Undercover (28 page)

Denise had helped Harpur's sister look after the girls while he was away with Iles on that investigation for Maud and the Home Office months ago; but he knew his absence had disturbed the girls and made them even more keen now on keeping things strong and settled at home in Arthur Street. He'd be going away again with Iles today but back this evening. Just the same, he could tell his daughters felt tense, vulnerable, anxious.

‘Where?' Jill said.

‘Hilston Manor,' Harpur said.

‘What is it?' Jill said.

‘Like a college,' Harpur said.

‘Such as Denise goes to,' Jill said, ‘learning French poetry about what happened to the snow that was here not long ago?'

‘No, it's not the same is it?' Hazel said. ‘Denise's type of college doesn't have that kind of name. They're called after the city or county they're in, or “Imperial” or “Such and such Metropolitan”. I should think this one Dad's going to is a special police college. They'd like to have a posh, historical name for it – Manor. In the old days there'd be a squire or something like that, for instance a royal courtier, or Admiral of the Fleet, in a manor house. Of course, police refer to their ground as their “manor”. It's one of those words that has slumped a bit, the same as “Parliament” and “intercourse”. A manor house would have a boot-scraper in the porch for after strolls over turf acres, and I don't know how many bedrooms for guests and servants and views out on to the estate with deer and a maze and a plashy fountain. Now, I should think, all the bedrooms have been turned into rooms for lectures and general police jabber about “the community”, and how to knock members of it about with that special long truncheon.'

‘Yes, that sort of thing,' Harpur said.

‘To do what?' Denise said. She was sitting up alongside Harpur in the bed, nightdress on. She lit a cigarette from the previous one. He had never seen more powerful or more symmetrical nose jets of smoke than Denise's. Obviously, they came from wonderfully deep inside her and had worked up this headlong pace by the time they got to her nostrils and double exit. They always excited Harpur, and he loved the acrid tobacco taste on her lips and teeth, but his daughter were present now, so he had to make do with the damn tea. Hazel and Jill would get on at Denise sometimes about her fags, but she'd deaf-ear them, the way undergraduates of her age could deaf-ear anything they didn't want to hear and concentrate on what they did want to hear – moronic rock music. ‘The cost of smokes!' Jill would say.

‘The cancer!' Hazel would say.

‘Yes, to do what at this Manor, Dad?' Jill said. ‘You two going to be teachers there or students?'

‘To contribute to a course,' Harpur replied.

‘Which course?'

‘They have many different courses at Hilston for police from all over the UK,' Harpur said. ‘Budgetary, traffic, undercover, public order, home security and so on.'

‘Have they got one on how to do verbals?' Hazel said.

‘What's verbals?' Jill said.

‘Oh, wake up, kid, get real, will you?' Hazel said.

‘What's verbals?' Jill said.

‘Detectives putting words into people's mouths which they didn't say. These words can be written into cop notebooks so whoever is supposed to have used them can be convicted and sent down,' Hazel replied.

‘You always have to be anti-police, Haze,' Jill said, ‘and spouting ancient gob-juice like “wake up, kid” and “get real”.'

‘Well, why don't you wake up, kid, and get real,' Hazel said.

‘What course, Col?' Denise asked.

‘This is one for senior officers on how to investigate possible failings and even corruption in another police force,' Harpur said.

‘You and Iles did one of those, didn't you?' Denise said.

‘When you helped my sister look after things here, yes,' Harpur said.

‘Dad and Ilesy were in the papers,' Jill said.

‘Yes, it made the Press and TV, didn't it?' Denise said. ‘An undercover guy shot, killed?'

‘That's how it started,' Harpur said.

‘I've got the newspaper clipping stuck into my scrapbook because you were part of it, Dad,' Hazel said. ‘A man called Mallen, but also a sort of code name, Parry.'

‘Tom Parry,' Harpur said.

‘And because you and Des Iles went poking about on their ground, you got the one who done it – a cop hisself, would you believe?' Jill said.

‘Did it,' Harpur said. ‘Himself.'

‘Yes, he did it, this other cop, himself,' Jill said.

‘We failed,' Harpur replied.

‘No!' Jill said. ‘He got life, didn't he, the cop who done, did, it?'

‘We failed,' Harpur replied.

‘I don't see that,' Denise said. ‘Are you getting all 'umble, martyring yourself? They wouldn't invite you to this Manor place and lecture other officers on how to do it if you failed. It would be like asking Gordon Brown to give a talk on how to be a great prime minister.'

‘We got the right verdict,' Harpur said.

‘So, you didn't fail, did you, Dad?' Hazel said. ‘That's what police are about – getting the right verdicts, regardless.'

‘What's that mean?' Jill said.

‘What?' Hazel replied.

‘“Regardless”,' Jill said.

‘It means regardless,' Hazel said. ‘The right verdict is the one that gets someone sent to jail, regardless.'

‘Regardless of what?' Jill asked.

‘Regardless of anything else,' Hazel replied.

‘Which anything else?' Jill said.

‘Anything,' Hazel said. ‘I expect they have a course at this Manor on how to get people sent down, regardless.'

‘Are you being nasty again, Haze?' Jill said.

‘You're going all metaphysical on us, are you, Col?' Denise said.

‘What's that mean?' Jill said.

‘This is all a bit beyond you, kid,' Hazel replied.

‘It's a bit, and a good bit, beyond all of us,' Denise said.

Harpur said: ‘In a way, Hazel's right.'

‘Which way?' Jill said.

‘Yes, Col, which?' Denise said.

‘About what policing is. You nick those you can, even though you know you might be – are – missing the real, main villains. We nibble at the perimeter. It's called, by some, “zero tolerance”. That is, hitting the smaller people, the smaller offences, in the hope this will deter not just the low-levels but the chieftains, the bosses, the barons. Or, that's the published statement of the aims. It's a PR gambit – a device to make it look as if purposeful police effort is under way. And purposeful police effort is. But aimed at nobodies or, at best, middling brass, like in the Parry/Mallen case. The major brass remains unreachable.'

‘You sound crushed, Dad,' Jill said.

‘He'll get over it,' Hazel said.

WELL AFTER

H
arpur felt Hazel must regret having been so rude and niggly and hard, and, maybe to compensate, she went for her scrap book. She opened it at the page where she'd glued the newspaper cutting about the Tom Mallen/Parry murder trial. Sitting on the end of the bed, she read bits of the report to them. ‘“A police officer was found guilty yesterday of ambushing and shooting to death another officer who it was feared might expose a network of police corruption. The Home Office had ordered investigations by officers from another force because of delays in solving the murder, thought to be the result of attempts to cover up the crime. Detective Inspector Courtenay Jaminel was sentenced to life imprisonment, for a minimum period of eighteen years.

‘“Prosecution evidence during the case said that the Home Office investigating team of Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles and Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur suspected that the accused, or an associate of the accused, had received information about the presence of an undercover officer planted in a criminal firm with which Detective Inspector Jaminel, and possibly other officers, had a corrupt financial connection. He had heard from someone in the firm of an opportunity to surprise and kill the undercover officer, Sergeant Thomas Mallen, who was acting under the name Tom Parry. Detective Inspector Jaminel waited hidden in a partly completed house on a building site which it was known that Parry would have to pass through. Jaminel shot him from an upstairs window. Jaminel was gun-trained. The weapon used was not police issue and has never been found.”'

Hazel skipped and summarized. ‘It says that although the gun was still missing, Jaminel had broken down and confessed under interrogation by the two visiting officers – Dad and Des Iles, who confronted him with evidence they had unearthed. This consisted of arriving at a short list of officers not simply gun trained but also capable of exceptional accuracy, and then working through the shortlist and eliminating those alibied. Jaminel withdrew the confession and pleaded not guilty, but the jury believed the investigating officers. That seems to show a lot of skill and persistence by the two of you, Dad, not failure at all.'

‘Ilesy is bound to be great in the witness box,' Jill said. ‘The jury wouldn't have the nerve to disagree with him.'

‘Col would be damn good, too, in his own different way,' Denise said.

‘Oh, of course,' Jill said. ‘For definite.'

WELL AFTER

M
aud was at the Hilston lecturette and discussion. She wore a navy blue silk suit, tall heels, a chunky pewter-beaded, Celtic-style necklace, an imitation dahlia buttonhole, and unquestionably looked very approachable. No, not unquestionably. There had to be questions. Harpur felt deeply glad that the ‘family' get-together with Denise and the kids had taken place, and taken place only hours earlier in the bedroom and at breakfast. His recollection of those binding sessions remained fresh and influential. They armoured him. They helped him feel that Maud might appear approachable, but not approachable by him. He had something else and he'd stick with it, with them. Yes. The way smoke spurted straight and laser-like from Denise's nostrils had to be unique and uniquely thrilling to watch, and perhaps to get speared by, depending on where his head was.

Iles, in uniform, and switched over for now to reasonableness, did most of the talking at Hilston, stressing the need for good preparation before actually going into another force and starting the hostile, unflinching inquiries. ‘For instance, Col here, my valued colleague in the assignment, heard of some activities by Mallen/Parry with a strange van away from his proper ground – a trip to celebrate his son's birthday. This was an understandable wish by the undercover officer, but possibly, it has to be said, the cause of his tragic death. Harpur calculated that there might well have been a phone call from one force to the other about the breach. Customs snoops had the van under scrutiny, had followed it, and then began intrusive research among Mallen/Parry neighbours, attempting to discover more about the van and its provenance. We used this inspired piece of imagination by Col as the start of our questioning and general digging. It established our, as it were, tone for the investigation. You will know how it paid off.'

Harpur wondered about amending this. Of course, it had been Iles who did the speculating about a possible inter-force phone call. Iles almost always provided the speculation and imagination, what he would sometimes call ‘the gifted, gilded, surmise'. Harpur guessed the ACC still aimed to build him up, give him stature, and prove to Maud that she should go after him hard, so as to make sure Harpur didn't try an affair revival with Sarah Iles. The ACC was crediting him with ownership of a vivid and clever imagination now, on top of basic, nitty-gritty, plod strengths. Iles probably realized that few women would go for basic, nitty-gritty, plod strengths, and the few would not include Maud.

Harpur decided to let the flattery go, though. To give the correct version would look like sucking up to Iles, and Harpur always tried to avoid that, unless he could overdo the smarm so much it became roaring mockery. In any case, it hadn't been the telephone call – the presumed, utterly unverified phone call – that really opened up the inquiry. It had been Claud Norman Rice, a fetch-and-carry twerp in the local drugs commerce.

There were about twenty very senior officers as audience for Iles and Harpur at Hilston, seated in one of those magnificently spacious ex-bedrooms of the Manor that Hazel had mentioned, some plain-clothed, some uniformed. Iles, at a fine, oak lectern, said: ‘As far as we can make out, Mallen/Parry did not have at the time of his murder any serious information about the corruption of a police officer, or police officers, so the death is especially meaningless and sad. Such information was there to be had, but he didn't find it. He lacked time. This will almost always be the case in undercover. Virtually everything is against the likelihood of success.'

Harpur had the impression that Iles believed they
had
found the information. He could be right, at least in part, but only a long time after the events; and certainly only in part, in very minor part, Harpur thought. The ACC said: ‘You'll have been able to read up on the case details, so I don't need to go over all of them now. I have to tell you, though, that when Harpur and I arrived for our survey in this other domain we had the idea at once that some wrong impressions and assumptions had been made during earlier examinations of the facts.' He paused and grinned a vintage, Iles-type grin – combative, contemptuous, hugely and for ever uncomradely. ‘By the way,' he said, ‘I think it's very brave of Hilston to ask me to speak here today because my views on undercover are well-known – well-known and negative. I believe the Mallen/Parry disaster helps endorse this judgement.' He did that plain and emotionless, nearly venom-free. Iles always expected his judgements to be endorsed – as routine, as inevitable – so why get triumphalist? That would be a kind of absurd denial of his all-round genius. Victory was standard.