The Crime Trade

16

It was near enough lunchtime so Tina and I decided that, for once, we’d go Continental and actually sit down and eat. Life’s too fast in London. It’s always go go go, and when your job involves go go going through the heavy tide of human corruption, then occasionally you need to sit back and take a break. We went to a cheap French restaurant I knew near Islington Green where they served moules mariniere with french fries and crusty bread, a meal that always brings back happy memories of childhood family camping trips to the coast of Brittany. And they only charged?4.95 for it as well, so, being overworked and underpaid, I felt doubly rewarded.

When we’d eaten and broken all the rules by washing it down with a glass of white wine each, we left and headed our separate ways: she to talk to Stegs’s boss at SO10, me to interview his guvnor at Barnet nick.

On the way, I got a call from a Mr Naresh Patel of the Police Complaints Authority, telling me that he’d like to speak to me as soon as possible in relation to the shootings at Heathrow. Knowing there was no point putting off the inevitable, I agreed to meet him later that day. He wanted to do it at their headquarters in Great George Street over in Westminster, and though I tried manfully to get him to come to the station instead, he insisted. So we set it for four-thirty, and I phoned through to Flanagan and told him that I wouldn’t be able to make the five o’clock murder squad meeting. Since it was routine anyway, he didn’t mind, but told me to call him beforehand with any relevant information I’d picked up that day. I told him about our meeting with Tyndall and the fact that he’d been out of the country for the last three days.

‘Setting himself up with an alibi suggests to me that he was more involved than not involved,’ said Flanagan, which were my thoughts exactly. ‘But, as I said this morning, it’s facts we need. We’ve got plenty of theories.’

I told him I’d see what I could come up with.

Stegs’s overall boss at Barnet, DCI Tom Clay, was overweight and looked like he’d had it with policework. It’s not an uncommon trait in coppers who’ve been in the job too long, but Clay had it more than most. He was genuinely concerned about Stegs, though, and hoped that he’d be back on duty before too long.

‘I could do with him back here,’ he told me as we sat in his office on the building’s third floor, overlooking the high street. Outside it was drizzling, and I wondered when we were next going to see the sun. ‘He spends three-quarters of his time on SO10 business — not that it’s ever done him any good.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘I mean, he gets involved in all these dangerous activities, risks his neck constantly, and it never helps his chances of promotion, doesn’t get him paid any more, and the first opportunity, they hang him out to dry.’

‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that.’

‘Wouldn’t you? I would.’ He sat back in his seat and it creaked under his weight. ‘He’s suspended from duty; you’re here asking questions about him; and he’s got that arsehole Flanagan to look out for.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, taking a sip from the tepid station coffee Clay had provided me with, and remembering the atmosphere between the two men during the meeting after the hotel shootings. ‘Why would Flanagan have it in for him?’

‘Stegs and Flanagan haven’t seen eye to eye for a long time. Flanagan was the DCI in overall charge of an op him and Vokes Vokerman did once for SO10. The two of them almost got killed. I don’t think it was entirely Flanagan’s fault that things went wrong, but Stegs took a different view and told him that he was an incompetent arsehole who couldn’t do his job properly. I don’t think either of them have ever forgotten the set-to they had, and I doubt if Flanagan’d lose any sleep if Stegs took the rap for what happened Wednesday.’ He took a crumpled pack of Embassy No. 1s out of his pocket and stuck one in his mouth. ‘Don’t tell me you’re one of those new breed who can’t stand the smell of smoke.’

‘Do I look like I’m new breed?’

He managed a smile, his first since we’d shaken hands at the front desk ten minutes earlier. ‘No, not really.’

‘Then please feel free. It’s your office.’

‘They’re trying to ban it everywhere,’ he said defiantly. ‘It makes me wonder why I joined up sometimes. They give the criminals a slap on the wrist, but if you’re law-abiding they’re on to you like a shot. So, where did you say you’re from?’

‘I don’t think I said I was from anywhere, but since you ask, I’m based out of Islington. I’ve been seconded to the inquiry into the murder of Robbie O’Brien, the guy they found dead alongside his grandma yesterday.’

Clay’s eyes narrowed. ‘What’s that got to do with Stegs?’ he demanded through a haze of smoke.

‘He knew the victim, and the victim had links with what happened on Wednesday. We’ve been trying to keep that part out of the papers, but I don’t suppose it’ll be too long before someone leaks it.’

‘I saw a mention about it on London Tonight, but I haven’t had a chance to read the papers for weeks, so I’d probably miss it if it was leaked. There’s no time, that’s the problem. No time for anything when you’re a copper. Apart from policework, that is.’ He took another drag on the cigarette, and eyed me as if he was somehow laying down a challenge. I got the feeling then that Clay didn’t trust me much. ‘Well, let me tell you this, Stegs Jenner’s a good copper. One of the best. He’s had the occasional run-ins, and his career’s not entirely unblemished, but I’d take him back here full-time tomorrow if I could. And I sincerely fucking hope that he doesn’t end up getting hounded out of the Force, because he doesn’t deserve it.’

I nodded. ‘Look, I’ve met him a few times myself and, for what it’s worth, I tend to agree with what you’re saying. Now, this incident when him and Flanagan fell out. What was it all about?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

The question bordered on hostile. I was going to have to tread carefully on this one. Tom Clay obviously had a lot of time for Stegs and was not going to want to say anything that made his situation worse.

‘I want to know because I’m trying to build up a picture. Personally I like him, but at the moment there’s questions being raised about his integrity, and I just want to make sure that I’ve got all the information I can.’

Clay continued to watch me like a hawk. Then he cleared his throat with a rattling cough that did not bode well for his long-term health and began. ‘It was when Flanagan was running CID at Greenwich. There was a drug importer and thug down there called Frank Rentners who was looking to expand his business, and Flanagan was interested in making sure he didn’t. So he brought in Stegs and Vokerman. The first meeting was in a pub and neither of them were wearing wires, but SO11 had a tracking device under Rentners’ car just in case they changed venues, so the handlers could intervene if anything went wrong.’

He then told me the whole story about how the two SO10 men had ended up having to watch another man being tortured while being told that they’d be next, and how they’d only just managed to persuade Rentners that they were kosher dealers, and therefore escape relatively unscathed. The way the operation had been controlled had been slapdash. According to Clay, Flanagan had only put a couple of DCs in as back-up since the risk of things going wrong on a first meeting was considered small. The DCs had followed the two Mercedes carrying Rentners and his entourage but had lost them quickly, and had then called the control room to alert them to this fact. However, it seemed that Flanagan had still considered the SO10 men a low priority because, by the time the car was tracked to the house and officers had arrived there, more than two hours had passed since they’d left the pub. The officers on the scene had been unaware of what was going on inside and had even seen Stegs and Vokes leave. By the time the police had finally approached the house and knocked on the door at ten to three, Rentners and the rest of his men had also left, along with an injured Brewster. Brewster had declined to press charges and had immediately disappeared from view.

Put bluntly, it had been a fuck-up of the first order, and afterwards Stegs had blown his top on Flanagan. ‘He called him a lot of names,’ said Clay. ‘Some real choice ones. Told him in no uncertain terms that he should have known that Brewster, the guy who was their contact, had been under suspicion, and made sure that they had proper back-up. I assume you know Flanagan?’

I nodded. ‘Yeah, I know him,’ I said with the right degree of ambivalence.

‘Well, you know what a wanker he is, then.’ I didn’t say anything so he continued. ‘Instead of holding his hands up and admitting he’d made a mistake, he reported Stegs to his bosses at SO10 and here and accused him of gross insubordination. Stegs ended up being disciplined, and almost got put back in uniform. I think if I hadn’t stood up for him, he would have been too.’ He lit a new cigarette with the butt of the old one. ‘And Flanagan ends up being promoted, even though the bloke he’s meant to have been sorting out, Frank Rentners, is still in business down there and doing very fucking nicely thank you. Now there’s justice for you.’

So that explained a few things. No wonder the two of them hadn’t got on. No wonder, too, that Flanagan hadn’t exactly been effusive in defence of Stegs’s character and innocence in the meeting this morning.

I didn’t say anything to Clay about any of this. Instead, I asked about Stegs’s disciplinary record aside from the Flanagan incident and was told, with some reluctance, that he’d been cited twice in the past: once for assaulting a prisoner nine years previously when he’d still been in uniform, and the other time for embellishing his expenses. That had been three years ago. I asked what had happened.

‘He just added a few things in that maybe he shouldn’t. The amounts involved weren’t a lot — a few quid here and there, that’s all. It happens, you know that.’ His look told me that if I thought that fiddling the expenses was a big deal, then I wasn’t living in the real world.

I told him I knew it happened, and after a few more minutes the meeting drew to a close without me uncovering anything else of any note about Stegs Jenner, other than confirming the fact that his boss liked him, which I suppose was one thing, although I wasn’t sure that a character reference from someone so jaded and tired as DCI Tom Clay was that much of a recommendation of innocence.

I stopped off back at the nick on the way to my meeting with Naresh Patel to go on the system and check Stegs’s record within the Force. It was pretty much what Clay had said: a not exactly spotless disciplinary record, which was probably why he’d never risen above DC level, but nothing too untoward or crooked, and nothing that Clay hadn’t mentioned. On the expense fiddles there were no details of the money involved, and I decided to take Clay’s word for it and assume the amounts weren’t a lot, since his penalty had only been a fine, not a demotion.

I arrived for the interview five minutes late (problems on the Victoria Line), and Patel, who I suspected worked to office hours, was keen to get started. However, if I thought that this would make him keep it short, I was very much mistaken. A bookish young man you’d probably avoid going to the pub with, he was a real stickler for detail and made me go over, step by excruciating step, what I’d seen, when I’d seen it and whether or not any of it could have been avoided. Were adequate warnings given to the suspects? Was it a life-threatening situation? I know he was only doing his job but I felt like grabbing him by the collar and telling him that when criminals are brandishing guns — particularly when they’re already in the process of using them, as they had been on that day — then it’s always a life-threatening situation; and if you’re the copper who’s unlucky enough to have your finger on the trigger then maybe you might pull it a couple more times than regulations insist. It’s easy to stand back at a safe distance and raise doubts about whether the SO19 officers had acted beyond their remit; it’s a lot harder to decide when you’re on the spot. And that’s the problem we have as coppers. Not only are we up against the criminals, we’re also up against the establishment as well. They might be trying to be fair and impartial, but, ultimately, the only people who end up benefiting from their actions are the ones who least deserve it. You know what they say. The road to hell and all that. .

As it was, I stated categorically at every available opportunity that I hadn’t seen a single officer do anything wrong. ‘It was a botched operation,’ I concluded, ‘in so far as unforseen elements compromised it and caused the shooting to start, but it was ended as professionally as possible by the people on the ground.’ I’d practised that phrase on the way over there and it came out just right.

‘And do you have any idea what caused the arrival of these unforseen elements?’ Patel asked in slow, careful tones tinged with natural distrust, as if he half expected my reply to be a lie. ‘How they could have known this alleged drug deal was happening?’

‘At the moment,’ I said, ‘none whatsoever.’

His nod of acknowledgement had something of the sceptical about it. ‘Thank you,’ he said, after a supremely long pause, switching off the tape recorder. ‘I may need to speak with you again.’

It was six o’clock by the time I left and a wet, and unseasonably cold, drizzle was falling over the cacophony of central London’s dirt-fumed rush hour. Even Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, those grand bastions of the city’s tourist trade, looked forlorn. Definitely a good night to be getting home.

When I got back to the nick to collect my car, it was half-six and the murder squad meeting had broken up. Apparently, they were round the Roving Wolf with members of the station’s CID, enjoying a few end-of-week drinks — a loose tradition not harmed by the fact that the start of the weekend usually heralded another two days’ work for most of us. On another night I would have stopped by and joined them for a couple, but tonight tiredness got the better of me and I drove straight home.

It was five to seven when I shut the front door of my flat behind me for the last time that night. The first thing I did was try Tina’s mobile, but she wasn’t answering. When I’d spoken to Flanagan earlier, he’d told me that she’d called to say that she wasn’t going to make the meeting either, and I wondered whether she’d picked up a lead. If so, I’d find out soon enough. I was expecting her round later, as I did most nights these days.

I pulled a beer from the fridge, then sat down in front of the TV, trying to push the thoughts of the day out of my head. A copper can work too hard, and sometimes I felt I was almost living my cases and that, aside from Tina, and perhaps my daughter, they were the only things governing my existence. I needed a holiday. We both did. I hadn’t had a trip abroad for two and a half years, when I’d spent two weeks in Barbados with my ex-wife and daughter. It had been a good time — good food, good weather, a little bit of scuba diving — but it also felt like a long time ago. I wondered how to broach the subject of going away together to Tina. Something like that would make our relationship official at the station since there was no way we could both take time off at the same time without it being commented upon, particularly when we’d be coming back with suntans. But I didn’t much fancy going on my own, so something was going to have to give.

Tina came back at seven-thirty, looking tired, but still as gorgeous as ever. The drizzle outside had turned into a downpour and her hair was tousled and wet, curling up around the smooth, pale skin of her face. I immediately got a surge of lust that knocked the cobwebs off my exhaustion straight away. She came over and gave me a kiss on the lips. I could smell the scent of her skin, and the lust went into overdrive. A tubful of Viagra wouldn’t have had a more positive effect.

‘Let me just get out of these clothes,’ she said. ‘Then we’ll talk.’ An invitation, if ever I’d heard one.

‘Talking wasn’t what I had in mind,’ I said as I followed her into the bedroom.

I wasn’t sure whether she was up for it or not, but it was either that or she was feeling sorry for me, because she took me in her arms and nature took its all-too-swift course. I’m not the world’s greatest lover, nor does the mood take me every waking hour like it does some men, but when I put my mind to the task I can be pretty successful, if I say so myself. Dogged rather than devastating, but Tina seemed to enjoy it which, as she would tell you, was the main thing.

‘Well, that wasn’t exactly romantic,’ she said after we’d finished and were lying naked on the bed, she smoking the obligatory cigarette, ‘but it did the trick.’

‘We aim to please,’ I told her, thinking that there weren’t many things better than sex with someone you care about. ‘Do you fancy something to eat?’ Though good food was probably a close second.

‘Are you cooking?’

‘I’ve even bought the wine.’

She smiled, ruffling my hair. ‘I could get used to this.’

‘Fine by me. I’m hoping you do.’

We looked at each other for a moment and I suddenly felt awkward, as if I’d just been caught putting pressure on her. These last few weeks I’d been finding it harder to keep the pace of our relationship casual, but I was also keen not to scare her away, knowing that she wanted to take things one step at a time.

‘I’ll go and rustle something up for us.’ I kissed her on the cheek, threw on my dressing gown and headed into the kitchen to attempt to produce some home-made chicken fried rice.

While the rice boiled and the chicken browned in the wok, I cracked open the bottle of white wine and poured half the contents into two large glasses. A few minutes later, Tina followed me in, dressed in a white dressing gown and slippers, her hair wet from the shower, and it occurred to me, not for the first time since we’d got together, that I was a very lucky man.

‘Smells nice,’ she said, coming over and giving me a kiss on the cheek.

‘So do you.’

She stepped away, picked up her wine, then asked me what I’d found out that afternoon. Whatever she said about leaving the Force and doing something a bit more in line with her background and education, she lived the job just as much as me. I was sure she wouldn’t last five minutes in an office, dealing with customer enquiries or adding numbers to balance sheets. Our job was a bad one, whatever the recruitment ads might say. Underpaid and under-supported, over-stressed and increasingly over-dangerous. But it was still addictive to the right sort of person, and Tina, like me, was the right sort of person. Maybe it was one of the reasons I liked her so much. Because she knew the pressures, and unlike a lot of the wives and girlfriends of coppers, she could tolerate them.

I gave her a brief rundown of my interview with Clay, and she raised her eyebrows when I told her about Stegs’s previous run-in with Flanagan.

‘That’s an interesting one,’ she said, lighting another cigarette and taking a decent-sized gulp of the wine. ‘I thought there was some tension between them on Wednesday. I found out something as well.’

‘What?’

‘Stegs used to partner up with a guy called Jeff Benson at SO10, before he worked with Vokes. I spoke to Benson today. He left the Force three years ago, very suddenly. Just before he slung his hook, he got inside the Holtzes, posing as a doorman who was also a drug dealer and enforcer. He was well inside too, not just on the periphery. It took him months, but he got to the point where they trusted him, and he even got introduced to the big boss, Stefan Holtz.’

I chucked some Chinese vegetables in with the chicken and gave the whole lot a good stir. ‘Go on.’

‘It was a top-secret op. Only his controller was meant to know about it, but Benson made a mistake. He let slip what he was doing to Stegs one night when they were out drinking, against all the rules. He told me it was because the pressure was getting to him and he wanted to talk to someone about it. Since he couldn’t say a word to his family, he chose someone he felt he could confide in. Three weeks later his wife and child got a visit from a group of Holtz thugs. No-one was hurt, but she was given a letter containing photos of her going in and out of the shop where she worked, plus the nursery where she dropped her baby off every day. And then, the very same night, Benson, who knew nothing about the visit, was getting into his car outside a pub when a man with a scarf round his face leant in the window and stuck a gun against his head. The shooter said, “This is a message from the Holtzes to their favourite copper,” and pulled the trigger. Thankfully the gun was empty, but Benson knew they were serious. When he saw the photos, that was it. He resigned on the spot.’

‘I remember Malik telling me something about that when I first met up with him,’ I said, emptying the rice into a colander before adding it to the mix in the wok, and giving it another stir. I was getting hungry now. ‘I didn’t know the guy had had anything to do with Stegs, though. Not that it necessarily means anything.’

‘Except that Benson’s certain Stegs was the leak. He said that within days of him telling Stegs, his contacts within the Holtzes began to shut him out of things. Meetings were postponed, the information he was gathering seemed to dry up. Then obviously all this other stuff happened, and that was it. Another career beckoned. He left within days and refused point-blank to tell his controller what he’d found out. The Holtzes knew what they were doing. He’s still scared now, even though they’re no longer a threat. I visited him at home today. He’s moved south of the river and become head of security for an investment company in Kent. A lot less money, but at least he sleeps at night. The thing is, he blames Stegs for what happened, without a doubt. They’ve never spoken since, and they were good friends.’

I thought about that for a moment. ‘There’s never been any evidence that Stegs had anything to do with the Holtzes, though, has there?’

‘I asked Benson about that and he said no, not that he was aware of. That’s why the controller didn’t buy it. But he’s sure, John. Benson’s sure Stegs set him up, and let’s face it, Stegs is not exactly whiter than white, is he?’ She took another long drag on the cigarette.

‘But if he did work for the Holtzes, then how come when we first used Stegs to set up Slim Robbie, Robbie didn’t recognize him?’

Tina shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps Stegs was only known to a handful of people in the organization, and Slim Robbie wasn’t one of them. It still doesn’t seem right, whatever you might think.’

I could hardly disagree with that. ‘We’ll need to keep our ears to the ground, but we’ll also have to be careful. He’s going to know we’re asking questions, but it’s important we make him believe that it’s only routine, and we don’t rattle him.’

I dished up and we ate at the kitchen table while steadily draining the bottle of wine. The conversation remained on the case for a few minutes but, with some prompting on my part, finally moved on to other things, and after we’d finished eating I brought up the idea of a holiday together.

‘It sounds nice,’ she said carefully, ‘but it means everything’s going to end up out in the open, doesn’t it?’

‘It’s going to have to come out eventually. And anyway, I think most people in CID have got a pretty good idea of what’s going on. They are detectives, after all. I’d be a bit concerned if they hadn’t.’

‘But at least they’re keeping quiet about it at the moment. If we come right out with it, then people are going to be asking all sorts of questions. Let’s leave it a few weeks, eh? See how it goes.’ She put her hand on mine. ‘I don’t want it to sound like I don’t want to — I do — but I want to play things slowly where work colleagues are concerned. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you?’

I wasn’t going to push things, thinking that gentle persuasion would be far more effective, so I told her that, yes, I did understand. ‘But if you ever did decide to go, where would you fancy?’

She thought about it for a few moments. ‘I think I’d like a week on safari, and then maybe a week somewhere in the Indian Ocean. The Seychelles, or Mauritius. That way you get a good combination.’

‘A good combination and a bad bank balance.’

She lit another cigarette and poured the last few drops of the wine fairly evenly into our two glasses. ‘Don’t be boring, Mr Gallan. You can’t take it with you when you go, and you can’t put a price on memories. You know, the days when I travelled after uni are still the best of my life, even though all I have to show for them are boxloads of photos and a massive overdraft that I’m still paying off now, seven years on. But so what? I wouldn’t have changed those days for anything. That’s the attitude you’ve got to take, John. We’ve only got the one life.’

I didn’t like it when Tina mentioned her travelling days because, if I’m honest, it made me jealous. I often look back — too often — and wish that I’d gone off and seen something of the world and experienced what it had to offer while I was still young and free enough to be able to do it. Instead, I’d left school and joined the Force straight away; got engaged at twenty; was married at twenty-two; and became a dad at twenty-four, rendering such thoughts utterly redundant. But now and again I still imagined myself stretched out on a far-off palm-fringed beach, drinking a rum punch while some gorgeous local girl rubbed suncream on my back. I’d just got used to the fact that it wasn’t going to happen.

Maybe now was the time to live a little and stop feeling sorry for myself, something I’d been doing far too much these past couple of years. ‘You’re dead right,’ I told her. ‘You can’t take it with you. Safari and the Seychelles it is. If, of course, you change your mind.’

She smiled at me through the smoke, and I got the impression that she was tempted. ‘Let’s see how we go, eh?’

I took a gulp of the wine. ‘Sure.’

At that moment, her mobile rang. I’d switched mine off, having done more than enough work on the taxpayers’ behalf that day. She stood up, saying she’d better take the call, and picked the phone up off the kitchen sideboard. The conversation was short, with her doing most of the listening, but I could tell that whatever she was hearing was significant. I could read it in her animated expression. Something, it seemed, had happened on the case.

When she put the phone down she turned to me, smiling. ‘That was Flanagan. It seems our killer wasn’t so clever after all.’

I felt an immediate surge of excitement. ‘Go on.’

‘A witness approached the officers manning the Portakabin down at the scene a couple of hours ago, while the meeting was still in progress. Apparently, she saw someone come through her garden and then climb over her wall and into someone else’s at about half-five on Wednesday afternoon. Her garden backs on to the one next door to Slim Robbie’s building. She thought it was odd because the guy was dressed in a suit and didn’t look much like your typical burglar. He’d disappeared before she could challenge him, but she did manage to give a description. White, twenty-five to thirty, with dark, curly hair. Looking agitated. It’s got to be our man. No-one else is going to be clambering over back gardens at that time in the afternoon. It’s too much of a coincidence.’

I grinned. What we had didn’t sound like much, but it was a start. Now we could concentrate on asking potential witnesses who lived in the surrounding streets if they’d seen the same guy. From there, we might get a better physical description, or even a description of a car he got into. I remember a case I worked on once south of the river where a rapist had gained entry into a house through an open back window in broad daylight and violently sexually assaulted a nineteen-year-old student who’d been in there on her own. The student, who’d been made to wear a blindfold for most of the ordeal, had only managed to give the most basic of descriptions: skin colour and a rough age (twenty-five to forty if memory serves me correctly), but a retired lady who lived three streets away always made it a habit to write down the registrations of cars she didn’t recognize, and to note down the descriptions of any suspicious-looking strangers. Obviously the rapist fitted that last criterion, and he’d also made the unfortunate mistake of parking his car in her street. She saw him get into it, tagged the number, and when we publicized what had happened shortly afterwards she supplied us with the details we’d needed. The rapist had been driving his brother-in-law’s motor but he had a couple of prior convictions and was quickly apprehended as a result of her information.

There might not be many people around like our amateur detective, but there were enough to make me hopeful that from this first step on the trail of our killer we could take some larger ones.

And I couldn’t help wondering whether the trail would eventually lead all the way back to Stegs Jenner.