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abandoned buildings, quietly cultivating their crop and then selling on through a network of dealers. Things ran smoothly. The people who got hurt had usually rocked the boat, and Humberside Police paid little attention to the cultivation of a drug they expected to be legalized within the next parliamentary term.
    Then a year or so back the Drugs Squad began to hear rumors that, on this coast at least, the Vietnamese were being outmuscled and outgunned. Somebody else was moving in, and their methods of persuasion were not pretty.
    A few months ago two Asian men were found unconscious on the shingle at Hessle Foreshore. Their faces showed marks of sustained beating, but it was the injuries to the rest of the two men’s bodies that caused the paramedics to gasp.
    Naked, fetal, their hands had been nailed to their knees.
    Strips of flesh on their torsos and backs had been melted to the color and consistency of burned jam.
    There was every indication that a nail gun had been used to drive in their restraints, and a heated paint-stripping tool used to inflict the damage.
    The men were alive purely because the message their attackers wished to send was made more potent by their mutilation.
    Neither spoke a word of English, but their eyes told a story in a universal language.
    A couple of months later a terraced house in the west of the city was burned to the ground—the occupants still inside. The smell that billowed out from the smashed windows put firefighters and officers in mind of a community barbecue. Half of the neighborhood got high on the fumes as a massive amount of fresh-picked cannabis went up in smoke. It could not quite mask the reek of burning flesh.
    Despite the protestations of Detective Superintendent Adrian Russell on the Drugs Squad, a decision was taken to make the investigation into the assaults the priority, and Trish Pharaoh was given command.
    Nobody has any doubts that the victims were involved in cannabis production. Their clothes had shown traces of marijuana, of fertilizer—even the broad of sparkling mineral water known among the experts to produce a flowering harvest.
    She got little from the victims at first, but by pulling in a few favors and suggesting she could assist with their pleas to be allowed to stay in the United Kingdom rather than be returned to Vietnam, she managed to get descriptions of the men who had hurt them. They spoke of big white men. Men who had been giving them orders ever since they smashed down the door to one of their marijuana farms and pressed a mobile phone to their foreman’s ear. Their gang leader was relinquishing authority for their operation. The crop, and the workers, were now somebody else’s property. They were to cooperate. Work hard. Their families would be taken care of.
    The man’s transgression was never truly explained. They upset somebody. Did something wrong. Said the wrong thing, perhaps. Made a call they should not have made. They fell foul of their new bosses. And they paid the price.
    Little was yet known about these new players on the drugs scene, but the next set of crime statistics was an embarrassment to the top brass. The number of incidents of cannabis possession was up 17 percent in twelve months. More than that, violent crime was on the rise. It wasn’t the street dealers who were taking the beatings. It was the people with backroom growing operations. People who grew enough to supply themselves and their friends. They were the ones being beaten down in the street. Beaten beyond recognition. Rendered too afraid or too unintelligible to talk.
    Tressider is sufficiently concerned to demand answers. And Everett has none to give.
    Stammering at first, and then warming to his theme, McAvoy outlines the situation as best he can. Tells the committee that it is not merely a matter of insufficient resources. It is a case that the new drugs operation is, in no uncertain terms, “very, very good.”
    “Bloody cannabis,” says Tressider. “Should