by Paul Cornell
And now they’d just told her . . . she was never going to read those court transcripts while her news – her intel – was presented to Toshack, and hammered at him back and forth, and all those revelations brought him down. Now the truth would never out.
It was too big to think about. She felt like crying. But she couldn’t.
Quill had changed into a spare shirt and trousers as fast as he could, the forensics people taking his own clothes off him and bagging them, right down to his Y-fronts, which he’d tossed over to them from inside a toilet cubicle. The incredible loss of Toshack, the copper mourning for such a huge, juicy target which had been the centre of all their lives – he could feel it all within the station. Their prey had been taken from them. From right in the heart of their place.
Lofthouse met him as soon as he was looking decent, and they walked away together quickly to find some privacy. She immediately put a hand on his shoulder. She did that occasionally, not like any other female copper Quill knew. It wasn’t just a willingness to touch other human beings: she would run her hands along walls, tapping them as a builder would, as if it was the only way she could ground herself in those horrible places where she ended up standing around at five in the morning. She was one of those higher-rank types from academia, with a slew of letters to her name, but that had never bothered Quill. Her tendency was to cut through things, to make use of the bureaucracy she had on her side. They’d been good comrades these last four years, himself and this always-tired-looking middle-aged woman. She’d saved his operation from all manner of deleterious penny-pinching Met shit.
‘It’s not your fault, James,’ she said now.
‘Was he poisoned? If so, some of our lot will be wondering if it was me who did it, ’cos I’d think it was if—’
‘We’re running toxicology, but the doctor gave an opinion back in the room itself that it was some sort of seizure.’ She was plucking at a charm bracelet she wore, something she often did when she was thinking hard. On it were attached a tiny horse, an anchor and a worn-down key. ‘Having pumped himself full of drugs tonight for the very first time, then picked a fight with a roomful of uniforms, I’m not that surprised. This is you we’re talking about and, unless the bloods come up saying you used an Amazonian dart toxin, I’ll do my best to get everyone to piss up another tree.’
‘Thank you, ma’am.’
‘Besides, Toshack, rather brilliantly, said he was “guilty of everything”, which could certainly be said to include the charges in front of him. With that, and what is on the Nagra tape, we get everyone else – and can start digging hard for more. Whatever it was that happened to matey, the firm still goes down.’
‘But not the mysterious freelancers? And now we won’t get anything out of him about . . . issues inside this nick.’
It was getting dark when Quill finally left the Hill. The lights were on at the Black Sheep along the road, but that was a copper pub, and he didn’t want to be among his fellows right now. Not with all the failure and futility that they’d already be starting to make jokes about. They’d lost Toshack. Quill had lost him. He now headed for the back gate, intending to go down to the Postal Order, where nobody knew who he was. He’d called Sarah but found that, when he started to talk to her, he couldn’t find much to tell her about what had happened, either. ‘I’m okay,’ he’d said finally. ‘Despite the fountain of blood.’
He passed a roughed-up pile of soil in one of the flowerbeds, a circular mass; apparently someone had decided to plant something and then just abandoned it. Even the surrounding garden was falling apart now. He had no idea who had employed the gardeners here, but they’d probably gone the way of everyone else.
Quill found Harry already standing at the bar in the Postal Order. He sighed and slumped up beside him. ‘Fucking detective,’ he said. ‘You knew I’d be here.’
‘I had one in the Sheep first.’
‘As the bishop said to the bishop.’
Harry got them in, and they sat at a table way back in the corner, where the bloody music drowned out any eavesdroppers. ‘Nothing you could have done, Jimmy. You’ll be fine after counselling.’
‘You what?’
‘Six or seven pints of counselling. At least now you’ve got a story to match your dad’s.’ Quill’s dad, Marty, had been a great and terrible rozzer, a Flying Squad detective in the days of lunchtime drinking. ‘Suspect misplaced all of his blood in custody? He’d have appreciated that. You always were a chip off the old block.’
‘Yeah?’ Quill wasn’t keen on the idea of his own pet death in custody being associated with his dad’s theatrical punch-ups and dangling suspects off Waterloo Bridge by their socks. ‘I know people like to think of me as old guard, Harry, but to be this rule-breaker cop I’d need to break some bloody rules. You can’t get away with that these days. I put an end to that rough stuff between Toshack and the uniforms as soon as I could. We could’ve lost everything with that.’
‘Well, at least you talk the talk . . . usually.’
‘’Blige! You’re trying hard to make me feel better, aren’t you? I tell you what – I’ll bet that’s how the first UC thinks of himself, and all. Only he doesn’t know where the line is, while I do.’
‘You just nudge that line along a few feet sometimes.’
Quill put his pint down solidly and looked at Harry challengingly. Nudging Quill to be more like his father Marty was one of Harry’s favourite pastimes, while he himself remained the most anonymous bloody copper in existence. But tonight it was all getting a bit much for Quill. ‘I am this bloke you see, Harry. I don’t really know who that is, and I don’t know how much is under the bonnet sometimes, but I’m not my dad and I don’t do requests.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘Great, sorted. My round, then, is it?’
And that became, as predicted, another six pints of therapy.
Quill was surprised by the next thing he really paid attention to, which was his wife Sarah standing beside him. A welcome sight, obviously. He realized he was sitting in the back garden of his house, and this was the geographical location from which he had been examining a completely blank neon-tinged London sky. His arse was getting wet because of the frost. She had a look on her face that said he might have woken her up while coming out here.
‘What,’ he asked her, ‘should I be like?’
‘Oh God, Quill, funny you should ask. I’ve been up all night worrying about that, too.’
She always called him by his surname; it was a fond little habit of hers. ‘I can’t seem to find any meaning in anything, not now.’ She was a member of the press, he reminded himself, so he couldn’t tell her all the details. ‘Goodfellow, it’s done and . . . I don’t think we did any good. Someone else’ll just move in on Toshack’s territory, and the new guy’ll amp up the violence again.’ He spun his finger in illustration. ‘It’s just getting worse and worse, round and round. What am I for? What can I find to do that’s . . .?’ He was sure it was to have been a really profound question, but he couldn’t find the end of that sentence. ‘That’s . . .?’
She took his hand and managed to haul him to his feet. ‘Your meaning is right here,’ she said, and Quill got the feeling she was probably angry. At any rate, between them they managed to get him into bed.
FIVE
Sefton stayed at the safe house in Wanstead for a week. He slept a lot. He watched daytime telly. He had some terrible dreams. Stupid stuff, easy to forget in the daylight. He was back on his school bus, being tormented by those little shits. Batty boy, that was their favourite. As if they knew. Posh boy. In that accent of theirs that he himself did offhandedly now, and still hated. The white kids called him black, and the black kids called him everything else.
‘That,’ he explained to a bloke called Tom, from Norfolk, in the right sort of pub, ‘is how I realized I had a talent for my line of work.’
‘What’s that?’ Tom hadn’t really been listening to Sefton’s tales of woe, just looking at
the other man’s chest.
Which was great. But maybe not for tonight, ’cos he was in a safe house, and out for an innocent pint. ‘Underwear model,’ he said, and at least the bloke laughed.
So, loads of time alone in his room, lots of time to let the tension flood out, but that only seemed to let the memories flood in. Fucking Costain! He wished he could put it all in the past, but Costain blowing him that kiss had connected. Even now. Even here. No racism or homophobia in the Met. Not these days, sir, no, I’ve never seen any. I’m one of the good ones.
He had found a gym with a boxing ring, sparred a bit. His partner, a cocky bloke, thinking he saw something vulnerable in Sefton’s passive expression, said, ‘No, come on, two rounds proper like.’ Sefton dropped his guard twenty seconds in, stepped past the haymaker, and hit him – body, jaw, body – and the kid staggered back, waving his gloves in the air, laughing awkwardly. ‘Okay, okay!’
Sefton had inclined his head to him. ‘Yeah. I get that a lot.’
That night he had thought about going on Grindr and setting up a random encounter with some bloke who wouldn’t give a fuck about all his angst. Yeah, but no.
Then a phone call had come, saying Toshack had died in custody. Sefton had just nodded, because he felt so numb. Then he wanted to hit something. But he kept it all in.
After that he went out for more runs, got himself ready for the debriefing, ready to become his public self again. He wanted to tell them about Costain, about that moment, about the fucking months of bullying, both in and out of character. But he wouldn’t. That wasn’t who he was. He didn’t want to be an adult who was bullied, so he rose above it by not talking. Or that’s what you tell yourself.
Debriefing took him to anonymous meeting rooms in anonymous hotels. He found some relief in being led through the last few weeks of the operation, giving the required details, establishing a narrative. He’d expected Quill to be there, but he wasn’t. His DS led the meetings and, when asked, said Quill was on leave. That didn’t bloody bode well.
Sefton wanted, he realized after the first session, to at least be asked about Costain. He wanted to be asked so he could . . . well, maybe mention the drugs. Yeah, that.
But he wasn’t asked. And was left frustrated. But perhaps that was for the best. It wasn’t as if he’d seen him take anything, damn it.
That night, in a different right sort of pub, he declared, again without having given the context: ‘It’s as if I haven’t got a voice.’
‘Talk a lot, don’t you?’ said the other bloke this time.
Sefton gave him a long look that made him take a step back. Then he broke into a cheerful smile. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘long day.’ And he went back to the safe house alone.
And then it was over. He was told he should expect a meeting with SCD 10 for reassignment, considered damaged goods along with the rest of Goodfellow. But then he got another call: this time Lofthouse’s office, which was on his approved list but not a number he’d ever used. A new meeting to be held at a Radisson hotel out near Heathrow. This must be a post-mortem, something on the way to holding an inquiry. Dirt was going to be dished and Sefton resolved that, just for once, he’d do the dishing. Against all his experience of the copper lifestyle, he was hoping for some sort of closure.
He stepped out of the lift, walked into the anonymous meeting room without knocking, closed the door behind him and found himself facing someone he didn’t know. A young woman in her twenties, who had the strangest eyes he’d ever seen. She looked out of place in a suit, didn’t stand like police did – she wasn’t balanced squarely on both feet so as to be braced against whatever was about to happen, the way he’d had to train himself not to stand. She thus looked vulnerable, and vulnerable was worrying. Lofthouse, Quill and Costain were there, too. Apart from the detective superintendent, they all looked equally uncomfortable. ‘Ma’am,’ he nodded, ‘Sir.’ Just a nod to Costain. ‘Who’s this?’
‘This is our intelligence analyst, Lisa Ross,’ began Lofthouse. ‘Lisa, this is DC—’
What the fuck? ‘Ma’am, I’m not comfortable with—!’
‘You were told at the start of Goodfellow that Lisa was indoctrinated in the operation, but cut out from it for security reasons. And you’re now reacting like any UC would, but Goodfellow is over, Detective Constable. And I’ve put together a juicy little spin-off.’
Sefton felt like walking straight out again. This was the last thing he’d expected. And it was not bloody closure. A spin-off with Costain? But . . . he wasn’t being sent home either. He controlled himself. He kept it all in. He nodded to Ross. ‘DC Kevin Sefton, second UC.’
She looked back at him, apparently as fearful of hearing his name as he was of giving it. Then she looked over to Costain. ‘You’re “Blakey”, then?’ she said.
‘Guilty as charged.’ At least he hadn’t smiled.
Ross actually snorted, which made Sefton hide a smile. Oh, he liked her.
Quill had meanwhile been lost in paperwork and waiting. Waiting far too long for those bloody test results to come in. He’d also been anticipating a post-mortem in which they’d doubtless try to establish exactly what Costain had been guilty of. His own reports to Lofthouse had leaned heavily in that direction. But it seemed he’d been ignored.
‘A spin-off?’ he enquired.
‘Just you four, reporting directly to me.’
Quill looked round at the others, and saw they were as boggled as he was. ‘Two UCs, an analyst and a DI?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, apart from anything else, I’ll need my DS, Harry Dobson—’
‘I’m sorry, no.’
Quill felt himself getting angry. ‘Is the possibility of corruption in Gipsy Hill so widespread,’ he said, ‘that we are the only four definitely exempt?’ And he couldn’t help but look straight at Costain as he said it.
Lofthouse just raised a warning eyebrow.
Costain had only narrowly persuaded himself to come here. His memory darted back now to the night when Lofthouse herself, incredibly, had arrived outside his cell. She’d taken away the Nagra tape. But then she’d come back, the key to the cell in her hand. ‘Only take phone calls from me,’ she’d instructed, walking him out to a waiting car. ‘I’ll take care of you. All right?’
He’d felt ridiculously glad to hear that. He remembered the night when she’d called him about the death that occurred in custody. He’d heard about Rob breaking, of him being about to tell it all, against everything he stood for, and then he heard that Quill had been the only officer in the room. Costain had hung up and gone to a door in his safe house and started slamming it. As if that would bring down punishment.
‘Just us four?’ he echoed, glaring back at Quill in the same way the man was glaring at him. ‘How are we going to do this without a traffic warden and a dog handler?’
Since that death in custody, Ross had continued examining the evidence from Goodfellow in her exile in Norwood. She’d kept at it ferociously, focused on it, because she couldn’t see a life beyond it. She’d kept telling herself she needed to get past how she felt about Toshack. She’d kept trying to find satisfaction in his death. But she couldn’t.
And now this new operation was going to demand that she actually lived in this world that was not – but was supposed to have been – a happy-ever-after one. It was mad. It was irrelevant. She focused her attention back on the man they were calling Costain, and set about memorizing him as if one day she’d have to profile him.
Lofthouse pointed to the round table in the middle of the room. ‘Please, sit.’
Quill, aware that he was eyeing her interrogatively, even a bit desperately, made to do so but she held up a hand. ‘Ah, no. Wait.’ They all halted. She toyed with her charm bracelet for a moment, lost in thought, then pointed from each person to a chair. ‘Jimmy, you go there. Tony there. Kevin there, Lisa there, please.’
They moved around to their assigned places, feeling rather amazed. None of them had witnessed a
detective superintendent having a nervous breakdown before.
‘I’m leaving the name of this new operation,’ she said, passing out the documents, ‘to you.’
Quill gaped at that too. There was a reason that job and subject names were picked from lists of randomly chosen words. What if he suffered a fit of madness and called it after the target? Speaking of which: ‘What’s the objective?’
‘Investigate what happened in that interview room. Find out who killed Robert Toshack.’
Quill’s heart sank.
‘And how, because the pathologist’s tests found no evidence of poisoning or physical assault.’
‘So . . .’ he couldn’t quite find the words for a moment. ‘How are you so sure he didn’t die of natural causes, ma’am?’ He wanted her to confirm he was in the clear.
‘Because, according to the many experts I’ve spent a long time talking to, there are no natural causes able to do that.’
He looked to his insanely small team. They looked back, equally flabbergasted. They had, as the old joke about the stolen toilets went, nothing to go on.
‘You’ll stay at Gipsy Hill.’ She finally managed a smile. ‘Lisa, you’ll finally be able to join them. But I’ve found you a nice new Ops Room, to keep you out of the general population.’
Two days later, Quill staggered into the Portakabin, carrying an ancient overhead projector he’d found in the stores at Gipsy Hill, and had heaved the quarter-mile back to the trading estate across the way. The inside of this new ‘Ops Room’ looked as unpromising as the outside. An Ops Board that had been improvised from a cork board found at the market, but empty except for a single photo of Toshack. Some desks. A stack of chairs. One desktop PC, perhaps even more ancient than those in Gipsy Hill. A new kettle. He looked out of the window towards the building in which he’d previously worked. He could smell the distrust even from here. ‘Gone all Professional Standards on us, have you?’ That had been Mark Salter when Quill had popped into the canteen this morning. He’d said it with a smile, but it hadn’t extended to his eyes.