'Fucking hell!' Dougie leapt out of bed, waking Camellia with a start.

'What is it?' she said sleepily. Even as she spoke, she heard heavy feet tramping up the bare wooden stairs towards them.

It was November, eleven months since the night at the George Hotel. Despite all Dougie's promises they were still living in the flat in Nottingham Court. Mr Tharrup still ogled Camellia and tried to grope her when the opportunity arose. Camellia still dipped pockets and shoplifted.

Dougie pulled back the heavy wooden shutters from the window before she could even lift her head off the pillow.

'Who is it?' she whispered. 'Why are you opening the shutters?'

'It's the pigs, stupid,' he hissed back. The light through the window was enough for her to see him pulling on his clothes at breakneck speed. 'I'm off. Don't open the door. Let them ram it in to give me time to get away. Tell them I went out some time after ten. They can't have been watching the house otherwise they'd have busted me earlier.'

Camellia's mind was reeling with questions, but Dougie put a finger to her lips and motioned for her to be silent. The heavy feet had now reached the landing outside their door.

'I'll be in touch as soon as it's safe,' he whispered, shoving his arms into his embroidered Afghan coat. 'Shut the window and lock the shutters behind me. Do it quietly so they don't twig. For fuck's sake give me time to get clear.'

At the first heavy knock on the door, Dougie snatched a duffel bag from under the bed, slung it round his shoulder and lifted open the window. He was onto the sill with the silent agility of a cat.

'See you soon,' he whispered as he dropped down onto the roof below. 'Lock it up and keep cool.'

Camellia saw him briefly silhouetted on the frost-covered rooftop, long slender legs straddling the apex, dark hair flowing out over his coat, hand raised in farewell. Then he was gone.

The banging grew louder at the door. 'Police, open up!'

In a flash Camellia had the window closed and the shutters locked and was back in bed, pulling the covers over her head. But her heart was pounding like a steam-hammer and she quivered with fear.

'Remember what he said,' she whispered as the banging grew louder still. 'Keep cool.'

A crash of a heavy boot against the door and the wood splintered. Another crash and the door just caved in, the steel bar clonking to the floor. As she peeped from beneath the covers, two bright beams of light shone into the room.

When they switched on the overhead light, Camellia made herself scream and sit up, clutching the blankets over her naked breasts. The light made her blink. It was easy to act shocked: she was.

Four uniformed policemen, truncheons in their hands, poured into the flat.

'Where is he?' One of them advanced on her.

Camellia backed up against the headboard, whimpering with terror. 'Who?' She curled her arm round her head, for one moment imagining they would actually beat her.

'Douglas Green, who else,' he snapped back, his big teeth yellow in the dim light from the Chinese lantern.

'He hasn't come home yet,' she stammered. 'Why? What's he done?'

The police were everywhere, all at once, rummaging around, turning out drawers, while the more senior one who barked out that he was Inspector Spencer tackled Camellia.

'Don't play the little innocent with me, girl,' he roared at her. 'We know he came back here, we saw him come in at half nine.'

'But he went out again later,' she said, guessing it had taken all this time to get a search warrant. She made a great play of reaching over for her clock. 'Goodness me! Is it really three o'clock? I was asleep till you came crashing in.'

She was terrified now. The expression 'losing your bottle' that Dougie used so often suddenly had real meaning. She wanted to go to the toilet so badly she was afraid she might just do it in the bed.

One policeman was pulling books off the shelves, scattering ornaments, packets of joss sticks and a collection of shells to the floor.

'What's your name?' Spencer barked at her again, daring her to lie to him.

'Camellia Norton,' she whimpered, tears welling up in her eyes. 'What's Dougie done?'

A sixth sense told her this was more than an ordinary drugs bust. Something had been up with Dougie yesterday.

He'd been pacing around the room, chain smoking and refusing to eat. He'd said a deal had gone wrong, but that could have meant anything.

'Three kids in hospital. That's what.' Spencer pulled her forward by the shoulder, ripping the pillows out behind her. 'By now they may all be dead and if you've got any sense you'll tell us where Green is.'

Camellia felt as if her blood had suddenly frozen. 'But what's that got to do with Dougie?' She forced herself to look stupid. 'He can't help three kids being in hospital!'

'Get up.' The policeman rolled his eyes with impatience.

'But I've got nothing on.'

'I've seen plenty of tarts with nothing on in my time,' he sneered. He snatched up a handful of clothes on a chair and threw them to her. 'Get those on, before I drag you out.'

The other policeman came back into the room as she buttoned up a shirt.

'He didn't go that way,' one of the younger men gestured towards the kitchen and bathroom. 'There's bars on the window. I found a substance in the fridge though.'

If things hadn't been so serious Camellia would have laughed. The window was the most obvious escape route, yet not one of them had thought to open the shutters. They'd be well brought down when they analysed the stuff in the bottle and discovered it was cough mixture!

Finally the youngest man, with pale gingery hair and eyelashes to match, made his way over to the shutters, barely glancing at her as she tried to wriggle into her knickers under the covers. He was so ham-fisted he couldn't even unlock the catch.

'I doubt he went out that way,' one of the others said. 'We'd have heard him.'

The young one got the window open eventually and peered out, shining a torch. 'It's a long drop,' he said. 'Should I check it out?'

'I told you he left through the door,' Camellia managed a token of defiance. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up, reaching for her jeans. 'If you listened to what I said instead of hassling me, you might learn something.'

'Don't get lippy with me, girl,' the inspector snarled at her. 'And cover yourself up!'

Dougie had dropped the fifteen or so feet to the roof below without a sound, but the young constable was like an elephant. He lowered himself awkwardly over the windowsill, then dropped down like a ton of bricks, smashing something en route.

'Christ Almighty,' Camellia heard him say, his voice muffled. 'I've torn my strides.'

Over two hours later they finally took her down to West Central Police Station in Bow Street. She sat shivering on a stool while they turned out every drawer and cupboard, groped down the side of chairs, turned the mattress upside down, and tipped out packets of sugar and cornflakes to check there was nothing inside.

The most incriminating things they found were a few packets of red Rizla and the cardboard roach of an old joint in a wastepaper bin.

Inspector Spencer kept on asking her where Dougie kept his stuff.

'What stuff?' She kept up the display of complete ignorance. 'What are you looking for?'

She had to hand it to Dougie, he knew how to keep his drugs in order. All those times she'd laughed at him for being so careful to place everything in one box right by the bed. Now she understood why. He must have snatched it up the moment he heard the heavy feet.

When the policeman moved the rug by the window and found the loose floorboard, she had felt sick. Nausea quickly turned to anger when she discovered this hiding place was empty too. Their bank book, Dougie's passport and the wad of notes he'd put in there only days before were gone. Dougie must have expected a raid, yet he hadn't taken her into his confidence.

Back in the flat it had been comparatively easy to portray herself as a naive yet somewhat rebellious teenager, but once in the station with the grim-faced Inspector Spencer questioning her, she found it far harder.

'Let me spell it out to you,' he said. The hanging flesh under his eyes and the slack, wet mouth reminded her of a bloodhound she'd seen once. 'Your boyfriend is not only a drug dealer, he's little better than a murderer. Not content with making money bending kids' minds, he had to make more by cutting this LSD with a poison. Suppose it was your friend lying there in agony on a hospital bed, vomiting up blood! How would you feel?'

It horrified Camellia to think of anyone in such a state, whether they were related to her or not. But as Spencer continued, he told her about other things Dougie had been involved in: burglaries in Essex where dogs had been thrown poisoned meat to silence them permanently; two old age pensioners in Islington who'd been robbed at knife point, then tied up while he ransacked their house.

'I didn't know,' she cried. This time she was speaking the truth. 'He never told me anything. I can't believe he was that wicked.'

The saddest thing was that in her heart of hearts she knew he was capable of all of it. He had no conscience and no respect for anyone. For most of the year he'd been out alone a great deal, and he'd become very secretive. It all added up.

'How old are you, Camellia?' The inspector put his hand on her shoulder, in an almost fatherly gesture.

'Eighteen. Nineteen in a few weeks,' she whispered.

'And your parents, where do they live?'

'They're both dead,' she replied.

She saw a momentary flash of sympathy in his eyes. But his next remark made her blush with shame.

'If I was to discover my daughter was living with a man like Douglas Green, I think it would break my heart,' he said. 'You couldn't have picked a worse man, Camellia, he's lower than a maggot.'

'But he wasn't bad to me,' she said, so scared now she could almost hear prison gates shutting on her too. 'He looked after me when I hadn't got anyone else.'

They left her alone for some time and she guessed they were checking up on her background. She hated to think they might speak to Sergeant Bert Simmonds in Rye. He would be so disappointed that she'd got herself into trouble.

But apart from the shame she felt, there was also the fear that they would discover she was a thief.

Supposing the security men at Fenwicks identified her as the girl who fainted in their store at approximately the same time four valuable furs were swiped from under their noses? Were there reports on file of a girl dipping into tourists' pockets around Piccadilly? So many people could tell the police that she was always with Dougie when he was out selling drugs in clubs and bars.

As the hours ticked by in the interview room, fright was replaced by despair. She wanted to cry. She'd spent eighteen months loving Dougie blindly, following his lead as if she had no mind of her own.

How often had she heard him justify selling drugs by saying 'If they don't get them from me it will be someone else'. He'd made her believe drugs were as essential to people's happiness as sunshine and love. And somehow she'd come to think shoplifting and pickpocketing weren't crimes, but a bit of a lark, a redistribution of wealth.

But it was wrong. She saw that now. By aiding and abetting Dougie she'd made him even worse. She should have got out after that night in the Mayfair hotel, when his real nature was revealed. Why hadn't she?

It wasn't even as if she'd been having fun with Dougie. All the drugs dried up for a time in February, and he'd begun to get morose and violent back then, yet she still foolishly thought she could handle him. No cannabis was coming through and the police found one acid laboratory after another. The Middle Earth was busted on three successive weekends and under threat of permanent closure.

Dougie got scared when plain-clothes policemen began mingling with the hippies around Soho, picking off the dealers one by one. Shoplifting had been almost a game until then, a 'V sign to the capitalists. Now it became a livelihood and Dougie made her take bigger and bigger risks. 'Just till we've got enough money to split,' he would say. 'We'll take off to Morocco and live like spaced-out kings.'

But where was he when the store detective chased her up Kensington High Street? Would he have cared if she was caught dipping tourists' pockets? Where was he now with all that money she'd helped him make?

'Did Dougie give you that bruise on your arm?' the woman police officer left sitting with her in the interview room asked. They had already checked her for needle marks and found nothing, but clearly this fresh-faced blonde hoped sympathy would encourage Camellia to tell them everything she knew.

'No,' Camellia lied. 'I fell on the stairs a couple of days ago.'

'It looks like finger marks to me.' The policewoman got up from her seat and came closer, cupping Camellia's chin and lifting her face so she could look right into her eyes. 'How did an intelligent pretty girl like you get mixed up with someone like him?'

Camellia wanted to blurt it all out. Being Dougie's girl was like being Queen of Soho. She was pointed out, looked-up to. Could someone who'd never experienced being a reject, possibly understand how that felt? She wanted to sob out that he needed her. Deep down, she knew that she endured being hit and sworn at because she felt that was what she deserved.

Even his old friends had urged her to leave him in the past few months. But how could she leave a man who shook so badly that sometimes he couldn't hold a cup or shave himself? His paranoia, his nightmares, all convinced her it was her duty to stand by him.

'I was just a kid up from Sussex with no family. He was so handsome and he knew everyone,' Camellia said at last, hoping this woman would understand. 'He looked after me. He made me feel I was somebody.'

The policewoman shook her head, an expression of bewilderment on her plump youthful face. 'But surely you must have guessed he was involved in something shady once you were living with him?' She ran her fingers through short blonde hair. 'Didn't you wonder where his money came from?'

'He told me he was a partner in the printers under his flat.' Camellia whispered the lie she had invented in readiness for this occasion. 'I thought he made deals for them. Mr Tharrup didn't charge us rent, so it seemed plausible.'

In all the time Camellia had known Dougie, the belief that he needed her and in his own way loved her was like a guiding star. She had been convinced that once they were away together, seeing the world, he would change for the better.

But now as she sat in this bare, brightly lit interview room, without anything to distract her from the truth, she saw things as they really were.

Dougie had never ached to see the Taj Mahal, or Niagara Falls. He didn't want the comfort and security of a nice home. All he wanted was to be stoned constantly, to live in a twilight world of idleness. The only reason he suggested India or Morocco was because drugs were readily available there and his money would last longer. Now faced with the organised way he had made his departure, making sure he had his drugs and money, but leaving her behind to take the flak, she couldn't even hang on to the idea that he needed her.

Inspector Spencer came back into the interview room a couple of hours later and patted her on the shoulder waking her from an exhausted sleep. 'I'm going to let you go,' he said.

'Go?' She stared at him stupidly.

'We'll get Green, I have no doubt about that.' His voice was low and stern. 'But I'm just as convinced that he won't come back for you.'

Camellia knew it too. Dougie was probably halfway to Amsterdam by now.

'But the kids in hospital?' she asked. 'How are they?'

'Fortunately for them, recovering,' he said icily.

Camellia felt a surge of relief and stood up.

'There's just a few things I want to point out,' he said, his eyes like flint. 'I know perfectly well that you aren't as innocent as you would like me to believe. But unless I'm very badly mistaken, the events of tonight have shaken you up enough for you to take stock of your life.'

Camellia nodded. She couldn't trust herself to speak.

'I'll be watching.' He waved a warning finger at her. 'If I get so much of a whisper that you're up to your old tricks again, I'll come down on you so hard you'll regret it for the rest of your life.'

He knew everything. Camellia could see it in his face. She hadn't fooled him for one minute.

"That slum of a flat will be boarded up by tonight,' he went on. 'A WPC will go with you now to get your things. Take a word of advice from me, Camellia. Find yourself a decent job, make something of yourself. Don't ever make me regret my lenience with you.'

There was more shame as the policewoman watched her pack her clothes. No one would have believed that Camellia had once kept the flat clean and tidy. Now after the raid it looked like a derelict building a few tramps had slept in. The big settee stripped of its bright Indian bedspread had stuffing oozing out of it. The mattress had huge brown stains, the shower Dougie took such pride in building was just an old cracked sink embedded in cement. In a few weeks' time even the daisies she'd stencilled on the walls in the kitchen would be crumbling away with damp.

'Where will you go, Camellia?'

Camellia looked up from her packing at the question. The day before she would have been insolent, but she was beyond that now. The policewoman's plump face held real concern.

'I'm not quite sure right now,' she said honestly. 'I think I might move right out of London. But I need time to get my head together.'