Undercover

by Bill James

  ‘But we came in together,’ Tom said.

  ‘There’s that fine argumentativeness again – refusal to take any statement or proposal glibly!’ Lambert said. He offered a congratulatory chuckle. ‘“Glibly” is not a word to be associated with Tom. I believe much has been accomplished this evening. Accord? In-depth mutual understanding?’ With a gentle movement of his arm, as though about to stroke a kitten, he put three fifties flat on the table near Tom’s empty coffee beaker. ‘This OK for fuel and, so to speak, grub?’ he said. ‘You’ll see that, as per guidance, it’s been rounded up to multiples of five.’

  The details of this procedure baffled Tom. He had not seen Lambert take the fifties from his pocket or a wallet. It was almost like a conjuror suddenly producing something out of nowhere: next, a rabbit? And the notes lay uncreased on the Formica surface, not crumpled as they would surely have been if concealed for a while in Lambert’s fist, waiting for the moment. Tom admired Lambert’s deftness. Perhaps he had done the same sort of handover often before and perfected a method. It would have appeared blatant and clumsy to fish the notes from inside his jacket or from a bill-holder. Ungraceful. Vulgar. No wonder they called these officers ‘handlers’.

  Rockmain and Lambert stood. Rockmain leaned over the table to talk reasonably quietly to Tom. Rockmain said: ‘These women, protesting about false provenance pricks trapezing up and down their skiters, were probably bullied into making a fucks-fuss by some libertarian pressure cell. Such groups proliferate. It’s an industry, Tom. But clearly, we have to take very serious and authentically respectful notice, ho-ho, while also ensuring as far as we can that the safety of undercover lads like you, Tom, and – even more vital – the future of undercover itself, are suitably preserved. To that end the women may be offered a silencer sum, a gagging douceur, by wad not traceable cheque, obviously, the fee quite possibly deserved and inevitable, given the flagrantly enlightened and sodding fair-play notions that dog us non-stop these days.’

  He and Lambert left, Rockmain ahead again, frail looking and boyish from behind, his sandals probably making a fast, flip-flap clacking on the caff carpet as he headed for the exit stairs. Tom finished eating and picked up the money. And, harvesting those three fifties from among the used crockery, Tom felt real satisfaction. Of course, he examined the notes separately and carefully. Each was new and looked brilliant, untrammelled and full of hearty promise, in splendid contrast to all this low-caste fodder debris. He could see the silver strip running through all, and the darker areas, a bit like piano keys. Near the Queen’s face glinted a rose and a medallion. These notes could not be more genuine. They were exemplary. The Queen would be proud to get her picture on such notes. Shops would take them OK. Pubs maybe not, especially if they’d been caught out by fakes earlier. No matter.

  But it wasn’t so much the money itself that pleased Tom. His attitude to it – this was what delighted him. The amount hugely and plainly exceeded his petrol costs getting here. Evidently, it came from an account subject to only the vaguest kind of auditing, if that. Although he’d bought none of the food and drink, Lambert told him to claim just the same. These fifties, and the unquestioning way Tom accepted them, showed he was seamlessly moving into a new kind of life. This thrilled him. It was on a par with his appreciation of Lambert’s graceful finger-magic with the fifties.

  At Hilston Manor there’d been psychology seminars aimed at helping future undercover people get used to grey-area thinking, authorized criminality, furtiveness, corner-cutting, consciencelessness, in the interests of the greater eventual good. Wasn’t it lovely to be freed from tedious regard for regulations and exactitudes? Collecting the fifties as a routine entitlement proved, didn’t it, that he had sound and slinky undercover potential? Hilston had said the same, but it was heartening to see himself, in an actual situation, automatically applying what he’d learned there. He even began wondering for a couple of seconds why Lambert couldn’t have rounded up the sum by fifties not fives and made it £200. Tom recalled a film, Wall Street, and the professional principles of its villain-hero, Gordon Gekko: ‘Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.’ But maybe the lack of a better word could be remedied. How about: ‘Greed is natural?’ ‘Greed is a career-builder?’ ‘Greed is necessary?’

  On the drive home, he decided he’d give the fifties to Iris as a fall-back fund to pay for Steve’s birthday present and celebration, in case Tom were unable to get time off to come home. Maybe the three of them, Steve, Laura and Iris, could go out for a Chinese meal. Putting the money towards a happy family occasion would prove – prove to himself – that nothing smelly and off-colour soiled the hundred and fifty, nothing to taint Steve’s special day. Money was money, nuff said. Tom might have drawn it from the bank. In fact, he wouldn’t have drawn the cash in fifties but in twenties and tens, because they could be more easily managed and didn’t get hassle in shops. But that was a quibble. Tom needed to demonstrate – demonstrate to himself, as before – yes, demonstrate the basic ordinariness of these notes, the normality of piping them positively aboard.

  But as he turned into their road and saw the house, some of its lights shining out from the sitting room bay window, saw also the clipped, boxy outline in the darkness of the front garden privet hedge, the radiantly correct recycle bin for tomorrow’s collection on the pavement, the shallow, cubbyhole porch, he dropped those previous ideas about use of the Howie windfall. This domestic vignette was what ordinary, normal items really looked like, surely. Perhaps something dubious about the cash threesome did exist, something he didn’t want his son linked to, even in the most roundabout, oblique way.

  Also, he thought Iris would be puzzled by the arrangement and wonder where the fifties came from. She knew Tom didn’t usually get his cash in forgery-prone, half-ton chunks, and she’d regard them as symbolic in some fashion of the changes taking place, unhealthily symbolic. He regarded them as symbolic himself, didn’t he, though not altogether unhealthily symbolic? Iris would think he already planned not to be home for Steve’s birthday.

  It turned out that while he’d been at the meeting with Rockmain and Lambert, she’d Googled ‘Undercover Policing’ and downloaded some material, mostly American. ‘A remarkable amount of it is about looking after the safety of the undercover officer,’ she said.

  ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘In a way it’s good, yes. But the fact it’s treated as so important must mean there are big risks,’ she said. ‘Pages of precautions. And justification of close relationships.’

  He could tell she’d struggled to speak about that last item. He preferred to ignore it. ‘Yes, they’re risks that have been recognized, faced up to, and can therefore be countered,’ he replied.

  ‘“Therefore.” That sounds very neat and optimistic, Tom,’ she said. ‘QED, like those geometry problems we used to do at school.’

  ‘The people who actually control and run undercover are learning, adapting, improving all the time.’

  ‘Because the risks are always there and getting worse?’ she said.

  Tom couldn’t work out whether she worried more about his safety than she did about the women an undercover officer might feel compelled to familiarize himself with as part of his cover; or the reverse.

  ‘Listen to this, Tom,’ she replied and read from a piece of A4: ‘“There are officers who have an unexplainable flair for picking out villains, and, likewise, some villains have an unexplainable flair for picking out undercover spies.”’

  ‘We’re trained to defeat that type of flair,’ he said.

  She looked at the sheet of paper again. ‘It says undercover officers can give themselves away by too much liveliness in their eyes. Druggies’ eyes look blank. How could they train you not to have lively eyes? Think dull? Think desperate? Think cold turkey?’

  TEN

  AFTER

  At around midday following the first film-show Maud said they should have a break and gave Harpur and Iles further documents, sta
tements and Press cuttings, then led them to a small conference room. It had several easy chairs and a long oak table. A buffet lunch with a bottle of claret, a bottle of Sauvignon, a jug of tap water, cutlery, glasses, plates and a corkscrew were laid out there. ‘Please read the material, help yourselves to a meal, veggie, meat or fish, yogurt desserts, and perhaps we could reassemble at half three in the cinema,’ she said. ‘Early afternoon I’m spoken for – have to interview a Chief Constable and kick him in the scrote for lassitude bordering on torpor.’

  ‘It could be any one of ten,’ Iles said. ‘Torpor would be brilliant progress in at least three of them.’

  ‘Won’t take me more than an hour,’ Maud replied.

  And it obviously didn’t. The new, three thirty session opened with a picture on the screen of what Harpur assumed to be the edge of Mitre Park, where the Volvo and career Wheels, Jamie Meldon-Luce, would have waited. As well as actual driving talent, and the skills and electronic tool-kit to crack any car’s security, a Wheels should know how to hang on and hang on for a latecomer; know how to make sure loyalty, solidarity and patience blocked out panic. This was a situationer photograph only, taken in the daytime and with no parked Volvo or any other vehicle present. The houses in the background looked markedly unshabby. Harpur came quite close to sympathizing with the residents’ rattiness at having their otherwise dandy road routinely picked for back-seat affirmations at night, with condom litter. Harpur liked suburbia – its general spruceness, customary peace and absence of starving dog packs – but he did understand that it cost a lot to run a car, and some folk thought it should earn its keep by more than only motoring. And, yes, Iles himself did like multi-purpose cars.

  Maud, in the front row again, turned to address Harpur and Iles squarely. She’d quickly learned some manners and knew now it was unwise to treat Iles like a caddy, throwing words back at him and Harpur and not bothering to look their way. She said: ‘So what we have, according to Wolsey, is Martin Abidan and Ivor scampering to the Volvo because Abidan fears massive retaliation from Scray’s gang within the gang and wants to hop it while hopping it is an option. The hunter might get hunted. Classic upending. Or that’s what Abidan tells Wolsey. Although Ivor considers this a pretty feeble and confused analysis, he believes it’s how Abidan genuinely feels. Since Abidan’s in charge of the operation, Wolsey must go with him, although he knows Empathy is liable to nerviness now and then.

  ‘They reach the Volvo and Abidan orders Jamie to exit pronto, according to the agreed drill. But, it’s not according to the agreed drill, is it? Tom Parry hasn’t shown yet. Wheels also has heard of Abidan’s occasional frailty. Jamie seems to believe fear of Scray’s troop within a troop has poisoned Abidan’s guts and judgement. Meldon-Luce decides he can’t accept a command based on funk. Maybe he’s seen a rerun of The Caine Mutiny lately on the movie channel, or even read the book, where jittery orders by the captain are ignored. To obey Empathy would run against Jamie’s deepest instincts and on-the-job training. He’s determined that Tom Parry, as they know him, is not left behind to be savaged and destroyed on his own by Scray and Scray stalwarts. I gather Jamie has a thug neck and upper body. Despite this, he is nobly gallant and old-style honourable, the cardie man.’

  ‘I can see Abidan’s thinking,’ Harpur said.

  ‘I told you Col has flairs, Maud,’ Iles said.

  ‘Adiban considers that if they get away fast there’s nothing to link him or anyone in the firm with the building-site trap for Tom,’ Harpur said. ‘He realizes the area will buzz with police as soon as the killing’s discovered, especially as Tom’s handler and controller know the victim was an embedded cop and may disclose that now. So, Abidan reasons, do a swift bunk.’

  ‘But he doesn’t have to reason, does he, Col?’ Iles said, in a mild, greasy tone, as if explaining something to a slow-witted child. ‘That would be the set plan from the outset: mock up the targeting of Scray to get Tom to a suitably terminal spot, then scarper. Job done. Reasoning’s redundant. Scray’s irrelevant. Scray’s a pretext, to be dealt with, sure, and possibly eliminated, but at some other time. Only Mart Abidan of the Volvo party knows this, though. The other two believe they’re in a sudden, unexpected crisis, because Empathy was spotted on Scray’s trail; and Scray might return with big, backup defensive-offensive firepower. Jamie considers Tom could have been delayed somehow, and those imperishable Wheels ethics say you don’t ditch a mate, leave him wheel-less, while there’s still a chance he or she might show, as scenarioed. There was no chance, but that’s hindsight, and although a Wheels on the job has a rear-view mirror he hasn’t any hindsight.’

  ‘Abidan sails near to telling them they’re wrong – wrong, that is, because he’s never given them enough truth to be right,’ Maud replied. ‘Wolsey says Abidan shouted, “He’s not coming, I tell you,” meaning Tom. “He’s not coming. Never.” The witness, Marchant, also heard these words, though too far away to see who spoke them. Ivor reports that Abidan sounded totally certain Tom would not appear, even though Empathy had supposedly mobiled him to abandon the Scray search and go straight to the Volvo for strategic withdrawal.

  ‘And, of course, Abidan was totally certain Tom would not appear, supposing the building-site murder went OK: we think he had a “Done” text from the site. But Jamie couldn’t swallow this display of certainty from Abidan. He gets out of the Volvo and says he’ll go to find Tom on foot, like, “Oh, where is my wandering boy tonight?” He’s no longer Wheels within wheels. If it’s a success they’ll call a taxi: Wheels hires wheels, instead. He urges Abidan to replace him in the Volvo and drive away, meaning, without saying it, because Jamie’s such a thorough gent, “Vamoose, Emp. Save your precious fucking poltroon skin. Oh, and, incidentally, Ivor’s skin as well.”’

  ‘It is a kind of mutiny,’ Harpur said. ‘The chauffeur’s giving commands.’

  ‘And the commands add up to, “Get lost, you shit-faced wreck,”’ Maud said.

  ‘Harpur doesn’t mind foul language from middle-class, educated women,’ Iles said. ‘He sees it as part of emancipation. They – you, Maud – should be allowed to talk like guttersnipes. Think how feeble that statement would be if you had to say “faecesed-faced wreck”, despite the alliteration.’

  ‘It looks as though Abidan could smell the contempt in Jamie’s words, and they push him towards a kind of assertive frenzy,’ Maud replied. ‘But he’s still set on getting out. Maybe he’d been cast-iron briefed by bossman Leo Young to quit the area fast, dodging any connection with the murder. So, anyway, Abidan does what Jamie suggested. He takes the wheel. Wolsey’s with him in the passenger seat.’

  ‘And the assertive frenzy reaches the driving?’ Harpur asked.

  ‘It’s as if what Jamie Meldon-Luce said to him makes Empathy loathe his own behaviour – abandoning a mate. There’s still a touch of loyalty and courage in Abidan.’

  ‘Apparently abandoning a mate,’ Harpur said. ‘The mate’s dead.’

  ‘Apparently abandoning, yes,’ she said. ‘But Jamie’s scorn hurts, just the same. So Empathy drives in a flashy, risk-taking, derring-do, foolhardy style to prove he’s no craven creep. He’s proving it only to Wolsey, because Jamie’s been left behind doing the on-hoof, selfless bit, and Empathy doesn’t really need to prove it to himself because he knows, of course, that this seeming withdrawal from the Scray chase is pre-schemed tactics, not cowardice. I think he prized Wolsey’s good opinion, longed to maintain it. Ivor is someone who by will and determination changed himself from a firearms failure into a wonderful marksman. This was outstanding mental robustness. And paragon Ivor mustn’t be allowed to think he’s present at an entire collapse of will and determination in Martin Abidan, a top man in the firm and supposed to offer leadership.

  ‘You’ll have seen from the additional, over-lunch papers that Wolsey says he was yelling at Empathy to cut speed. This would most likely gratify Mart, given his state of mind. He’d imagine he appeared dauntless, indomitable. Ivor Wolsey’s shou
ting was probably before the accident. Maybe after that he wants to speed an exit as much as Abidan does. Conceivably, Wolsey would have been shocked into silence.’

  ‘The car wholly out of control for those minutes?’ Harpur said.

  ‘As you’ll have read, some witnesses thought a driver’s heart attack. You’ll have read, too, that the Volvo mounted the pavement at what might be over sixty miles per hour and smashed into the three girls from behind – three young women, out on the town and walking towards the Panaché club: two killed instantly, the other wheel-chaired and near blind for life. One bystander thought the hit deliberate, didn’t he – the Volvo aimed specifically at the three, as if a vengeance attack? That was obviously not so, but it shows how horrific the bump looked. Abidan doesn’t stop – daren’t stop – but gets back on to the road and makes for the switch vehicle. They reach there without more trouble and do the change.’

  Maud brought another situationer picture on to the screen, Pallindone Lane, the swap location, though now without the Volvo and Ford Focus. ‘There are witnesses to this car shuffle, also, as you’ll know. The front of the Volvo is damaged and marked, headlights bloodied. It’s conspicuous – has obviously been involved in something bad. People watching the move from one car to the other would be on to the police at once. Wolsey doesn’t say so, but there may have been a tussle about who’ll drive the Ford. That would get added attention from people in the street. Alternatively, Abidan might have been played out, exhausted by then, and so did what Wolsey told him to do: quit the driving seat. Anyway, the nine nine nine calls would have gone out, and a couple of squad cars stop the Ford only a few miles away. Abidan and Wolsey are arrested, Wolsey driving.’

  Harpur said: ‘The trial transcript, as I read it, doesn’t make any connection with the building-site murder.’

  ‘There is no connection, Col,’ Iles said, in that same sickeningly helpful voice. ‘Not that that’s known to anyone but Abidan and, presumably, his master, and they don’t talk.’