The Crime Trade

5

Stegs Jenner’s real first name was Montgomery. His dad had been a massive Second World War buff whose hero had been the field marshal of the same name and, according to Stegs’s dad, the man responsible not only for the defeat of Rommel at El Alamein but also, ultimately, the vanquishing of Hitler and Nazism. Forget Stalin, Roosevelt, Eisenhower or even Churchill. Monty was the man, and Stan Jenner immortalized him by bestowing the name on his first and only son.

Monty Jenner. It had been a fucking nightmare at school. At first they’d called him ‘Mont-ay’ in effeminate tones to suggest that anyone bearing such a name was quite obviously queer. When he’d complained to his dad, Jenner senior had invoked ‘the spirit of the Blitz’, telling his son that he had to be prepared to deal with adverse circumstances, that it would make him a better person. And that he had to be prepared to fight. ‘I will give up my gun when they prise my cold, dead fingers from around it,’ he’d said wisely. Stegs was one of the smaller kids in his year and didn’t really understand what his old man was going on about, but even so, the next time someone had called him ‘Mont-ay’ (it had been Barry Growler, the school bully), he’d responded with his fists, launching a full-frontal blitzkrieg-style assault that had caught the Growlster completely by surprise and had cost him a black eye and a bleeding nose. The fight had been broken up by one of the teachers before Growler had had a chance to launch a substantial counter-offensive, and Stegs had ended up the winner on points, earning a grudging respect for his actions. People still laughed at his name, but they were a little bit more careful about it, and preferred to address him as ‘Mental Monty’ rather than the more irritating ‘Mont-ay’. Even Growler had left him alone for a while after that.

About the same time, he’d decided to call himself Stegs. Although he’d never admit it now, it was short for Stegosaurus. He’d been interested in dinosaurs as a kid, and his two favourites had been Triceratops and Stegosaurus (two even-tempered plant-eaters who preferred to be left alone, but who, like Dirty Harry, could hit back hard if attacked). He felt he could identify with that. Since neither Triks nor Trice had a very cool ring to it, he’d gone with Stegs, claiming to those who asked him about it that it was his grandmother’s maiden name. He’d also changed his whole demeanour. He strutted instead of walked, he answered back to the teachers, he became a bit of a joker. For a long time, though, he couldn’t get either the name or the image to stick, but he perservered, did a few detentions for his backchat, got a couple of kickings for the way he didn’t get out of the way for the bigger boys, and eventually even the teachers started addressing him as Stegs. It taught him a valuable lesson: you can be anyone if you try.

Stegs Jenner did not look like a typical police officer. At five foot eight, he only just beat the height restrictions, and his face, even at thirty-two, was chubby and boyish, topped off by a receding mop of fine gingery-blond hair that had the curious effect of making him look both his age and a dozen years younger at the same time, like one of those illusionists’ acts. Blink and he was twenty; blink again and he was back to thirty-two. But Stegs Jenner talked the talk, and he walked the walk, and he wasn’t afraid to put his head into the lion’s mouth, which made him an invaluable asset to SO10, Scotland Yard’s specialist undercover unit.

He’d been a copper since the age of nineteen, and plainclothes since twenty-four. His full-time posting was still in the area where he’d grown up, the north London suburb of Barnet, but he’d been attached to SO10 for the previous six years, and probably half his time was spent seconded to them on undercover assignments, which is the way it works in the Met. No-one’s full-time undercover. You could be meeting Colombian drugs dealers one day to discuss a multi-million-pound deal, and hunting for stolen office equipment the next.

Not that Stegs was going to be doing too much of anything for the next few days, at least not work-wise. He’d been officially suspended (thankfully on full pay) until a preliminary internal investigation could take place to see whether he’d acted improperly or not. They hadn’t let him go until half-nine that night, at which point a very pissed-off, newly arrived assistant commissioner of the Met had formally told him that he was not to report for duty until further notice and not to speak to anyone about what had happened, other than those directly involved. The assistant commissioner (a middle-aged accountant look-alike with silver hair, an immaculately pressed uniform and a very long nose) had then stood there for a few seconds, waiting, it seemed, for Stegs to say something, presumably along the lines of ‘I’m sorry for causing you all this inconvenience’. Stegs hadn’t given him the satisfaction. Instead, he’d given the bastard a look that said, ‘If you think you can do better, you get in there and talk to people who’d flay you alive if they knew your true identity. Then maybe you’d actually be earning your money, instead of waltzing around passing the buck to the junior ranks.’

After they’d finished with him, he reluctantly phoned the missus. She must have seen something about the operation on the news because she’d left three increasingly worried messages on the mobile. She didn’t know what role he’d been playing, of course, or where he’d been playing it, but she knew he did undercover work, and the news that an undercover officer had been killed would probably have seeped out by now, so he felt duty-bound to let her know he was all right.

She answered on about the tenth ring, and in the background he could hear Luke screaming and crying.

‘Oh, Mark, thank God you’ve called. I’ve been worried stiff. Are you all right?’

She always called him Mark. She didn’t like the name Stegs, and he sure as fuck wasn’t going to let her call him Monty, so they’d had to come up with something that was acceptable to both of them, and after much discussion it turned out that Mark was it. It was how he was known to all her friends. One day he was sure he was going to end up being diagnosed as a schizophrenic.

He told her he was fine but very busy, and she asked him if he’d heard about the incident at Heathrow. He said he had.

‘It makes me so scared, Mark, thinking of you out there all alone. I don’t want baby Luke growing up without a father.’

Stegs was touched by her concern, in spite of himself. He told her everything would be OK, but neglected to mention that he’d been suspended on full pay. He’d been advised by his superiors that no correspondence would be sent to his home address regarding what had happened, and that all contact would be made on his mobile or his encrypted email address, so there was no point mentioning it, particularly as he had no intention of hanging around the house all day with her and Luke.

‘Are you coming home then?’ she asked him. ‘I know Luke wants to see you.’

That he seriously doubted. Luke was never pleased to see him. He always gave him the evil eye when Stegs tried to pick him up or play with him. At eight months old, he was definitely his mother’s son, and treated his dad like some sort of usurper whenever he came into the room. Stegs loved the kid (of course he did, he was his flesh and blood) but, though he never liked to admit it, he didn’t like him much, and was never in any doubt that the feeling was mutual.

‘I’ve still got some paperwork to clear up here,’ he told her. ‘I’ll be back later on but don’t wait up for me, I don’t know what time it’ll be.’

She sighed loudly down the other end of the phone. ‘I can’t do this all on my own, you know. Bringing up a baby’s hard enough when there’s two of you, let alone one.’ As if to confirm quite how hard, Luke’s crying went up a couple of decibels as she brought him nearer the phone. ‘Tell Daddy to come home, Lukey,’ she cooed at the infant. Fat chance of that, Stegs thought. If he could speak, he’d be telling him to fuck off, no doubt about it. ‘Tell him he’s making Mummy miserable.’ Luke had clearly been brought right up to the mouthpiece now because Stegs was forced to hold the phone away from his ear as the howling increased still further. ‘Seriously, though, Mark,’ she continued, coming back on the line. ‘It can’t carry on like this. It’s too much for me.’

‘I know, I know,’ he said, and made his excuses, citing the usual: workload, lack of staff, etc. But it didn’t sound convincing, and he knew it. She told him she understood all that but that maybe he ought to think about changing careers so that he could help a bit more, and he said he had to go, that his boss needed to see him. ‘We’ll talk in the morning,’ he said.

She sounded down as she hung up the phone with Luke’s wailing continuing in the background, and it made him wonder why she’d wanted to have kids. He’d tried his hardest to convince her that they were better off continuing as they were, childless but reasonably well off, with her nurse’s and his copper’s wage, but she’d been adamant, and he knew that part of the reason for her desire probably stemmed from the need for some companionship, given the fact that he was hardly ever there. You reap what you sow, and he was reaping.

He drove back to Barnet on the M25, but instead of turning off on to the East Barnet road and heading home, he carried on going until he reached a pub just off the Whetstone High Road. He found a parking spot about fifty yards away and walked through the driving rain to the battered front door. It was ten to eleven.

The One-Eyed Admiral had a one o’clock weekly licence but was one of those places that was never going to be that popular because (a) it never looked very clean, and (b) it had never been able to rid itself of its low-life clientele, probably because they were the only people who’d frequent it. It wasn’t a rough place, but one look through the smoky haze at the middle-aged petty criminals clustered round the tables and the fruit machines told any self-respecting punter that it wasn’t a pub he wanted to be seen in. Which was one of the reasons Stegs liked it. Because he knew he’d always get a seat at the bar, and people wouldn’t pay him too much attention.

He’d been going in there for years, ever since he’d been introduced to it by a small-time gun dealer who’d been a regular. Stegs had been undercover at the time, investigating the dealer, whose name was Pete, and the One-Eyed Admiral had been their main meeting place. After Pete had got nicked, along with several of the other customers, Stegs had continued to drink there now and again (no-one had ever suspected that he’d been the one who’d put them behind bars), and it was always the place he adjourned to when he needed time to think. They knew him as Tam in here, and thought he was the son of Irish immigrants hailing from County Cork.

The pub was busier than usual and all the tables were full, although there were still seats at the bar. Stegs nodded to a couple of blokes he recognized, then took a seat at one end — his usual spot, if it was free — and waited for Patrick, the barman, to come and take his order.

‘All right, Tam. Long time no see,’ grunted Patrick in that less-than-charming manner of his. He’d been here for years and Stegs had never seen him smile once. ‘What’ll it be?’

‘Pint of Stella,’ said Stegs, thinking that he should be thankful for men like Patrick. A lot of barmen’ll take it as an invitation to talk if you sit at their bar, and talking was something Stegs had done enough of for one day. At least he knew Patrick would leave him alone.

He took the pint when it came to him, and handed over the exact money. He gulped down at least a third of it, savouring the much-needed taste of alcohol, before putting the glass down on the bar and sparking up a Marlboro Light. The missus was always on at him to give up the fags, even though she continued to smoke three Silk Cut Ultras religiously every evening (giving her teeth a ferocious clean after each one). Stegs never smoked in the house any more; apparently the residue on his breath could potentially be harmful to an infant (hence the missus’s tooth cleaning). It was the same with the booze. Next she’d be telling him not to eat curries.

He dragged on the Marlboro and looked at the clock on the wall. Two minutes to eleven. Gill Vokerman would have been told by now what had happened to her husband, and Stegs wondered how she’d be coping. Badly probably. They had two kids: Jacob and Honey (not a name Stegs would have chosen — too gooey). Jacob was six and Honey either two or three, he couldn’t remember which. Gill was a committed Christian, so maybe her beliefs would help get her through it. He hoped so. She’d always struck him as a stoic sort, one who could call upon the old ‘spirit of the Blitz’ to help her through adversity, but losing a husband suddenly, violently and unexpectedly was as adverse as you were likely to get. He was going to have to go and see her, offer his condolences. It wasn’t going to be easy, especially as she didn’t like him anyway. Vokes had told him once that she looked upon him as a bad influence, although quite how he’d deserved that accolade, he didn’t know. Perhaps Vokes had blamed him for the occasional night the two of them had stayed out late. That was the problem with their job. You spent so much time living on the edge, acting out roles in environments where things were always on a knife-edge, that you had to be able to unwind. That meant sinking a few beers, coming in late, sometimes not making it in at all. Whatever Gill Vokerman might have thought, there was no way round it. If you couldn’t unwind with your mates, you’d go mental.

He was going to miss Vokes, who’d been a good mate to him. They’d known each other for about three years, ever since they’d been thrown together on an assignment to trap a team of luxury-car thieves. That particular case, in which the two of them had posed as potential buyers with heavyweight contacts in the Middle East, had lasted close to two months, and with its successful conclusion (four members of the team had ended up with prison time totalling twenty-three years), so their partnership had been cemented. They’d worked together wherever possible since and each had learnt to cover the other’s back in even the most dangerous situations. When you’re an undercover copper, everything’s based on trust. If you’re working with another SO10 operative you’ve got to know that they won’t crack whatever the provocation, that they’ll continue to hold on to their identity even with a gun against their head, and it takes a special kind of person to be able to handle that sort of pressure. Vokes was one of them, so was Stegs.

One time, eighteen months ago, that capability had been put to the ultimate test. The two of them had been working on an assignment to infiltrate and gather evidence on a south London-based coke and cannabis smuggling gang led by a psychotic thug named Frank Rentners. Rentners, an ex-boxer who’d served time for manslaughter, had ambitions to tie up the dope and coke market in his patch of south-east London, and he ran a sophisticated and lucrative operation in which the drugs were brought in on lorries overland from Spain among consignments of fruit and veg. At the time of the assignment, it was estimated that Rentners and his crew were turning over close to a million a year in sales, and were expanding fast thanks to their policy of undercutting (quite literally in one case) the competition.

Once again, the two of them had posed as buyers from the provinces looking to set up an ongoing business relationship with Rentners to purchase quantities of his imported gear. An informant had introduced them to a small-time player called Jack Brewster who knew someone else within the gang. This is usually how it works in the criminal world: word of mouth. Somebody knows somebody who knows somebody else. It’s a good way of working because so many people get involved that by the time the bad guys are nicked they’re not sure who it was who actually grassed them up. That was the theory anyway.

Brewster, who’d had no idea that the people he was representing were police officers, had been promised a commission by Stegs and Vokes if he could get his contact within the gang to set up a meeting between them and Rentners. Feelers had been put out and eventually Rentners had agreed to see Stegs, Vokes and Brewster in a pub in Streatham for an initial chat. If all went well, then they’d take it to the next step: a test purchase.

So when they’d gone to the pub, there’d been no reason to suspect that things were going to go wrong. It was just a first meeting. He and Vokes weren’t even wearing wires, relying instead on the fact that officers from SO11, Scotland Yard’s intelligence-gathering unit, had put a tracking device under Rentners’ car, just in case they changed venues. Brewster, who’d met the two of them in a Burger King just down the road, had been laughing and chatting, and was keen to know when he could expect some money. Stegs remembered that he’d told him it wouldn’t be too long and that he had nothing to worry about because he, Stegs, was a man of his word. Brewster had seemed happy enough with that.

Rentners had been in the pub with three of his men. They all looked pretty much identical: shaven-headed, powerfully built, and togged out in three-quarter-length black leather jackets, black jeans and Timberlands. Like a doormen’s barbershop quartet — not that Stegs expected this lot to break out in song, not unless it was the Funeral March anyway. Rentners had been shorter than the rest, and older — probably about forty-five — but you could tell from the way he stood in the middle of the group, one elbow resting on the bar, that he was the leader. He had a black goatee beard modelled along the lines of one Satan might wear, and a similarly fiendish half-smile. All that was missing were the horns and forked tail.

He’d looked the three of them up and down slowly and silently, trying to maximize the menace, then said straight away that they were going somewhere else. No-one had argued, this sort of welcome being par for the course, and the seven of them had left the pub through the back entrance that led out to a tiny car park. Two Mercedes, both black, were parked next to each other. Brewster was ushered into one along with two of Rentners’ goons, while Stegs and Vokes were invited into the back seat of the other. Rentners sat in the front passenger seat while the fourth member of the group drove.

‘Where are we heading?’ asked Vokes, who on this particular occasion was acting as the senior of the two of them.

‘Just for a little drive,’ growled their host, with that same devilish little half-smile which was not designed to make the recipient feel any better. ‘Sit back and relax.’

And with that, he pressed a button and a tinted partition came down, making further communication impossible. The two SO10 men glanced at each other, but remained calm. In the end, Frank Rentners was a businessman and they were potential customers with some serious money to spend, so neither of them expected any real problems. They’d done this sort of thing plenty of times before.

They drove through the streets of south London for close to three-quarters of an hour, losing the other car in the process. The driver kept to the quieter roads, occasionally doubling back on himself until eventually they were into the suburbs. They passed through Orpington, crossed the M25 at Swanley, and continued in a south-easterly direction. There was still no sign of the other car, and Stegs wondered whether they were going to see Brewster again that day, and whether the SO11 men were also on their tail.

An hour and five minutes into the journey by Stegs’s watch, they suddenly pulled off the road they were travelling on and drove up a dirt track through woods until they came to a modern two-storey red-brick house set back on its own behind a small, neatly trimmed garden. The other Merc was already there, parked up on the driveway, along with a red Golf. They pulled up behind the Merc and the driver cut the engine.

Rentners got out along with the driver, and beckoned them to do the same. ‘Are you hungry?’ he asked, when they were standing on the driveway.

It was one o’clock in the afternoon and they both said they were, so Rentners, his smile a little more welcoming now, ushered them towards the house. Stegs noticed that he had his own key which he used to let them in, and he wondered briefly if this property was in Rentners’ name.

The interior was surprisingly sparse. There were no pictures or ornaments in the hallway, and the unfashionable black carpet looked cheap. Rentners led them through to a large dining room that looked out on to trees. A large table took up most of the room and it was laid for seven people. Two bottles of Ty Nant mineral water were in the middle of the table along with a bottle each of red and white wine. Even eighteen months on, Stegs Jenner remembered all these little details. He remembered everything about that day.

Brewster was already sitting down at the table along with the other two. He greeted them with a slightly confused smile, as if he too wasn’t a hundred per cent sure what was going on. Stegs and Vokes took seats opposite him.

‘Help yourselves to drinks,’ said Rentners, and disappeared out of the room.

Stegs helped himself to a glass of red. He wouldn’t have drunk on duty normally but it was Chateauneuf du Pape. Whatever else could be said of Rentners, he had good taste in wine. Vokes shot him a sideways glare and poured himself some water.

‘Well, this is very nice,’ said Stegs, not really meaning it at all. It wasn’t nice. It was weird. He’d been working with SO10 a long time, and no-one had ever fed him at a first meeting.

‘It is, isn’t it?’ said Brewster, an excruciatingly ingratiating smile on his face as he looked around. Stegs thought then that he really didn’t like Brewster. He had the furtive air of a child molester.

Nobody else spoke.

A few minutes later, Rentners returned carrying a huge pot. A big, blonde-haired woman in a kitchen apron came in behind him. She was carrying bowls which she put down in front of everyone without speaking. Stegs thanked her but she ignored him, not even looking his way.

‘Spaghetti al araba,’ said Rentners, who must have thought he was John Gotti or Tony Soprano, lifting the lid off the pot. ‘I hope you all like chilli.’ He then doled out a portion of spaghetti in a tomatoey sauce to each and every one of them while the blonde came back several times bringing salad and garlic bread. ‘Bon appetit,’ he growled when he’d finished, before sitting down at the head of the table and proceeding to stuff his demonic face.

As they ate (and Stegs would always remember that the food was excellent), Rentners asked the two of them questions. What sort of quantity of gear were they after? How were they raising the funds needed? Where’d they done time? Did they know so and so? The questions were probing but nothing unusual, and the two of them answered confidently and without hesitation. Only once did Rentners speak to Brewster, to ask him if he knew how a mutual acquaintance of theirs was doing. Brewster, between sizeable mouthfuls of spaghetti, said he hadn’t seen the bloke for ages. Rentners nodded, as if accepting the answer, and carried on talking to the two SO10 men. Vokes did most of the talking, but Stegs had entered the discussion where necessary, and he remembered thinking, as he poured himself a second glass of the Chateauneuf du Pape, that it wouldn’t take more than a few meetings to reel in Rentners. He obviously rated himself very highly, and they’re always the easiest to bring down because they never see it coming.

Rentners was the first to finish. As he did so, he gave his belly a satisfying rub and raised his glass. ‘To crime,’ he chuckled.

‘To crime,’ said everyone else with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Stegs even raised his glass.

Then Rentners lifted up the empty bottle of white wine and smashed it over Brewster’s head. Brewster didn’t even know what had hit him, he simply slid off the chair and fell to the floor. Stegs and Vokes stared at Rentners, wondering whether they’d missed something. Vokes began to speak, but their host stood up and pulled a long-barrelled Browning from the waistband of his black jeans and pointed it at him.

‘Shut the fuck up, cunt!’ he hissed, his face dissolving into a malevolent glare, which hadn’t required much of a transformation.

At the same time, Stegs felt something warm and metallic being pushed against his temple as the bloke next to him — the one who’d driven them down there — produced his own gun. Stegs carried on chewing. When he’d finished, he turned to Rentners and glared right back. ‘What the fuck is this? What are you trying to do?’

‘Shut your fucking mouth, copper!’ snarled Rentners, moving the gun round so it was pointed right between Stegs’s eyes.

Stegs felt his heart shoot up to his mouth and he silently thanked God that he had Vokes with him because he knew his partner was experienced enough to handle this sort of situation.

‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ he yelled, indignant. ‘Who the fuck’s a copper? How do I even know you’re not a fucking copper?’ He stood up, flinging his serviette onto the table and ignoring the gun to his head, a picture of righteous anger.

Bluff, bluff — it’s always bluff.

‘Get fucking down!’ roared Rentners, his gun hand shaking with rage.

‘All right, Steve,’ said Vokes. ‘Sit down and take it easy.’ Stegs slowly sat back down while Vokes turned to Rentners and spoke calmly but with barely suppressed irritation. ‘What the fuck is this, Mr Rentners? We came here to do business. We don’t like having weapons pointed at us, and having accusations made that are, quite frankly, fucking insulting.’

‘Don’t fucking try that one. You’re coppers. I know you are. And him’ — he motioned with the Browning towards the prone form of Brewster — ‘he’s a fucking grass. You’re here to fucking set me up.’

‘Bollocks!’ yelled Stegs. ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this to us.’

‘Is this the way you treat all your customers, Frank? Because if it is-’

‘SHUT THAT FUCKING MOUTH!’ roared Rentners. ‘NOW! BOTH OF YOU! YOU HEAR ME? NOW!’

The whole world had probably heard that. It left Stegs’s ears ringing, and he knew that this was serious. Very serious. Rentners had killed before. Knifed a man in the heart over an alleged drugs debt. He’d got off on manslaughter charges because the bloke had also slept with his missus, which meant extenuating circumstances. Nineteen times he’d stabbed him, the defence barrister at his trial describing it as a passionate rage in search of an outlet, which seemed a very generous way of looking at it. Some fucking outlet. The point was, though, that this was a bad situation. Rentners was unpredictable, he was violent, and he had a gun. Stegs was as scared as he’d ever been, but he knew it would be fatal to show it. He gave Rentners a look that said that he wouldn’t forget this sort of treatment.

‘Get ’em in the weights room,’ said Rentners, ignoring him, ‘and wake that cunt up. I don’t want him missing all the fun.’

Vokes started to tell him that he was making a big mistake but never finished the sentence as Rentners let fly with a wicked right hook that sent him stumbling back into the wall. Vokes was a big lad, six two and about fifteen stone, but he was left dazed by the ex-boxer’s blow, and offered little resistance as Rentners grabbed his shirt and pulled him back out into the hallway. At the same time, the one with the gun against Stegs’s head hauled him to his feet and led him out the same way, keeping the weapon in position. ‘Make a wrong fucking move and you die,’ he told Stegs helpfully.

The weights room took up the whole of the basement. It was even more sparsely furnished than the rest of the house and, being windowless, was brightly lit by strip lights on the ceiling. It was also carpetless, and consequently quite cold. At one end of the room were two racks of weights, a treadmill, and several other exercise machines. A single leather sofa was at the other end, about thirty feet away, facing this makeshift gymnasium.

Rentners shoved Vokes onto the sofa, and Stegs followed a couple of seconds later. Their hands were then forced behind their backs by one of Rentner’s gunmen, and amid continued protestations they were tied with duct tape. While this was going on, Brewster was dumped unceremoniously onto the stone floor halfway between the sofa and the nearest rack of weights. For the first time Stegs noticed a steam iron plugged into one of the mains sockets a few feet away from him.

‘This is fucking ridiculous,’ he told Rentners, trying hard not to look at the iron. ‘We’re here offering you money for your merchandise, and you’re treating us like shit. If I’m a fucking copper, why aren’t I wearing a wire, then? Come on, search me. See if I’m fucking wearing one.’

A tiny glimmer of doubt crossed Rentners’ features, then disappeared. ‘Tape their fucking traps up, Tone,’ he told the gunman.

Tone stuffed the gun in his waistband and took the duct tape back out of his jacket.

‘He’s right, Frank,’ said Vokes, trying hard to keep the nerves out of his voice. ‘Search us if you don’t believe us. Don’t fucking do business with us if you don’t trust us, but tying us up and doing all this is just going to make your reputation-’

He was forced to stop when Tone pulled the tape round his mouth several times over, before biting the end off it.

‘You’d better make sure you never run into me again, Tone, you cunt!’ snarled Stegs, as Tone prepared to do the same thing to him. When he’d finished, he punched Stegs in the side of the head, knocking him into Vokes. Their eyes met for a second, before they were pulled apart. Stegs thought that Vokes was more nervous than he’d ever seen him.

Brewster was taking his time coming round, so one of the other men disappeared into an alcove round the corner. The sound of running water followed and then he returned with a full bucket. He chucked it over Brewster, and now Stegs realized why the room wasn’t carpeted.

Brewster coughed and spluttered and tried to sit up. Rentners then stepped forward and kicked him in the face. ‘Lie on your front, now!’ he demanded.

Brewster appeared confused but did exactly what he was told. Tone then came over, leant down, and ripped the shirt off his back, leaving only the arms still attached to him. He chucked the material to one side, then wrapped more of his roll of tape round Brewster’s wrists, binding them together. He did the same with his ankles. Brewster didn’t move while any of this was going on, or say anything.

‘You’re a grass, aintcha, Brewster?’ said Rentners gently, walking round the other man. ‘You’re trying to fit us up, aintcha? And these geezers, they’re coppers, right?’

Brewster desperately protested his innocence, but it was no good. Stegs could see in Rentners’ face that they were going to punish him whatever he said. Rentners had decided he was guilty, and now that he had that thought in his head it was going to take a miracle to budge it. Stegs didn’t believe in miracles. That was more Vokes’s line. He’d bet that Brewster was praying for one, though.

Rentners turned and smiled at the two undercover cops, then walked over to the iron, removing it from its base. He gently touched it with his finger, then pulled the finger away with mock suddenness, mouthing the word ‘Ow!’ He was still smiling, and his whole demeanour had calmed considerably. He looked like a man at peace with himself.

‘Do the honours then, Tone,’ he said, and Tone stepped onto the prostrate Brewster, putting a foot on each arm above the elbow, thereby severely restricting his upper body movement. Rentners stood there motionless, watching Stegs and Vokes. His expression was blank.

‘Aagh!’ yelped Brewster. ‘Get off. I ain’t done nothing. That hurts.’

‘That don’t hurt,’ said Rentners. ‘This hurts.’

He dropped one knee onto the back of Brewster’s legs, careful not to conceal the view for the two SO10 men, then pushed the iron hard against the centre of his victim’s back, directly beneath the shoulder blades. Steam shot up as the iron sizzled and crackled, and Brewster unleashed a blood-curdling scream of agony that reverberated round the room. Rentners kept the iron in the same position, pressing hard, and using his weight to keep Brewster’s legs from moving. Brewster kept screaming, louder and louder, and Stegs suddenly had a desperate urge to piss. It took all his self-control to stop himself. He couldn’t have that. Couldn’t show them how scared he was. He avoided looking at Vokes but couldn’t help but catch the eye of the man holding the bucket. He blew Stegs a kiss.

All of a sudden the screaming stopped, and Rentners removed the iron, revealing a red-raw, sizzling wound. The smell of burnt skin drifted through the air.

‘The cunt’s passed out,’ said Rentners. ‘Get some more water, Alan,’ he told the bucket man. ‘We need to wake him up.’

Once again Alan disappeared into the alcove with the bucket. While he was gone, Rentners used a screwdriver to scrape off scraps of flesh from the iron before replacing it on its base and walking over to the sofa, stopping in front of Stegs and Vokes. He removed the gun from his waistband and put it against Vokes’s head.

‘You look nervous,’ he said, ‘and you ought to be. You’re next.’ He patted Vokes’s shirt, manhandling him in the seat as he hunted belatedly for a wire. ‘I know you’re coppers,’ he said when he’d finished without finding anything. ‘You know how I know, because earlier on you’ — he motioned towards Stegs — ‘said you’d done time in Parkhurst for dealing last year, on D wing. But you can’t have done. Tone was there then and he don’t remember you, do you, Tone?’

Tone, who’d stepped off Brewster’s arms now, shook his head slowly. ‘Never seen him before in my life.’ He stepped out of the way as Alan the bucket man chucked more water over Brewster’s upper half.

Brewster moaned and shook his head. ‘My back, my fucking back. . What are you doing?’ He tried to move but Tone stood on his arms again, and the next second Rentners had grabbed the iron and reapplied it to the same area.

The screams started again — animal-like howls of suffering — and out of the corner of his eye Stegs saw Vokes shift uncomfortably in his seat.

‘PLAAAAYYYSSE!’

Stegs tried to shut out the sound but couldn’t; it seemed to be coming from everywhere. Tried to concentrate on anything other than the events being played out before him, tried to tell himself that they wouldn’t kill them (it’d be too much hassle). Knowing he’d made a mistake. Knowing he shouldn’t have been so specific about when he’d done his supposed time. Cursing his bad luck. And bad planning. They should have done a better job of checking out Rentners’ associates.

The screams stopped.

The room fell silent.

Stegs would have given both his bollocks to have got out of there then.

Don’t burn me, you fucks. Please do not fucking burn me.

Alan the bucket man went to get some more water. Rentners smiled at them both. ‘If you both admit to me you’re coppers, and you tell me what evidence you’ve got, and give me details of who you are and where you live, then I’ll let you walk as soon as I’ve checked them out. You don’t fucking talk, then you’re going to get the same treatment as this cunt. Understand? I’ve got a business to protect, and I’m going to fucking protect it. From grasses and undercover cozzers. You understand me? Yeah, I think you do now, dontcha?’

More water splashed over Brewster, and slowly he came round again. This time, Rentners lifted him up by his hair and shoved his gun against his head. Brewster’s eyes were vacant. He looked drugged up.

‘Are these two cozzers?’ Rentners demanded, pushing him round so he was facing Stegs and Vokes. For a couple of seconds, Brewster didn’t answer, his eyes struggling to focus. Rentners repeated the question, pushing the barrel harder against his head. ‘Answer me or I’ll blow your fucking head off.’

Stegs heard himself praying that Brewster, who could surely have no fucking idea that they were SO10, didn’t simply say yes to deflect attention from himself. Don’t say it. Don’t fucking say it!

‘No,’ Brewster croaked. ‘Course not.’

Once again a sudden flash of doubt crossed Rentners’ features but was gone just as quickly. He let go of Brewster’s hair and let him fall onto the wet floor, then he walked purposefully over to the sofa and pulled the tape from Vokes’s mouth. ‘Last chance not to burn,’ he said. ‘Just admit it, tell me what you know, and you’ll be out of here inside an hour with your back in the same condition it’s in now.’

Vokes was sweating profusely, but he held Rentners’ gaze. ‘I am not a fucking undercover copper,’ he spat. ‘I am a fucking businessman. I was here looking to make a deal, now I’m just looking to get the fuck out of here.’

‘What about him, then? How come he fucked up about doing time in Parkhurst?’

‘Fuck knows. Ask him.’

Rentners ripped off Stegs’s duct tape and started to speak, but Stegs knew he was going to get only one chance to turn the tables, so he cut him off straight away. ‘Is that what this is all about? Are you putting us through this just because of something I’m meant to have fucking said? Because I tell you this, I was fucking there, and I was on B wing, you deaf cunt! Not D! And if he doesn’t fucking recognize me, then he obviously wasn’t looking very hard! Or maybe he’s the fucking undercover copper, because I’ll tell you something, I don’t fucking recognize him either, the cunt!’

His words spilt out so fast that Rentners didn’t get even half a chance to interrupt. When he’d finished, the ex-boxer’s expression had changed. He looked thoughtful now. Stegs and Vokes both glared at him, letting it be known that they were not best pleased with the way serious liberties had been taken with them.

Rentners appeared at last to realize he’d made a mistake and placed the gun back in his waistband. ‘Listen, I’m sorry about that, boys,’ he said. ‘You just can’t be too careful, though, can you? We’ve been hearing bad reports about Brewster for a while now, and then he gets all keen to introduce youse two to me. I put two and two together and it looks like I come up with five. Let me get you a drink.’

And that was how it had ended. The two of them had been released and given a large brandy each, which they’d drunk while Brewster lay ignored on the stone floor. Rentners had then begun acting like nothing had happened, and had even started trying to put together a test purchase. In Stegs’s experience, that was how a lot of violent criminals acted. It was as if they couldn’t understand what was wrong with their actions. Vokes had told him to fuck off and to watch how he treated potential customers next time, which was the attitude to take. It demonstrated how pissed off they were and bolstered their credentials as bona fide buyers. Rentners had apologized again and had got Tone to drive them back to London. On the way back, Tone had said sorry too, admitting that he’d made up the bit about being in Parkhurst as a bluff. ‘The boss told me to’ was his explanation. Stegs had told him that he’d better never show his face in Southampton, otherwise he’d get an axe in it. Tone had actually looked a bit worried at that, and had brought up the partition.

He’d dropped them off at Waterloo station, and as soon as he was gone they’d grabbed each other in a long and emotional bearhug that got the late-afternoon commuters giving them some very strange stares.

Not that any of those bastards would ever know the half of it.

He really was going to miss his partner. He wasn’t sure if he could trust anyone else like he’d trusted him. He wasn’t even sure if he could keep going with SO10 duties. It seemed one hell of a lot of risk for not very much reward. A few weeks earlier, he’d read in one of the Sunday newspapers about an investment banker in the City who was paid so well that he earned in three and a half days what Stegs made in a year, and he wasn’t even the highest paid in his department. Was some fucking accountant in a suit worth so much more than him? Did he really contribute so much more to society? It seemed plenty of people thought he did. He wondered how they would react if someone like Frank Rentners came knocking on their doors with a long-barrelled Browning in one hand and a steam iron in the other.

‘Do you want another one, Tam?’ asked Patrick, coming over.

Stegs nodded. ‘Yeah, please. Same again.’

He knew he was going to end up drink-driving, but he was past caring. The last time he’d been stopped, the previous year, he’d managed to convince them to let him go, although they’d warned him that if they saw him doing it again they’d have to nick him. Fair enough. He’d take his chances.

The pint came and he paid for it with a twenty. As Patrick went over to the till, a thought struck him. Vokes had been a lot more nervous than usual today. He was usually pretty cool, but this time he’d definitely looked under pressure, even before they’d arrived at the hotel. Maybe he’d just been losing it, finally burning out under the pressure of the job. It happened. Plenty of times, particularly to undercover cops.

Or maybe it was something else.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that a young blonde had taken the stool next to his at the bar. She was early twenties, dressed in tight-fitting hipsters and an oldish suede jacket. She flashed him a smile, and he knew straight away she was a pro. You got them sometimes in the Admiral, usually on their nights off. They had a couple of saunas on the high street nearby and some of the girls lived on the estate opposite, so they liked to stop in for the odd drink, and were tolerated by the management as long as they kept their activities discreet. Stegs hadn’t seen this one before and hadn’t noticed her when he’d come in earlier. Perhaps she was new. Patrick returned with his change, gave the girl a quick once-over, then turned away again to serve someone.

‘Hi,’ said the girl, smiling again. ‘How are you?’

Her accent was eastern European, probably Romanian or Bulgarian. She was heavily made up with bright red lipstick, and her hair, cut into a bob, was dyed. She was quite attractive in a harsh, lived-in kind of way, but her blue eyes were weary and she was too skinny for Stegs’s liking. He wondered briefly whether she was on the pipe, then decided he honestly didn’t care either way.

‘How do I look?’

‘Very nice.’ The smile was now fixed on her face. ‘You look very nice.’

He turned and gave her a vaguely dismissive glance. ‘Really? I shouldn’t do. I’m tired, pissed off, and my best mate got killed today. Some bastard blew his head off.’

The smile dropped a little at the sides even though she made a valiant effort to keep it there. Her expression suggested she didn’t know whether he was joking or not. Stegs just looked at her with the same expression for a couple of seconds longer, then turned away.

Patrick came over. ‘Everything all right here?’ he asked. He looked at the girl. ‘Do you want a drink?’

She glanced at Stegs, saw that he wasn’t going to offer, and ordered a large vodka with ice. When she’d got her drink, she slipped off her stool and disappeared. Stegs took another huge gulp of his beer and lit a Marlboro Light.

‘Did you hear about Pete?’ asked Patrick as he poured a Murphys from the tap.

‘Who?’

‘Yer man, Pete. The one you used to come in here with back in the old days. Pete Moss.’

Pete the gun dealer. ‘What about him?’

Patrick left the three-quarters-full pint of Murphys to settle for a moment, and looked hard at Stegs. There was something innately distrustful in his expression. Stegs didn’t react. He was used to that kind of look.

‘He’s dead.’

Stegs dragged on his cigarette. ‘Shit. How did that happen?’

‘The old C. Throat cancer. Died in Ford a few weeks back. I’m surprised you didn’t hear.’

‘I haven’t seen him for a long time. I visited him a couple of times after he got sent down, but you know what it’s like. You lose touch.’

‘No way to die though, is it? Behind bars. The last four years of his life ruined. Another six months and he’d have been out.’

He continued to look at Stegs as he spoke, with a greater intensity than he’d ever shown before, and Stegs wondered if he suspected him of having had something to do with it. Maybe he should have tried a bit harder to keep up with Pete’s progress inside. Still, it was a bit late to worry about that now.

‘That’s always the way,’ he said. ‘There’s no justice in this fucking world. Poor old Pete, I always liked him. Did you get to the funeral?’

Patrick shook his head and went back to pouring the rest of the beer, having seemingly lost interest in the conversation. ‘Nah, I didn’t,’ he replied eventually, and walked away with the pint.

They all fucked up in the end, thought Stegs. The small-time thieves, knifemen, the fences, the dealers, the thugs, all those who worked on the wrong side of the crime trade. They all thought they’d live for ever, breathing the ripe air of freedom, but it never worked like that. He’d always liked Pete, though. He’d been a laugh, a good bloke to be around. They’d had some good times together. Stegs tried not to picture him wasted and rasping in a prison hospital bed. Instead, he pictured a smiling Jack Brewster, the way he’d been before Frank Rentners had tattooed his back with a steam iron, and he remembered that Brewster too was now dead. Someone had garrotted him a few months back, then dumped his corpse in Mulgrave Pond in Woolwich, case unsolved.

They all fucked up in the end.

Stegs drained his drink and, catching Patrick’s eye, ordered another one.