Undercover (15 page)

Tom reckoned this whole episode at the apartment block had been so brief that he could possibly slip home for a swift visit on the quiet. After all, the surveillance stint might have gone on for hours more, made feasible by the commode and flasks. It was Steve's birthday today. The detour would add an extra 100 miles or so to Tom's journeys, but he'd learned a long time ago in a car dealer case how to adjust the mileage clock. He'd sent a card, and he would stop off and get Steve a present: an electronic item, small enough to go into Tom's pocket: a super-modern mobile phone, or an iPod, maybe. He would explain it was a ‘holding present' only. Months ago he had promised Steve a mountain bike. That wouldn't be possible today. Perhaps for Christmas instead. Not now, anyway. He couldn't accommodate a bike.

The van would take it easily, of course, but Tom didn't intend doing the full distance in it. There'd be too many questions from the kids if he rolled up with that: the main one, naturally, being why had he joined a gardening firm? Neighbours might wonder the same. Iris wouldn't ask. She'd have an idea what it was all about, and it would worry her, scare her. Steve and Laura would demand a look inside the van. The commode would give them a giggle. They might also spot the eight A windows and ask what they were for.

So, Tom would put the van into a multi-storey and do the last few miles by taxi. He'd say he was in the town with a colleague, who had things to see to nearby. This pal had used his car and done the driving, and Tom had to call another taxi and meet him near the city hall for the return hop.

He had a token pee in the commode. It seemed the considerate thing to do because Leo had displayed such evident pride in this fitment, and it would be a kind of rebuff to ignore it; might make Tom look ungrateful, uptight and possibly aloof. He thought of that famous, strange mental state known as the ‘Stockholm syndrome' – noticed first, apparently, during a Swedish police operation – where an undercover officer or hostage came to admire the people he was spying on or imprisoned by and went over to their way of thinking and behaving.

Tom did feel that taking a leak in the van showed he had some regard for Leo and wouldn't want to disappoint him, at least as to the commode. This piss spoke of comradeship, fellowship, camaraderie, important undercover assets. Leo looked after his subordinates. The commode figured under the
noblesse oblige
ticket. Tom zipped up, closed the lid, let himself out of the back of the vehicle, then went to the front cabin and drove away. The move out through the rear and around to the driver's door on foot was very visible to anybody in the street, or looking from a window in one of the buildings: an inevitable van weakness because a solid partition divided its two parts. It ought to have been possible to get from the back to the front and vice versa without having to leave the vehicle. But any activity in the back must be blocked off from people outside looking in through the windscreen. Maybe one-way vision, darkened glass could have been installed, but why should a gardening firm or savoury pie business need that? It would have made the vehicle conspicuous.

Tom watched the mirror in case the Lexus showed, but still negative. He heard a bit of a swish and gurgle from behind when he made some ninety degree turns, but knew things would be all right there because the bowl was deep, the hefty wooden lid down, and the whole thing securely fixed to the van wall. Leo was someone who would obviously hate skimping – such as providing only a bucket or bottle.

AFTER

I
n the Home Office cinema now, the screen temporarily blank, Maud held up a sheaf of papers and waved them gently at Harpur and Iles. ‘We should talk about this report. You have a copy each. It's among the stuff I gave you to look over in the lunch break. The item's titled—' she bent her head to read – ‘“
Debrief of outsourced officer T5 by H7
,
February 3 2011
,
1800 hours to 1901 hours
,
Location
,
Trombone
.” What did you make of it? Were you OK with the coding? But that sounds condescending. Sorry! Of course you saw through the coding. Are you dim, for heaven's sake?' She chuckled.

Harpur wanted to assume this was one of those questions that had its answer built-in – a big ‘no', so big that the preposterousness of the question brought on her warm chuckle.

Just the same, though, Maud went on to explain. Maybe she thought most people
were
dim compared to herself. That cordial, beckoning wave with the documents might mean: ‘These things in my hand are papers. OK? Got that? You have? Splendid! Now, next step: there is writing on the papers. OK? Got that? Sensational! Finally: I should like to discuss these papers and the writing on them with you. OK? Got that? Splendid! Truly splendid!' It reminded Harpur of one of the earliest, uncomplicated French lessons in school, when the teacher held up a pencil for all the class to see and said, ‘
Un crayon
.'

‘T5 is Tom, plus a five letter surname, Parry,' Maud explained. ‘H7 is Howard, the handler, with a seven letter follow-up, Lambert. Trombone is to be translated as The Field pub car park, two hours for a quid. Another location they used sometimes was disguise-labelled Viola. Neither had any obvious link to music, but H7 might have been feeling orchestral when he picked the ciphers. “Outsourced”, of course, means undercover: he's
out
there secretly in gangland so as to provide a
source
of information about Leo Young's firm. And,
because
he's
out
there secretly in gangland, he's away from any
source
of police help.' Maud gave each of the emphasized words a really terrific whack, so that even the thickest thicko would cotton on.

Iles went sniffily through his handful of papers and found a copy of the one needed. He skipped the heading but began to read aloud the opening sentences, in a mock-prim, mock-clipped, mock-bureaucratic voice: ‘“T5 arrived on time (eighteen hundred hours) at Trombone and observed all the established procedures for this type of sensitive meet-up. That is, parking some distance from my vehicle, waiting for a short while before walking to it, continuing briskly past my vehicle as if uninterested in it when two other people came out into the car park, then returning when the two had left. He had a carrier bag in one hand containing various food purchases, as if he had been shopping. His manner throughout our conversation was confident and positive.” Oh, great,' the ACC said, resuming the normal Iles half-snarl.

‘What?' Maud asked.

‘He knows how to disguise himself with fruit and veg,' the ACC said. ‘I can imagine him shouting words full of mad gladness at being such a nobody: “Look at me, folk. I'm just a healthy eater.”' Iles went for a booming, vacuous intonation now. ‘Or, rather, “
Don't
look at me, because all I am is just an ordinary healthy eater. I have measured out my life with carrier bags.”'

‘That's brilliant,' Harpur said.

‘What?' Iles replied.

‘The last bit,' Harpur said.

‘Which last bit?' Iles asked.

‘“Measured out my life with carrier bags,”' Harpur said. ‘That seems to go beyond just the case of T5. It sounds like a comment on a wider scene, a universal scene, sort of poetic. Is the phrase original, sir?'

‘Carrier bags have been around for a long while and are subject to comment by some, Col,' Iles replied.

‘Well, yes,' Harpur said.

‘It's a recognised ploy in undercover,' Maud said.

‘What is?' Iles asked.

‘For an officer to kit himself out with something very innocent and run-of-the-mill,' Maud said. ‘It helps him or her look as though he or she has some purpose – some purpose other than the clandestine get-together, that is. To sort of prepare a face to meet the faces that he or she will meet. A social background.'

‘A couple of cabbages and four Jaffas give him or her a social background?' Iles asked.

‘Undercover needs its methodology, Desmond,' Maud said.

‘Its methodology couldn't keep him alive,' Iles said. ‘The methodology is a farce, a placebo, a pretence that the danger can be countered and seen off.'

Maud lowered her papers for a moment, like dipping a flag in sympathy and respect. ‘I think you must have had a tough experience with undercover at some time,' she said. ‘It's gone deep.'

Iles slumped a degree or two in his seat and suddenly lost all aggression and jokiness. He shrank. His skin seemed too big for him, like a handed down overcoat. ‘Yes, a tough experience,' he replied. ‘You could call it that.'

Harpur said: ‘A while ago the ACC agreed for a detective to infiltrate a gang on our territory. The officer was rumbled and killed.
⁴
Mr Iles has been immovably opposed to undercover ever since.'

‘Touching,' she said.

Iles nodded. So his muscular system must still be all right.

‘But absurd,' Maud said, as though she'd spotted a weakness in Iles and instinctively grabbed the chance to put the boot in while he was down. ‘Yes, absurd, surely?' she said. ‘Sentimentalizing one past event, allowing it to control the present and the future. Irrational, half-baked, death-obsessed.'

Iles didn't answer. He disliked talking about this episode. It was one topic – maybe one of only two or three – that he couldn't treat with his usual brassy disdain and steely detachment. His wife's relationship with Harpur was another, naturally.

Iles reread aloud H7's appraisal of T5's manner at their meeting. ‘“He was confident and positive.”' The Assistant Chief recovered and gave that a big, clanging, sneering delivery. ‘Grand words for his gravestone. He's going to be killed as a spy only a few months after this wonderfully confident and positive start.'

‘H7 writes as it struck him then,' Maud replied. ‘It has honesty.'

‘Perhaps,' Iles said. ‘Harpur can be as hard as gunmetal, but when we read the documents together in the other room even he was shaken by the daft hope and underestimate of danger.'

This was about two-thirds true. Sometimes, when Iles had got himself into a high-level, flimflam argument about theory, he would call on Harpur to back him up, because he thought of Harpur as wonderfully sane, frank, clear-sighted and extremely limited. If Harpur supported him, it would be in convincing, unsubtle, anti-intellectual, concrete style. Iles considered Harpur could deal competently – formidably – with the basics of a situation, but was not too good on any larger stuff about themes and abstractions: what Harpur would regard as wool. And Harpur knew Iles wasn't completely wrong. For instance, Harpur would avoid getting pulled into a debate about the merits or not of undercover: the kind of wide, airy-fairy, policy dispute Maud and Iles were on the edge of now, with words like ‘placebo', for fuck's sake. It could become not much more than an ego clash. She might want to squash him because of his rank, gender and general snottiness. He might want to diminish her because she was young, female, not turned on by him sexually, and a thing of the Home Office.

And so, nitty-grittying, Harpur said: ‘Look, forget the drool, what are we trying to get at here?'

‘Well, yes,' Maud said.

‘Exactly,' Iles said.

‘We want to know, don't we, when suspicion about T5's real identity began.'

‘Well, yes,' Maud said.

‘Exactly,' Iles said.

Harpur looked at his collection of papers. ‘H7 says that, at their interview, T5 made three or four major points. T5 told him he had some grounds for believing he might have now been accepted in the designated firm and was trusted. H7 stressed that T5 said “some grounds” and was careful not to overstate this apparent progress. Obviously, we're going to have difficulty swallowing the accuracy of T5's opinion – tentative or not – in view of what happened to him eventually. But, as Maud points out, this is to apply knowledge to the state of things then which could not be available at the time.'

‘You wouldn't expect Harpur to come on with this kind of forcefulness, would you, Maud?'

Harpur resumed his summarizing: ‘One of the so-called “grounds” was that the head of the firm congratulated himself on being a gifted judge of potential recruits and thought his choice of T5 showed inspiration. Which could be an act – something to dupe him, put him off guard,' Harpur said.

‘Certainly,' Maud said.

Harpur referred to his papers again. ‘T5 tells H7 the head of the firm had invited him – only him – to his farmhouse to get familiar with the “sinews” and “ligaments” of the firm. This includes an educational visit to Leo's prized Acme van and mention of immediate and possibly future assignments, with or without it. This could reasonably be interpreted as insider privilege, yes? And Young gives him details of the tripartite division of the firm's turf and the alleged abuse of their position in Arabella by J5 and C4. As to the territorial divisions and Young's mother, this might be information already known. It could be something, it could be nothing. The debriefing account doesn't help us with that. It's a standard bit of trickery to seem to dish out secrets as a way of fooling someone and building their confidence, though the secrets are not secrets at all.'

‘Certainly,' Maud said. ‘Was Tom on guard against such a gambit? We can't tell.'

Harpur said: ‘He's instructed to take the observation van to do surveillance, via the A-tops, of a wholesaler who might be supplying J5. In fact, at the handler meeting, T5 tells H7 that it was C4 who turned up and apparently left with a commodity load. H7 recorded the name and address of the wholesaler.' Harpur paused to measure how these facts – supposed facts – looked when taken all together. Then he went on: ‘I consider T5 could be excused for thinking he's accepted as OK in the firm. He has apparently been handed a stack of confidential insights and given an important mission. Yes, it might all be show and bullshit. It might not. And if not, it would mean that a mistake by Tom, or mistakes, later than this made Young or others in the firm see through his cover.'