Tango One (8 page)

“But isn't there a danger that it could be traced back to me?”

“I'll make sure that doesn't happen,” he said.

“When you do file, by all means highlight anything you think might be linked to you, but frankly it's the big players I'm interested in. Donovan and the like. I'm not going to risk blowing your cover for anything less.”

“Blowing my cover!”

Hathaway closed his eyes and put his hand to his temple as if he had a headache.

“That came out wrong,” he said. He opened his eyes again.

“What I mean is that the important thing is that you stay in place. That is my primary concern, keeping you undercover as long as possible. The only reason I'd want to pull you out is if it meant putting Donovan behind bars.”

Tina stared at Hathaway. She knew next to nothing about the man who was about to become her handler, who would have her life in his hands.

“You realise that you can't ever tell anyone what you're doing?” said Hathaway.

“No matter how much you want to. No matter how much you think you can trust the person. There'll be times when you'll want to talk to someone. To confide.”

“I don't think so.”

“What about your family?”

“I haven't seen them for six years. Don't want to see them again. Ever.”

“Friends?”

“Not the sort I'd confide in. About anything.”

“It's going to be lonely, Tina.”

“I'm used to being on my own.”

“And how do you feel about betraying people who might well become your friends? Your only friends?”

Cliff Warren took a long pull on his bottle of Sol while he considered Hathaway's question. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Thing is, they won't really be friends, will they? They'll be criminals and I'll be a cop.”

“Easy to say now, Cliff, but you might feel differently three years down the line.”

“If they're criminals, they deserve to go down. Are you playing devil's advocate, is that what's going on here?”

“I just want you to face the reality of your situation, that's all.”

Warren pursed his lips and tapped his bottle against his knee.

“I know what I'm letting myself in for.” He leaned back in his chair, looked at the ceiling and sighed mournfully.

"Funny how things work out, in nit “In what way?”

“By rights I should be square bashing at Hendon. Left, right, left, right, back straight, amis out. And instead I'm gearing up to hit the streets as a drug dealer.” He lowered his chin and looked over at Hathaway.

“That's a point, where do I get my cash from?”

“I'll be supplying funds. At least in the early stages. And drugs.”

At first Warren thought he'd misheard, then the implications of what Hathaway had said sank in and he sat upright.

“Say what? You'll be giving me drugs?”

“You'll be operating as a dealer. You can't be out there selling caster sugar.”

“The police are going to be giving me heroin?”

Hathaway winced.

“I was thinking cannabis,” he said.

“Just to get you started. You ever taken drugs, Cliff?”

Warren shook his head.

“Never. Saw what they did to my folks.” Warren's mother had died of a heroin overdose when he was twelve. His father was also an addict and had ended up in prison for killing a dealer in North London. Warren had been passed from relative to relative until he'd been old enough to take care of himself, and it seemed that every household he stayed in was tainted in some way by drugs. He had steadfastly refused to touch so much as a joint.

“I don't see that's a problem, though. Plenty of dealers don't use.”

“Absolutely, but you're going to have to know good gear when you see it.”

“I've got people can show me. The stuff you're going to give me. Where's it coming from?”

“Drugs we've seized in previous operations,” said Hathaway.

“They're destroyed if they're no longer needed as evidence. We'll just divert some of it your way.”

Warren took another drink. His heart was pounding and he felt a little light headed. It wasn't the alcohol he'd barely drunk half of his beer it was an adrenalin rush, his body gearing for fight, fright or flight in anticipation of what lay ahead. He felt his hand begin to shake and he pressed the bottle against his knee to steady it. This was no time to have the shakes.

“There's one word I haven't heard you mention,” he said.

Hathaway raised an eyebrow.

“What's that?”

“Entrapment.”

“It's no defence in an English court,” said Hathaway.

“Cases have gone as high as the House of Lords and the end result has always been the same entrapment evidence can't be excluded from a trial, because there is no substantive defence of entrapment in English law.”

“I thought there'd been cases where undercover officers had obtained confessions and the confessions weren't admissible because they hadn't administered the caution?”

Hathaway smiled.

“It's a grey area,” he said.

“You're right, a confession without a caution required under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1984 would be technically inadmissible. But that wouldn't apply if you weren't questioning them as a police officer. Anything they tell you would be admissible if it was a conversation between equals. Or at least as if they perceived it as a conversation between equals.”

“But if I'm encouraging the commission of a crime, doesn't give them a way out?” asked Warren.

“They could say that I was leading them on, that I was waving money around saying that I want to buy drugs. They could claim that if I hadn't approached them they wouldn't have committed the crime in the first place. How are you going to get a conviction on that?”

“We won't. We'll note the transaction and the people involved, but we won't be moving in to arrest them. A couple of busts like that and your cover would be well and truly blown. It's information we want, Cliff. Good quality intelligence that will help us mount effective operations. The last thing we're going to do is to put you in court holding a Bible and swearing to tell the truth.” Hathaway drank from his bottle of Sol, then leaned back and studied Warren for almost a minute.

“Entrapment isn't covered by PACE or by the codes of practice issued under PACE,” he said, eventually. And it is one hundred per cent true that claiming entrapment isn't a defence under English law. But there were Home Office guidelines issued in 1986 which do refer to entrapment. Basically the Home Office said that no informant must act as an agent provocateur, that is he or she mustn't suggest to others that they commit an offence or encourage them to do so."

“But that means .. .” Warren began.

Hathaway held up a hand to silence him.

“That's what the Home Office says, but between you, me and that cheese plant in the corner, the likes of Dennis Donovan don't pay a blind bit of notice to the Home Office, so why should we?”

“That's a dangerous route to start along,” said Warren.

“You're saying the rules aren't fair so you're going to break them?”

“What I'm saying is that established procedures aren't going to catch Dennis Donovan. We're going to have to be more .. .” He searched for the word.

“Creative,” he said eventually.

“But if it ever gets out that I've been acting as an agent provocateur, all bets are off,” said Warren.

“He'd be able to take you to the European Court of Human Rights, any conviction would be quashed, and he'd sue you for millions.”

“But he won't ever find out,” said Hathaway.

“No one will. You are going to be so far undercover they'll need a submarine to find you. That's why we've gone to all this trouble, Cliff. Only a handful of people will know what you are doing, and they'll never tell. From now on your only contact with the police will be me, and we'll only be communicating via a secure website.”

“So I really will be on my own?”

“It's the only way, Cliff. Are you up for it?”

“I guess so.” He saw from the look on Hathaway's face that the answer wasn't emphatic enough.

“Yes,” he said, more determinedly.

“Yes, I am.”

“Good man,” said Hathaway. His fingers started to play across the keyboard. Warren moved over to sit next to him.

Tina rolled over and hugged her pillow. She'd been in bed for almost three hours and was no closer getting to sleep. Her mind was in a whirl. Her meeting with Latham. Her briefing from Hathaway. It had all been such a shock. One minute she'd been all geared up for joining the Metropolitan Police, wearing a uniform and pounding a beat. The next, she was preparing to become a lap-dancer, which, no matter how Hathaway had portrayed it, was in her eyes only one step up from being a street-walking prostitute. She'd worked hard for her qualifications. Bloody hard. She'd set her heart on a career, a real career, and that had been taken away from her. By men.

She felt tears well up, but screwed her eyes tightly closed, refusing to cry. It always seemed to be men who were screwing up her life. Her stepfather, crawling into her bed late at night, whispering drunkenly and licking her ear. The punters, always trying to get her to do it for free or without a condom. Her neighbours, sneering and leering as she left to walk the streets in short skirt, low-cut top and knee-length boots. The police, patronizing and condescending. And now Latham and Hathaway. They were worse than pimps. Worse than her punters.

She opened her eyes and sat up, still clutching the pillow to her stomach. A sudden wave of nausea swept over her and she rushed to the bathroom. She barely managed to get her head above the toilet bowl before throwing up. She flushed the toilet and drank from the cold tap, then wiped her mouth with a towel. She stared at her reflection in the mirror above the sink.

“Bastards,” she said.

“Bastards, bastards, bastards.”

She went back into the sitting room and dropped down on to the sofa. Could she trust them? And was she even capable of doing what they wanted? She felt nauseous again and took deep breaths to steady herself. What if it went wrong? What if she wasn't up to the job, what if she slipped up and someone found out that she was an undercover cop? Hathaway had given her a phone number to memorize. Her way out. Her once in a lifetime 'get out of jail free' card. Two years down the line, three years, would there still be someone at the end of the lifeline? She stared at the phone on the coffee table. A voice on the end of the phone and a website were to be her only points of contact, Hathaway had said. She drew her legs up underneath her and rested her head on the pillow. One of the reasons she'd been so keen to join the Met was because she wanted to be a member of a team, to be surrounded by colleagues who could support her if she was in trouble, to be part of a group. The police she'd come across when she'd worked the streets had always been the enemy, but she'd envied them their camaraderie. She knew the girls on the streets with her, but they were the competition. They might help each other out with loans or cigarettes and even offer advice on which punters to avoid, but there was never the familiarity and intimacy that the police had. Tina wasn't sure if she had what it took to work on her own. Undercover. Living a lie.

Tina reached over and picked up the phone. She placed it on the pillow and ran her fingers along the smooth, white plastic.

Twenty-four seven, Hathaway had said. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, there'd be a voice at the end of the phone. One call and she'd be pulled out.

She picked up the receiver and listened to the dialling tone, then put it back. She ran her hands through her hair and then rubbed the knotted muscles at the back of her neck. She stared at the phone. What if he'd been lying? What if there was no lifeline? She snatched at the receiver and tapped out the number on the keypad as quickly as she could, not wanting to give herself time to change her mind. It started to ring. Tina closed her eyes. It was answered on the third ring.

“Yes?” It was a man's voice. It might have been Hathaway, but Tina couldn't tell, not from the single word.

There was a faint buzzing on the line, like static.

“What do you need?” said the voice after a long pause. It was flat and emotionless, almost mechanical, but Tina was sure now it was Hathaway.

“Nothing. Wrong number,” she said and replaced the receiver.

She replaced the phone on the coffee table and carried the pillow back to her bed. She lay down and curled up into a foetal ball and within five minutes she was fast asleep.

Three Years Later Marty Clare took a long draw on his joint and held the smoke deep in his lungs as he watched the two girls on the bed. The blonde was on top, the redhead underneath, their legs and arms entwined as they kissed. Clare scratched his backside, then exhaled slowly, blowing blue smoke over the two girls.

“Come on, girls, let the dog see the rabbit,” said Clare in his gravelly Irish accent. The two girls moved apart. The redhead reached up for the joint and Clare handed it to her as he slid down next to the blonde. Sylvia, her name was. Or Sandra. Clare hadn't been paying attention to their names. All he'd been interested in was how much they'd charge for a threesome, and the price had been reasonable considering their pneumatic breasts and model-pretty faces. They were Slovakians, the blonde twenty-one and the redhead barely out of her teens. From the way they were going at each other on the bed, Clare figured they were probably genuinely bisexual. Not that he cared over-much either way: the evening was about satisfying Clare's urges, not theirs.

Clare kissed the blonde and she moaned softly and opened her mouth, allowing his exploring tongue deep inside. She reached down between his legs and stroked him. Clare felt the redhead's tongue on his back, gently licking between his shoulder blades.

The redhead reached and gave the joint to the blonde, then pressed her lips against Clare's mouth, practically sucking the breath from him. She rolled on top of him and began to move downwards, kissing and gently nipping at his flesh with her teeth. Clare ran his fingers through her hair and groaned in anticipation of the pleasures to come. The blonde sat up with her back against the headboard and blew smoke up at the ceiling. Clare held out his hand for the joint. As she passed it to him there was the sound of cracking wood and shouts from the room next door, then booted footsteps and shouts. The bedroom door crashed open and half a dozen uniformed policemen burst into the room with a series of rapid flashes that temporarily blinded Clare.