Remains to be Seen (3 page)

‘There are racial overtones to this, Peach.'

And you're wetting yourself again, thought Percy. He was glad to hear his forename removed from Tommy Bloody Tucker's address and enmity re-entering the chief's tones; you knew where you were when there was a little formality in the exchanges. ‘You're on to it as usual, sir. Nothing slips past you, as I constantly emphasize to the lads and lasses downstairs. I was saying as much to the girl who had her head split open in making this arrest, only this morning.'

Tucker's concern was as usual not for his officer's welfare but for the PR aspect of the incident. ‘You need to go easy here, Peach. We operate in a very difficult racial climate, in this area.'

Correction:
we
operate and
you
piss about up here, thought Percy. He sat very erect and addressed himself to a point on the wall behind the Chief Superintendent's head. ‘I appreciate that, sir. And I am glad that you are counselling that we operate zero tolerance whenever there are incidents of racial violence like this. It is the quickest way of stamping them out, in my opinion. And the officers who have to deal with this escalating problem will be gratified to know that they have your support. They will be very happy to take a hard line: we have been waiting for a lead on this.'

He nodded his approval and half-rose to his feet, as if anxious to rush away and announce this brave new world to the men and women straining at the leash on the floors below them.

Tucker was looking pleasingly pale. He was as usual not quite clear how he had arrived at a stance which was the very opposite of his inclination. ‘You mustn't be headstrong, Peach. I have an overview of this situation which you cannot be expected to have when you are more closely involved in it.'

‘Ah! Your overview, sir.' Peach recognized a familiar phenomenon, settled sadly back on his chair and shook his head with elaborate melancholy. He looked like a man who had been hit over the head with a sock full of wet sand.

‘Indeed, Peach. My overview tells me that we have to be excessively cautious in this area. My advice – my reluctant advice, Peach – has to be that you should let this Atwal fellow go with a caution. To do otherwise might be to provoke resentment among our Asian community.'

‘And to release him without charge would certainly fuel the resentment of the National Front and the British National Party and every other right-wing lunatic. They gather extra votes every time we do not act in cases like this.' For a moment, Peach found himself abandoning his baiting of his inadequate superior to speak with a real passion. ‘The police service needs to be seen to be even-handed, sir.'

Tucker shook his head sadly. ‘If you had to go into some of the meetings I have to attend, Peach, you wouldn't dismiss racial tensions so lightly.'

And if you had to pick your way through the blood on the streets and see your own officers at risk, you wouldn't be such a time-serving and contemptible disappointment to us, thought Percy. He found himself unexpectedly tight-lipped and staring for once straight into Tucker's face as he said, ‘I'll question Atwal and his cronies myself, sir. Then I'll make a decision.'

Tucker looked uneasy in the face of this confrontation. But the only alternative to giving Peach his head was to get involved himself, which he was never going to do. ‘Better come back to me for a final approval, if you decide to charge him. My advice is a caution.'

Advice which was being offered without knowledge of a single detail of the case, thought Percy grimly. But he knew that he was going to have difficulty in getting the witnesses he needed to convince the CPS that they should take on an assault case. He would probably have to let the arrogant young hoodlum downstairs go with a caution anyway. The matter would end with this silly sod in front of him thinking his wiser counsel had prevailed.

To make his disapproval manifest, Peach spoke every syllable with elaborate slowness as he said, ‘Was there anything else you wanted to say to me, sir?'

Tucker stared at him for a moment, a rabbit now caught in headlights. Then his memory clanked into gear and he said querulously, ‘Yes, there was, Peach. If you hadn't distracted me with your inanities, you would have known about it by now.' He squirmed a little on his seat, feeling he needed a different pose for this portentous revelation. ‘We are to be part of the most important police operation in the north-west this year. A major part, in fact. The Drugs Squad have been working on this one for months, and are now ready to make their move. They believe they can seize some of the really big boys: the drug barons.' Tucker paused to let Peach appreciate that portentous phrase. ‘And I have decided to entrust the matter to you and the team you select. But I don't want any cock-ups. The prestige of Brunton CID is at stake.'

What you mean is that you don't want to be around when the shit's flying but you'll emerge to claim the glory if all goes well, thought Percy. He had worked with Tommy Bloody Tucker for too long to feel either surprise or resentment. It was the way of the world and the privilege of rank to do such things, but Tucker took it to extremes. Success was always his and his alone; failure was never remotely to be connected with him.

Peach looked at the wall beyond his chief and said modestly, ‘You're far too ready to let us enjoy all the excitement, sir. I don't think you should deny yourself like this. I think you should take charge of this operation yourself. Let us have the benefit of your overview.' He dwelt on the last word just long enough to leave irony hanging in the air over the big desk.

Tucker stared at him suspiciously. ‘It is not my policy to interfere with my staff. You know how I like to let you and the others take the glory.' It did not sound convincing, even to him, but he put all the conviction he could muster into the words.

‘But it isn't fair for us to monopolize the action, sir. This would be an opportunity to bring your fabled experience back on to the streets and savour the full benefits of leading from the front. A rare opportunity.' Peach paused to give due weight to this last phrase.

‘No. I shall liaise with senior officers in the Drugs Squad and the Serious Crime Unit over this. That is my function. That is what the system requires of me.'

‘Well, there's no getting round the system, sir, is there? A pity, though: I can guess just how much you'd like to be sharing the dangers with us.'

Tucker looked at him sharply, but his DCI's face was as inscrutable as a warrior's mask. ‘You'll have the Armed Response Unit to back you up.' He was sprinkling the capitals in each of his statements about the operation, as if by doing so he could stress its magnitude to this man who refused so steadfastly to be impressed.

Peach nodded, suddenly serious. Bullets flying about; trigger-happy young coppers on the one side and villains who were not bound by any rules on the other. People could get hurt. Despite his goading of Tommy Bloody Tucker, the last man he wanted around in such circumstances was this bumbling figurehead. ‘Let's have the details, sir. The when and the where, to start with. I'll need to decide carefully who to deploy on this one, by the sound of it.'

Tucker smiled a superior smile. At last this insolent subordinate was recognizing the importance of this commission. The Chief Superintendent touched the side of his nose in the gesture of secrecy which Peach found the most irritating of all. ‘I cannot tell you that at the moment, as you will appreciate, Peach. I don't even know the details myself, as yet.'

That was but one more drop in the vast pool of Tommy Bloody Tucker's ignorance, thought Percy Peach, as he went thoughtfully back down the stairs to rejoin the real world. But he was unusually quiet as he began to think about the personnel he would deploy on this. For all his wordplay with Tucker, this wasn't something to be taken lightly.

J
ack Clark was exhausted.

You would expect to be able to relax when you reached the haven of the police station. Instead, as an undercover officer coming here from the most dangerous of all situations, he knew that he would be put through a series of tests and interrogations, most of which he did not understand and did not want to understand.

They had put him in a room on his own, a blessedly warm room. He knew it was no more than an empty office, but it felt like a palace after the basement in the squat. He stood motionless for minutes before the single window, looking out at the lights of the town, at the sky darkening to navy in the early March twilight.

He did not recognize any of the people who attended to him. But that was all right: he found he did not want to recognize them, or to exchange any words which would make them colleagues. He had striven for months now to attune himself to the dangerous world of the squat and the strange companions of that house, some of them pathetic, some of them menacing. He had worked hard to make this place of friendly, unthreatening faces into an alien one; he could not afford to switch back to it now.

They took his order and brought him food from the police canteen. Having a choice of food was more than he could cope with: he opted for the steak pie and chips which was the first thing on offer, and scarcely heard the words of the rest. The female officer who brought the tray to him was scathing about the quality of the canteen cuisine, but he fell upon the food as soon as she was out of the room as if it had earned the highest Michelin rating.

It was the first really hot food he had consumed in weeks, and the syrup sponge and custard which followed formed a warm lining in his stomach for the cold night to which he knew he must return. He sipped the mug of hot, sweet tea as if it were a new and priceless beverage, noting with a shock how filthy and cracked his nails were, as he wrapped them around the diminishing warmth of the earthenware.

Then Jack Clark folded his arms, slid them on to the table in front of him and put his head sideways upon them, as he had not done since he was a small child in the nursery school. He was safe here, as he had not been for months: he curled up like an overfed animal to sleep off the meal.

They gave Sergeant Clark four minutes before they came into the room. He seemed sound asleep, but he was awake in an instant as the door slid open, his deeply set eyes as narrow and watchful as those of a wild creature cornered in its lair, his lean body twisting on the chair to confront them.

The psychologist was swift, expert and impersonal, testing him without a change of expression, whatever his replies. If he felt sympathy for this debilitated, hunted figure, he gave no sign of it in his face. And he wasted no time: Clark had to be back in the squat in no more than two hours, or suspicions might be aroused about where he was and what he was doing.

The National Crime Squad pursues major criminals in drugs, in arms and people trafficking, in fraud and paedophilia. The fifteen hundred officers and five hundred civilian staff are based in covert locations throughout England and Wales. It is the people who work as undercover agents in the drug industry who take the maximum risks, disappearing for months on end without being able to contact their nearest and dearest, unable to assure them of their safety or even their continued existence.

Each year, a few of these officers disappear for ever, removed from the face of the earth without even remains to mourn. The surprising thing is that people still volunteer to undertake such work. Those who do are driven by a complex of motives which they do not always understand themselves, the chief of which are a lust for excitement and a need to explore the most secret parts of themselves.

Such personalities are by definition extraordinary. And the extraordinary is also unpredictable, especially when operating under the extremes of stress which undercover work demands. Officers who volunteer to work like this have to be checked as regularly as their perilous work allows. In order to make their cover convincing, they have to take illegal drugs. Usually they do as Jack Clark had done, and pretend to be injecting or swallowing more cocaine or heroin than is actually the case, but there is no way they can be convincing without being users.

Some of them become unpredictable junkies, no longer any use to themselves or to their employers, destined for early death from the drugs themselves or at the hands of the people they set out to expose, unless they can be swiftly pulled out and sent for rehabilitation. Others join the enemy. The sight of thousands of pounds passing between the bigger fish in this dark pool can be a real temptation to swim in it yourself, to drop your police contacts, supply information to the other side and begin your move up the sides of this lucrative criminal pyramid.

As often as it is possible, your mental balance and your continuing loyalty are checked, as Jack Clark's were now. He understood all that, but he was not interested in the details. He went through the tests as unthinkingly as a beast in the fields where he had worked as a boy, in that existence which seemed now to belong to another being altogether.

When it came to his debriefing and he stood for the first time in front of a man he recognized, his attitude was transformed. He had information to give. He wanted to convey what he had to offer as completely and as accurately as he could, but also to absorb whatever information these people at HQ had gathered and could relay to him, to make his own situation less hazardous. The success of the whole operation might depend on the exchanges of the next few minutes.

More pertinently for him, his own life might depend on any one of the scraps of information he could give, which the chief superintendent in front of him was assimilating and collating with what came in from elsewhere. That sounded melodramatic, but it was absolutely accurate; you grew used to melodrama, once you accepted the role he had adopted.

He gave names, watched the man nodding in front of him, gathered that he was offering confirmation of what had come in from other sources. The thought that there were others working on his side against the big battalions of the enemy was a consolation to him. When you were watching your back and playing out a lie for twenty-four hours a day in that squat and elsewhere, it often felt as if you were working alone against impossible odds.