Harry left messages for Ronnie Clavin in pubs, clubs and snooker rooms all over Greenwich borough to no avail. He finally found him in person six hours later nursing a large malt at the Liberal Club in Charlton Church Lane. When he passed on Buck’s message the colour drained from Ronnie’s face. He nodded and asked Harry to go. Harry didn’t see Ronnie again until the following Thursday, and by then he was in hospital.
HOW IT WAS
Three months earlier: it was the oddest picture that Limp-wrist Larry Steinmetz, the rampantly gay Bristol police college photographer, had ever been asked to take. Nine detectives, four female and five male, were lined up in front of him with their backs to the camera.
‘Now,’ said Limp-wrist. ‘Should I tell you to say cheese or just ask you to cut it?’
The Americanism was lost on DI Holmes, who looked on nervously. ‘Please don’t let any of them decide to moon the camera,’ the DI muttered as Limp-wrist fussed about making sure not one of the ensemble’s faces could be seen.
With such a distinguished surname, the young Holmes was always going to be attracted to detective work. In his early days he had hoped to earn the nickname ‘Sherlock’, but inevitably, given his genial manner and remarkable physical resemblance to Russ Abbot, he had become known affectionately to all and sundry as Barrett.
From the windows above he could hear the ‘trainee bell-heads’ – uniform probationer constables – jokingly speculate about who this mixed group of strangers could be.
‘Muppets’, ‘Wurzels’ and ‘The Wild Bunch’ were some of the kinder comments that wafted down. The odd muttered ‘faggot’ was almost certainly aimed at Limp-wrist, who relished the attention and had dressed to impress in a duck blue suede jacket, white roll-neck jumper and leather trousers so tight that they left less to the imagination than a Ron Jeremy porn movie.
‘Look at them leather pants! Mr Magoo could make out his religion, already,’ joked one cop.
‘Say cheese!’ another cop shouted camply.
‘Knob cheese!’ a third man oafishly guffawed.
‘Larry’s got half a lob-on,’ said the first cop again. ‘If he doesn’t get this shot soon, Chernobyl won’t be the only thing in meltdown.’
Even Holmes smiled at that one. Another heckler yelled, ‘Tell ’im to give his Botox a polish, Barrett,’ but the DI pretended not to hear. He could understand why the probationers were so fascinated by their mysterious colleagues. What branch of the service could possibly employ such a motley crew? One man was clearly from the Bob Geldof school of personal hygiene. Long matted hair. Bearded. Pungent. Revolting. The chap hadn’t washed since he got there, wore clothes Michael Foot would think scruffy, and screeched out of the college gates most nights on a Harley Davidson with sulphurous fumes belching from its knackered exhaust.
‘That cunt wants hosing down.’
‘He ain’t seen a bath since the vicar ducked him in the font.’
‘And I bet he left a ring round that.’
Another guy was eighteen stone, bald, black and built like a nightclub bouncer. ‘Oi, Mr T, does Hannibal know you’re moonlighting down here?’ shouted one bold bell-head.
‘Hey, Limp-wrist,’ hollered another. ‘Is this the closest you’ve ever got to a black mass?’
Inevitably a woman got the most stick – blonde Denise Watts, who was more top-heavy than Sam Fox in a centrifuge.
‘She’ll never drown in a swimming pool,’ cackled one young observer.
‘Fuck the pool, let’s see her on a trampoline,’ quipped his pal.
‘If they fall out of her blouse, they could have Larry’s eye out.’
‘Here, titty, titty, titty …’
Holmes tutted. It was like working on a building site. But he was relieved that the young probationers had no idea what was going on here. Undercover police infiltration remained a well-kept secret. Despite major successes against some of Britain’s leading organised crime gangs, top-drawer villains were still being caught on the toilet with their trousers around their ankles. Why? That was simple: when the cases came to court, the police were not yet compelled to disclose to the defence that ‘the one who got away’ was undercover Old Bill.
UC operatives, trained here and known as the Dream Factory team, were a logical response to a drug-fuelled crime wave that was fast turning tidal. Not that you’d know it from their budgets. The dinosaurs who controlled police purse strings could not quite get their heads around the new game of infiltration. UC operations were tolerated rather than encouraged. Many officers of senior rank felt it just wasn’t cricket. They didn’t like to acknowledge that the game had changed and it wasn’t George Dixon versus the Lavender Hill Mob out there any more. Yet it was becoming ever harder even for them to cling on to the old comforting belief that drug culture was safely confined to a few poverty-blighted urban pockets. It was bad, and it was nationwide. And the sheer tonnage of powder and pills recovered by UC operatives in the last twelve months, along with high-value stolen goods, counterfeit currency and firearms, proved it beyond question. Crime in the 1980s was increasingly about supplying a growing and ravenous demand for drugs, and by turning a blind eye to it for so many years the police establishment had allowed a new aristocracy of law-breakers to flourish. Britain’s drug-peddling criminal elite were richer, more ruthless and far more successful than Al Capone, Bugs Moran, Johnny Torrio, the Gennas, the O’Banions or any other of the organised mobs whose growth was rooted in the fertile soil of the Prohibition years in 1920s America.
Alerted by a cough behind him, DI Holmes turned to warmly greet his DCI, thanking his lucky stars that the small band of heroes had resisted the urge to drop their trousers. He turned back to see nine bare arses pointed towards Limp-wrist Larry’s zoom lens. ‘Full moon tonight then, Barrett,’ the DCI said with a wan smile, before turning on his heels and walking away.
Down in the courtyard, the ponytailed Harry Dean smiled as Limp-wrist gave his instructions in a voice that screamed theatrical queen: ‘OK, put your right hand on the left cheek of the person to your right. That’s it, dear. Now, you on the end, put your right hand on your hips.’ This was clearly a shot for his private collection.
‘Are you sure you don’t want it mounted, mate?’ grumbled Warren Walker, the black UC officer, in a heavy Midlands accent.
‘No,’ quipped Harry Dean. ‘But he’ll help you to get it enlarged.’
‘Easy, tiger.’ Limp-wrist laughed. ‘You’ll make Mr Holmes jealous. Now, everyone touching …?’
Harry glanced sideways to his right at brunette Rachel Freeman, a flirty, loud-mouthed Mancunian detective from the Avon and Somerset force. She wasn’t bad looking but she never shut up. What Rachel didn’t know about anything wasn’t worth knowing – well, according to her, that was. She had turned on Harry in their first week for eating his favourite breakfast – two fried bangers in a crusty roll, smothered in brown sauce and spread with so much butter that it dripped from the sides as it melted.
‘Lips and arseholes, that’s what sausages are,’ she had said before setting off on an uninvited rant about the perils of cholesterol and animal fat.
Rachel Freeman, Harry thought: no opinion unexpressed, no prick unteased. She’d been out with two of the five blokes in the line-up since they’d got here, but neither of them had got past first base with her. Harry put his hand on her plump little bottom and squeezed it gingerly, hoping she wouldn’t bite. There had to be teeth down there somewhere, she was always talking out of it. Yeah, lips and arseholes, all right.
Harry Aaron Dean was 27. Born in Colchester, Essex, he had grown up poor but proud on a Romford council estate and drifted into the Essex police seven years before on the advice of his former father-in-law, a tough retired cop. The force served Harry better than the marriage. Dawn had run off with the six-foot-two physical training officer next door. Harry’s world fell apart the day he came home to the ‘Dear John’ letter on the kitchen table. She still loved him, she said, but she never saw him. She n
eeded more. That’s where Harry had gone wrong, see, doing all that overtime to try and buy the bitch a better fucking lifestyle – the nicer house, the holidays in Benidorm and Majorca.
He didn’t tell anyone how much Dawn had mangled his insides. Who could he tell? His parents were dead, he had no siblings, he had never let anyone get close enough to become bosom buddies and it wasn’t exactly the kind of thing you chatted about in the canteen at the nick. So Harry bottled it all up. He never let the pain show; and he never gave all of himself to anyone again.
It’s surprising how quickly a broken heart heals up when you’ve got something to live for. Dawn left him in the February of 1985, the year Harry transferred into the CID after six years in uniform. A move to the Essex wing of the Regional Crime Squad followed swiftly as he threw himself into detective work. Harry was a natural thief-taker. His assured manner and innate gift of the gab helped him move with ease in the criminal underworld. He relished the shady demi-monde of strippers, drippers, bent publicans and snouts. This was his turf, this other Britain – a world of lock-ins, lock-ups and unlicensed brawls. And Harry notched up more felt collars than a Savile Row tailor. His superior officers recognised his natural abilities. Who better to send on the undercover course at Bristol?
So Harry and his fellow maverick gladiators went through four hard months of training. They were taught tactics and psychology, how to bluff and double bluff, how to deflect suspicion and get inside the heads of their prey. Their job was to bring on the parcel and make sure the top men on the firm they were targeting were caught ‘hands-on’ with the illicit merchandise. But you couldn’t incite a criminal to commit a crime he would not have committed if it weren’t for you urging him to do so. That was the cardinal rule – ‘the prime directive’ as they called it, Captain Kirk-style. The pitfalls were plentiful, the consequences of any mistake plainly life-threatening. And if the course were mentally and physically draining, the nine knew that it would be nothing compared to the challenge of the real job to come.
Studying was especially tough for Harry Dean because he had been placed in the smaller group with Rachel and his initial dislike of the woman was confirmed by her incessant chatter. He had sat next to her once in the canteen and paid a terrible price.
‘Why can’t they do summat healthy?’ she’d moaned as he tucked into a plate of ham, egg and chips. ‘I would kill for a bowl of broccoli soup, y’know? I’m trying t’stay clear of stuff like bread ’cos I was right poorly a while back and this fella in t’health shop said I should cut down on my wheat intake. But as a vegetarian that’s tough. I don’t want to turn into one of those foodie weirdos. Can I pinch one of your chips? Can I dip it in the sauce …?’ And so she had gone on for the entire dinner break. Verbal diarrhoea didn’t come into it. The woman would give an aspirin a headache. It was a mark of how good Harry was going to be at submerging his true feelings that nobody in the group even remotely suspected that he found her as irritating as thrush.
For her part Rachel took Harry’s polite coldness as a sign of hidden depths. He was a good-looking guy, a little over six feet tall with blue eyes and dark brown hair. He was fit and muscular, clearly with something promising in the trouser department. He dressed well, he was funny, wore no wedding ring and hadn’t made a single attempt to chat her up since they had arrived. That made him a challenge, and on their last night at Bristol, after six hours of serious drinking, Rachel Freeman engineered a situation where she and Harry were alone. Jeremy Tyler, the biker, had the hots for the busty blonde Denise Watts, the top-heavy temptress from Torbay. Inevitably she was known as ‘Dirty Den’ because of the character in BBC1’s new hit soap EastEnders; although, as Jeremy was to discover, the nickname was a triumph of hope over reality. ‘She just lay on that bed like a corpse,’ he had moaned to Harry the next day. ‘I might as well have been sticking my dick in a plate of cold suet.’
Jeremy had brought Harry along as back-up and so it was that all four of them ended up back at Rachel’s digs, until the Northern lass tipped Denise the wink and she scooted Jeremy away. Harry made a half-hearted attempt to leave but it was late and besides, he had started to get a taste for Rachel’s brandy. As she saw the others out, Harry went for a slash. There was nothing wrong with the toilet, but it amused him to use the sink instead and then clear up the splashes with her flannel. Coming back, Harry noticed that Rachel’s bedroom door was opened so he stuck his head inside for a quick shufti: no cuddly toys – she wasn’t the type – but there was a Man City scarf over the headboard, a Prince poster on the wall, and a picture of her and presumably a sister on the bedside table.
‘So what are you, Harry chuck, forward or just nosey?’
Shit. He hadn’t meant to get caught.
‘That Prince is some kind of ponce,’ he said, hoping to provoke a row. He’d wanted to ruck her since day one. Rachel changed the subject.
‘Let’s not kid around – you know you want me,’ she said, stepping into the room and shutting the bedroom door behind her.
‘Do I?’
‘Oh yeah.’
‘I think I’d better go …’
‘Sure you will. What’s the score then, pretend you’re not interested then go home and wank about what might have been?’
Ordinarily Harry would have walked away, but he was smashed, his resistance worn down by duty-free Courvoisier. He could feel his distaste for the woman battling with pure lust – and, as he hadn’t had a shag for weeks, the lust won hands down. He smiled. Rachel came at him like a predator, eyes blazing, mouth open. Harry kissed her roughly. Too roughly. He was hurting her; he knew it but made no attempt to stop. Oddly, his aggression seemed to turn her on. Rachel pushed against him, relishing his hardness. She reached down and grabbed him through the crotch of his Farah slacks, just as the sound of Ashford and Simpson drifted in from the other room: ‘Solid! Solid as a rock.’ That made them both laugh.
‘Fuck me,’ she said, barking out the words like an order. But Harry had other ideas. He wanted her to suck him before he gave the dog a bone. He unzipped his fly and urgently pressed her head in the right direction. ‘Right, cock,’ she giggled drunkenly. ‘I’m munchin’ on yer truncheon. But don’t come in my mouth, all right? And tell me if I hurt you with me teeth, I’m not very good at this …’
Shut the fuck up!
‘Shhh. Go on, you’ll be fine.’
She took him greedily. Harry looked down at her as her head bobbed away industriously. Finally he had silenced the voice of the North.
He came in her mouth deliberately, but apologised and blamed the drink. They made love violently three times that night, and woke up covered in bites and bruises. Rachel was flat-chested with large areolae and dark, prominent nipples which looked like Eartha Kitt’s face in the morning half-light and which sprang to attention at the slightest touch. This amused Harry no end. He could start to like her, he thought. But when the alarm went off she was straight up and out of the bed with her tongue in overdrive and he realised he couldn’t.
‘Do you think I’d look good with me hair in a bob?’
Not as good as you would with your head in a noose, he thought. Jesus. What was wrong with the woman? Harry skipped breakfast in favour of a mug of sweet black coffee, which he downed mechanically as Rachel munched on raw carrots. As he left she gave him her phone number – ‘Ring me, ya bastard, you know you will.’ Harry screwed it up and chucked it as soon as they had parted. He was a bastard, that much was true, but what did she expect? Lovey-dovey phone calls and chats about Elsie Tanner, alfalfa and muesli? Fuck that. He didn’t have time for that shit. His mind was already racing.
Before Harry could get involved in his first operation, he knew that he and all the other UC graduates would have to serve a testing apprenticeship. They would be put out into shady corners of the real world for six to nine months in order to create a new, criminal identity. Most of the group chose not to use their real Christian names but Harry was a Harry, there was no getting away fr
om that. Besides, Harry, H, Hal … it had a real street ring about it. It was a name you could associate with a gangster, a hard man, a trader. A name you could trust.
But Harry who? Harry had got on well with Jeremy Tyler. He’d called him ‘Tark’, short for Tarquin, because Jeremy had been educated at Dulwich College, a minor public school in South London, but Harry’s ingrained class prejudice didn’t blind him to Tyler’s considerable talents. He was an exceptionally gifted detective constable from Thames Valley police who had an outstanding working knowledge of the arts and antiques. He could skipper his own yacht and held a full pilot’s licence. Jeremy was as different from Harry as you could get, so it appealed to the Essex boy’s sense of fun to appropriate his name. At the end of the course, he became Harry Tyler, and soon he had the paperwork to prove it. Each officer was given a starter pack to back up their new personas. Harry’s came in an oxblood-coloured briefcase with two gold-plated combination locks. He set the left lock at 999 and the right one at 814 – numbers which corresponded with his real initials H.A.D. Many crooks were going to be.
Many Rachels too.
INTO THE VALLEY
Through a villainous friend of a villainous friend, an established UC had managed to feed Harry into Ronnie Clavin’s scrapyard in Madison Gardens, Charlton, London SE7; close enough to the Thames to be able to ‘hit the lapping water with a gob full of phlegm’, as Ronnie so poetically put it. The sole holder of Valley Metals was a burly 52-year-old with a greasy complexion whose perennial off-white string vest stretched tightly across two disturbingly developed man breasts. It was a small yard with an even smaller breeze-block office. The tin-roofed building was just about big enough to contain a desk, two chairs, a filing cabinet, a kettle, a cat called Mandy and a dog called Brandy, so ugly that Harry swore her arse backed away when she tried to lick it. A poster of topless Page Three beauty Christine Peake was blu-tacked to the wall above Ronnie’s head, next to a framed, autographed picture of the legendary Charlton Athletic player Derek ‘Gypo’ Hales. The yard had been in the Clavin family for sixty years. Ronnie habitually described it as ‘big enough to unload two trailers’, by which he meant two lorry-loads of stolen – ‘halfinched’ – gear.
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