Undercover (17 page)

‘Which sense would that be?' Iles said.

‘This is very high-class shooting,' Maud replied. ‘Two pops, two strikes. It's true the range was short, but there's maximum coolness and system.' She put the second photo on to the screen. For this one, the camera had gone down to head and shoulders level. Tom was thin-bodied and thin-faced. To Harpur, the wound looked neat: not much flesh for the bullet to dig out and spatter. The bone of his lower left eye socket and left side of his nose bridge was visible where the tight skin had been split and furled minimally back by the impact. The sight of these flimsy, sample snippets of skeleton seemed to hint that Tom's whole physical structure might be dodgy. His mouth hung ajar, maybe to pull more air into his lungs, damaged by the smack in the chest; maybe to cry out at the pain; maybe to yell a curse at the gunman or a more general curse at Fate for letting him ever get into this whole doomed, shitty, act-a-part carry-on.

Maud said: ‘I wondered whether the face shot was meant for an eye and just missed it – an I spy eye; an I
am
a spy eye. Possible. A good moon at the time, I gather, for accuracy. Punishment made-to-measure. A deterrent to others thinking about undercover.'

‘It's something nobody should think about,' Iles said. ‘These are thoughts leading to muck-up and regret. But, look, they're
not
thoughts. They're spasms. That's the message here. It's always the message.'

The third picture came from an even lower angle and showed a big bloodstain on the front of the white ‘I love Torremolinos' T-shirt he'd been wearing under an unbuttoned denim jacket, ‘love' not given as a word but represented by a red heart, with stubs of artery and/or vein sticking out, ready to get circulation going, as well as love. The heart was of a slightly darker red than the general red around it now, and therefore its shape still possible to make out. The jacket had kept mud off his T-shirt.

Maud said: ‘As you'll have seen in the notes, the bullets were from a Smith and Wesson SW99, a very choice piece and well-liked here and overseas. Torremolinos and its package tour naffness were part of the faked Parry persona. We don't believe Tom Mallen ever went there. You'll remember
Prick Up Your Ears
, the playwright Joe Orton's autobiography. He tells one of his working-class pick-ups that his tan comes from sunbathing at Torremolinos. It doesn't, but Orton thinks it's the kind of flashy Spanish resort where his companion for the night might himself have holidayed. Same sort of prole role play from Tom.'

‘I adore Torremolinos,' Iles said. ‘Oh, but that San Miguel fiesta in September! Even an inveterate Prot like me can share the spiritual zing. I
am
rather a fiesta person, you know – arcing the wine into one's mouth without too much disaster from a flask held high above in that fine old Iberian tradition. You'll hardly ever see a Spaniard drink from a glass. Deemed chichi and wimpish. One follows a country's customs. My mother used to cry out gleefully to me, even as a child, “Desmond, you're
such
an internationalist!” And then there's the bullfighting, of course. How else to commemorate old St Mig but with beast torture?'

Harpur thought Iles had probably never been near Torremolinos, either, but he'd want to wrong-foot Maud whenever possible, because she was the Home Office: make her feel snooty and insular and heathen, disrespectfully out of touch with the saints'-day calendar, and ignorant of wine straight on to the back teeth from a raised-arm altitude.

Maud said: ‘He had a shoulder-holstered Browning automatic, as you'll have seen in the reports. It's a nine mm item, like the SW that killed him. His Browning hadn't been fired, or even drawn. Although he thought he would be part of a hunt for Scray, he had a few hundred yards to go before meeting the others and getting to full readiness. We know now, don't we, that he
was
part of a hunt, but as the quarry, not one of the hounds.'

‘And did
he
know it, in those last minutes, the crawling, half-nose minutes?' Iles asked.

Harpur picked at the question. Had Tom realized he was stupid to have come this way? Iles could be remarkably intuitive. Although his mind sometimes lurched and plummeted or blanked itself off, it would turn astonishingly perceptive now and then. Yes, it would. But probably not about undercover work. He hated these operations so passionately that he'd bring to any discussion of them only hostility, doubt, darkness, thoroughgoing bias. He would never have admitted there was
any
route for Tom to take that might have been less foolish. In the ACC's view the foolishness began with accepting an undercover role at all. He'd argue that because the whole project started from a catastrophic error of intent, every decision afterwards was inevitably wrong – diseased attempts to justify the unjustifiable. No, not argue. Iles didn't argue. He announced. Occasionally, he had to be ignored. Occasionally, his announcements had to be switched off.

Harpur tried to get at what Tom's thinking might have been, once he'd received the call to join Abidan and the others. Tom would know he mustn't seem dubious or reluctant about the operation against Scray – the supposed operation, that is; Tom couldn't be aware of its real purpose:
he
was its real purpose. He had to seem obedient, responsive, committed, eager to protect Leo's firm from Scray's sly programme of comradely fraud. Anything less could make Abidan and the rest start sniffing. If Tom seemed to delay, he might appear scared to be in on a killing. Of course, he
was
scared to be in on a killing. That should be concealed, though. And so, he needed the quickest path from the mall to the square where Abidan waited for the rest of the killing party to clock in. Or
should
have waited for the rest of the killing party to clock in. The quickest path meant the building site. No question, that was the shortest, the recommended route, the obligatory route. As he set out on it, progressed some way on it, did he have doubts about his safety? Did he suspect, half suspect, that he might have been allocated the mall to scour
because
the swiftest way from there to the square was via the building site? ‘God, but what a fucking idiot to come this way,' as Iles had imagined Tom slagging himself off. Did Tom wonder whether he'd given any cause for them to doubt he was what he said he was? The photos didn't show his fingers crossed for luck.

Harpur wanted to visualize the sequence of things. Every detective did that whatever the case. Suppose Maud were wrong and Iles right. That is, suppose Maud's theory of the two shots coming virtually on top of each other were not correct. And suppose Iles's hunch that Tom would have done almost anything to prove himself alive were right. Longing to show – show himself – his body still functioned OK, might Tom have managed to get to his feet somehow after the face bullet? Could he have walked, stumbled, a few paces towards the house and towards the gunman? The T-shirt and its heart would have looked totally clean and intact for a moment: would have looked like an invitation to fire again, the white garment perilously luminous in the dark. And that pictured heart offered guidance towards the real, fleshly one behind: did it seem to call for a follow-up nine mm round, a
coup de grâce
nine mm round? The illustrated heart had not been hit direct, in fact, but close. Then Tom could have staggered on again briefly, blood cascading over his muddied trousers, socks, shoes and the ground, until he went down and remained down on his side, as in the photos. The message: ‘I (heart sketch) Torremolinos, but won't be going there any more, if, in fact, I ever went there before.'

And there might be other possible accounts of how the murder took place. So? Did they matter much? Tom had been killed. Was it necessary to know anything more than this? Well, yes, perhaps. Well, yes, of course. Police existed to know more, and continued to exist
by
knowing more, and scheming to know more still. Harpur thought his version of what happened could tell something about the executioner. Against Maud's theory of two almost simultaneous SW shots, Harpur set the possibility of a delay – perhaps a minute or two or even three or four – between. During that gap, the gunman stayed cool, didn't he? He hadn't scarpered fast, afraid the noise when he first fired would bring an audience; would bring potential witnesses. He didn't panic as the flattened, face-fucked victim somehow got on to his knees in the muck, then winched and scrabbled himself on to his feet and possibly seemed to come after the sniper – apparently meaning to fight back, even though his legs must have been nearly goners.

The attacker had stayed calm enough to decide that because a mug shot failed to do the terminal trick he'd go for the heart now, that anatomical, rather crucial heart, under the nicely visible shirt and its useful artwork. This steadiness could suggest the gunman had some experience of small arms and their effective use; had perhaps gone through training in small arms and their effective use; had been taught that a small-arms hit didn't always mean a small-arms death: you hung about, checking. And, if necessary, you offered a subsequent, tidying-up shot or volley. Police training with small arms was very thorough and always provided a Plan B and even Plans C, D, E and F.

Incidentally, Harpur realized that all of them – he, Maud and Iles – spoke and thought as if the marksman were certain to be a marks
man
. But quite a lot of female police got that thorough small-arms training. Some female police would be cool and tactical and appreciative of a white shirt, plus vivid ticker pic, to focus their sights on in the poor light. They'd be capable of finding their way into an unoccupied property and creating a sharpshooter's nest. This was an equal opportunities career. Any cop could be a self-saving cop, gender regardless, if a nice, established racket seemed in danger of getting blown. Women as well as men knew how to look after their investments.

The screen now showed a couple of photographs of the house used by the gunman (gunwoman). There were front and back views. Maud said: ‘Entrance and exit by a rear door. No evidence of forced break-in, so we assume a bit of magic on the lock. That might mean more than one person – a burglary expert, a handguns and deaths expert. Nothing meaningful found in the sniper's selected bedroom we're told. The rear yard – not yet a garden – gives on to a broad service lane, no CCTV. A car might have been waiting there. The house and the houses next to it were boarded up after this episode. Gorgeously late foresight!'

The papers Harpur and Iles had been given to read during the lunch break were official inquiry documents. But Maud also had slides giving reports from the local Press and all the nationals. The murder of a police detective in these unexplainable, no-man's-land circumstances had been a major media story. Harpur could remember coverage in the
Daily Mail
and on television news. That was a good while before he came to have this personal connection with the case, of course. Maud said: ‘One can tell they sensed something very clandestine and veiled behind the killing. Naturally, they all refer to him by his real name, Detective Sergeant Thomas Rodney Mallen.'

She had one of the national's account of things on the screen now and ringed a sentence: ‘
He is believed to have been on secondment from another force with undisclosed duties, but possibly connected to drugs trafficking
.'

Maud did a summarizing session from other cuttings: ‘Various terms,' she said. ‘Some call it “secondment”, others “attachment”. One national wrote he had been “drafted in with a special remit outside the normal command structure”. She switched slides to the front-page piece in a local and singled out sentences near the top. ‘
The police investigation continues, its priority to discover why he was on the partially completed Elms private housing estate of four- and five-bedroomed executive style properties at the time of his murder. The site is used as a short-cut, despite prominent “Keep Out” warning notices.
'

Maud said: ‘And as we all know from recorded interviews and so on, Tom's body was found by a couple coming back from evening shopping at the Rinton mall, the man qualified in first aid. You'll remember he tries some on Tom, including kiss of life, but no response. Meanwhile the woman mobiles nine nine nine. The man must have got in a bit of a mess through contact. These were good people. One of the police interviews makes it clear, doesn't it, that when tending to Tom and getting him into position for the kiss of life they find the shoulder holster and Browning pistol under his jacket and on the jolly but sopping Torremolinos T-shirt? It must have told the pair they were into something serious and possibly very rough – if they didn't already realize it. That didn't stop them doing what they could for him, though. Yes, good people.'

The tale had continued to run, and cuttings from newspapers later in the week showed journalists had found Tom's home and family. There was speculation in these reports about why a detective should have been sent from one police force to work in another – and to die in another. The guesswork didn't get very far. A Police Press Office statement quoted said: ‘
Exchanges of personnel between various forces is not unusual. Such arrangements can be very beneficial both for the destination force, which may profit from skills developed in a different context, and beneficial also for the officer or officers concerned in that their experience of the police service is widened. It is not the practice of police forces to comment upon the special skills or circumstances of an officer, particularly when, as in Detective Sergeant Mallen's case, the exchange procedure resulted in this very regrettable tragedy. Normally, the exchanges are positive and useful.
'

Iles said: ‘Oh, yea? Not a very satisfactory way to widen an officer's experience of the service, was it?'

Reporters had gone to the Mallen home. Tom's wife must have been too distressed to talk, but neighbours were quoted as saying what Harpur would have expected them to say – that they felt ‘devastated' by the killing, and that the family were very pleasant and helpful. It was the TV News grief formula. One paper carried a couple of photographs supplied by somebody living in the street. The first featured a group of young lads with bicycles, apparently about to set off for a ride together. Maud put a circle around one boy. ‘This is Tom's son, Steve,' she said. ‘The photograph comes from the dad of another of the kids, a Mr Richard Coombs.' Steve Mallen looked about twelve or thirteen years old, fair-haired, thin, with a big, cheerful grin. Maud indicated part of the accompanying interview.
‘“Steve had a Viking Valhalla mountain bike for his recent birthday,” Mr Coombs said. “He's very proud of it.”'