Tango One

by Stephen Leather

  "Not while I'm driving, miss. You know what the cops are like. They did that sales rep a while back for driving with a sandwich on his seat."

  "Yeah. It was in all the papers, wasn't it? You'd think they'd have better things to do with their time, right?"

  The driver nodded.

  "You'd think so. Mind you, army's pretty much the same. It'd all go a lot more smoothly if there was no bloody officers, pardon my language."

  Tina smiled and settled back in the seat.

  "You know what that was about, back there?" she asked.

  "No, miss. We're mushrooms. Keep us in the dark .. ."

  "And feed you bullshit. Yeah, you said."

  "It's got to be important if they're using us, that much I can tell you. Our company isn't cheap."

  Tina closed her eyes and let the breeze from the open window play over her face. She wondered who would contact her. Her handler, Assistant Commissioner Latham had said. No name. No description. Her handler. It had the same echoes as pimp, and Tina had always refused to have anything to do with pimps. When she'd worked the streets, she'd worked them alone, even though a pimp offered protection. So far as Tina was concerned, pimps were leeches, and she'd despised the girls she'd seen handing over their hard-earned money to smooth black guys in big cars with deafening stereo systems. Now Tina was getting her own handler. The more she thought about it, the less comfortable she was with the idea, but when doubts did threaten to overwhelm her, she thought back to Assistant Commissioner Latham, with his ramrod straight back and his firm handshake and his immaculate uniform. He was a man she could trust, of that much she was sure. And he was right: there was no way she could have expected to serve as a regular police officer, not with her past. Try as she might to conceal what she'd once been, it was bound to come back to haunt her one day. At least this way she was being up front about her past, using it as an asset rather than fearing it as the dirty secret that would one day destroy her career. But could she really do what Latham had asked? Go back into the world she'd escaped from and work against it? She shivered and opened her eyes. Maybe that was exactly what she had been working towards her whole life. Maybe that was the way of vindicating herself. If she could use her past, use it constructively, then maybe it had all been worth it. Her cigarette had burned down to the filter and she flicked it out of the open window.

  The Vectra turned into the road where Tina lived and the driver pulled up in front of the three-storey terraced house.

  "Here we are, miss," he said, twisting around in his seat.

  Tina jerked out of her reverie.

  "Oh, right. Cheers, thanks." She put her hand into her handbag.

  "I suppose I should .. ."

  He waved her offer of a tip away with a shovel-sized hand.

  "It's all taken care of, miss. You take care, hear?"

  Tina nodded and got out of the car. She stared up at the house as the Vectra drove away. The paint on the door and windows was weathered and peeling and the roof was missing several slates. One of the windows on the top floor was covered with yellowing newspapers. An old woman lived there, so Tina had been told, but she'd never seen anyone going in or out.

  She unlocked the front door and pushed it closed behind her. The door was warped and the lock didn't click shut unless it was given a hard push. The area had more than its fair share of opportunistic thieves wandering around looking for an opportunity to pay for their next fix. The hallway smelt of damp and the flowery wallpaper was peeling away from the corner over the door. Tina's flat was on the ground floor, tucked away at the back. It had originally been the kitchen and scullery of the house, but the developer had managed to cram a small bedroom, a poky sitting room and a kitchenette and bathroom into the space. There was barely enough room to swing a cat, but as Tina would joke with the few friends she'd had around, she was allergic to cats anyway.

  She let herself into her flat and kicked off her clunky black shoes, tossing her handbag on to the sagging sofa by the window. Latham hadn't told her when her handler would get in touch, or how. Did that mean she was to wait in until he called? They had her mobile number so maybe he'd phone. Tina realised that she was already thinking of her handler as a 'he', but it could just as easily be a woman.

  She went through to her cramped bathroom and ran herself a bath as she wiped off her make-up. She poured in a good slug of bath salts, lit a perfumed candle, and soaked for the best part of half an hour. After she'd towelled herself dry she dressed carelessly, throwing on an old pair of jeans and a baggy sweater, and tied her hair back with an elastic band.

  She padded into the kitchenette and switched on the electric kettle, then swore out loud as she remembered that she'd intended to buy milk on the way home. She opened the fridge in the vain hope that there might be a splash of milk left in the carton, then jumped as her doorbell rang.

  She rushed out into the hallway and opened the front door. A short man in a brown leather jacket was standing on the doorstep. He ran a hand across his thinning hair. In his other hand was a black laptop computer case.

  "Christina Leigh," he said, a statement of fact rather than a question.

  "Yes?" she said, frowning.

  "Gregg Hathaway. You're expecting me, right?" he asked.

  Warren heard the wail of an ambulance siren as he got out of the Vectra and headed down Craven Park Road towards his house. He didn't want his neighbours to see the car or the driver. The noise barely registered with Warren as he walked through the crowds of shoppers. Sirens be they police, ambulance or fire engines were an all too regular occurrence in Harlesden. He turned left and saw that his street had been closed off midway with lines of blue and white tape. Three police cars had been parked haphazardly, their doors open and blue lights flashing.

  In the middle of the road a man and a woman dressed in white overalls were studying a red smear and what looked like a pool of vomit, and a man in a sheepskin jacket was drawing chalk circles around several cartridge cases.

  There was a gap in the police tape along the pavement, so Warren went over to the overweight uniformed constable who was guarding it. He nodded down the road.

  "Okay if I go on through?" he asked.

  "I live in number sixty-eight."

  "Sorry, sir, this is a crime scene. You'll have to go back to the main road and cut through Charlton Road." The officer was in his forties with chubby face and a drinker's nose.

  Warren pointed down the road.

  "But that's my house there."

  "Nothing I can do, sir. This is a crime scene."

  Warren nodded at the two SOCO officers.

  "No, that's the crime scene over there. This is the pavement, and that's my house. All I'm asking is that you let me walk along the pavement to my house."

  The constable folded his arms across his chest and tilted his head back.

  "I'm not arguing with you, sir," he said, stretching out the 'sir' to leave Warren in no doubt that civility was the last thing on the officer's mind.

  "You'll have to go back the way you came. You must be used to shootings by now, living here. You should know the procedure."

  Warren stared at the officer, who slowly reached for the radio receiver that was clipped to his jacket.

  "Not going to give me a problem are you, sir?" he said, the officer, his eyes hardening.

  "Obstructing a police officer, disorderly conduct, threatening behaviour, there's a million and one reasons why I could have you taken back to the station right now. So why don't you be a good lad and head off back to the main road like I said."

  Warren exhaled slowly. Two uniformed officers were walking towards one of the cars, deep in conversation. One was an inspector. Warren looked at the inspector and then back to the constable. He considered registering a complaint but dismissed the idea. There was no point. The constable continued to stare at Warren contemptuously. Warren forced a grin and winked.

  "You have a nice day, yeah?" he said and walked away.

  Warren's hea
rt was pounding, but the only visible sign of his anger was the clenching and unclenching of his hands. He would have liked to have confronted the officer, at the very least to have hit back verbally, but he'd long ago learned that such confrontations with authority were pointless. There was nothing he could say or do that would change the way the man behaved. It was best just to smile and walk away, although knowing that didn't make it any easier to swallow.

  Three Jamaican teenagers were huddled outside a news agent wrapped up in gunmetal-grey Puffa jackets with gleaming new Nikes on their feet. Warren nodded at the tallest of the youths.

  "What's the story, PM?"

  PM shrugged carelessly and scratched the end of his nose. His real name was Tony Blair and he'd been given the nickname the day that his namesake was elected to Number 10. A scar stretched from his left ear to halfway across his cheek, a souvenir of a run-in with a group of white football supporters a few years earlier.

  "Jimmy T. took a couple of slugs in the back. Should have seen him run, Bunny. Like the fucking wind. Almost made it."

  Warren shook his head sadly. Jimmy T. was a fifteen-year-old runner for one of the area's crack cocaine gangs.

  "He okay?"

  "He look dead as dead can be."

  "Shit."

  "Shit happens," said PM.

  "Specially to short-changers."

  That what he did?"

  "Word is."

  Warren gestured with his chin over at the police investigators.

  "You told the Feds?"

  PM guffawed and slapped his thigh.

  "Sure, man. Told 'em who killed Stephen Lawrence while I was at it."

  All three youths laughed and Warren nodded glumly. Shootings were a regular occurrence in Harlesden, but witnesses were rarer than Conservative Party canvassers at election time.

  "You saw who did it?"

  "Got eyes."

  Warren looked expectantly at PM. The teenager laughed out loud but his eyes were unsmiling.

  "Shit, man, I could tell you but then I'd have to kill you."

  Warren smiled despite himself. He wondered how much PM would have told him if he'd been standing there in a police constable's uniform.

  "You look wound up, Bunny-man. You want some puff?"

  "Nah, I'm sorted. Gotta get back to the house."

  "You got a chauffeur, Bunny?"

  Warren kept smiling but he could feel his heart start to race.

  PM couldn't have seen him getting out of the Vectra, so someone must have seen the car picking him up from his house that morning.

  "Minicab," he said.

  "Anywhere interesting?"

  Warren chuckled at the question.

  "Yeah, PM. I could tell you ..." He left the sentence unfinished.

  PM guffawed.

  "Yeah, but you'd have to kill me," he said, nodding his head as if to emphasise each word.

  Warren made a gun from his right hand and mimed shooting PM in the chest.

  "You take care, PM."

  "Back at you, Bunny-man," laughed PM.

  Warren headed back to the main road, his head down, deep in thought. He was still annoyed at the attitude of the uniformed constable, and he wondered if the man would have treated him any differently if he knew that Warren was also a policeman. Maybe he would have been more civil, thought Warren, cracked a joke perhaps, but it wouldn't have changed the way the man thought about him. The constable's contempt might have been hidden but it would have still been there. He would see the uniform, but it was Warren's colour that would determine the way he behaved.

  PM would react to the uniform, not to Warren's race. If he'd known that Warren was a police officer, there would have been no chat, no banter, just hostile stares and a tight face. His type closed ranks against authority, the authority of the white man.

  Warren lost out either way.

  Warren sighed. He'd wanted to join the Met because he believed that he could make a difference, but Latham had been right: he'd do more good by playing to his strengths, rather than trying to fit into the established system. On the street, undercover, his colour would be a strength. Trapped inside the uniform, it would be a weakness. Could he spend his career hanging around the likes of PM and his posse, though, pretending to be one of them so that he could betray them?

  Warren felt confused, and the more he tried to work out how he felt, the more confused he became. While he'd been sitting opposite Latham in the office, it had all seemed so simple; but on the streets of Harlesden, what the senior police officer had proposed looked less attractive. It meant living a lie. It meant betrayal. Being a police officer was about being a part of a team; working with colleagues you could rely on, working towards a common aim, Us against Them. Latham wanted Warren to be one of Them.

  Warren shook his head as he walked. No, Latham didn't want him to be one of Them. He wanted Warren to be in a no-man's land; part of the police force but separate from it, part of the criminal community but there to betray it. A lone wolf.

  Jamie Fullerton tossed his suit on to the bed, ripped off his shirt and tie and started doing vigorous press-ups. He breathed deeply and evenly as he pumped up and down, pausing every tenth dip and holding himself an inch above the bedroom carpet before resuming his rhythm.

  The doorbell rang and Fullerton froze, his torso parallel to the floor, his arms trembling under the strain. Fullerton frowned. He wasn't expecting anyone. He pushed himself to his feet and pulled on his trousers and buckled the belt. He hurriedly put on his shirt and fastened the buttons as he walked to the front door.

  The man who'd rung his bell was almost a head shorter than Fullerton with thinning brown hair, a squarish chin and thin, unsmiling lips. He was carrying a laptop computer in a black shoulder bag.

  "Jamie Fullerton?" he said.

  "Maybe," said Fullerton.

  The man extended his right hand.

  "Gregg Hathaway. You're expecting me."

  Fullerton shook Hathaway's hand. The man had a weak handshake and his fingers barely touched Fullerton's skin, as if he were uneasy with physical contact. Fullerton squeezed the hand hard and felt a tingle of satisfaction when he felt Hathaway try to pull away. He gave the hand a final squeeze before releasing his grip.

  "Come on in," said Fullerton.

  He stepped to the side and smiled as Hathaway walked by, rubbing his right hand against his jeans. There was something awkward about his right leg, as if it were an effort for Hathaway to move it.

  "You don't mind showing me some form of ID, do you?" asked Fullerton as he closed the front door and followed Hathaway into the sitting room.

  Hathaway had put his laptop case on the coffee table and was examining the books that filled the shelves on one wall of the room. He turned to look at Fullerton.

  "Your name is James Robert Fullerton, you were born on April fifteenth twenty-six years ago, your parents are Eric and Sylvia, your father committed suicide after he lost the bulk of your family's assets in a series of badly advised stock market investments and your mother is confined to a mental hospital outside Edinburgh."

  Fullerton swallowed but his throat had gone so dry that his tongue felt twice its normal size and he started to cough.

  "Is that enough, or shall I go on?"

  Fullerton nodded.

  "You don't look like you're in the job."

  "Neither do you. That's the point. Black with two sugars."

  Fullerton frowned.

  "Sorry?"

  "You were going to offer me a coffee, right? Black with two sugars."

  "Right. Okay," said Fullerton. It was only when he was in the kitchen filling the kettle that he realised how quickly Hathaway had taken control of the situation. The man was physically smaller than Fullerton, maybe a decade older, but with none of the bearing or presence that Latham had shown. Underneath the softer exterior, however, there was a toughness that suggested he was used to being obeyed.

  By the time he returned to the sitting room with two mugs of coffe
e on a tray, Hathaway had powered up his laptop and was sitting on the sofa, tapping on the keyboard. He'd extended his right leg under the coffee table, as if it troubled him less when it was straight. He'd run a phone line from the back of the computer to the phone socket by the window.

  "You computer literate, Jamie?" said Hathaway, slipping off his leather jacket and draping it over the back of the sofa.

  "I guess so," said Fullerton. He held the tray out, and Hathaway helped himself to the black coffee.

  "You're the handler, right?"

  "Handler suggests physical contact," said Hathaway.

  "Ideally we won't ever meet again after today." He gestured at the laptop.

  "This is a safer way of keeping in touch."

  Fullerton sat down in an easy chair and put his coffee on the table by the laptop.

  "And you'll be handling the others?"

  "The others?" said Hathaway, frowning.

  "The other members of the team."

  Hathaway's frown deepened.

  "Team? What team?"

  "I just thought .. ." Fullerton left the sentence hanging.

  Hathaway pushed the computer away and sat back, looking at Fullerton through slightly narrowed eyes.

  "You do understand what's being asked of you, Jamie?"

  "Undercover work," said Fullerton.

  "Deep undercover. Longterm penetration of criminal gangs."

  Hathaway nodded slowly.

  "That's right, but not as part of a team. You'll be working alone. You'll have on line access to me, and an emergency number to call if you're in trouble. If necessary we'll send a shed load of people to pull you out, but while you're undercover you're on your own."

  "Okay. Got it." Fullerton ran his hand through his fringe, brushing his hair out of his eyes.

  "But what I don't get is Latham's insistence that we don't get any training. What about firearms? Anti-surveillance techniques? Things like that?"

  "You watch gangster movies, Jamie?"

  Fullerton was nonplussed by the apparent change of subject, but he nodded.

  "See how the bad guys hold their guns? One handed, waving them around, grips parallel to the ground? Half the gang-bangers in Brixton hold them that way now. Couldn't hit a barn door, but they see it in the movies so that's what they do. Okay, so I put you through a police firearms course. We'd teach you to shoot with both hands, feet shoulder width apart, sighting with your stronger eye, exhaling before pulling the trigger, blah, blah, blah. You'd hit the target every time at twenty-five yards, but first time you ever use a weapon in anger you might as well have a flashing neon sign over your head saying "COP". Any techniques we give you will identify you as a. police officer."