Deals as Tube commuters look on

To the hundreds of shoppers out buying Christmas presents, the young man with a crutch would have immediately attracted sympathy. But had they known the truth, that the injury was a fake and the crutch a cover for drug dealing, they would have felt very differently.

The young man with the crutch was watched by our reporter for several days, hanging around with a small group of people on a busy street corner at the exit of Tottenham Court Road station. There he was seen selling drugs at the astonishing rate of more than one deal every 10 minutes.

Although the dealer carried a crutch, he did not use it to help him walk. Inside the crutch, it seemed clear, was cash and drugs. At one point one of his grey-haired associates approached the group and took the dealer with the crutch into a subway. They both walked down the steps with ease. And when they trotted up a few minutes later the older associate held the crutch. There wasn't a limp in sight. The crutch had been successfully used to shield money and drugs from the public and police.

The unusual transaction took place just outside the station as business people and shoppers - heading for the discount electrical shops for which the road is better known - passed by, oblivious to what was occurring in their midst.

The same group of five or six people were observed over three days, coming and going and selling whenever a client appeared. Their business techniques were mostly clever and quick, with some deals carried out in the dark alleyways nearby. But the vast majority were done in broad daylight, almost by sleight of hand.

Usually, a few words were exchanged between dealer and user, as both parties shot glances around them. Several times, hands slipped into inside pockets as if to retrieve a mobile phone or wallet. What looked like a quick handshake followed and the deal was done.

On another occasion a dealer pulled out an open cigarette box and appeared to offer a cigarette to her client. The small package pulled out of the box was clearly not conventional smoking material.

Later, five or six people gathered in a tight circle after a buyer approached. While most of them looked around, the junkie and the dealer each shot out a hand and the sale was made.

In the network of alleyways surrounding the station, users can then shoot up in relative privacy. Early in the morning syringes, needles, methadone bottles, plastic needle covers and five empty glue pots were on the ground, even though the passages are cleaned early each day. Just how thoroughly they are cleaned became clear later, once a day's dealing and dragon-chasing had been done, when there were hundreds of bits of drugtaking kit around.

Every morning before 6am the subway is hosed down and disinfected. But at 7am the stench of urine and human waste still hangs in the air. There is still evidence of drugtaking: syringes and milk containers. Methadone is very hard on the stomach and milk helps counter its acidity.

Frustrated residents and shopkeepers told of junkies shooting up in phoneboxes or in one of the nearby bookshops as well as doing deals in local stores. One businessman, afraid to have his name published, has watched the dealers from his office for more than 15 years. He told the Standard addicts and dealers were there when he arrived and only their faces have changed.

"We got the police in once because two were shooting up in the yard behind the office. They had their trousers down and were injecting in their legs. It was disgusting," he said.

"They go down their alleys to do it. It's just vile but if they go from here they will only do it somewhere else. I can't understand why the police don't just arrest the dealers, they are the evil ones. We used to see a man on a bike turn up every day at three o'clock on the dot with a plastic bag full of stuff and stand and sell it. It was unbelievable."

He added: "What happens first thing in the morning is very, very sad. There are people asleep in the subway and there is urine everywhere. The addicts look like the living dead, so pale and drawn. You just know some of them will not make it through the winter.

"In a decent society you should not be able to find 15-year-old girls with babies out there, but they are there. It is horrific. What is going to happen to those children?"