In the Absence of Iles (2 page)

There were civilian staff at Fieldfare, of course, all excluded from the Simpkins Suite and other Suites while sessions about Out-location took place. Just the same, there might be leaks. And so, the two featured officers who had been undercover, and who might go undercover again, appeared merely as A and B when they gave their ‘personal narratives’: that is, described and analysed their Out-located experiences for this gathering of brass; no names and no indication of which part of the country they worked in. A and B’s ranks, as well as their names, remained undisclosed. But, almost certainly, they’d be detective constables only, or, at the highest, detective sergeants. Years ago, as a detective constable, Esther herself did some Out-location, slangily known then, though, simply as ‘leeching’.

She wondered whether A and B found it daunting to take the platform and instruct a roomful of Association of Chief Police Officer members. But was that crazy? After all, A and B had lived for weeks, even months, in situations needing a stack more bravery than confronting an ACPO collection. Nobody at Fieldfare would put a knife to their throats, a daily and nightly chance for Out-located detectives. Esther had never known more fear than when undercover.

He’d be about twenty-eight or -nine and before saying anything catwalked back and forth like a model on the small, temporary platform at the end of the room. Occasionally, he pirouetted, so they could take in the all-round glory of his three-piece, double-breasted, grey suit, which was all-round glorious. Unquestionably, it had been custom-made. The cloth held to his shoulders in the affectionate, unruffled, congratulatory way a midwife might present a just-born baby to its mother. The lapels were mid-width and timeless, no ludicrously sharp, wool spear points at the top. Not much of the waistcoat showed under his buttoned-up jacket, but Esther could tell it fitted right, and the pockets contained nothing bulky to destroy the general line. His striped blue, white and aubergine silk tie had impact without luridness. She thought A’s black lace-up shoes would be from Fellowes, or Mason and Caltrop, and possibly also custom-made. He’d had his hair done in a moderately up-tuft style, but, again, nothing coarse, nothing farcical. You could see men with haircuts like this presenting unextreme television programmes or running charity shops.

He came to the edge of the platform and gazed at them: ‘You might have to shell out on this kind of tailoring and so on,’ he said. ‘It’s all paid for by the police. I’ve got three outfits of similar quality, two K a throw, and a stack more shoes. Upper grade villains dress upper grade. And conventional. You’ve got to match it on your boy – on your girl, too, if you decide to pick female, though gangs tend to be male and sexist, and the rules for what women wear are different.’ Esther couldn’t pinpoint any accent. He grinned. ‘So, you have to wonder, could you afford me?’

He assumed instant charge of the Simpkins Suite. A Simpkins descendant couldn’t have been more at home. For God’s sake, Esther had madly imagined he might be nervy and hesitant in front of them! She realized he reminded her of someone, not the actual looks but his radiant cockiness. In a moment, she pinpointed who: Joel Grey, as the singer and club master of ceremonies, in that Liza Minnelli film,
Cabaret,
on DVD. She saw the same mixture of lavish insolence and impishness in Officer A. His voice, the glare of his eyes and the aggressive, challenging tilt of his modish head said he didn’t recognize much of any real worth in this puffed-up audience and thought they might as well push off right away, back to their snug, well-pensioned, desk-bound sinecures.
He
had lived in, survived in, a rough, non-stop dangerous scene, and might have to again. They needn’t expect any kowtowing from him. He couldn’t know that Esther, and perhaps others in the room, had also entered that dangerous scene in the past. He shot the cuffs of his stupendously white shirt. Gold links flashed, like ‘Fuck the lot of you’ in Morse.

But then he turned his back for a moment and when he slowly spun and faced them once more seemed suddenly . . . seemed suddenly what she’d originally expected: nervy and hesitant. In small, arse-licking, sing-song tones he said: ‘Ladies, gentlemen, this is a privilege and an important responsibility to address so many chief officers.’ His body signalled prodigious cringe now. The suit had somehow abruptly lost its oomph and might have been an entirely ordinary, reach-me-down, sixty-quid job. You could suspect him of having pinched at least the cuff-links, and possibly the shoes. ‘I speak for my colleague, B, and myself,’ he went on, ‘in saying that we are, indeed, surpassingly grateful for the interest shown in our work by high representatives from so many British police forces. I – we – are honoured by such interest, which will encourage, nay, inspire us, when next we are required to take on infiltration assignments. It is especially appropriate that this valuable endorsement of our special duties should occur in the magnificent Simpkins Suite of the renowned Fieldfare House, a symbol of success in another era through boldness, vision and effort. These are characteristics which B and myself will seek to emulate, in this twenty-first century, deeply heartened by your presence here today.’

He smiled a minion’s greasy smile, and passed the tip of his tongue gingerly along his upper lip, like playing the word ‘lickspittle’ in Charades. Now, when he flashed his cuffs and the links, the gesture seemed pathetically boastful – a desperate ploy by someone frantically struggling to come over as significant.

Esther realized they were watching a performer who could have made it big in the theatre. He did roles, inhabited them instantly, no matter how different from one another. During her days at Fieldfare, Esther would several times run across the word ‘protean’, meaning able to change appearance and character at will. And A seemed to have decided to give a demonstration of this flair, or had been instructed to, so Esther and the rest of the audience would know the kind of talents they must demand in their undercover people. Next for A, King Lear. Or Bottom. Just tell him what you wanted. He brought out crummy words like ‘nay’ and ‘indeed’ without a tremor. He was made for Out-location, In-location. That is if, as well as his acting range, he knew what to look for, and remembered it, and brought it back in a form fit to prop a prosecution.

He might never appear on the witness stand himself, or that could be the end of him in secret operations. Might be the end of him altogether: relatives and friends of those he helped send down would want a reckoning if they saw plainly and painfully at trial how they’d been gulled. But A, and those in his game, must be able to guide and brief and cue the colleagues who
could
do the arrests and give the evidence in court. He, personally, would stay out of sight, watching his back, counting his suits, cooking up insults and smarm for his next appearance at Fieldfare.

Judges sometimes turned nosy and obstructive in cases based on undercover evidence. Of course, judges would never be
told
the prosecution rested on undercover evidence. Those words – ‘undercover’, ‘Out-located’ – had to be kept from the wise; the allegedly wise. But some of them tactlessly sensed or sniffed out gaps in material as it came before the jury. A detective in the box might say that, ‘acting on information received’, he turned up at the right place and at the right time to witness the accused doing what he was accused of, and to arrest him. ‘On information received from where and how?’ some intellectually unkempt judge might ask. Because the source had to stay confidential, no proper answer could be given, and there were judges who regarded this as either an affront to themselves and therefore to the whole edifice of British justice, and/or cool defiance of themselves and therefore of the whole edifice of British justice. They regarded spying as a sneaky, obnoxious trade, unless done years ago by Alec Guinness in
Smiley’s People
on BBC television. The prosecution case might get thrown out. Undercover people accepted this as customary, high-minded, wig-powered, Inns of Court absolutism and idiocy, and waited for the next casting, or promotion into Traffic.

Subsequently today, Officer A turned philosopher and theologian for a while. For this, he put a real whack of solemnity into his voice and manner. ‘Think the movie,
Reservoir Dogs,’
he said. ‘Think ethics, think acute and inevitable spiritual confusion. Consider how your man or woman undercover must in the interests of his/her disguise temporarily become a villain, going enthusiastically along with all kinds of gang crimes, including possible murders. Will that be acceptable to you? If not, perhaps you should forget undercover capers. Do it some other way. For credibility, and to see offences at first hand, your planted officer might have to take part in the actual lawlessness he/she has gone undercover to expose and thwart. His/Her Honour, concerned to guard his/her honour and the court’s, will possibly disapprove of such
dis
honourable behaviour, if Her/His Honour should get sight of it. He/she might find it hard to believe the supposed good end justifies the dirty means, and QCs climbed to be QCs by highlighting the dirty means so judges
did
notice them; unless the QCs were hired by the Prosecution, in which case they’d downplay the dirty means, naturally, and try to blank off the judge from them.

‘And, then, yes, think
Reservoir Dogs.
You’ll remember, Tim Roth, the cop spy playing gang member, “Mr Orange”, has to join in the very self-same diamond robbery he has already tipped off his chiefs about, and gets fatally gut-shot by the actual ambush police answering his whisper. Could you face that kind of agonizing irony? Again I say, you possibly shouldn’t mess with undercover if not, because undercover can be very messy.’

Esther chewed on that lot. Of course, she’d known already that undercover presented deeply troublesome, hellishly slippery issues of right and wrong. And, also of course, she’d heard the tale and the rumours about an Assistant Chief Constable, Desmond Iles, whose ground lay not all that far from Fieldfare. Apparently, Iles had very reluctantly authorized the placement of an undercover detective in a local criminal band.
^*
Soon, though, this officer’s real identity got known to the gang, and he was garrotted. Police arrested two men for the murder and prepared what they considered an irresistible case. The court acquitted both. But not long afterwards the pair were found dead, also garrotted. These killings remained a mystery. Some described them as ‘rough justice’. But, surely, police dealt in justice as plain justice, not justice with fancy adjectives stuck on. Esther tried to believe no Assistant Chief would carry out such tit-for-tat attacks, regardless of how racked he might have felt for sending a man undercover, so causing his death. And regardless of how enraged he might reasonably have felt at the perverse failure of the court to convict. She found herself confused by the issues involved here. Did the two villains deserve what came their way, though from no court? Should a senior police officer think like that? ‘“Vengeance is
mine,”
saith the Lord,’ in the Bible, really emphasizing that ‘mine’. There’s no mention of Assistant Chief Constables.

She liked to think the Fieldfare sessions might bring clarity to these debates she had with herself. And maybe Officer A did offer a kind of clarity, though not a soothing kind. He slapped the problems in front of you squarely, brutally, almost insubordinately, and more or less told you to get lost if such insoluble moral conundrums deeply niggled your pious, prissy soul making you not much more use than a judge. The conundrums deeply niggled Esther’s soul. She’d stay for the full Fieldfare course, though. It was such a treat to get away from Gerald and his little rages. She gathered Desmond Iles totally forbade undercover in his Force since those rough events on his patch, so he probably wouldn’t be at this conference. No nominal roll of those attending had been issued, of course; further security.

Esther hoped Officer A would eventually reach something that could truly be called a personal narrative, as described in the advertisement for this session, i.e. his own story, rather than displays of disdain, tailoring, bum-sucking servility, brilliant footwear and toughness. He did. Soon, he described his selection for undercover duties via psychometric assessment at another of these huge, adapted, Home Office Victorian houses, Hilston Manor. Esther had naturally heard of it and of the magic art, psychometrics – mind and brain measuring. She’d never been to Hilston, though. It and psychometrics were an advance since her own undercover spells.

Now, Officer A grew very heavily technical. Jargon galloped back. Esther made some notes, though she didn’t understand everything she wrote. At the Manor, he said, they used a specially adapted character test based on the findings of the famous psychologist, Carl Jung. This had been originally designed to assess the ability of candidates for high posts in business to read and interpret information, then act on it. It had an obvious bearing on undercover work. A talked of ‘scale scores’, and the ‘high and non-negotiable requirement’ to reach a good, specified level at these skills before qualifying for Out-location. He told of ‘interaction complexities’, ‘profile dimensions’ and ‘fakeometers’, designed to expose those who gave false answers, to conceal unsuitable personality quirks. He mentioned what was dubbed at Hilston ‘the unconfined, or protean, persona’, meaning, apparently, the flair of A and others at becoming something one moment, and then its opposite the moment after, and then a modification of both, or of one, or neither, as thought necessary. ‘I’m sure you’ll all be familiar with Proteus, that classical sea god who could switch shape whenever he fancied.’

From here he went into accounts of his own undercover work in several settings, some requiring the status suits and shoes, some less formal. All these penetrations of villain firms had clearly been deeply dangerous, several successful, a few not, though he told of each absolutely deadpan: another from his stock of ready-made, adaptable, suitable faces.