Agent of the State (37 page)

As he flicked back, Langton found only a few blue flags. Against each was the vehicle registration number and the coded reference to the source, two letters and a four-digit number: PI for an agent, short for ‘Participating Informant’, and MI for an undercover officer, a reference to the ‘Main Index’, the definitive national list of undercover officers retained by the National Crime Agency. Celia had disappeared into the washrooms and Langton heard water running as he primed one of Justin’s Pentax cameras and switched on the desk lamp. By the time she returned with her mop and bucket, Langton had captured each of the twenty-three pages and isolated three references to MI/2403.

‘So what’s happened to me cup of tea?’ she laughed.

‘Coming right up, Celia,’ Langton said, slipping the camera into his pocket and squeezing past her through a haze of disinfectant, ‘and I think we both deserve it.’

He was back home just after five-thirty. Katy was feeding the baby again, so he prepared breakfast while he made his checks. By seven his exhausted wife was in bed again and he was in the living room, on the phone to Kerr. ‘John, I tracked the Customs warnings back over three months. There are plenty on the list but only one possible undercover officer if you’re definitely linking this to recent Crime Agency operations. He’s on the national register for trained undercovers, and I cross-checked him with a mate in the Serious Crime UC Unit. He appears three times on the warnings, different truck each time.’

‘So what have we got?’

‘Ex-Met guy, borough CID at Stoke Newington, then did a lot of UC drugs and firearms work. No one in the Met shed any tears when he jumped ship for the Agency. My contact reckons he was bent then, so he’s odds on favourite now.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Mickey Baines. Detective constable, HGV-qualified up to thirty-two-tonners. At least four work names for his sets of duff papers. I’ve put the three vehicles on the magic box with a warning flag to Alan Fargo, so we may get a sighting if they use any of them in the future.’

‘Nice one, Jack,’ said Kerr. ‘I’ll let Theo Canning know.’

Forty-four

Monday, 24 September, 08.46, Home Office

Claire Grant MP, minister of state at the Home Office, was late for work. On Mondays, she normally reached the glassy new building in Marsham Street by eight o’clock for a team meeting with the home secretary. Today, in view of Saturday’s news, she had taken a detour to visit Michael Danbury in his Battersea mansion flat.

Grant hated her right honourable friend with a vengeance. But for his vicious party politicking, her rise would have been unstoppable. A Cambridge economics graduate, she had been an international aid worker, supply lecturer and councillor before entering Parliament. Carefully airbrushed photographs of Grant’s student partying cemented her reputation as an approachable, right-on woman of the people, and six years of assiduous manoeuvring had delivered her first Home Office ministerial appointment with responsibility for immigration, nationality and citizenship.

Grant was married to a corporate lawyer, who lived with their two children in an expensive farmhouse ten miles from Manchester. When Parliament was sitting she stayed during the week at their second home, a one-bedroom flat in Southwark, within easy reach of Westminster, arriving by train late on Sunday evening.

Michael Danbury was her parliamentary shadow and had been identifying the thousands of dodgy asylum applicants spirited into the UK on Grant’s watch. He had timed his attack to coincide with a media bombardment about knife, gun and gang crime, prostitution, organised criminality, theft of British jobs and the failure of multiculturalism.

The campaign generated a resentment of migrants that surpassed even the climate of fear against terrorism. Every time he accused her of incompetence, Grant played the race and tolerance cards. But then a number of things happened in quick succession. A tabloid published actual numbers of rapists, drugs traffickers, quasi-terrorists and sociopaths ‘ripping the heart out of Britain’, and a bad-tempered debate with Danbury on
Newsnight
had exposed Grant’s manipulation of the statistics. The next day the home secretary expressed complete confidence in his favourite Home Office minister; by breakfast the morning after, Claire Grant was toast.

Grant was the exception to the belief that the House of Commons club transcended party divides. Even a recall to government on promotion years later did nothing to soften her visceral loathing of Michael Danbury. Yet when he opened the front door, pale and watery-eyed, she embraced him as she would a brother. It was a gesture, though her skin was so thick that his peck on her cheek scarcely registered. ‘Crises like this have nothing to do with political differences,’ she had said to him, on the phone the night before.

Grant sat with Danbury for a few minutes in his living room, politely refusing his offer of tea, observing his suffering at first hand. ‘I know we’ve had our battles in the House,’ he said, close to tears.

‘Nonsense, Michael, that’s all in the past. This is parent stuff,’ she said, vaguely thinking of the adult son from her first marriage she never saw, ‘me to you, nothing to do with politics. Now,’ she said, sitting forward in her chair, ‘I want to know what the police have been like.’

‘Chief constable came to see me last night. Seemed a bit of a prat, actually. Had the head of CID in tow and asked if there could be any connection to my political work in the Northern Ireland office. You know, revenge attack, kidnap for ransom, that sort of thing.’

‘What do you think?’

‘Absolute garbage, as I told him to his face. That was a lifetime ago and I asked if he’d heard of the Good Friday Agreement, so then he droned on about the threat from AQ.’

‘Well, you have made some pretty trenchant remarks about Islamic terrorists.’

‘Kidnapping’s not their style in the UK,’ said Danbury, shaking his head. ‘Different MO.’ He sighed and looked Grant in the eye. ‘But since you’ve taken the trouble, Claire, I just want to make sure, you know . . .’

‘. . . that they’re doing everything possible? Of course, I understand.’

‘It would be enormously comforting if you could give Hampshire Plod a kicking.’

‘Go home and spend time with Selina. And don’t worry, I’ll drag the chief constable up to brief me personally, make sure he pulls out all the stops.’

‘Thanks, Claire, truly. From both of us.’

Her work done, Grant stood to go. ‘I’ll keep in touch, and let’s speak again soon.’

By the time she swept into the Home Office with her red box she was forty minutes behind schedule. She was renowned for her unpredictability and love of status. While other ministers mingled with their civil servants in the lift lobby, Grant’s driver ensured a lift was held for her exclusive use whenever she was on the move, leaving the infantry to take the stairs. In the outer office her diary secretary was hovering with the list of rescheduled meetings, but the three other staff kept their heads down, gauging her mood. They had only seconds to wait. ‘Get me the chief constable of Hampshire,’ Grant ordered no one in particular, ‘and coffee, now.’

‘Number Ten would like you to call as soon as . . .’ said Susan, the senior private secretary, as Grant bustled into her office and slammed the door. In addition to her own lift, the minister required fresh coffee all day, served black with sugar. There was a high turnover in the private office.

Susan buzzed through to Grant’s desk. ‘I have Chief Constable Clark. He’s on his carphone.’

‘First name?’ demanded Grant, wriggling out of her jacket.

‘Gordon.’

She used the speaker, scrolling through her emails as she spoke. ‘Gordon, I’ve had Michael Danbury onto me. What progress?’

‘Sara Danbury is a core priority investigation. Scores high on the matrix.’

Clark had a high, reedy voice, and spoke like a statistician. ‘We’re resourcing it as a kidnap, with the potential to develop into a murder scenario.’

‘Obviously,’ replied Grant, shaking her head in irritation. Clark’s face suddenly came to her. Somebody had introduced him to her at Bramshill Police College, a blond schoolboy, with fluff on his top lip and coloured pens in his shirt pocket, who still believed in mind maps. ‘But what information do you have for me now?’

‘Early days, Minister. The victim was snatched outside her dance class.’

‘We’ve all seen the news.’

‘We’re still doing house-to-house and forensicating the scene, checking CCTV and trying to keep it high on the national bulletins.’

‘Your signal keeps breaking. What leads do you have, witnesses, et cetera?’ Grant demanded, ignoring Susan as she entered with her coffee.

‘The investigation is building steadily,’ said Clark, to the sound of papers being shuffled. ‘Three witnesses mention a grey Ford Transit van, sliding side door, no windows, and one says it was a long wheelbase. Male behind the wheel, dark complexion. Are you sure you want this much detail, Minister?’

‘Everything you have,’ she snapped.

‘Slim build, wearing round glasses. Wire-rimmed. A second male grabbed her. This one was also dark but heavy-set, wearing jeans and sweatshirt. I went to see Mr Danbury personally last night.’

‘I heard. Listen, Michael Danbury is a parliamentary colleague and friend, so I want to know every detail about progress. If you get anything at all, you come through to me, understood?’

‘Certainly, Minister, if you feel it’s necessary.’

‘I do, and let me know if I need to bring in the Met.’ Grant cut the call and buzzed the office. ‘What’s happened to the call into Number Ten?’

Forty-five

Monday, 24 September, 12.56, chairman’s office, National Crime Agency

As soon as he received Kerr’s tip-off about the corrupt Mickey Baines, Sir Theo Canning acted with the decisiveness that had served him so well as an undeclared MI6 field officer. Kerr had rung his office mid-morning while he was at the leadership meeting he chaired every Monday. As he had left instructions that he was not to be pulled out of it, he did not return Kerr’s call until lunchtime, losing two precious hours for damage limitation.

Kerr laid out the child-trafficking allegation exactly as Robyn had told him, including the use of Hull to smuggle, and this time mentioning that the originating source was a dealer to whom Baines was selling cocaine. ‘Sorry to be first to piss you off at the start of the week, Theo,’ Kerr had said. ‘Must be a bit of a shock.’

That was an understatement. Canning tried to keep himself in check as he absorbed the scale of the undercover officer’s betrayal. The gross breach of operational security went against everything he had worked for in his own long and distinguished career, and Baines’s sheer greed left him practically speechless. His professional instincts kicked in to cover his anger with coolness and gratitude, but he guessed John Kerr knew him well enough to sense his true feelings.

He kept the conversation with Kerr short, less than two minutes, while a deeper part of his brain worked out a game plan. By the time he buzzed his PA he already had a strategy mapped out. ‘Dorothy, I need to see Mickey Baines now. I’ll hold.’

She was obviously eating something. There was an audible gulp, and the chewing started as she dialled.

‘No reply,’ she said. ‘I’m getting his voicemail.’

‘So try his mobile.’ Canning took a deep breath. Whatever his PA’s failings, he was invariably courteous and patient. ‘Quick as you can, please, Dorothy.’

Canning silently locked his main office door, removed a laptop from his safe and set it on the coffee-table. From a small inner drawer in the safe he withdrew a palm-sized transmitter and plugged it into the laptop. He took an electronic token from a locked drawer in his desk, waited for the number to change and typed the numerals into the laptop. He skim-read the decoded message, closed the laptop down, replaced it in the safe and unlocked the door as Dorothy buzzed him.

Mickey Baines was waiting in the outer office and jumped to his feet the second Canning appeared. As usual, he was dressed for action in baseball pumps, narrow jeans and torso-hugging red T-shirt, a Secret Squirrel always ready to deploy at a moment’s notice. Canning groaned inwardly as he led the way into his office.

Canning sat at the head of the conference table overlooking the Thames. His old office was less than half a mile away, concealed by a bend in the river. ‘I have an emergency special assignment, Mickey,’ he said gravely, ‘which I need you to carry out tonight.’ He was finding it difficult to conceal his true feelings. Having placed such trust in Baines, he took the man’s treachery as a deep personal affront. He now viewed Baines as a double agent working for two masters: Theo Canning, and naked self-interest. He had ordered the execution of several doubles in his long career, and Baines would be no exception.

Baines already looked pumped up. ‘No worries, Sir Theo,’ he said, running a hand through his shoulder-length hair. ‘I’m ready to roll. Totally.’

Canning fought to conceal his distaste. He had always held misgivings about the rough and ready Baines. Successful undercover officers exuded confidence, and the tiny minority who were corrupt often exhibited charm bordering on the charismatic. But this designer-stubbled insubordinate oaf had never progressed beyond a coarse extrovertism.

Canning outlined the emergency special assignment he needed Baines to carry out that night. The information was short and explicit. When he had finished, he sat back in his chair. ‘So, is that all right, Mickey? Can you do it?’