Undercover (5 page)

‘So, Maud, let me tabulate the topics and sub-topics, will you? One, you'll ask, and reasonably ask, why in this case do I wish to protect his unkempt, struggling ego? Two: why do I pick him to come on this assignment with me in another police region? I'll deal chronologically with these wholly justifiable queries. One: I am, I trust, a forgiving, large-minded man who, at the sight of mental frailty, wishes to do what I can, in the interests of humaneness, to help. Hence, kindness to Col. As a child, I was known by my mother as “Heartfelt Desmond” and, if brevity were not required, “Desmond-who-does-not-pass-by-on-the-other-side”. That deals with Question One.

‘But, then, we have to answer Question Two, don't we? Why select him as my baggage-man and toothpaste squeezer? And, so, here
is
the answer: am I going to leave this prick-driven laddie unmonitored while I'm away sorting out some distant police crew, my wife being there unchaperoned and vulnerable in Rougemont Place, and Harpur treacherously familiar with the environs?'

Harpur thought Maud looked appalled – altogether unlike the calm but commanding mandarin figure she had seemed a short time ago. She said: ‘Mr Iles, Desmond, please: none of this has anything to do with—'

‘Oh, I can tell you,' Iles replied, ‘my wife, Sarah, and I have quite a joint giggle some evenings now when we talk of her goings-on with him in the past. We – neither of us, and I stress this, neither she nor I – neither of us is able to understand how she could possibly have opened up to someone of Col's grubby ilk. Notoriously, some women will go for what's termed “a bit of rough”. Although people wrongly pronounce the initial A in Ava Gardner to rhyme with “day” or “say”, I'm told she'd chosen it as her stage name because she liked to have a gardener occasionally, possibly
al fresco
.'

‘Did he have something special for her?' Harpur said.

‘Who?' Iles replied.

‘Ava Gardner,' Harpur said, with the broad A.

‘No, I meant did who have something special for her?' Iles said.

‘The gardener, Al Fresco,' Harpur said, ‘with the broad A.'

‘So, yes, “a bit of rough” might be understandable, Maud. But Harpur?' Iles asked. ‘To stick this label on him would disrespect the word “rough”. There is, after all, rough, and then there's
rough
. However, I can sense your trained mind tackling this perhaps unexpected material. No doubt, Maud, you'll want to ask why, if my wife and I now regard their fling as absurd, should I fear that in my absence the two of them might reactivate their déclassé, nomadic intimacy, accompanied most probably by unbecoming, subversive jibes about me? I have to say, Maud, I do not know the answer to this. I am one who will unhesitatingly admit to gaps and even contradictions in my thinking.

‘Possibly, you have not come across this kind of rampant honesty and frankness before. The fucking Home Office is hardly the place to encounter such limpid qualities. But, however one looks at this, Maud, I believe it would be a kind of hubris to leave Harpur at large back there while there is also a fine, friendly woman to be exploited. Harpur won't, of course, know what “hubris” means. You, Maud, owing to a Classics background, will be familiar with the word and what it denotes – excessive, smug, foolish pride. But I'll say this for Col, he'll make a guess at it. OK, he'll get it wrong, but he will have tried. There's something admirable about such determination, although doomed. Many would find Col entirely acceptable, no question, but, also no question, they would
not
include those who've discovered that, in his abominable, unholy way he has—'

‘You're telling us, Maud, are you, that the whole supposed Scray hunt was a phoney? A device to get Tom so-called Parry into a spot – the non-CCTV'd building site – where he could be safely taken out?' Harpur said.

‘This is what I would like you and Desmond to establish,' she said.

‘If it can be established,' Harpur replied.

‘I think we should come at things positively,' Maud said.

‘But you won't be coming at them. We will,' Harpur said.

‘Col can be sharp on phrasing,' Iles said. ‘He has been shaped by what is referred to unapologetically as “the university of life”. He had an Open Scholarship to that one.'

‘It's among a hundred hazards of going undercover, isn't it?' Maud replied. ‘The planted officer finds as part of his spying that some members of the infiltrated gang have a money arrangement with certain cops – probably Drugs Squad people. Perhaps he or she shows too much interest in this. His or her cover crumbles. Both sides – the villains and the corrupt detectives – decide he or she is a fink, and also decide he or she might expose their jolly arrangement. They want him or her dead, and soon – before he or she has enough evidence to convince a court. They scheme an operation where he or she can be seen off, as if by someone from a competing firm, in a company battle. So neat.'

‘But
you
think he was killed by a police officer?' Harpur asked.

‘Col can have flashes of insight. I did warn you,' Iles said. The ACC was calm again now, and rational. His fits never lasted long. He was aware afterwards that they'd taken place. No blackout. A couple of weeks ago he'd said to Harpur, following a bout, ‘Debussy used to have mind-wobbles, too, but they didn't spoil his compositions, Col: in fact, they perhaps gave his music an extra, thrilling, other-worldly touch. Likewise, my work is enhanced.'

‘I've often thought it should be
Clair de loon
, with double O not the “une”,' Harpur had answered.

Maud said now: ‘You'll have the full backing of the Home Office.'

‘Oh, God,' Iles said.

‘On the night, who knew what was going on, Maud?' Harpur asked.

‘Perhaps only Abidan,' she said. ‘And the chief, L.P. Young, naturally. There was little drugs trading done at the mall. Very unlikely Scray would be there. It appears that Young wanted to fix a suitable route for Tom, so he gets that pitch.'

‘But none of this came out in the trial, did it?' Harpur said.

‘The trial was about something else entirely, wasn't it?' Maud said.

‘And nobody charged for the death of Parry,' Harpur said.

‘Quite,' Maud replied.

‘Quite,' Iles said.

BEFORE

I
f they decided to kill
,
you had to go along with it
.
Pack law
.
Basic
.
Anyone who went undercover knew this
.

Yes, of course, Thomas Rodney Mallen did know this, but it was a while before he had to apply such obvious, tidy undercover wisdom to how he actually behaved. You didn't just stroll into the realm of secret duty and its special, non-stop moral puzzles. And into its special strains and perils – also non-stop. They'd come up with a new name for him, Thomas Derek Parry, and it would take a while to acclimatize. Undercover people often kept their first name, but
only
their first name; and only their first name if it was reasonably common: not Peregrine or Putsy-Pie or Sacheverell.

For years – decades – as children and young adults at home and in school, present-day undercover officers had responded automatically to that first name. So, to stick with it now in these hairy conditions reduced by a fraction the amount of play-acting needed, and therefore a fraction of the stress. Also, the name helped an undercover snoop hang on to a portion of his or her true identity, and in a protracted operation that could be useful: selfhood sometimes turned shaky then, like:
who the fuck am I?

Iris and both the children said he shouldn't take on this change of duties. Naturally, Laura and Steve could have no real understanding of what it was about, but they'd been warned he might have to go away for long spells, and that disturbed them. Also, Tom sensed they'd noticed how his mention of the new duties badly upset their mother. Her agitation spread. Iris was very close to the kids, and they to Iris, so her feelings inevitably reached them; like osmosis, an absorbent process, but faster. Tom thought this was how a good family should be, but it did mean that on some issues he'd feel outgunned, three to one, which now and then pissed him off. Now.

Their objections wouldn't make him change, though. The brass had sent someone to ask Tom to do it, and he'd said he'd do it. You didn't get ordered into undercover. You volunteered. You accepted, if and when invited. Not many officers
were
invited. The role brought kudos.
¹
Tom wouldn't mind some of that. The role brought a kind of independence. Tom wouldn't mind some of that, either. Once you'd infiltrated a firm, you had to run things as you wanted them run. Interference from senior officers wasn't possible, because it might crack the spy's cover.

Tom's willingness – enthusiasm – would make it worse for Iris and the children to take, of course. He'd opted to go. He'd actually chosen to leave them, for who knew how long? He didn't really think it would be a dolly job and quickly over. There'd be more training, then the slow business of getting into the target crew, followed by the harvesting of information that made the slow business of getting into the target crew necessary and worthwhile.

Undercover people weren't supposed to tell even their spouse/partner about assignments. Tom considered this nuts. It would require someone superlatively dim not to guess what was happening. You couldn't brick wall all the inevitable queries. That would only magnify uneasiness and, maybe, resentment. Your replies to questions needn't be too detailed, though: they could be ‘redacted', to borrow a modish term. ‘I don't get it, Tom,' Iris said.

He reckoned this meant she
did
get it – or, at least the permitted outline of it – but wanted him to give her a full, clear description of what he was taking on. She'd be able to endorse it or counter it point by point then. Iris liked system. Obviously, life did need some system. Tom thought it shouldn't get to domineer, though. Iris had a brother, Jeremy, a Cambridge graduate, who often – it certainly
seemed
often – spoke about the intellectual ‘rigour' instilled there. Iris hadn't been to Cambridge, but she could offer her own, home-made rigour. Tom didn't go much for Cambridge rigour, anyway. Hadn't that Lord who ‘authenticated' the flagrantly phoney Hitler diaries become head of a Cambridge college? Dacre, his name? A faker fooled Dacre.

Tom realized that Iris might have been expecting the kind of announcement he'd made today – expecting, and possibly dreading. After all, he'd been away for a month on that course in undercover objectives and skills at Hilston Manor, the handsome country mansion, once home of a great nineteenth-century railways man. It was still handsome, but the industrialist and his heirs had gone, and the house and grounds now served as an assessment and training depot for all British police forces.

The course he'd attended had as its official, magnificently uninformative title, ‘Actual Progressive Policing' (APP). Those selected were instructed to tell anyone outside who asked about it that the object was to improve police integration within the community. The last phrase – ‘within the community' – should be used verbatim and with a pious tone, his tutor said, because the word ‘community' had lately developed a kind of gorgeously holy tinge, and to be ‘within' that blessed fold made things even holier: the curious would consider it crude to go on nosing if once blocked by this cosy, sanctified formula. He'd tried it on Iris, and she'd replied: ‘Rubbish. You've been learning how to spy, haven't you, Tom? Active Progressive Policing means getting disguised into a gang.'

Now, she said: ‘It's a different police patch, and they want you to move there?'

‘Not
move
there. Not a permanent thing, of course. A sort of secondment.'

‘Which sort?'

‘Strictly task related. When it's completed I'll be signed off. A very limited arrangement. Like a company calling in an IT expert to deal with some specific snarl-up.'

‘What are you an expert at? What type of snarl-up?'

Iris had one hell of a down on jargon – assumed always that its purpose was concealment and evasiveness, not communication; anti-communication. OK, OK, she might be right. Often Iris got things right. He wouldn't want a wife who didn't. It could be a sodding pain, though.

‘There'll be a full briefing before things get properly under way,' he said.

‘Before what gets properly under way?'

‘Some kinds of work can't be rushed,' he replied. ‘It's not like answering a nine nine nine.'

‘Which kinds?'

‘Secondments of this sort.'

‘Which sort?'

‘Secondments are very various – and quite common. They allow a beneficial spread of resources.'

The gobbledegook shit made her grimace. ‘How long do secondments of this particular sort last?' Iris asked.

‘It depends.'

‘On what?'

‘On the degree of progress.'

‘What kind of progress?'

‘Progress towards bringing a properly documented case against the firm I'm placed with.' He had been going to say ‘against the firm I'm embedded with' but corrected that in time. ‘Bed', even buried in the middle of a bigger word, could suggest the wrong kind of intimacy.

‘So, you aim to scupper them?' Iris asked.

‘To bring them to trial.'

‘You'll pretend friendship, and then betray them?'

‘Not friendship. You're being deliberately naive.'

‘You'll be workmates, apparently.'

‘We're talking about mobsters, Iris. They kill people. I don't owe them loyalty. This might be the only way they can be neutralized.'

‘“Neutralized” meaning destroyed.'