"Not since university, sir. I didn't like the loss of control."
"Would you consider yourself an addict?"
Fullerton shook his head emphatically.
"I don't have an addictive personality, sir. I use because I enjoy it, not because I need it."
"That's what all addicts say."
"I've gone without for weeks at a time, sir. It's not a problem."
"And you switched urine samples?"
"I gave a friend fifty quid for a bottle of his piss."
"And your tutor at Oxford? You pressurised him?"
Fullerton nodded.
"But only for the cannabis thing, I swear. I got the first on merit."
"Do you still deal?"
Fullerton grimaced.
"That depends, sir."
"On what?"
"On your definition of dealing."
"Selling for profit."
Fullerton grimaced again.
"I sell to friends, and it'd be stupid to make a loss on the deal, wouldn't it? I mean, you wouldn't expect me to sell at a loss."
"That would make you a dealer," said Latham.
Fullerton could feel sweat beading on his forehead, but he didn't want to wipe it away, didn't want Latham to see his discomfort.
"What's this about, sir?" he asked.
"I assume there's no way I'm going to be allowed to join the force. Not in view of… this."
For the first time, Latham smiled with something approaching warmth.
"Actually, Fullerton, you'd be surprised."
"Don't think you think it's going to be tough for you in the Met, being a nigger?" said Assistant Commissioner Latham.
At first Cliff Warren thought he'd misheard, and he sat with a blank look on his face.
Latham folded his arms across his chest, tilted his head back slightly and looked down his nose at Warren.
"What's wrong, Warren? Cat got your tongue?"
Still Warren thought he'd misunderstood the senior police officer.
"I'm not sure I understand the question, sir."
"The question, Warren, is don't you think that being black is going to hold you back? The Met doesn't like spooks. Spades. Sooties.
Whatever the latest generic is. Haven't you heard? We're institutionally racist. We don't like niggers."
Warren frowned. He looked away from Latham's piercing gaze and stared out of the window at the tower block opposite. It was like a bad dream and he half expected to wake up at any moment and find himself looking at his brand new uniform hanging from the wardrobe door. This didn't make any sense. The drive to the Isle of Dogs. The lift with a security code. The empty office, empty except for a desk and two chairs and a senior police officer whom Warren recognised from his many television appearances, who was using racist language which could lose him his job if it was ever made public.
"I'm not sure of your point, sir," said Warren.
"My point is that it's not going to be much fun for you, is it?
Pictures of monkeys pinned up on your locker. Bananas on the backseat of your patrol car. Memos asking you to call Mr. K.K. Clan."
"I thought the Met wanted to widen its minority base," said Warren.
Latham raised an eyebrow.
"Did you now?" he said.
"And you were eager to take up the challenge, were you?"
"I wanted the job, yes."
Latham steepled his fingers under his chin like a child saying his prayers and studied Warren with unblinking eyes.
"You're not angered by what I've just said?" he said eventually.
"I've heard worse, sir."
"And you're always so relaxed about it?"
"What makes you think I'm relaxed, sir?"
Latham nodded slowly, accepting Warren's point.
"That was a test, was it, sir?"
"In a way, Warren."
Warren smiled without warmth.
"Because it wasn't really a fair test, not if you think about it.
You're in uniform, I'm hoping to become an officer in the force that you command, I'm hardly likely to lose control, am I?"
"I suppose not."
"See, if you weren't an Assistant Commissioner, and you'd said what you'd said outside, in a pub or on the street, my reaction might have been a little less… reticent." Warren leaned forward, his eyes never leaving Latham's face.
"In fact," he said in a low whisper, "I'd be kicking your lily-white arse to within an inch of your lily-white life. Sir." Warren smiled showing perfect slab-like white teeth.
"No offence intended."
Latham smiled back. This time there was an amused glint in his eyes and Warren knew that he'd passed the test. Maybe not with flying colours, but he'd passed.
"None taken," said the Assistant Commissioner.
"Tell me about your criminal record."
"Minor of fences said Warren without hesitation.
"Taking and driving away when I was fourteen. Driving without due care and attention. Driving without insurance. Without a licence. Criminal damage." Warren's criminal past had been discussed at length prior to his being accepted as a probationary constable.
"And there's nothing else that we should know about you, nothing that might have influenced our decision to allow you to join the force?"
"The interviews and tests were wide-ranging, sir," said Warren.
"You didn't reveal your homosexuality," said Latham.
"I wasn't asked," said Warren without hesitation.
"You didn't think it relevant?"
"Clearly the interviewers didn't."
"Your home situation would have been enquired about. Your domestic arrangements."
"I live alone."
"So you have random sexual partners?"
Warren's lips tightened. It appeared that Latham was determined to keep testing him, but Warren couldn't fathom what was going on. The time for such questions had long passed: all the Met had to do was to say that his services weren't required. There was no need for such taunting, especially from a senior officer like Latham.
"I'm not sure that my sexual history is relevant, sir," said Warren.
"With respect."
"It might be if it left you open to blackmail," said Latham.
"Homosexuality isn't illegal, sir."
"I'm aware of that, Warren, but any deviation from the norm makes an officer vulnerable."
"Again, sir, I don't think that homosexuality is regarded as a deviation any more. These days it's seen as a lifestyle choice."
Latham nodded slowly.
"One that you're not ashamed of?"
"I'm not ashamed of being black and I'm not ashamed of being gay, sir.
So far as revealing my sexuality, I wasn't asked and I didn't tell. I certainly didn't lie."
"And your criminal record? How do you feel about that?"
"Do you mean am I ashamed of what I did?"
Latham didn't react to the question, clearly regarding it as rhetorical, and continued looking at Warren.
Warren shrugged.
"Of course I'm ashamed. I was stupid. I was undisciplined, I was running wild, I was just an angry teenager out looking for kicks who didn't know how close he was coming to ruining his whole life. I was lucky not to be sent down, and if it wasn't for the fact that I was assigned one of the few social workers who actually appeared to care about her work, I'd probably be behind bars right now and not sitting here in your office." Warren looked around the bare office.
"This office," he corrected himself.
"Wherever we are, I assume this isn't where you normally conduct your business. What's this about, sir? My criminal record's an open book, and I don't see that my being gay is a bar to me joining the Met."
Latham tapped his manicured nails silently on the desktop. The windows were double-glazed and sealed so no sound penetrated from the outside.
It was so quiet that Warren could hear his own breathing, slow and regular.
"What sort of criminal do you think you would have made, Warren?"
Latham said eventually.
"Back then? A very bad one. If I'd been any good at it, I wouldn't have been caught so often."
"And now?"
Warren raised his eyebrows in surprise.
"Now?" he repeated.
"Suppose you hadn't been turned around by the altruistic social worker assigned to you. Suppose you'd continued along the road you'd started on. Petty crime. Stealing. Where do you think it would have led to?"
"Difficult to say, sir."
"Try."
Warren shrugged.
"Drugs, I guess. Dealing. That's what most crime comes down to these days. Everything from car break-ins to guns to prostitution, it's all drugs."
"And what sort of drug dealer do you think you'd make?"
Warren frowned. It wasn't a question he'd ever considered.
"Probably quite a good one."
"Because?"
"Because I'm not stupid any more. Because now I'm better educated than the average villain. I've a knowledge of criminal law and police procedure that most villains don't have. And to be quite honest, I consider I'm a hell of a lot smarter than most of the police officers I've come across."
"I don't suppose you were that blunt at your interviews," said Latham.
"I think we've moved beyond my being interviewed, sir. Whatever it is you want from me, it's not dependent on my being politically correct.
I'm not going to Hendon, am I?"
"Not today, no," said Latham, 'but this isn't about stopping you becoming a police officer, Warren, I can promise you that. You scored highly on all counts during the selection procedure, you're exactly the sort of material we want." Latham pulled on his right ear, then scratched the lobe.
"The question is, exactly how would you be able to serve us best?"
Warren's forehead creased into a frown, but he didn't say anything.
"You see, Warren, putting you in a uniform and having you walk a beat might make for good public relations, but realistically it's going to make precious little difference to the crime figures." Latham took a deep breath, held it, then exhaled slowly.
"What we'd like, Warren, is for you to consider becoming an undercover agent for us. Deep undercover. So deep, in fact, that hardly anyone will know that you work for the Met."
Warren's eyes narrowed.
"You're asking me to pretend to be a criminal?"
Latham shook his head.
"No, I'm asking you to become a criminal. To cross the line."
"To be a grass?"
"No, you'll still be a police officer. A grass is a criminal who provides information on other criminals. You'll be a fully functioning police officer who will be keeping us informed of the activities of the criminals you come across."
"But I won't wear a uniform, I won't go to Hendon? No probationary period?"
"You'll never pound a beat. And the only time you'll go anywhere near a police station is if you get arrested. The number of people who'll know that you are a serving police officer will be counted on the fingers of one hand."
"For how long?"
"For as long as you can take it. Hopefully years. Ideally, you'll spend your whole career undercover."
Warren ran his hand over his black hair, closely cropped only two days earlier in anticipation of his new career.
"So I'd be a police officer, but undercover? I'd never be in uniform?"
"That would be the intention, yes."
"If I'm not going to Hendon, how would I be trained?"
"You wouldn't," said Latham.
"That's the whole point. We don't want you tainted."
Tainted?"
"At present undercover operatives are drawn from the ranks," said Latham.
"We spend years training them to be policemen, then we send them undercover and expect them to act like criminals. It's no wonder it doesn't work. Doesn't matter how long they grow their hair or how they try to blend, they're still policemen acting as criminals. We don't want you to put on an act, Warren. We want you to become a criminal.
You already have the perfect cover you have a criminal record. We want you to build on that."
"I can break the law? Is that what you're saying?"
For the first time Latham looked uncomfortable.
"That's not a conversation we should be having," he said, adjusting his cuffs.
"That'll come later with your handler. I'm here to ask you to take on this assignment. I have a high profile: you know that if you have my word that the Met is behind you one hundred per cent, then you're not going to be left hanging in the wind down the line, if that's not mixing too many metaphors."
"And if I refuse?"
Latham grimaced.
"As I've already said, you'll be an asset to the force. You can start at Hendon tomorrow, just one day late. I'm sure you'll have an exemplary career, but what I'm offering you is a chance to make a real difference."
Warren nodded.
"How much time do I have to think about it?"
Latham looked at the large clock on the wall.
"I'd like your decision now," said the Assistant Commissioner.
"If you have to talk yourself into the job, you're not the person that we're looking for."
"Can I just get one thing straight?" asked Tina, fidgeting with the small gold stud earring in her left ear.
"Am I joining the Met or not?"
"Not as a uniformed constable, no," said Assistant Commissioner Latham softly.
Tears pricked Tina's eyes, but she refused to allow herself to cry,
"It's not fair," she said, her lower lip trembling.
"You shouldn't have lied, Tina. Did you seriously believe we wouldn't find out?"
"It was a long time ago," said Tina, looking over the senior policeman's shoulder at the tower block opposite.
"A lifetime ago."
"And you didn't think that being a prostitute would preclude you from becoming a police officer?"
"I was fifteen!" she protested.
Latham sat back in his chair.
"Which doesn't actually make it any better, Tina. Does it?"
A lone tear trickled down Tina's cheek. She shook her head, angry with herself for the way she was behaving, but she'd been so looking forward to joining the Met. It was going to be a new start. A new life. Now it had been snatched away from her at the last minute. She groped for her handbag on the floor and fumbled for her cigarettes and disposable lighter.
"I think this is a non-smoking office," said Latham as she tapped out a cigarette and slipped it between her lips.
"Fuck you," she hissed, clicking the lighter.
"I need a fag." She lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply, then blew a plume of smoke at the ceiling.
"You knew that if your criminal record came to light, you'd be in trouble," said Latham quietly.
Tina glared at him.
"I don't have a criminal record," she spat.
"I was cautioned for soliciting. Twice. Under a different name. I wasn't even charged."
"You were a prostitute for more than a year, Tina," said Latham.
"You were known to Vice. You were known on the streets."
"I did what I did to survive. I did what I had to do."
"I understand that."
"Do you?" said Tina.
"I doubt it. Do you know what it's like to have to fend for yourself when you're still a kid? To have to leave home because your stepfather spends all his time trying to get into your knickers and your mum's so drunk she can't stop him even if she wants to? Do you know what's it like to arrive in London with nowhere to stay and a couple of quid in your pocket? Do you? I don't fucking think so. So don't sit there in your made-to-measure uniform with your shiny silver buttons and your pimp's fingernails and your pension and your little wife with her Volvo and her flower-arranging classes and tell me that you understand, because you don't."
Tina leaned forward.
"Don't think I haven't met your sort before, because I have. Squeaky clean on the outside, pillar of the fucking community, but what you really want is a blow job from an underage girl in the front seat of your car because your little wife hasn't had her mouth near your dick since England won the World Cup."
She took another long pull on her cigarette. Her hand was shaking and she blew smoke straight at Latham. He didn't react, just kept looking at her through the cloud of smoke.
Tina closed her eyes.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
"I'd expect you to lash out, Tina," said Latham.
Tina opened her eyes again. She took another drag on her cigarette, this time taking care to blow the smoke away from the Assistant Commissioner.
"If I could turn the clock back, I would. But back then, I didn't have a choice," she said. Tina looked around the office, her eyes settling on the large clock on the wall, the red hand ticking away the seconds of her life.
"You had to bring me here to tell me this, yeah?" she said.
"You couldn't have written? Or phoned?"
"I wanted to talk to you."
She turned to look at him and fixed him with her dark green eyes.
"You wanted to see me squirm?"
Latham shook his head.
"It's not that, Tina."
"So what is it, then?"
"I've a proposition for you."
"I knew it!" Tina hissed.
"You're all the bloody same. I do it for you, you turn a blind eye to my past. Quid pro fucking quo."
Latham smiled sadly and shook his head.
"I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I'm probably the most happily married man you've ever met. Just listen to what I have to say. Okay?"
Tina nodded. She looked around for an ashtray, but there wasn't one so she stubbed the cigarette out on the underside of the desk, grimacing apologetically.
"Okay," she said.
"Your past precludes you from joining the Metropolitan Police as a normal entrant," Latham continued.
"You can understand why. Suppose you had to arrest someone who knew you from your previous life? Suppose your past became public knowledge? Every case you'd ever worked on would be compromised. It wouldn't matter how good a police officer you were. All that would matter is that you used to be a prostitute. It would also leave you open to blackmail."
"I know," sighed Tina.
"I just hoped…" She left the sentence hanging.
"That it would remain a secret for ever?"
Tina nodded.
"Pretty naive, yeah?"
Latham smiled thinly.
"Why did you apply to join the police, Tina? Of all the jobs that you could have done."
"Like what? Serving in a shop? Waitressing?"
"There's nothing wrong with either of those jobs. You can't be afraid of hard work or you wouldn't have applied to join the Met. I've seen your CV, Tina. I've seen the jobs you've done to make a living and the courses you've taken to get the qualifications you never got at school."
Tina shrugged.
"Why the police?" Latham asked again.
"Why not the army? The civil service? Nursing?"
"Because I want to help people like me. People who were shat on when they were kids."
"So why didn't you become a social worker?"
"I want to make a difference. I want to help put away the bastards who break the rules. Who think it's okay to molest kids or steal from old ladies." Tina rubbed the back of her neck with both hands.
"Why all these questions? You've already said that I can't join the police."
"That's not what I said," said Latham.
"I said you couldn't join as a uniformed constable, but there are other opportunities available to you within the force."
"Washing up in the staff canteen?"
Latham gave her a frosty look.
"It's been obvious to us for some time that our undercover operations are being compromised more often than not. The reason for that is quite simple villains, the good ones, can always spot a police officer, no matter how good their cover. Police officers all undergo the same training, and pretty much have the same experiences on the job. It's that shared experience that binds them together, but it also shapes them, it gives them a standard way of behaving, common mannerisms. They become a type."
Tina nodded.
"We could always spot Vice on the streets," she said.
"Stuck out like sore thumbs." She grinned.
"Thumbs weren't the only things sticking out."
For a moment Tina thought that the Assistant Commissioner was going to accuse her of flippancy again, but he smiled and nodded.
"Exactly," he said.
"So what we want to do is to set up a unit of police officers who haven't been through the standard Hendon training. We need a special sort of undercover officer," said Latham.
"We need people who have enough strength of character to work virtually alone, people who have enough, how shall I describe it… life experience… to cope with whatever gets thrown at them, and we need them with a background that isn't manufactured. A background that will stand up to any scrutiny."
"Like a former prostitute?"
"While your background precludes you from serving as a regular officer, it's perfect for an undercover operative," said Latham.
"The very same contacts that would damage you as a regular officer will be a major advantage in your role under cover."
"Because no one would ever believe that the Met would hire a former prostitute?"
Latham nodded.
"I have to tell you, Tina, it won't be easy. Hardly anyone will know what you're doing; you won't be able to tell anyone, family or friends.
So far as anyone will know, you'll be on the wrong side of the tracks."
"What if anything went wrong?"
"You'd have back-up," said Latham, 'but that's down the line. What I need now is your commitment to join the unit. Then your handler will take over."
"Handler? You make me sound like a dog." Trisha grinned.
"How much does the job pay?"
"You'll be on the same rate of pay as an ordinary entrant. There'll be regular increases based on length of service and promotion, and overtime. But again, these are details to be worked out with your handler. My role is to demonstrate that your recruitment is desired at a very high level. The highest."
"Does the Commissioner know?"
Latham frowned slightly.
"If you're asking officially, I'd have to say that you'd need to put a question of that nature to the Commissioner's office. Unofficially, I'd say that I wouldn't be here if I didn't have his approval. I'm certainly not a maverick."
Tina reached over and picked up her pack of cigarettes. She toyed with it, running her fingers down the pack, standing it on each side in turn. She took a deep breath.
"Okay," she said.
"I'm in."
Latham beamed.
"Good. That's very good, Tina."
"What happens now?" she asked.
"You go home. Someone will be in touch." He pushed back his chair and held out his hand.
"I doubt that we'll meet again, but I will be watching your progress with great interest, Tina."
Tina shook his hand. It was smooth and dry with an inner strength that suggested he could crush her if he wanted.
It was a familiar sensation, and Tina struggled to remember what it reminded her of.
It was only when she was in the lift heading back to the car park that she remembered. One of her first customers had been an obese man with horned-rimmed spectacles with thick lenses who wheezed at the slightest exertion. He'd wanted to take her home, and at first Tina had refused because all the girls on the street where she worked had told her that she was safer staying in the punter's car, but he'd offered her more money and eventually she'd given up and gone with him, only after insisting that he paid up front.
Home was a two-up, two-down house in East London with stained carpets and bare light bulbs in the light fittings. He'd shown Tina into his front room and stood at the doorway, wheezing as he watched her reaction to the dozens of glass tanks that lined the walls. In the tanks were snakes. All sorts of snakes. Big ones coiled up like lengths of hose pipe small ones that dangled from bare twigs, some asleep, others watching her intently with cold black unfeeling eyes, their tongues flicking in and out.
The man made Tina give him a blow job in the middle of the room, and he stood there wheezing as she went down on her knees in front of him, her eyes shut tight as she tried to blot out the image of the watching snakes.
Afterwards, after she'd wrapped the used condom in a tissue and tossed it under one of the tanks, he'd taken out a large python and made her stroke it. At first she'd refused, but then he promised to give her an extra twenty quid so she touched it, gingerly at first. When she realised it wasn't going to hurt her she became more confident and ran her hands down its back. She'd thought it might be wet and slimy but it was cool and dry and she could feel how strong it was, how easily it could crush the life out of her if it should ever coil itself around her. The punter had got all excited at the sight of Tina caressing the snake and had offered her money for some really weird stuff, stuff that Tina didn't like to think about, and she'd rushed out of the house without the twenty pounds he'd promised. Tina shivered at the memory and groped for her cigarettes.
Assistant Commissioner Latham paced up and down in front of the window.
"I'm still not convinced that we're doing the right thing here," he said.
Gregg Hathaway unhooked the clock from the wall and placed it on the table.
"Morally, you mean?" Hathaway was wearing a dark brown leather jacket, blue jeans and scuffed brown Timberland boots. He had a slight limp, favouring his left leg when he walked.
Latham gave Hathaway a cold look.
"I was referring to their training and handling," he said.
Hathaway shrugged carelessly.
"It's not really my place to query operational decisions," he said.
"I leave that up to my masters." He was a short man, thought Latham: even if he didn't have the limp, he wouldn't have been allowed to join the Met. He was well below the Met's height requirements, even though they'd been drastically lowered so as not to exclude Asians. The intelligence services clearly had different criteria when it came to recruiting, and there was no doubting Hathaway's intelligence.
"They applied to join the police, not MI6," said Latham.
Hathaway went back to the wall and pulled out a length of wire that had been connected to the small camera in the centre of the clock. The wire led through the wall and up into the ceiling to the video monitor on the floor above, from where Hathaway had watched all three interviews. Latham had been upstairs to check that there was no video recording equipment. Under no circumstances was there to be any record of what had gone on in the office, either on tape or on paper.
Officially, the three interviews hadn't taken place. Latham's diary would show that he was in a private meeting with the Commissioner.
"I suppose you do get a different sort of applicant than we do at Six," said Hathaway, coiling up the wire and placing it on top of the clock.
"They've been trying to widen the intake, but it's still mainly Oxbridge graduates that get in. Wouldn't get the likes of Cliff Warren applying. Fullerton maybe."
"I suppose so. How do you think they'll do?"
Hathaway ran a hand through his thinning sandy hair.
"You can never tell. Not until they go undercover. Fullerton's a bit cocky, but that's no bad thing. Warren's probably the most stable of the three, but he's not been put under pressure yet. The girl's interesting."
"Interesting?"
"She worked hard to get away from the life she had. Now we're going to send her back. I'm not sure how she'll cope with that. I was surprised that she agreed."
"I'm not sure that she had much choice." Latham looked at his watch.
His driver was already waiting in the car park downstairs and there was no reason for the Assistant Commissioner still to be in the office. No reason other than the fact that he still had misgivings about what he was doing.
Hathaway put the clock and the wire into an aluminum briefcase and snapped shut the lid.
"Right, that's me, then." He swung the briefcase off the table.
"Take care of them," said Latham.
"I haven't lost an agent yet," said Hathaway.
"I mean it," said Latham.
"I know they're not my responsibility, but that doesn't mean I'm washing my hands of them."
Hathaway looked as if he might say something, but then he nodded curtly and limped out of the room.
Latham turned and looked out of the window. He had a nagging feeling that he'd done something wrong, that in some way he'd betrayed the three individuals who'd been brought to see him. He'd lied to them, there was no doubt about that, but had he betrayed them? And if he had, did it matter in the grand scheme of things? Or did the ends justify the means? He looked at his watch again. It was time to go.
Tina wound down the window and flicked ash out. Some of it blew back into the car and she brushed it off the seat.
"Sorry," she said to the driver.
He flashed her a grin in the rear-view mirror.
"Doesn't matter to me, miss," he said.
"First of all, I'm a forty-a-day man myself. Second of all, it's not my car."
"You work for the police, right?"
"Contract," said the driver.
"Former army, me. Did my twenty years and then they said my services were no longer required."
Tina took another long pull on her cigarette.
"Do you want one?" she asked, proffering the pack.
The driver shook his head.
"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 heart 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 coffee 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."
"Okay, but what about anti-surveillance? What's the harm in teaching me how to shake a tail?"
Hathaway grinned.
"You've been reading too many cheap spy novels, Jamie."
Fullerton felt his cheeks flush red and he sat back in his chair, crossing his arms defensively.
"If anyone follows you, it's best you deal with them in whatever way you come up with yourself," continued Hathaway.
"Use your instincts."
Fullerton nodded. What Hathaway was saying made sense, but there was an obvious flaw to his argument.
"What if I'm on my way to see you? If I can't shake them, that puts you at risk."
Hathaway tapped the laptop screen.
"Like I said, that's what this is for," he said.
"We won't be meeting face to face. All contact will be online."
"But my cover," said Fullerton.
"You'll be giving me my cover, right?"
"I'm going to help you with that, of course, but basically we'll be sticking to your true background."
Fullerton grinned.
"And that includes the drugs, yeah?"
"Sure," said Hathaway.
"One of the things that trips up a lot of undercover agents is that they can't touch drugs. No court is going to convict if one of the investigating officers turns out to have smoked a joint or snorted a line. You're in a different league. You do whatever comes naturally, and if that involves getting high, then that's up to you."
"Okay if I do a line now?" Fullerton asked.
Hathaway flashed him a humourless smile.
"I'd rather you didn't."
"I was joking," said Fullerton. He could see from the look on Hathaway's face that they didn't share the same sense of humour.
"But won't my drug-taking affect the cases I'll be working on?"
"In what way?"
"Won't my evidence be tainted?"
"No, for a very simple reason. You won't ever be required to give evidence in court. You'll be supplying us with information and leads which will be passed on to the appropriate investigating teams, but it will be up to them to supply the evidence to convict."
Fullerton picked up his mug of coffee and sipped it slowly.
"So I'm getting official permission to snort coke? Funny old world, isn't it?"
"There's nothing official about this briefing, Jamie," said Hathaway.
"From the moment you agreed to Assistant Commissioner Latham's proposal, everything has been off the record."
Fullerton's lips tightened and he put the mug back on the coffee table.
"That's what I figured," he said.
"Nothing in writing, nothing on file."
"It's for your own protection, Jamie," said Hathaway.
"The Met still has more than its fair share of bad apples."
"Is that going to be part of my brief, too? Corrupt cops?"
"Absolutely," said Hathaway.
"And will you be giving me specific targets?"
Hathaway smiled.
"You're getting ahead of me, Jamie, but yes, we will be asking for you to look at specific targets. Tangos, as we call them." There was a document pouch on the side of the laptop case, sealed with Velcro. It made a ripping sound as Hathaway opened it. He took out a large glossy colour photograph and slid it across the coffee table to Fullerton.
"Meet Dennis Donovan. Tango One."
Cliff Warren picked up the photograph and studied it. It was a man in his mid to late thirties. He had a square face with a strong chin, pale green eyes and a sprinkling of freckles across a broken nose. The man's chestnut-brown hair was windswept, brushed carelessly across his forehead.
"Tango?" he said.
"Tango is how we designate our targets," explained Hathaway.
"Dennis Donovan is Tango One. Our most wanted target."
"Drugs?" said Warren.
"One of the country's biggest importers of marijuana and cocaine.
Virtually untouchable by conventional methods. He's so big that we can't get near him. Den Donovan never goes near a shipment and never handles the money. He never deals with anyone he doesn't know."
"And you expect me to get close to him?" said Warren, bemused. He passed the photograph back to Hathaway.
"Unless you haven't noticed, I'm black. Donovan's white. It's not like we went to the same school, is it? Why's he gonna let me get close to him?"
"We don't expect it to happen overnight," said Hathaway.
"Donovan is a longterm project. He's not even in the country at the moment. Most of the time he's in the Caribbean. I'll supply you with details of his known associates, and as you go deeper all you have to do is keep an eye out for them. It's going to take time, Cliff. Years.
You build up contacts with his associates, and use them to put you next to Donovan."
"You make it sound easy," said Warren.
A police car sped down the road outside the house, siren wailing.
"Not easy, but possible. Donovan is a major supplier, you'll be a dealer."
"You said he didn't go near the gear."
"He doesn't, but if you can get into his inner circle we can get him on conspiracy. He's also been shipping drugs into the States. If we can tie up to a US delivery, the Americans will put him away for life."
Warren raised his eyebrows.
"I'm working for the Met, right? How does that involve Yanks?"
"There's no national barriers when it comes to drugs, Cliff. It's way too big a business for that. They reckon that every year some three hundred billion dollars of illegal money gets laundered through the world banking system, and almost all of it is from drugs. Three hundred billion dollars, Warren. Think about that. No one agency can fight that sort of money. In the States the market for illegal drugs is worth sixty billion dollars a year. In the UK about five billion pounds is spent on heroin, cocaine, marijuana, amphetamines and ecstasy. The drug suppliers are working together, so the anti-drug agencies are having to share their resources."
"So I might end up working for the DEA?"
"With rather than for," said Hathaway.
"It'll be more a question of sharing intelligence."
"So they won't know who I am?"
"No one will know you're undercover, except me. And Latham."
Warren frowned.
"But what if I come across other undercover agents? Won't they report back on me?"
"Sure, but all they'll report on is your criminal activity. That's just going to add to your cover."
"Do I report on them?"
"You report on everything." He patted the laptop computer in front of him.
"That's what this is for. Everyone you meet, everything you hear, everything you do, you e-mail to me. You supply the intelligence, I process it and, if necessary, act on it."
Warren gestured at the photograph.
"This Donovan, why's he so important?"
"Because he's big. Responsible for maybe a third of all the cocaine that comes into this country. If we take him out, we reduce the amount on the streets."
"You reckon?" said Warren.
"All you'll do is push up the street price for a while. Take out Donovan and someone else will move in to fill the gap. That's how it works. Supply and demand."
"So we take out Donovan, then there'll be a new Tango One and we'll take him out, too. And we keep on going."
Warren sighed.
"It's not a war we can win."
"Putting murderers in prison doesn't mean that murders won't continue to happen," said Hathaway, 'but murderers still belong behind bars.
Same goes for men like Donovan. Not having second thoughts, are you?"
Warren shook his head fiercely.
"I only have to look out of the window to see the damage drugs do. But I know how it works in the real world, Gregg. You put a dealer behind bars, there's half a dozen want to take over his customers. Clamp down on the supply and the price goes up, so there's more crime as the addicts raise the extra cash they need. More break-ins, more muggings."
"We're not interested in the guys on the street," said Hathaway.
"We're after the big fish. Guys like Dennis Donovan. Put Donovan behind bars and it will make a difference, I can promise you that."
Warren reached over and picked up the photograph of Donovan again. He looked more like a foot baller reaching the end of his career than a hardened criminal.
"He's thirty-four years old, married with a six-year-old son. Wife is Vicky. She's twenty-seven. They've got a house in Kensington, but Donovan spends most of his time in the Caribbean."
"Are they separated?" asked Warren.
"No, it's just easier for him to operate out there. He was under round-the-clock surveillance here Customs, police, the taxman. Couldn't take a leak without someone recording the fact. His kid's settled in school and his wife likes shopping, so they've resisted moving out there. Donovan's over here every month or so and they spend all their holidays in the sun, so it seems to be working out okay."
"Is he still under the microscope?"
"Sure, but it's more to keep the pressure on him than it is to catch him in the act."
Warren wrinkled his nose.
"Why do you think I'm going to do any better than the teams who've already been targeting him?"
"Because you won't be watching him, Cliff. You'll be working for him, ideally."
"And just how do I get to him?"
"You start dealing." Hathaway nodded at the window.
"Most of the crack cocaine sold in the streets out there can be traced to Donovan if you go back for enough."
"If you know that, why don't you arrest him?"
"Knowing and proving are two very different things, Cliff."
"So the idea is for me to work my way up the supply chain until I get to Donovan?"
"That's the plan."
"That's not a plan," said Warren.
"That's a wish. A hope. It's what you do when you get the biggest piece of turkey wishbone, that's what that is."
Hathaway leaned forward.
"It's what'll happen in an ideal world. But even if you don't get close to Donovan, you'll still be supplying us with useful intelligence. Whatever you do, wherever you end up, you keep your eyes and ears open for news about this man. Tango One."
Tina Leigh ran both hands through her hair, brushing the strands behind her ears.
"I'm not a criminal. Why's Donovan going to be interested in me?"
Hathaway looked away, awkwardly.
"I'm his type, is that it?"
"You're a very sexy girl, Tina."
Tina glared at him, "Go screw yourself "Give me a chance to explain, Tina. Please."
"You don't need to explain. I used to be a hooker, so now I'll just lie back and spread my legs for a gangster. Well, fuck you, Hathaway.
I worked my balls off to put that behind me. I ain't going back for you or anyone."
She stood up and Hathaway put his hands up in front of his face as if he feared she might attack him.
"That's not what I said. And that's not what I meant."
"I know exactly what you meant. I can't join the Met because I worked the streets, but I'm being given official approval to sleep with a gangster. How fucking hypocritical is that?"
"I didn't say you had to sleep with him, Tina." He waved at her chair.
"Please sit down and hear me out."
Tina raised her right hand to her mouth and bit down on the knuckle of her first finger, hard enough to feel the bone beneath the skin. She wanted to throw Hathaway out of her flat, she wanted to yell and scream and call him every name under the sun, but she brought her anger under control.
"Okay," she said. She sat down and crossed her legs, lit a cigarette, the third since Hathaway had arrived, and waited for him to continue.
"Donovan's out of the country most of the time, but he comes back regularly on flying visits. When he does come back, we know of several clubs that he frequents. We'd like you to apply for a job, whatever job you think you'd be suitable for. Once you're employed, we'd want you to keep your ears open. You pass on anything you hear. And if you can get near Donovan, that'll be the icing on the cake."
"These clubs? What sort of clubs are they?"
Hathaway pulled a pained face again.
"They're sort of executive entertainment bars…" He tailed off as Tina's face hardened.
"Lap-dancing clubs?" she hissed.
"You want me to be a fucking lap-dancer?"
"Lap-dancing isn't prostitution," said Hathaway.
"Students do it to work their way through college, single mothers do it, it's totally legal and above board."
Tina took a long pull on her cigarette and blew smoke at Hathaway. He looked uncomfortable but didn't say anything.
"I don't believe this. I don't fucking believe this."
Still Hathaway said nothing.
"It's not much of a plan, is it? Putting me undercover in a lap-dancing bar in the hope that Donovan wanders in and spills his guts."
"Give us some credit, Tina."
"Why should I give you any credit at all? You say you know who this guy is and what he's doing. Why can't you put him away yourself?"
"Knowing and proving are two different things, Tina."
"I thought with new technology and stuff there was no way anyone could hide any more."
Hathaway nodded.
"You're right. We can tap his phones, we can watch him from CCTV, from satellites even. We have his DNA and fingerprints on file, we know almost everything there is to know about Dennis Donovan, but we can't catch him in the act. And if we stick to using traditional methods, we probably won't."
"See, that doesn't make sense to me. How can he operate if you've got him under surveillance?" She flicked ash into an ashtray shaped like a four-leafed clover.
"Because at the level Donovan operates, it's all about contacts. It's not as if he hands over a briefcase of cash and picks up a bag of drugs. He has a conversation with a Colombian. Face to face. On a beach maybe. Or walking down a street. Somewhere he can't be overheard. Then he talks to a shipping guy. Probably a guy he's used a dozen times before. Then money gets transferred from a bank in the Cayman Islands to a bank in Switzerland and the Colombian puts the drugs on a ship and the ship sets sail. Donovan flies to Amsterdam and has another meeting with a couple of guys from Dublin and money is transferred between two other bank accounts and the drugs are unloaded on the south coast of Ireland and driven up to Belfast and on to a ferry to the UK. We put him under the microscope and what do we have?
Donovan chatting to his friends, that's what we have. And even if we could hear what he was saying, he'd be talking in code. It wouldn't mean a thing to a court."
"So the plan is he's going to open his heart to me when he sees me dancing around a silver pole? Just as a matter of interest, Gregg, is there a Plan B?"
Hathaway chuckled and leaned back, putting his hands behind his neck and stretching out.
"You're right to be suspicious, Tina, but we have thought this through.
This is long term. Years rather than months. If we put you undercover now, you might not get to meet Donovan for two years. Three. But the pool he swims in isn't that big and I have no doubt at all that you'll come across his associates if not the man himself. And they're going to open up to you because you're a pretty girl." He held up a hand heading off her attempt to interrupt him.
"I'm stating that as a fact, Tina, I'm not trying to soft soap you. Put guys together with booze and pretty girls and tongues start to loosen.
These guys work under such secrecy that often they're bursting to tell someone. To boast. To show what big men they are."
Tina had smoked the cigarette down to the filter and she stubbed it out in the ashtray. She took another and lit it. She offered the pack to Hathaway but he shook his head.
"Let's suppose I agree to do this," she said.
"What happens to the money?"
Hathaway looked confused.
"What money?"
"I'll be a police officer, right? On standard pay and conditions?"
Hathaway nodded.
"But if I'm working in a what was it you called it an executive entertainment bar? If I'm working there, I'll get wages. And tips."
"Yours to keep."
Tina blew smoke up at the ceiling, a slight smile on her lips.
"Do you how much those girls earn?" she asked.
"Sixty, seventy grand. Sometimes more."
"Yeah," said Tina.
"That sounds about right. And I get to keep it, yeah?"
"Every penny."
Jamie Fullerton's jaw dropped.
"Let me get this straight," he said.
"Any money I make from illegal activities is mine to keep?"
"It has to be that way," said Hathaway.
"Believe me, the powers that be aren't happy with the idea, but we don't have any choice."
"And I won't ever be asked to pay the money back?"
"I don't see how that could ever happen."
Fullerton stood up and paced around the sitting room.
"And you're going to set me up in this new life? Make me look like a criminal?"
"Initially. Hopefully you'll become self-funding quite quickly."
Hathaway waved at the section of bookshelves devoted to art.
"You studied art history at university. Got a First, right?"
Fullerton nodded.
"So we'll build on that. Set you up in a gallery. Give you some works of art to get you started. And we'll put some stolen works your way.
To add authenticity."
Fullerton's eyes widened in astonishment.
"You're going to give me stolen paintings? To sell? And I get to keep the money?"
Hathaway wiped his forehead with his hand. He looked uncomfortable and when he spoke he chose his words carefully.
"What we will be doing is establishing your cover, Jamie. This isn't a game. If Donovan, or anyone else for that matter, discovers who you are or what you're doing, your life will be on the line."
Fullerton nodded.
"I understand, but how does me being an art dealer get me close to Donovan?"
"He's an art freak. A bit of a collector, but he appears to be more interested in visiting galleries. He also uses galleries and museums as meeting points. What we're suggesting is that you establish a small gallery, then start moving into the drugs business. You presumably have your own suppliers?"
"Sure."
"So start with them. Start increasing the quantities you buy from them, then move up the chain."
"And then you bust them?"
Hathaway shrugged.
"That depends. We're after the big fish, Jamie, not street dealers.
Not everyone you tell us about is going to be brought in, but all the information you give us will go on file. You just keep working towards Donovan."
Fullerton sat down.
"How do you know this will work?"
"We don't. It's a new strategy."
"It's a gamble, that's what it is."
"Maybe," Hathaway conceded.
"You're gambling with our lives."
Hathaway frowned.
"Our? What do you mean?"
"I'm assuming I'm not the only agent you're sending undercover. You don't strike me as the type who'd put all his eggs in one basket."
Eventually Hathaway nodded slowly.
"Don't assume anything, Jamie. Don't go into this thinking that there'll be other undercover agents who'll pull your nuts out of the fire if anything goes wrong. You can't trust anyone. Is it a risk? Of course. But the uniformed bobby walking the beat puts his life at risk every day. He never knows when a drunk's going to try to hit him with a bottle or a drug addict's going to stick him with an HIV-infected needle. In a way, you'll be in a better position, because you'll know the dangers you're facing."
Fullerton exhaled deeply.
"Have you ever done it?" he asked.
"Gone undercover?"
Hathaway nodded.
"Several times, but never long term. A few months at most."
"What's it like?"
"It means living a lie. It means developing a second personality that has to become more real than your own. Everything you say and do has to be filtered through the person you're pretending to be. It means never being able to relax, never being able to let your guard down."
"That's what I thought."
"But you'll be in a slightly different position. When I was working undercover, I was pretending to be a villain. You'll be the real thing."
Cliff Warren stood up and walked through to his kitchen.
"Do you want a beer?" he asked over his shoulder.
"Thanks," said Hathaway.
Warren opened his fridge door and took out two bottles of Sol. They clinked bottles and Warren sat down again.
"What happens if I get arrested?" he asked.
"It's up to you, but once you've revealed to anybody that you're undercover, you're of no further use."
"But if I get pulled in on drugs charges, I could be facing a long prison sentence."
Hathaway nodded.
"You could indeed." He drank from the bottle but his eyes never left Warren's face.
"So what do I do?"
"You could go through the system and serve your time. If that's what you were prepared to do. It would do wonders for your cover, Cliff."
Warren sat stunned as the ramifications of what Hathaway was proposing sank in.
"You'd expect me to serve time?"
"It'd be your call, Cliff. No one would force you. At any point you can ask to be pulled out." Hathaway reached over to his jacket and took out a brown leather wallet. From it he removed a pristine white business card which he handed to Warren. Printed in the middle was a single London telephone number.
"You can call this number at any time of the day and night. You'll either speak to me direct, or you'll speak to someone who will immediately transfer you to me, no matter where in the world I am. No matter what trouble you're in, we'll have you out of it within minutes."
Warren ran the card between his fingers.
"It's a get-out-of-jail-free card," he said quietly.
"Sort of," said Hathaway, 'but it can only be used once. The moment you reveal you're undercover, it's over. There's no having a quiet word with the investigating officers, no smoothing things over behind closed doors. You're either in or you're out." He pointed at the card.
"Memorise the number. Then destroy the card."
He turned around the laptop so that Warren could see the screen.
"The same goes for what I'm going to show you on the computer. You're going to have to memo rise the procedures and passwords. You must never write anything down."
Tina watched as Hathaway tapped away at the keyboard.
"So I'll be e-mailing you reports, is that it?" she asked.
"It's the safest way," he said.
"No meeting that can be watched, no phone conversations that can be tapped. You just find yourself an internet cafe and Robert's your mother's brother."
"My mother didn't have a brother, but I get your drift." She pointed at the laptop, a grey Toshiba.
"Do I get to use this?"
Hathaway shook his head.
"Absolutely not," he said.
"Under no circumstances must you ever use your own machine. Everything you do will be stored somewhere on your hard disc. Someone who knows what they're doing will be able to find it. I'll use this to show you what to do, but once you're up and running you should use public machines. There are internet cafes all over the place these days."
He sat back from the laptop. On screen was a web page and he tapped it with his forefinger.
"This is Safe Web," he said.
"It's a state-of-the-art privacy site. You can use it to move around the web without being traced. No one knows who you are or what you're doing. That goes for sites you visit or any e-mail you send or receive. It's so secure that the CIA use it."
"Okay," said Tina hesitantly, 'but does that mean you think someone will be watching me?"
"If you get close to Donovan, or to any of his associates, there'll be all sorts of agencies crawling over you, Tina. The Drugs Squad, Customs and Excise, Europol, the DEA, law enforcement agencies right across the world will put you under the microscope. And every one of them will have the capacity to open your mail, listen in on your phone calls and intercept your e-mail. If any one of them were to discover that you were an undercover agent, your life would be on the line."
"Even though they're the good guys?"
"Someone at Donovan's level can't operate without help from the inside."
"Bent cops?"
"Bent cops, bent DEA agents, bent politicians," said Hathaway.
"There is so much money involved in the drugs trade that they can buy almost anyone. Everyone has their price, Tina. And Donovan has the money to meet it."
Tina tilted her head on one side.
"What about you, Gregg? What's your price?"
Hathaway flashed her a tight smile.
"I prefer to be on the side of law and order."
"White hat and sheriffs badge?"
"I don't do this for the money, Tina."
"You're on some sort of crusade, are you?"
"My motivation isn't the issue." He turned the laptop towards her.
"Once you've logged on to Safe Web, type in this URL." His fingers played across the keyboard. The new web page loaded then the screen turned pale blue.
She looked at the graphics and wording on the screen. It appeared to be an online store selling toiletries. There was a "Feedback' section where e-mails could be sent to the company.
"That's where I send my stuff?" she asked.
"That's it. But first you have to log on. For that you'll need a password. Something you'll never forget so that you won't have to write it down. It can be a number, or a word. Anything up to eight characters."
Tina gave him a password and watched as he tapped it in. His fingernails were bitten to the quick and there were nicotine stains on the first and second fingers of his right hand. He was a smoker, yet he'd turned down her offer of a cigarette when he'd first arrived at her flat. She wondered how much she should read into the nicotine stains and the bitten nails.
"Sure you don't want a cigarette?" she asked, offering her pack.
He shook his head, his eyes still on the screen.
"Gave up, six weeks ago."
"Wish I could."
"Anyone can. Just a matter of willpower."
Tina blew smoke but was careful to keep it away from Hathaway.
"Is that when you started biting your nails?"
Hathaway flashed her a sideways look.
"Not much gets by you, does it, Tina?" He gestured at the screen.
"Right, this is you logged on. If there's a message for you, there'll be an envelope signal here. If you want to send me a message, you click here." Hathaway clicked on a letter icon.
"Then it's just like any word processing or e-mail programme. When you've finished, click on "send" and you're done. If you want to attach any photographs or documents, use the paper-clip icon here."
"What sort of photographs?"
"Anything you think might be of use to us."
"And am I supposed to be in contact with you every day?"
Hathaway ran his hand down his face and rubbed his chin.
"I'd advise against that. Once a week would be enough, but you want to avoid making it a routine. If you sit down at a computer every Saturday morning, it's going to be noticed. Vary it."
"What if you need to get in touch with me? Say there's a problem and you need to warn me."
"That's not going to happen. We're not going to be watching you, Tina.
You will be one hundred per cent on your own. From time to time I might need to brief you on operations, perhaps point you in the direction of possible targets, but I won't be expecting instant results. Weekly contact will be fine."
Tina stubbed out her cigarette.
"Will you be running other agents, Gregg?"
Hathaway's face hardened.
"Why do you ask?"
"Because you're going to a lot of trouble over little old me," she said with a smile. She nodded at the laptop.
"The website, you, Latham. I can't believe this is all being done just for my benefit."
Hathaway nodded slowly, a slight frown on his face as if assessing what she'd said.
"Suppose I was having this conversation with someone else. You wouldn't want me to tell them about you, would you?"
"That sort of answers my question, doesn't it?"
Hathaway smiled thinly and folded his arms.
"There's nothing I can say. Other than lying to you outright, and I'm not prepared to do that."
"And are they all being sent against Tango One?"
"That I can't tell you, Tina."
"But suppose one of your people gets close to Donovan and I see them.
If I send you details of what they were doing, doesn't that put them in the spotlight?"
"All your reports will come through me and I won't pass on anything that would put another operative in danger." He smiled again.
"Assuming that there are other operatives."
Tina walked over and sat on the arm of the sofa.
"The reports I send. What will you do with them?"
"I'll go through them and pass on whatever intelligence there is to the appropriate authorities."
"But isn't there a danger that it could be traced back to me?"
"I'll make sure that doesn't happen," he said.
"When you do file, by all means highlight anything you think might be linked to you, but frankly it's the big players I'm interested in.
Donovan and the like. I'm not going to risk blowing your cover for anything less."
"Blowing my cover!"
Hathaway closed his eyes and put his hand to his temple as if he had a headache.
"That came out wrong," he said. He opened his eyes again.
"What I mean is that the important thing is that you stay in place.
That is my primary concern, keeping you undercover as long as possible.
The only reason I'd want to pull you out is if it meant putting Donovan behind bars."
Tina stared at Hathaway. She knew next to nothing about the man who was about to become her handler, who would have her life in his hands.
"You realise that you can't ever tell anyone what you're doing?" said Hathaway.
"No matter how much you want to. No matter how much you think you can trust the person. There'll be times when you'll want to talk to someone. To confide."
"I don't think so."
"What about your family?"
"I haven't seen them for six years. Don't want to see them again.
Ever."
"Friends?"
"Not the sort I'd confide in. About anything."
"It's going to be lonely, Tina."
"I'm used to being on my own."
"And how do you feel about betraying people who might well become your friends? Your only friends?"
Cliff Warren took a long pull on his bottle of Sol while he considered Hathaway's question. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Thing is, they won't really be friends, will they? They'll be criminals and I'll be a cop."
"Easy to say now, Cliff, but you might feel differently three years down the line."
"If they're criminals, they deserve to go down. Are you playing devil's advocate, is that what's going on here?"
"I just want you to face the reality of your situation, that's all."
Warren pursed his lips and tapped his bottle against his knee.
"I know what I'm letting myself in for." He leaned back in his chair, looked at the ceiling and sighed mournfully.
"Funny how things work out, in nit
"In what way?"
"By rights I should be square bashing at Hendon. Left, right, left, right, back straight, amis out. And instead I'm gearing up to hit the streets as a drug dealer." He lowered his chin and looked over at Hathaway.
"That's a point, where do I get my cash from?"
"I'll be supplying funds. At least in the early stages. And drugs."
At first Warren thought he'd misheard, then the implications of what Hathaway had said sank in and he sat upright.
"Say what? You'll be giving me drugs?"
"You'll be operating as a dealer. You can't be out there selling caster sugar."
"The police are going to be giving me heroin?"
Hathaway winced.
"I was thinking cannabis," he said.
"Just to get you started. You ever taken drugs, Cliff?"
Warren shook his head.
"Never. Saw what they did to my folks." Warren's mother had died of a heroin overdose when he was twelve. His father was also an addict and had ended up in prison for killing a dealer in North London. Warren had been passed from relative to relative until he'd been old enough to take care of himself, and it seemed that every household he stayed in was tainted in some way by drugs. He had steadfastly refused to touch so much as a joint.
"I don't see that's a problem, though. Plenty of dealers don't use."
"Absolutely, but you're going to have to know good gear when you see it."
"I've got people can show me. The stuff you're going to give me.
Where's it coming from?"
"Drugs we've seized in previous operations," said Hathaway.
"They're destroyed if they're no longer needed as evidence. We'll just divert some of it your way."
Warren took another drink. His heart was pounding and he felt a little light headed. It wasn't the alcohol he'd barely drunk half of his beer it was an adrenalin rush, his body gearing for fight, fright or flight in anticipation of what lay ahead. He felt his hand begin to shake and he pressed the bottle against his knee to steady it. This was no time to have the shakes.
"There's one word I haven't heard you mention," he said.
Hathaway raised an eyebrow.
"What's that?"
"Entrapment."
"It's no defence in an English court," said Hathaway.
"Cases have gone as high as the House of Lords and the end result has always been the same entrapment evidence can't be excluded from a trial, because there is no substantive defence of entrapment in English law."
"I thought there'd been cases where undercover officers had obtained confessions and the confessions weren't admissible because they hadn't administered the caution?"
Hathaway smiled.
"It's a grey area," he said.
"You're right, a confession without a caution required under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1984 would be technically inadmissible.
But that wouldn't apply if you weren't questioning them as a police officer. Anything they tell you would be admissible if it was a conversation between equals. Or at least as if they perceived it as a conversation between equals."
"But if I'm encouraging the commission of a crime, doesn't give them a way out?" asked Warren.
"They could say that I was leading them on, that I was waving money around saying that I want to buy drugs. They could claim that if I hadn't approached them they wouldn't have committed the crime in the first place. How are you going to get a conviction on that?"
"We won't. We'll note the transaction and the people involved, but we won't be moving in to arrest them. A couple of busts like that and your cover would be well and truly blown. It's information we want, Cliff. Good quality intelligence that will help us mount effective operations. The last thing we're going to do is to put you in court holding a Bible and swearing to tell the truth." Hathaway drank from his bottle of Sol, then leaned back and studied Warren for almost a minute.
"Entrapment isn't covered by PACE or by the codes of practice issued under PACE," he said, eventually. And it is one hundred per cent true that claiming entrapment isn't a defence under English law. But there were Home Office guidelines issued in 1986 which do refer to entrapment. Basically the Home Office said that no informant must act as an agent provocateur, that is he or she mustn't suggest to others that they commit an offence or encourage them to do so."
"But that means…" Warren began.
Hathaway held up a hand to silence him.
"That's what the Home Office says, but between you, me and that cheese plant in the corner, the likes of Dennis Donovan don't pay a blind bit of notice to the Home Office, so why should we?"
"That's a dangerous route to start along," said Warren.
"You're saying the rules aren't fair so you're going to break them?"
"What I'm saying is that established procedures aren't going to catch Dennis Donovan. We're going to have to be more…" He searched for the word.
"Creative," he said eventually.
"But if it ever gets out that I've been acting as an agent provocateur, all bets are off," said Warren.
"He'd be able to take you to the European Court of Human Rights, any conviction would be quashed, and he'd sue you for millions."
"But he won't ever find out," said Hathaway.
"No one will. You are going to be so far undercover they'll need a submarine to find you. That's why we've gone to all this trouble, Cliff. Only a handful of people will know what you are doing, and they'll never tell. From now on your only contact with the police will be me, and we'll only be communicating via a secure website."
"So I really will be on my own?"
"It's the only way, Cliff. Are you up for it?"
"I guess so." He saw from the look on Hathaway's face that the answer wasn't emphatic enough.
"Yes," he said, more determinedly.
"Yes, I am."
"Good man," said Hathaway. His fingers started to play across the keyboard. Warren moved over to sit next to him.
Tina rolled over and hugged her pillow. She'd been in bed for almost three hours and was no closer getting to sleep. Her mind was in a whirl. Her meeting with Latham. Her briefing from Hathaway. It had all been such a shock. One minute she'd been all geared up for joining the Metropolitan Police, wearing a uniform and pounding a beat. The next, she was preparing to become a lap-dancer, which, no matter how Hathaway had portrayed it, was in her eyes only one step up from being a street-walking prostitute. She'd worked hard for her qualifications.
Bloody hard. She'd set her heart on a career, a real career, and that had been taken away from her. By men.
She felt tears well up, but screwed her eyes tightly closed, refusing to cry. It always seemed to be men who were screwing up her life. Her stepfather, crawling into her bed late at night, whispering drunkenly and licking her ear. The punters, always trying to get her to do it for free or without a condom. Her neighbours, sneering and leering as she left to walk the streets in short skirt, low-cut top and knee-length boots. The police, patronizing and condescending. And now Latham and Hathaway. They were worse than pimps. Worse than her punters.
She opened her eyes and sat up, still clutching the pillow to her stomach. A sudden wave of nausea swept over her and she rushed to the bathroom. She barely managed to get her head above the toilet bowl before throwing up. She flushed the toilet and drank from the cold tap, then wiped her mouth with a towel. She stared at her reflection in the mirror above the sink.
"Bastards," she said.
"Bastards, bastards, bastards."
She went back into the sitting room and dropped down on to the sofa.
Could she trust them? And was she even capable of doing what they wanted? She felt nauseous again and took deep breaths to steady herself. What if it went wrong? What if she wasn't up to the job, what if she slipped up and someone found out that she was an undercover cop? Hathaway had given her a phone number to memorize. Her way out.
Her once in a lifetime 'get out of jail free' card. Two years down the line, three years, would there still be someone at the end of the lifeline? She stared at the phone on the coffee table. A voice on the end of the phone and a website were to be her only points of contact, Hathaway had said. She drew her legs up underneath her and rested her head on the pillow. One of the reasons she'd been so keen to join the Met was because she wanted to be a member of a team, to be surrounded by colleagues who could support her if she was in trouble, to be part of a group. The police she'd come across when she'd worked the streets had always been the enemy, but she'd envied them their camaraderie. She knew the girls on the streets with her, but they were the competition.
They might help each other out with loans or cigarettes and even offer advice on which punters to avoid, but there was never the familiarity and intimacy that the police had. Tina wasn't sure if she had what it took to work on her own. Undercover. Living a lie.
Tina reached over and picked up the phone. She placed it on the pillow and ran her fingers along the smooth, white plastic.
Twenty-four seven, Hathaway had said. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, there'd be a voice at the end of the phone. One call and she'd be pulled out.
She picked up the receiver and listened to the dialling tone, then put it back. She ran her hands through her hair and then rubbed the knotted muscles at the back of her neck. She stared at the phone. What if he'd been lying? What if there was no lifeline? She snatched at the receiver and tapped out the number on the keypad as quickly as she could, not wanting to give herself time to change her mind. It started to ring. Tina closed her eyes. It was answered on the third ring.
"Yes?" It was a man's voice. It might have been Hathaway, but Tina couldn't tell, not from the single word.
There was a faint buzzing on the line, like static.
"What do you need?" said the voice after a long pause. It was flat and emotionless, almost mechanical, but Tina was sure now it was Hathaway.
"Nothing. Wrong number," she said and replaced the receiver.
She replaced the phone on the coffee table and carried the pillow back to her bed. She lay down and curled up into a foetal ball and within five minutes she was fast asleep.
Three Years Later Marty Clare took a long draw on his joint and held the smoke deep in his lungs as he watched the two girls on the bed. The blonde was on top, the redhead underneath, their legs and arms entwined as they kissed. Clare scratched his backside, then exhaled slowly, blowing blue smoke over the two girls.
"Come on, girls, let the dog see the rabbit," said Clare in his gravelly Irish accent. The two girls moved apart. The redhead reached up for the joint and Clare handed it to her as he slid down next to the blonde. Sylvia, her name was. Or Sandra. Clare hadn't been paying attention to their names. All he'd been interested in was how much they'd charge for a threesome, and the price had been reasonable considering their pneumatic breasts and model-pretty faces. They were Slovakians, the blonde twenty-one and the redhead barely out of her teens. From the way they were going at each other on the bed, Clare figured they were probably genuinely bisexual. Not that he cared over-much either way: the evening was about satisfying Clare's urges, not theirs.
Clare kissed the blonde and she moaned softly and opened her mouth, allowing his exploring tongue deep inside. She reached down between his legs and stroked him. Clare felt the redhead's tongue on his back, gently licking between his shoulder blades.
The redhead reached and gave the joint to the blonde, then pressed her lips against Clare's mouth, practically sucking the breath from him.
She rolled on top of him and began to move downwards, kissing and gently nipping at his flesh with her teeth. Clare ran his fingers through her hair and groaned in anticipation of the pleasures to come.
The blonde sat up with her back against the headboard and blew smoke up at the ceiling. Clare held out his hand for the joint. As she passed it to him there was the sound of cracking wood and shouts from the room next door, then booted footsteps and shouts. The bedroom door crashed open and half a dozen uniformed policemen burst into the room with a series of rapid flashes that temporarily blinded Clare.
Clare dropped the joint on to the redhead's back and she screamed. The blonde made a run for it and Clare grinned despite himself: she was totally naked and the apartment was on the top floor of a sixteen-storey building. The only way out was blocked by two very large men in black raincoats. They were grinning, too, because the redhead was screaming and cursing and trying to get off the bed. The glowing joint had rolled against her leg and burned her thigh. She fell to the floor and then scrabbled on her hands and knees towards the bathroom door. The blonde had changed direction and decided that she was going to make a run for the bathroom, too, but she collided with the redhead and they both fell to the ground in a tangle of limbs.
There were more flashes as a man in a grey anorak and jeans photographed the two women.
Clare burst out laughing and so did the uniformed policemen. They grabbed the girls and a female officer picked up their clothes. The two men in raincoats moved to the side and the girls were hustled down the hallway. The redhead started to cry but the blonde was more vociferous, screaming that she wanted to call her lawyer. The man with the camera followed them out of the room.
Clare picked up the still-burning joint and took a long pull on it. He held it up and offered it to the two detectives. They shook their heads.
"So what's the charge, guys?" asked Clare nonchalantly.
"Is it the sex, the drugs or the rock and roll?"
The taller of the two detectives picked up an ashtray and carried it over to the bed.
Clare was naked but he made no move to cover himself up. His well-muscled torso was still glistening with sweat. He stubbed out the joint.
"Martin Clare, you are under arrest for conspiring to export four tons of cannabis resin," said the detective.
Clare's face tightened but he continued to smile brightly.
"Cannabis that we currently have in our possession at Rotterdam docks," the detective continued.
"What is it they say in your country, Mr. Clare? You are nicked?"
"That'll do it," said Clare.
"What the fuck. Let me get my pants on, yeah?"
Robbie picked up his sports bag as soon as the bell started to ring, but dropped it by the side of his desk after Mr. Inverdale gave him a baleful look. Mr. Inverdale finished outlining the essay he wanted writing for homework, then turned his back on the class. There was a mad scramble for the door. Robbie pulled his Nokia mobile from his sports bag and switched it on. He'd sent Elaine Meade a text message before the start of class and was keen to see if she'd replied.
"Outside with that, Donovan," said Mr. Inverdale, without turning around.
"You know the rules."
Robbie hurried out into the corridor. He had one text message waiting.
Robbie's heart began to pound. Elaine was the prettiest girl in his year, bar none. Blonde with big blue eyes like the pretty one in Steps and a really cute way of wrinkling up her nose when she laughed. He pressed the button to collect the message and tried to ignore the growing tightness in his stomach. The text message flashed up.