Undercover

Table of Contents

A Selection of Titles by Bill James

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Footnotes

DOUBLE JEOPARDY *

FORGET IT *

FULL OF MONEY *

HEAR ME TALKING TO YOU *

KING'S FRIENDS *

THE LAST ENEMY *

LETTERS FROM CARTHAGE *

MAKING STUFF UP *

OFF-STREET PARKING *

TIP TOP *

WORLD WAR TWO WILL NOT TAKE PLACE *

THE SIXTH MAN and other stories *

 

The Harpur and Iles Series

YOU'D BETTER BELIEVE IT

THE LOLITA MAN

HALO PARADE

PROTECTION

COME CLEAN

TAKE

CLUB

ASTRIDE A GRAVE

GOSPEL

ROSES, ROSES

IN GOOD HANDS

THE DETECTIVE IS DEAD

TOP BANANA

PANICKING RALPH

LOVELY MOVER

ETON CROP

KILL ME

PAY DAYS

NAKED AT THE WINDOW

THE GIRL WITH THE LONG BACK

EASY STREETS

WOLVES OF MEMORY

GIRLS

PIX

IN THE ABSENCE OF ILES

HOTBED

I AM GOLD

VACUUM *

UNDERCOVER *

* available from Severn House

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

First world edition published 2012

in Great Britain and the USA by

Crème de la Crime, an imprint of

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

Copyright © 2012 by Bill James.

All rights reserved.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

James, Bill, 1929-

Undercover.

1. Harpur, Colin (Fictitious character)–Fiction. 2. Iles,

Desmond (Fictitious character)–Fiction. 3. Police–Great

Britain–Fiction. 4. Detective and mystery stories.

I. Title

823.9'14-dc23

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-297-9 (Epub)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-028-7 (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-531-2 (trade paper)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

This ebook produced by

Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

T
here was, of course, a before and an after. In the setting down of events, they might have jostled each other and got a bit out of sequence. Never mind: some mucking about with the order of things, and with time itself, could occasionally bring extra understanding and a special clarity. So—

BEFORE

If they decided to kill, you had to go along with it. Pack law. Basic. Anyone who worked undercover knew this. He had a nine mm Browning, not a weapon he would normally have picked. He liked Heckler and Koch products better, thank you very much, was trained on them. But the training had been police training. Police famously loved HK. Too famously. Therefore, Tom left his in the armoury and went for the Browning. This model gave no troublesome hints about its owner's possible past and true career.

There were four of them in the car, casual gear all round. Crook firms had their fashion rules, present and important, but nobody spelled them out. You intuited. It was a core undercover skill. For instance, people wouldn't put on a decent suit for today's type of mission, not because the smartness would seem freakish at a killing and a bit too Kray, but on account of the vulgar, showy bulge of shoulder holsters. That was plainly the thinking. When these lads bought their suits, reach-me-down or custom-made – but especially big-cost, custom-made – they wanted jackets to give a sweetly close and comely fit for normal social life; not tailoring that hung loose, shapeless, because occasionally, on crux outings like today's, it had to hide a full handgun bra and harness. Pick something less formal. For instance, a suede or leather or denim short coat with chinos didn't need to pass any strict, bandbox tests – in fact certainly
shouldn't
look too neat, sculpted and suave. Tom Parry – as he must think of himself now – had his Browning cradled under an absolutely adequate stretch of very dark blue, black-buttoned denim. Although it didn't feel like part of him, as an HK Parabellum automatic would have, this Browning nestled very nicely.

Jamie Meldon-Luce, the distinguished Wheels who drove now, esteemed the Browning, and so did many of the world's armies, including Britain's. No question, it had cracking credentials. Jamie was expert in many technical and other areas, not just handguns. He had expensive electronic gear that could neutralize the security on any car, even the most modern, such as this stolen Volvo, and the stolen Ford waiting in Pallindon Lane as a switch vehicle. Jamie, early thirties, father of one, wore a heavy-looking, greenish cardigan. He reckoned cardigans were making a good comeback, and not just as necessary garb in poorly heated rest-homes. The ample wool betrayed no outlines. Tom sat driver's side back in the Volvo alongside Mart ‘Empathy' Abidan, who had charge of this jaunt, despite what some regarded as the jittery abandonment of another intended attack not long ago when he had command.

Ivor Wolsey was in the front passenger spot. There'd been a stage, apparently, when Wolsey suffered from a deep dread of firearms: couldn't even handle a piece, loaded or not, without massive tremors setting in, a recognized sickness known in the game as
corditus allergius
. He'd fought it and fought it, and eventually turned himself into the company's finest handgun liegeman. Wolsey never boasted about his shooting, though. He seemed to fear that, if he crowed, the magic he'd achieved on his psyche could suddenly fall apart as punishment and drop him back where he used to be, paralytically weapon-shy. As Jamie Meldon-Luce had stated, there was no Samaritans counselling service for personnel who lost their trigger knack.

Naturally, Tom had his worries. When he said – obviously, said only and exclusively to himself – that if they decided to kill, you had to go along with it, that was as much as he meant. You ‘went along'. You didn't try to stop it, but you didn't actually help, didn't assist in it. And this was where the big difficulties started. An officer who infiltrated a gang aiming to get enough inside stuff to convict its chief or chiefs could not be, must not be, a murderer, not even to preserve his cover. On some excursions, he would probably have to shoot, but he'd shoot only close; shoot to miss. No big purpose was big enough to excuse active responsibility for a killing; that is, none of the undercover officer's bullets should be found in the target, whether Browning or HK.

True, in some aspects of undercover, that dodgy doctrine ‘the end justifies the means' did operate. If your spy penetrated an outfit, he, or she, had to behave like a member of the outfit – most probably behave criminally like a member of the outfit. But there had to be a stop point. No end could justify slaughterous behaviour as a disguise tactic. A police phrase had been concocted that tried to cope with and sweeten those episodes where an officer might for a while have to dispense with legality and morality. Its wording avoided the rough Stalinite bluntness of ‘the end justifies the means'. Instead, it labelled such ploys as ‘noble-cause corruption' – the purpose admirable and gloriously in the public interest, nobly in the public interest; the methods foul, though. And not even that clever jiggery-pokery with terms could allow the corruption to go as far as homicide.

This was one reason Tom felt glad Ivor Wolsey figured in their party. He would probably wrap up this execution before the others had even attempted a shot. And that's what counted – the execution. The objective. Tom's wayward blast on the Browning wouldn't be noticed, except as useless, frantic noise, he hoped. But he knew these were not dumbo people with him in the Volvo. They'd be alert to trickery, might spot it when someone was not aiming at the target, only at its safe surroundings. And possibly worse: they might be wondering about Tom already, and would be focused on watching how he behaved in a warm set-to. Yes, Tom had worries.

AFTER

O
r so Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur imagined months later.

Parts of it he
had
to imagine. He wasn't present at the shooting, of course. Court transcripts, witness statements, detectives' notes, and newspaper clippings gave him some undisputed and indisputable facts. But there were gaps. He tried to fill them. Detectives habitually did this – guessed at the thoughts and the likely talk and undisclosed behaviour of those involved in a case. It could show the various possible ways inquiries should go; and he and one of his bosses, Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles, had a special kind of exceptionally tough inquiry ahead.

They had been ordered on to another Force's ground, their task – yes, an exceptionally tough one – to investigate what had been going on there, or, more correctly, what had
not
been going on, when something
ought
to have been going on. Major people at the Home Office seemed to think there were spectacular failings in the way that Force had dealt with the shooting and its aftermath. And when major people at the Home Office felt such elite uneasiness, the procedure was to send senior officers from another outfit to look dispassionately, unsparingly, extremely unchummily at the way things had been done; or
not
done, when something
ought
to have been done. Iles and Harpur and their staff would be playing away from home, their task to examine and report on how their equivalents in this other communion had behaved. Already, Harpur sensed very dark areas ahead, and possibly very hazardous areas. He and Iles and the rest of the team would not be popular. Careers of some of their hosts might be torched. Jail would possibly loom for them. Perhaps dangerous, secret alliances existed between some officers and some villains. They'd try to look after one another, wouldn't they? On this kind of job you watched your back and your front and used the I-spy-with-my-little-eye machine under your car.

Case documents gave the exact timing, the exact street geography, the exact number of rounds fired, the specific type of gun used, the injuries, the death, the witnesses, the police resources involved, their tactics, the combatants. Maybe all this should have been enough. But Harpur added a slice of make-believe here and there – very reasonable make-believe, but make-believe all the same. He wanted a full impression of the run-up to the shooting and the shooting itself. In the search for this completeness he wondered how Tom would regard and get on with a Browning, having almost certainly been trained on Heckler and Koch. He still had the Browning in its holster, fully loaded, when his body was found on the building site.