That morning I made twenty rounds of tea between bouts of ‘administrative’ work while they sat around regaling each other with tales of their bravery and the times when they had narrowly and heroically escaped death through relying purely on their wits. It became quickly obvious to me that the fastest way to gain their respect was to administer some sort of violence.
And the next day the routine was the same: round upon round of tea and toast and having to listen to their misogynistic and snide comments. But my grandmother had taught me, when you live in a lake you don’t antagonize the crocodiles.
I was determined to stick it out and live in that infested lake. They were not going to break me. I was there for a reason and all those thinly veiled attempts to provoke me were not going to get a rise out of me. Although the atmosphere was macho, intimidating, and openly contemptuous of the rest of the police force, these men thought of themselves as the elite: I had not been brought there to make endless cups of tea. I knew I had something important they wanted. I was the mouse they needed to catch a lion. Let them have their fun until then.
On day five, Robin, one of the marginally nicer guys, stopped by my table where I was knee-deep in their antiquated filing system that still used paper receipts.
‘Want to go out with us tomorrow?’ he asked.
Going out with inarguably the most ignorant bunch of men I had ever had the misfortune to meet was not the most appealing offer I could think of, and there was also the distinct possibility that this was a means to humiliate me in public, but… ‘Sure,’ I said softly. ‘Where are you guys going?’
‘To a crack house.’
I smiled for the first time since I had come to SO10. ‘Yeah, I do. I definitely do.’
‘Great. Briefing is at eleven. You’ll be going as a crack whore. So don’t wash your hair and bring slutty clothes and skanky shoes with you.’
I nodded happily.
Finally!
FOUR
‘Just relax. If it all goes pear-shaped a vanload of big guys in riot gear will rush in,’ Robin said, while Federica, another undercover agent, expertly applied stage paint to make me look like a junkie.
I nodded, unable to stop staring at him. A very experienced ex TPO, he had incredibly transformed himself into a convincingly sad addict with a pasty face, bags under his eyes, greasy ropes for hair, fake ear and nose piercings, grimy nails, and stained clothes and shoes.
In a little hand-held mirror I watched Federica blacken my front teeth and paint a disgusting sore on one side of my mouth. When she was finished I stood still in a faux leather miniskirt, a purple Lycra tube top and cheap stilettos with heels that I had deliberately scuffed, while Jason fitted my ‘technical’ (body-worn recording equipment): an Apple iPod that had been equipped with a tiny camera and monitoring device that would allow the monitoring team to see and hear what was being said.
‘Here,’ Robin said, and gave me a battered packet of cigarettes. I unzipped my bag and put the packet into it.
‘Rinse your mouth out with this,’ Federica said holding out a bottle of red wine. I took it and swallowed a mouthful. Pure vinegar. Robin took it off me and glugged it down as if it was water.
‘Ready?’ he asked.
‘Ready,’ I said, shrugging into a filthy, fur-trimmed hooded parka. We got into a battered brown Renault and Jason drove us to the crack house. I sat in the back seat and mentally prepared myself for the unknown. I was going behind the locked doors of a real crack den to see the lost souls inside it.
It was two in the afternoon and the street was dead quiet. It was quite a nice area, actually. I wondered what the neighbors must think of having a crack den right in their midst.
Robin swiveled his head to look at me. ‘Remember, the back door is welded shut, so don’t ever make for it in an emergency.’
‘I’ll remember,’ I said nervously.
He thumped a few times on the door and a black, well-built, twenty-something man with suspicious, darting eyes opened it. In his hand was a large hammer. This was not Robin’s first time and the man—his name was Samson—touched fists with him and opened the door wider. I flashed Samson a quick smile, which was not returned, and totally ill at ease followed Robin and Federica into a darkened hallway.
‘When is he coming, bruv?’ Robin asked.
‘Soon, man,’ Samson said with a Jamaican accent. ‘Soon.’
Behind me I heard three heavy bolts slide shut.
For better or worse we were locked in with a man called Samson who was armed with a large hammer. Samson told Robin that the dealer had not arrived and that everybody was still waiting for him. He led the way to the living room, an awful room. There was neither furniture nor curtains. The windows were shrouded with moth-eaten blankets.
Crammed into that dim, smoky space were dozens of junkies leaning against the walls and sitting close together talking quietly. But from the flare when someone lit a cigarette or a crack pipe I saw the vacant desperation on all their faces. Humans of every race and age had been reduced to creatures that were beyond pitiful.
Their degradation and devastation was unbelievable. They were living corpses. Their stench couldn’t be described. You had to experience it to believe the rotten reek of the accumulated weeping of the human body; blood, sweat, oil, urine; and dirt, layers upon layers of fetid filth.
It was intolerable.
There was also a great restlessness about them that made them appear to be a heaving mass united by a single all-consuming purpose. To score. They were all here for smack or crack.
Suddenly, fear gripped me that just as I could smell them, they could smell me. I felt wild-eyed with paranoia. Federica fitted her hand over mine and squeezed. I knew what it meant. Calm down.
I pressed her hand. I hear you.
Federica led me to a corner and we sat on the bare, dirty floor. I was glad to do so—my knees were shaking. I could not comprehend the utter wreck of the humanity around me. For a second I thought of Luke, the spoon on his coffee table, the rubber rope fallen on the floor, and the old tree of my sorrow shed a few leaves, but I pushed the thoughts away.
Not now, Lily Strom. Not now.
After a few minutes I came to realize that there was no talk of family or hobbies or work. Nothing. Just drugs. The only topic of conversation was about gear—they spoke about it endlessly. It was the only thing they lived for. And everybody’s main preoccupation was to know when the dealer would be arriving. Every once in a while someone would ask, ‘When’s he coming?’ and the answer was always, ‘Soon, man, soon.’ I felt incredibly sorry for them, for their wasted lives. I thought of their parents and their sisters and maybe even their children.
Every few minutes more junkies knocked on the door. The place became more and more packed.
A gaunt man and his friend turned to me.
‘Where you from, girl?’ he asked.
It was only junkie small talk. Who were we? How did we hear about the house? The kind of thing that Robin had already briefed me I might be asked, but I was terrified I would slip up, or my accent would sound too forced and fake. So I started to pretend to be suffering from withdrawal systems, twitching, jerking, pulling faces and looking generally unwell, or I bit my nails furiously.
Federica fielded their questions expertly.
‘Soon’ turned out to be hours. I was exhausted from pretending to be in withdrawal. The longer I remained in that room the more anxious and worried I became. Finally, Samson announced that the dealer was five minutes away. The room became charged with an electric excitement; the mass began to prepare for its feast of delight.
Then a whisper spread like wildfire. ‘He’s here. He’s here.’ And everybody scrambled up from their sitting positions. Ready.
We heard the three bolts slide back, and the door opened.
The dealer, a strutting East Ender, in a Nike tracksuit, came with two minions. They immediately started dishing out the drugs to the addicts who had the presence of mind to line up a
s if they were in a supermarket queue. But some of them were so desperate by then that they lit up or stood against the walls shooting the drug into their veins instantly. Standing in the queue I gazed at one boy, high as a kite, bent from the waist swaying like a plant in the wind. Robin, Federica and I produced our crumpled tenners and got our little rocks of crack.
When it was my turn the minion looked directly into my eyes and my throat constricted. An Eastern European boy. He couldn’t have been more than nineteen. I held out my two tenners.
‘One of each, please.’
I noticed the notes were trembling, but he snatched them from me, and gave me a tiny white rock (crack) wrapped in white plastic and a small brown rock (heroin) in blue plastic. I closed my fingers around them and… Suddenly all hell broke loose.
The riot boys were coming in. The door imploded with an enormous crash at the same time as the windows were being smashed to smithereens. To the sound of splintering glass they were pouring in screaming, ‘Police, police,’ ordering everyone to, ‘Show your hand.’
It was like being caught in a tornado. I had never seen anything like it before. Helmeted, flameproof balaclavas and massive in their heavy-duty uniform, some were wearing glass suits (special material that protected them when they climbed windows full of glass splinters). They mowed into the gaunt addicts, screaming, ‘Get on the fucking floor. Now.’ And beating them with batons. The poor junkies! The war on drugs was total crap! A political sleight of hand.
Both the drug dealer and I had frozen in terror. He looked at me—his eyes were wide with fear. In that second I realized that he was no tough kingpin, but a frightened little boy who was as much a victim as the desperados he served. The small-time drug dealers were just as vulnerable and in need of real help as the addicts were. He, me, Luke we were all victims. At that moment: did he know? Who I was?
Then he was running to flush the drugs. He didn’t know Federica had already blocked the toilet. He ran straight into a beefy figure in black. One second after he was pushed face first into a wall. I was toppled. A large officer pressed my face into the ground and I felt the grit and the dirt from the filthy floor scrape into my skin. The two rocks in my hand fell out.
The cuffs were on me in seconds. ‘You’re nicked. Possession of Class A drugs,’ the officer gleefully proclaimed.
‘Just do exactly as you are told,’ Federica muttered under her breath next to me.
I went limp.
Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, it was all under control. They had completely trashed the place and everybody was in cuffs. Incredibly, it had all lasted only seconds.
I could see Robin play-acting, calling the cops ‘cunts’, and Federica was yelling abuse in Italian, but I could also see that they were high on the adrenalin of a successful bust-up. Of knowing they had closed down another despicable crack house. I knew I should have felt the same, but I was too much in shock. I could not forget the look in the drug dealer’s eyes. None of those arrested would be given the help that they desperately needed, and were too ill to obtain themselves. They would simply be holed up somewhere for some time and then released, and the whole cycle would repeat again. This was a war where there would be no winners, only ‘good’ crime figures, praise from superiors, and more funding for the drug squad.
Out through the smashed door I staggered in the bright light of the afternoon. I could have wept from the relief of the light. I took deep gulps of fresh air and turned my face upwards as if in prayer. For a few seconds my soul blossomed and then I was roughly uprooted as if I was no more than a dandelion that does not belong and pushed into a waiting drug squad car. I looked out of the window and saw that neighbors had gathered to watch. One of them met my eyes. There was no pity or compassion, only condemnation and disgust in her face. I was just another junkie fouling up her neighborhood.
I turned to the arresting officer. ‘I’m a cop. I’m a UCO.’ It ran hollow. So hollow it echoed in my brain.
And so hollow the cop said sarcastically, ‘No doubt.’
I said nothing else until Robin came to get me at the local police station where we had been taken.
‘We got them,’ he said, still buzzing.
‘And you were great,’ Federica added. She looked elated.
I was too shocked and shaken to reply. I felt my lip start trembling and tears welling up behind my eyes, but somehow, I clenched my teeth, swallowed my emotions and put on a brave face. I realized that both of them had known that it was not going to be a simple test purchase exercise. It was a full-blown bust-up, but they had not informed me because it had been a test of sorts.
I was not going to fail by falling apart.
I wanted their report to note that I was strong.
That I was the mouse to catch a lion.
FIVE
The next morning I stood in DS Dickie Mills’ spartan office. He used to be a UCO—for many years. Now he was top brass running the Met’s covert ops program together with five other undercover officers. He drove a 7 Series BMW and was unashamedly and brazenly tough as nails.
He was wearing a gray Armani polo neck, cream trousers with knife edge creases, and Prada loafers. When he rested his palms on the edge of his desk his gold Rolex peeked through.
‘There’s an undercover course in two days’ time. I want you on it.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Get the details from Robin.’
‘Yes, sir,’ I responded confidently.
‘That will be all.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Come and see me after… If you pass.’
The undercover course, held at Hendon Training Centre, turned out to be a two-week long, bloody hard training session packed with interrogations, role-plays, cameos, pretend UC operations in real time, psychometric tests, psychological evaluations, and a final interview with cold-eyed UC officers.
There were twelve of us on the course. If I had thought my Police Academy training was a means of sucking the recruits’ individuality out and brainwashing them to unquestioningly obey the chain of authority at all times, then the undercover course was breaking down and hardwiring recruits on steroids.
For two weeks we were kept tired, stressed and disorientated with an incredibly intensive schedule and lack of sleep. Once I went to bed at 5.30 a.m. and had to be back in the classroom at 8.00 a.m. Our tutors frequently subjected us to abuse and degrading names. One even called me a cunt. Three students were simply arbitrarily dismissed and we never saw them again. Two broke down in tears and left.
We were expected, in fact compelled, to drink until the early morning hours with the staff and sometimes with the role-play carried on throughout the night to see if we could keep our created personas when we were drunk. Even the weekends brought no respite—we were given tasks that necessitated us traveling all over London and finishing at midnight.
My first time in the interrogation chair left me a shaking mess. I was supposed to take on the persona of a runaway turned stripper who dabbled in drugs and was looking for a job in a lap dancing joint. Tensely, I took the chair and perched on the end of it nervously. They began.
First they lulled you into a sense of false confidence by asking simple questions. With me it was the kind of drugs I had taken.
Easy. I felt myself relax.
Then they asked me for the street prices of those drugs.
I sailed through those.
Then they asked about the last hostel I had stayed in.
I was prepared. I told them.
‘What street is it on?’
I swallowed. I knew that. I had memorized it. But my mind was a blank.
‘Is it the one near Aldi supermarket?’ one of them asked, his eyes gleaming, sensing weakness.
I floundered. I had absolutely no idea. ‘I’m not sure. I didn’t go out much,’ I evaded. Black thoughts swirled in my head. After all this, I was not going to pass, after all. I felt so bad the tears pricked at the backs of my eyes, but crying, I kne
w, would only make them jeer and hound me mercilessly. I had seen them heap abuse on others for crying. I bit my lip hard and looked them in the eye.
‘So who was running the hostel that year, then?’
Oh shit. ‘I… I’ve forgotten,’ I stammered.
‘This is fucking bullshit,’ he roared.
‘Load of old bollocks,’ the other interrogator agreed, fixing me with a mean stare.
I was falling apart inside, but I kept my face calm. ‘Look, I didn’t want to say this before, but when I was in that hostel I was a total wreck. I took so many drugs I didn’t know whether I was coming or going,’ I said in a contrite tone of someone confessing.
I batted more questions. By the time I rejoined the others I was shaking with nerves and exhilaration. The fuckers had not broken me down.
By the end of the course, I was mentally exhausted, and had lost nearly half a stone in weight. There were five of us left standing. There were no awards or medals or ceremony to tell us we had passed. We just gathered in a restaurant for a meal and that was that.
Two of us went off to join foreign forces, another two were taken as part of the part-time index, which meant that they would be available for part-time UC work alongside their day job in whatever police department they belonged to. And I alone was taken on as part of the full UC unit.
I had passed!
SIX
DS Mills swiveled his large black chair and contemplated the bleak gray sky outside his window, as I stared in wonder at the chiseled, savagely handsome face of Jake Eden—a.k.a. Crystal Jake, the kingpin drug dealer. I could hardly believe it. The assignment was for me to infiltrate one of the Eden family clubs and find out how their secretive and vast drug empire was run.
Ever since I joined the police force all I had ever dreamed of had been just such an opportunity. Going after the big guys. Making a difference. To think that such a plum assignment had fallen so easily into my hands was shocking. I wanted to punch the air.
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