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Tanya MurraySPINNING THE DRUM It’s nearly three pm, and we’re preparing to smash Harold's door to matchwood.Late for a spin, but based on a week of obs, this was his busiest time. We hit the estate at warp speed, bailing from the carrier before the big armoured van stopped rolling, plunging into the stairwell, trying to make the eight flights to his floor before too many eyes made us. One good thing about the Peckham estates. They were target-rich environments. The spotters had to hang fire long enough to work out exactly where we were headed; otherwise a lot of good gear got flushed unnecessarily. That gave us an edge. About thirty seconds of edge. ...Droptheknife! Droptheknife!... The Door Entry Team a.k.a. the Ghostbusters, Terry and Mac, went first, goggled and gloved. Big beefy civvies, their day jobs were in the motor pool but they volunteered for this, just for the thrill of smashing other peoples’ things.Mac had the hydraulic ram, but Terry sized the door up, shook his head. A quick glance at the rest of us, crouched beneath the kitchen window, and he swung a short length of orange-painted steel pipe by its twin handles at a spot just to the right of the Yale. The Enforcer went in at the first hit, the door lock popping off intact, the frame barely splintered. This was good. It meant no-one would have to hang around afterwards for the locksmith. Even as the door begun its bounce back off the hall wall, Terry and Mac cleared, their day’s work done, and we piled in, turtle-clumsy in our heavy ballistic vests. I remembered seeing a whole TSG Serial do this once, eight big lads in full riot gear, charging one after another into what turned out to be a cleaners’ cupboard, the poor sod at the front despairing as another sixteen stone of rugby player smeared him a bit more into the back wall. Very Keystone Cops. Luckily, our own “rapid entry” was going to plan, so far. “Police! Stand still! Get down! Don’t move!” We all barked overlapping, contradictory orders in our butchest voices. It didn’t really matter what was said. The intention was to create as much confusion as possible, to fuse a target’s synapses until we were all over them like a cheap suit. Oh, and to emphasise we were cops, in case he didn’t take the hint of the big “Police” logos on the vests, and decided to test out their alleged bullet-stopping properties for real. As the vests were maintained by police, a breed capable of breaking any known device, this was something I fervently did not wish to occur. Especially, as by some fluke of re-ordering on the stairwell, I now found myself leading the charge. I saw a blur of unoccupied kitchen, then, freeze-framed, Harold himself, ten feet ahead, through his open living room door. A tall, good looking black guy in his late twenties. He worked out, you could tell. He was caught in the act of rising from his armchair, a half-peeled apple in one hand, a small pen knife in the other, his mouth an ‘o’ of surprise. “Dropthefuckingknife,dropitdropit!” I gabbled, and launched myself at him. I’m a crap fighter, but I was four stone overweight then, and hyped on adrenaline. So a heavy, shouty armoured blue ball of panic took him somewhere in the middle, and we both went clean over the back of the armchair, into a cheap plastic music centre on a coffee table behind. The hifi and the coffee table exploded in fragments as I slammed one rigid Quik-Cuff on to his unresisting knife hand. I started working the black plastic grip of the cuff, the sharp-edged steel bracelet grating painfully back and forth across his wrist. “Droptheknife, droptheknife…!” “Ow! Okay Man, I did already!” He had. I felt another pair of eyes on me. Sitting on a sofa opposite, unmoving, was an elderly, white haired black male. “It’s my dad, man. He’s got a heart condition. Just calm down, yeah?” Things did calm down. I got the second cuff on. Harold didn’t protest. We served him with his copy of the warrant, picked up his armchair, sat him back on it, began the tedious business of spinning the drum: searching every room one square foot at a time. His dad’s accusing eyes tracked us silently. Some time later, I noticed the old man fiddling with a glass demijohn of dark red liquid. I took it from him. Plants waved lazily in the bottle. “What’s this?” A couple of other cops on the search team looked over. “It’s just me rum,” the old man said in a strong Caribbean accent. I pulled out the bung from the bottle and sniffed. The strong burnt toffee smell of 100 proof Jamaican booze made my eyes water. “What about the plants?” The bottle was stuffed with them. “Them’s steepin’,” he said. “Medicinal.” I shrugged, tapped the bung back and handed the bottle to the old man. “Okay.” The search continued. Intel, lapsing into the sub-Scorsese street slang they affected for briefings, had promised us ‘…Rocks… H… maybe as much as a key.” Well, at least this time we got something. Wrapped around with cabbage leaves and cling film in the salad box of the fridge; maybe a quarter kilo block of compressed herbal. A result of sorts. Nothing to write home about. I nicked Harold. “Come on,” I said. “You’re coming with us.” The old man, unblinking, watched us go. -o0o- Back in the van, someone was sorting through the big polybag of exhibits we’d seized. “Hang on… Where’s the rest of the dope?” “What dope?” I said. The cop with the exhibit bag looked at me oddly. “That bottle I saw you with, stuffed full of rum and cannabis.” I pictured the bottle. The leaves. The unmistakable, distinctive five-pointed leaves, swaying gently in the rum. “Shit!” I looked at Harold. He grinned. Tanya Murray wrote the story Dancing for Un-Made-Up. The photo is by Skip The Budgie who has blogged about Police drug raids from another perspective entirely. 4:53 PM - 24/1/2007 - post comment
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