The boys were running around like chickens with their heads chopped off – the illegal supply had stopped dead.’
‘Wait a minute,’ said Hellier. ‘Are you implying that to stop the trade into Britain it would be necessary to do the same for the States?’
‘That’s virtually the position if you attack it at the source, which would be the best way. One automatically implies the other. I told you the problem was big.’
‘The ramifications are more extensive than I thought,’ admitted Hellier. He shrugged. ‘Not that I’m chauvinistic about it; as you say, it’s an international problem.’
Hellier still did not seem to be disturbed about the probable cost to his pocket, so Warren went on: ‘I think the best way of outlining the current rumours is to look at the problem backwards, so to speak – beginning at the American end. A typical addict in New York will buy his shot from a pusher as a “sixteenth” – meaning a sixteenth of an ounce. He must buy it from a pusher because he can’t get it legally, as in England. That jerks up the price, and his sixteenth will cost him somewhere between six and seven dollars. His average need will
