The Crime Tsar by Nichola McAuliffe

television an aggressive young woman was debating with an aggressive young man what the youths would do with the two chief constables.
    The three women had taken off Tom’s jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. He was put on a fourth chair. This one two pieces of carved wood that slotted into each other to form a low, high-backed chair. He was nervous it wouldn’t take his weight but it wassurprisingly comfortable. It forced him to sit back. Relax. The sky was clear and the stars brighter than usual in England. The night was hot. Dry. Good rioting weather. His burned skin was painful now, an insistent pain that pulsed with his heartbeat.
    The thin woman had gone into the flat and returned with a plastic bucket and a bulging carrier bag emblazoned with
HARRODS – THE SALE
. She put the bucket down in front of the fat woman and sat in her sagging deckchair. They were now a circle with the bucket in the centre.
    The African woman, unsmiling and unblinking, reached into the carrier bag. She pulled out a bottle of oil. It had no label and when she unscrewed the top and poured a thin gold stream into the bucket it smelled of smooth Mediterranean geranium leaves. A sharp sweet smell. The desiccated woman took out a bunch of herbs and tore them roughly before dropping them into the bucket.
    Tom watched, recognised the leaves as khat, a drug favoured by West Africans. Illegal. He wanted to say something but, as if from a distance, he saw himself unable to speak. With a sort of removed disapproval he watched the big woman stir the leaves into the oil with his swagger stick. Where did she get it? Where was Gordon? He should be going home – Jenni would be in one of her moods.
    As the great brown hand stirred, the other two women added more things from the carrier bag. A bottle of spring water, powders and the foul-smelling contents of three small plastic syringes.
    Tom knew he should get up and walk away but couldn’t. He’d once been hypnotised at a club. He was a young PC and desperate to fit in; he’d volunteered. Unwilling to say it hadn’t worked he went along with the mumbo jumbo and cooperated with the tatty hypnotist. Then he’d decided enough was enough and tried to leave the stage. He found he couldn’t. Sitting with these three women round a plastic bucket on the edge of a restless inner-city estate, he felt the same helplessness.
    The women were singing softly over the brew, which was giving off a strange attractive repellent smell. With an effort he got his brain to identify it. Tom tried to discipline his mind into creating concrete thoughts. It was the sharp clinging odour he’d smelled between women’s legs. At once comforting and repulsive, it was so strong he could taste it.
    The African woman moved behind him and leaned over hisshoulder to take his wrists in her long elegant fingers. He felt the skin of her cheek against his own. He was surprised at the softness of it. He couldn’t stop himself – he reached up, her hand still on his arm, and touched her face. He couldn’t see what he touched but it felt like the scales of dead fish. Cold and smooth one way, cutting the other. He pulled back, shocked. The women laughed.
    â€˜Here,’ said the big one, shifting her great bulk so he could see the ravine between her breasts. The top buttons of her dress had given up the struggle and the thin cotton gaped open. She scooped up a handful of the sludge from the bucket. The black hands on his wrists gripped him and held out his burned hands. He felt fear but the fear was someone else’s. He watched the women apply the ointment to his skin. The relief was immediate, cool, like being wrapped in cotton sheets on a hot night.
    â€˜Now, Thomas …’
    The big woman was smiling at him, holding his hands in hers. Hers were bigger.
    â€˜Drink this.’
    The thin one dipped a royal-wedding mug into the bucket then diluted the contents with British