The Crime Trade

9

Stegs was writing a book about his exploits undercover in SO10. It had been done before by former officers of course, several times, but he was certain there was still a market for this kind of material: tales of derring-do amid the violent world of cops, robbers and killers. That last bit was the first sentence of the synopsis for Undercover Cop, the tell-it-all novel he was hoping was going to attract some serious literary attention of the financial kind once he released it into the public realm. He’d decided on the title after much thought, concluding that it was best not to try and be too subtle with the punters. Tell them straight what it was all about, no fannying around. The plan was to finish it, get an offer in from someone big, then retire from the Force and give the bastards a richly deserved two fingers.

Progress, however, had been slow. Stegs had been writing it for more than two years and was still only on page twenty-seven. He’d had a lot of trouble with the first chapter, in which he’d described his schooldays. He couldn’t seem to get the right combination of tough and vulnerable and had found it particularly hard to avoid mentioning the name Monty without making the whole thing sound wrong, and in these sort of things you had to be authentic. He’d finally moved on to chapter two a few months earlier, having given himself the new name of Martin for chapter one, and was now at the training stage in Hendon. A few more pages and he’d be on to the good stuff: football riots, his first case at SO10, the sex, the drugs, the rock and roll. And any other bullshit he could think up.

On the morning after the death of Vokes, Stegs made a vow to turn adversity into opportunity and use his period of suspension to make a concerted push on Undercover Cop. This was at twenty to seven while he sat feeding baby Luke at the breakfast table. The missus, meanwhile, was carrying out a two-pronged pincer attack: on the one hand complaining about the fact that he hadn’t got in until quarter to two the previous night; on the other bemoaning the Jenner family’s lack of money. The latest Visa bill received the previous day, which was being waved like a piece of evidence, showed that they owed?2,311. And sixty-eight pence, if you wanted to be exact. This was on top of the latest bank statement brandished three days earlier, which carried the grim news that the joint account was?240 in the red with a week still to go before Stegs received his pay.

‘We can’t carry on like this,’ she said in a voice that was a mixture of angry and pained, a tone peculiar to her that he always thought would have been better suited to someone who’d been constipated for a week and wanted to blame someone else for it.

Money had been becoming more and more of an issue recently. The missus’s sister was married to an insurance broker in the city called Clive who liked to flash the cash, and it was making the missus jealous. They also had a kid a couple of months older than Luke, a real ugly bruiser called Harry who had a flat, bashed-in face that looked like it had been used as a hammer by Mike Tyson, but who was always dressed up in the latest designer clothes. Clive, the missus’s sister and young Frankenstein were off to a villa in the south of France for three weeks in August, and had invited the Jenner family along. The missus wanted to go but Stegs wasn’t keen on the idea. He’d said it was because they couldn’t afford it, but in reality it was much more to do with the fact that he couldn’t stick Clive, who was about as full of life as the Unknown Soldier. But since then the missus had got it into her head that Stegs was going to have to change jobs in order to solve their financial woes and put them in a position where they could go on fancy holidays and dress Luke up in the manner he deserved. Not that the little bugger appeared too bothered about his sartorial elegance as he sat there drooling lumpy porridge all over his romper suit.

Stegs decided to use the nuclear option and nip this broadside in the bud by telling her that Vokes had been the officer killed yesterday, and that he himself had been present only minutes before it had happened. It had the desired effect. Her hand went to her mouth, and her eyes widened. ‘Oh God, Mark. It could have been you. Are you all right, baby?’ She grabbed him in an intense hug, crumpling the Visa bill against his dressing gown, and causing a burst of jealous displeasure from Luke who started screaming and spraying bits of porridge everywhere. The missus was not a big woman — in fact, her mother thought she was too thin (mind you, the mother was pushing fifteen stone) — but on that morning she had a grip of steel, and Stegs felt himself losing breath.

‘It’s all right, love,’ he gasped. ‘I’m fine. It’s going to be OK.’ Not if you don’t fucking let go of me, it won’t.

She sobbed silently into his shoulder, unlike Luke who sobbed loudly into his ear, occasionally hitting it with pieces of half-eaten shrapnel. Stegs felt bad that he’d broken it to her like he had, and not for the first time he cursed himself for being so thoughtless. She didn’t have the most comfortable of lives at the moment and he ought to go a bit easier on her.

She pulled away from him and turned her attention instead to Luke. ‘It’s all right, Lukey, Lukey, Lukey. It’s OK, babe. Mama’s here now.’ Like a wild animal who’d met his match, Luke calmed down and his screams became the occasional hiccoughing sob. The missus took the porridge spoon from Stegs and began refilling her son’s face. He gave Stegs a nasty look out of the corner of his eye, as if to say, ‘Watch it, she’s mine.’ Stegs, to his shame, gave him one in return. That kid was going to have to learn a bit of respect.

The missus turned to him, still feeding Luke. She’d recovered now, but there were still tears in her eyes. She’d only met Vokes twice — once when they’d gone round there for dinner, and another time for a meal in the West End (neither occasion had been very successful, in part due to Gill’s rampant Christianity, which meant you had to be careful what you said) — but she was aware that Stegs had worked with him for a while, and that they were close. ‘Have you spoken to Gill?’ she asked.

‘Not yet. I will do, though.’

‘Poor thing. It’s going to be awful for her.’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘Imagine losing your husband like that. And with kids as well. You’re going to go round and see her, aren’t you?’

He didn’t feel any better about doing it than he had the previous night, but he knew he didn’t really have much choice. ‘I’ll go and see her later today. She’ll probably have her family and the police round this morning.’

‘It’s just so. . so awful, Mark. What happened?’

Stegs didn’t like talking about his job with the missus. He never had. To be fair, she’d never been that interested, and on those occasions when she had asked, he’d always cited security reasons for not saying too much. This time, though, he knew he wasn’t going to get away without at least telling her something, not least because she was going to be able to get most of the details from the news and the papers, so he gave her as brief a rundown as possible of what had happened, making no mention of his suspension. In his story, he’d been at the scene in one of the other rooms, but at no time had he been in any danger. Vokes had been the one taking the risks (Stegs explained that he didn’t get directly involved in the more dangerous situations, describing his responsibility as back-up, which she seemed to buy) and, unfortunately, things had gone wrong. ‘He was just unlucky, you know. It’s very, very rare that these jobs go tits-up.’

‘Don’t swear in front of Lukey, Mark.’

‘Why not? He can’t understand what I’m saying.’

‘It’s just not nice, OK? Please.’

Stegs took a slurp from his cup of tea. It was going cold. ‘Yeah, whatever.’

‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

‘I’m fine. Tired, that’s all.’ And hung over, he thought. He’d sunk four in the Admiral, then two cans of Stella when he’d got home. He was amazed he hadn’t been up pissing all night, but then he’d always had a strong bladder.

The missus sighed and gave him her trademark calm-but-serious look. This was always a sign that she was going to nag him about something. And he knew straight away what it was. ‘I want you to think very seriously about changing jobs, Mark. Really. Linda was saying the other day that Clive could get you a job as head of office security at Warner Tomkins and Nash Associates. The current incumbent’s not doing a very good job and they want to make him redundant and replace him.’

Stegs thought that his missus was probably the only person he knew who actually used the word ‘incumbent’ in conversation. ‘Look, can we not talk about this now? It’s a bad time at the moment.’

‘When can we talk about it, then?’

‘Not today,’ he said, getting up from the kitchen chair and looking around for his cigarettes. ‘Please not today.’

‘The pay’s good,’ she called after him as he found the pack and retreated out the back door and into the cold for his first smoke of the day.

He locked himself in his study with the PC for most of the morning, explaining to the missus that he was doing some work from home. Instead he made a valiant effort to get Undercover Cop flowing, and after much scratching of head, he managed to get it to midway down page thirty. To spice up the otherwise boring details of his training, he put in the bit on his graduation night when he’d slept with a Scottish prostitute with a prosthetic leg. Stegs remembered how shocked he’d been when he’d bumped into it during sex and jarred his knee (it had been covered with a black stocking at the time, so wasn’t that obvious), but he didn’t mention how he’d got her to remove it for the remainder of their bout to see what it would be like, not wanting to come across like some sort of pervert. Having wound up Hendon, he was now on to chapter three where he was a probationer pounding the beat of Barnet (or driving round in a squad car, anyway). Soon he’d be getting on to the good stuff, having already decided to slap in a fictitious murder for him to help solve in chapter four. Then it would really start to flow.

But even the most hardy of scribes needs a rest, so at 11.30 Stegs emerged from the cramped little room which was the only one in the house he could truly call his own (no-one else could fit in it while he was in there) and told his missus that he had to go to a debriefing session at Scotland Yard.

‘Are you sure you’re OK to go?’ she asked him. ‘Maybe it’d be better if you stayed here for the afternoon. They really ought to give you a couple of days off after something as traumatic as what’s happened.’

‘I’ve got a duty to the people who need me,’ he told her piously. ‘And I’m fine, honestly.’

‘Are you going to call in on Gill and the kids?’

He nodded. ‘Afterwards.’

‘Give them my love. And my condolences. Maybe you should pick up some flowers on the way.’

‘Course I will.’ He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, then picked up Luke who was playing at her feet. The boy gave him a hostile look at first, then slowly his face broke into a smile. Stegs smiled back, suddenly feeling all soppy. ‘Hey, my little man, I’m going to miss you today. Kiss for Dada, eh?’

As he leant forward to give him a big slobbery one on the lips, he was suddenly assailed by a ferocious smell, so powerful that it could probably have stripped paint off walls. He swallowed hard, trying not to gag. An old man couldn’t have produced worse. No wonder the little bugger had been smiling. That one must have been brewing up for hours.

Swiftly he handed him back to the missus, having given him only a cursory lip-scrape across the cheek. ‘I think he needs changing, babes. I’d love to stop and help but the meeting starts in an hour. I’ve got to run.’

He was out of there like lightning, the smell fair chasing him out of the door, a noxious cloud warning him not to return. No chance of that, he thought. Not for a few hours anyway.

For a while he just drove around, not really sure what to do with himself. He knew he had to go and visit Gill but was desperate to put off the inevitable. Seeing her was going to be a nightmare. It was bad enough on a normal day. God knows what she was going to say to him. He couldn’t help thinking that he was going to get the blame for what had happened, even though there was nothing he could have done. He hoped Vokes hadn’t been too scared in the last few seconds before he died, and he hoped too that death had come quickly. It felt strange knowing he was never going to see his colleague again, that this was it: the end of their relationship. Vokes had always claimed to have believed in God, but Stegs was never a hundred per cent sure whether he really did or not. More likely he was trying to keep the missus happy and hedge his bets at the same time. In a job like theirs you never knew when your card might be marked. Better to be on the right side of the Good Lord if he did exist. Maybe it had given him some comfort in those last frantic moments. Stegs hoped so, and wished at the same time that he’d had a chance to say goodbye, so that he could have let him know that he’d always been a good mate. It upset him that his last words had been to tell him not to worry, that he’d be back in a few minutes, but that of course was the injustice of sudden death. It deprived you of the opportunity to tie up all the loose ends and finally close the book.

Vokes’s family lived in Ealing, a few miles down the road from the station in Acton where he’d been based for the past ten years. By the time Stegs had meandered his way down there, it was one o’clock and time to eat. Hungry, tired and still vaguely hung over, he had a rank taste of old beer in his mouth and the best way to get rid of it was to sup a bit of hair of the dog. The pub beckoned.

He parked on a backstreet near Ealing Common and made his way down on to the Broadway, keeping an eye out for a decent boozer as he strolled along the crowded shopping street. He and Vokes had never really drunk round here so he didn’t know the watering holes and wanted to make sure he found a good one. Stegs was a traditionalist where pubs were concerned. He didn’t want a wine bar serving tapas or somewhere where they only flogged bottled beer at?2.50 a pop. He wanted carpets with fag burns on them, the smell of beer and smoke; the noise of loud, rasping, unhealthy laughter. Pork scratchings; a dartboard; food with big chips on the side; barmen who look like barmen, not fucking students.

He eventually found a place near Ealing Broadway Tube that at least had some of what he was looking for. It was a bit big, and there were a few too many businessmen and estate agent types, but they did do steak and kidney pie and chips and they had a good variety of beers on tap. He asked the barman, who unfortunately did look like a student, whether the chips were chunky or those little thin ones like you got in McDonald’s. The barman, who said he was new, had to go and check with the kitchen, and when he came back he said that they did bakers’ chips, which were apparently in between.

‘That’s not a bad marketing idea,’ said Stegs, and ordered a pint of Stella and steak and kidney pie with bakers’ chips, before taking a seat at the bar.

The grub, when it came, was good and he finished the lot. There are very few men in the world who can have just one pint and leave it at that, and in Stegs’s opinion those who can have something wrong with them. He wasn’t going to be driving for an hour or two so he ordered another Stella and drank it swiftly with two smokes. That was the point when he should have stopped — he could usually last just about on two — but the knowledge that stopping meant heading round to Gill’s place made him think that perhaps one more would be in order.

He shouted for another pint, paid for it, then made his way to the toilets, taking the drink with him. They were clean enough for pub bogs, but they still had that stale, pissy smell you always get in such places, and the sight of a cockroach floundering on its back in a pool of water by the sinks did little to add to the ambience. There was no-one else in there so he went to the nearest cubicle, stepped inside and locked the door. He then fished a small, transparent packet filled with white powder from the inside of his jacket, opened it, and chucked half of its contents into the new pint. The beer fizzed up angrily, then settled again as the speed began to dissolve, the chunkier bits sinking towards the bottom. Stegs didn’t consider himself an addict by any means, but more and more these days he needed the speed as a pick-me-up for when he was feeling knackered or hung over — or in this case both. He’d been introduced to it by Pete the gun dealer, had liked it (particularly the fact that it was cheap) and, given his excellent and varied contacts within the criminal classes, had never had a problem getting hold of it. He never took it more than two or three times a week though, and considered his usage firmly under control.

With one hand, he flipped himself out of his jeans and opened fire directly into the bowl, while using the other hand to guzzle the drug-fuelled lager in a classic example of recycling. One minute later he’d given his dick and the half-full glass a good shake, and was feeling better already. He went back out, his heart thumping and teeth grinding, a grin already erupting on his face, knowing that now he was ready for anything. A vision of Vokes marched unwelcome into his mind, and he pushed it aside with a survivor’s laugh that had a group of businessmen standing near the door to the gents giving him the resigned, moderately contemptuous look that so many Londoners aim at the mentally unstable. Stegs ignored them.

His seat at the bar had been taken by a young woman with a pudgy face and a big arse who was sitting talking to a spotty teenager in a cheap suit. The teenager was making a pretty lame attempt to appear interested in what the girl was saying, but he perked up noticeably when she put a flabby arm on his and leant forward, giggling, to tell him something. Stegs imagined the two of them naked and on the job, and it made him feel a bit sick, so he turned away and found some space by a pillar in the middle of the floor. He leant against it and took another huge swig of his pint, wondering whether he had time for just one more.

At that moment, his private mobile rang. He instantly recognized the tone: Mission Impossible. This was the phone used by family, friends, work and informants who knew his real identity. He had another purely for undercover work. The ringtone on that one was The Magnificent Seven.

He removed it from the pocket of his jacket and checked the number, not immediately recognizing it. ‘Hello,’ he said, putting it to his ear. The bar was crowded now with office workers on their lunch-break, and he had to speak up.

‘All right, Stegsy?’

Only one man called Stegs ‘Stegsy’, and that was Trevor Murk, a petty criminal and informant whose activities matched his name, and who occasionally provided him with tidbits of information about the activities of small-time crims operating out of his Barnet locale. Stegs hadn’t heard from Murk for a while, which was why he hadn’t recognized the number.

‘Hello, Trevor. What can I do for you today?’

‘I think it’s more a matter of what I can do for you, me old mate. Got a little bit of info that might be of great use. Great use indeed.’

Murk spoke like Michael Caine did in Get Carter. Loud enough to stop a conversation, yet taking care to enunciate every word individually with an air of cheery cockney menace. It was all an act, though. He’d actually been brought up in St Albans.

‘Oh yeah?’ said Stegs, not sure whether it was worth mentioning that he was suspended. ‘What’s that, then?’

‘Behave, sweetboy. Not over the blower. This sort of thing requires some alcoholic lubrication. Are you in the boozer at the moment?’

‘I am, but nowhere local. I’m in Ealing.’

‘What the fuck are you doing there?’ asked Murk in a tone that suggested he might as well have been in Kathmandu.

‘I’m having a drink,’ said Stegs, who was already beginning to get tired of this conversation. Murk wasn’t bad company as informants go, but he did rate himself highly and could therefore become severely irritating on occasion.

‘Well, I can give it to someone else, Stegsy, but I reckon you’ll regret it if I do. This’ll be a nice little collar, and I reckon you’ll have a laugh doing it as well.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Exactly what I said. I’ll tell you more if we meet up. And I’m going to need a nice little drink for my troubles.’

In spite of himself, Stegs was intrigued. He took another gulp from his pint, leaving nothing but a powdery mouthful in the bottom. He could hear his heart pounding but knew it was the gear. ‘There’ll be no money until I hear what you’ve got to say, all right?’

‘Fair do’s, but you’ll like it, I promise you that.’

‘We’ll see. I can meet you tomorrow lunchtime. Soon enough.’

‘That’ll do. Usual place?’

‘I’ll be there at one o’clock.’

‘Are you pissed?’

‘Eh?’

‘You sound a bit pissed down there. How many have you had?’

‘What are you? My fucking mother? I’m fine. See you tomorrow.’

He hung up, hoping he didn’t sound too inebriated. He’d been thinking about having another, but decided he’d better knock it on the head for now.

He didn’t know why he’d agreed to meet up with Murk. Even if it was an easy collar, in the end it was none of his business now that he was suspended, his future in the Force looking shaky to say the least. No-one likes a copper involved in controversy, least of all the politically sensitive Brass. But regardless of all that, that’s what Stegs Jenner still was. A copper. And a copper likes getting collars. Plus, it would give him something to do tomorrow. If Murk wasn’t being too cocky, it might even be quite a good afternoon.

He finished the last bit of his drink and put the glass on a shelf on the pillar he’d been leaning against, then headed out the door, trying to compose a few fitting sentences of commiseration for the recently bereaved widow.

It took Stegs close to half an hour to find the Vokerman household. He’d only ever been there once before, and this time had forgotten to bring the address or the directions with him. Or the flowers, come to that. He knew the number, and the rough location, but couldn’t think of the street name, so he’d had to tramp around the whole area until he’d come across it, quite by chance. A quiet residential road made up of bland but spacious 1940s semis in view of the Thames Valley University campus.

He walked along until he came to the house where his friend had lived for more than ten years. He stopped for a moment at the gate, recognizing the familiar yellow paint, then steadied himself before walking the three yards through the tiny but well-kept front garden up to the front door. A bunch of flowers wrapped in black paper had been placed in the porch. He knocked hard on the door.

A few seconds later he heard footsteps, and then it opened to reveal a tall, bespectacled gentleman with a kindly smile, a dog collar and not much hair. ‘Good afternoon,’ he said. ‘Can I help you?’

Stegs’s heart banged hard in his chest and he had to fight back a sudden urge to shriek loudly. ‘Yes,’ he said, as sombrely as possible. ‘I’m here to see Mrs Vokerman. I worked very closely with her husband.’

The vicar nodded slowly and wisely. Stegs doubted if he was more than a couple of years older than him, but he had the demeanour of a fifty-year-old. It probably went with the territory. He opened the door wider. ‘Please come in.’

‘My son.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘My son. Sorry, I thought you were going to say “my son”. You know, “Please come in, my son.”’

‘I think that’s Catholics, Mr. .?’

‘Jenner. Mark Jenner.’ He had to think about that last one.

‘Come in, Mark. I am sure it’ll be a comfort for Gill to see you.’ He looked like he meant it too. Whatever you say about these Christians, they do try hard.

Stegs followed him through the hall and into the lounge, cursing himself for not being able to keep his mouth shut. Gill was in there, sitting in an armchair sipping a cup of tea. An older lady, with her grey hair tied into two huge buns like giant headphones round each ear, held onto Gill’s arm. She also had a cup of tea. On the wall was a large framed photo of Vokes, Gill and the two kids, all looking very happy as they smiled into the camera. Other photos of his former colleague and family adorned the walls and mantelpieces of the room. It was half past two. This time the previous afternoon the man of the house had been alive and well. Stegs almost burst into tears. Thank God he hadn’t had that fourth pint.

‘Hello, Gill,’ he said, stopping enough distance away from her so she wouldn’t smell the booze and fags. ‘I came round to say how sorry I am about your loss. He was a good man.’

‘Thank you, Mark,’ she said quietly, fixing him with a moderately disapproving look.

Stegs couldn’t help wondering what Vokes had ever seen in her. She was a very plain woman to look at and did nothing to try to minimize it. She wore no make-up, dressed very conservatively and had a shrewish personality. Vokes wouldn’t have won any good looks contests (he had a beard for a start), but he could have done a lot better than this.

‘Please take a seat. This is my mother.’

The mother nodded menacingly.

The vicar plonked himself next to the woman Stegs would only ever know as Mother, while he himself took a seat at the other end of the room, furthest away from Gill.

‘The police came round this morning,’ Gill said wearily, staring up towards the ceiling. ‘They talked for a long time but were unable to give me any details of how Paul died. Were you there?’

They all looked at him. The vicar was still smiling, or maybe that was just his normal expression. Stegs suddenly had a terrible desire to masturbate, to rush out of this room, lock himself in the toilet and pull one off at the wrist. It was a reaction he often got to speed, he wasn’t sure why. It was ironic, really, because amphetamines made it very difficult to get a hard-on, something that at that moment was proving quite useful. A tentpeg stiffy in a room like this would have been a disaster.

For a couple of seconds he didn’t answer as his thoughts shot off here and there, so she repeated the question.

‘Are you finding it difficult to talk about what happened, Mark?’ asked the vicar.

‘No, I’m fine. Really.’ He turned to Gill, putting on his most earnest expression. ‘I’m not allowed to make any comment about it either, I’m afraid, Gill,’ he said, trying to stop his teeth grinding. ‘All I can say is that I was part of the same operation, and that his death would have been very quick. Very quick indeed.’

The mother gasped. ‘The name of the Lord is a strong tower the righteous run into and are safe,’ she said stiffly. Whatever that was meant to mean.

The vicar nodded slowly. ‘These are very trying times,’ he said, which was a bit of a statement of the obvious. ‘We must all be strong.’

‘How are the children taking it?’ asked Stegs, unable to think of anything else to say.

‘Jacob is very upset, as you can imagine. Honey’s still too young to understand.’

‘Where are they at the moment?’

‘My dad’s looking after them.’

‘Kids are very resilient. Very, very resilient. They can get through this sort of thing. Yup, definitely. No problem.’

There was a long silence. Stegs felt himself sweating. The room was stifling.

‘I am the living bread which came down from heaven,’ said Mother. ‘If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever.’

No thanks, thought Stegs, with an inner shudder.

‘Amen,’ said Gill quietly, and he saw tears form in her eyes.

He had to get out of there, he couldn’t handle it. There was a pressure building in his head that for some reason seemed far more intense than any of the situations he’d found himself in during his undercover activities. With the exception of Frank Rentners and the steam iron, of course.

‘You must be traumatized yourself, Mark,’ said the vicar gently. ‘You’ve lost a friend.’

‘We’ve all lost a friend,’ said Gill, and this time the floodgates opened. Mother squeezed her arm tightly before leaning over and giving her another encouraging quote from the Bible.

Stegs and the vicar exchanged sympathetic looks. ‘I’m sure I’ll be OK,’ he said.

‘These are trying times,’ the vicar repeated, ‘but with the help of the Lord we will get through them. Are you a Christian, Mark?’

‘I like to keep an open mind,’ said Stegs, thinking that this would be the easiest answer. It was yes, no and maybe all rolled into one, and hopefully strangled any further debate on the issue.

‘Mark’s a biblical name. Mark was, as I’m sure you know, one of Jesus’s apostles.’

‘My real name’s Ken,’ said Stegs, who always liked to lie when he’d had a few.

‘Ah, Ken,’ mused the vicar wisely. ‘It’s a name I always associate with hard work.’

‘My dad was a dustman.’

‘Tell me about Paul,’ said the vicar breezily, changing the subject. ‘I knew him from the congregation at the church, and from my work in the parish, but it would be nice to hear something from one of his colleagues.’

Stegs was beginning to go off the vicar. That idiot grin just didn’t want to leave his face, like it was squatting there waiting for the bailiffs, defying court order after court order. Perhaps he was retarded.

Stegs saw that Gill had brought herself back under control now, and she and Mother were also waiting for him to say something. He wished he hadn’t had that speed. It was making sitting still next to impossible. ‘He was a lovely guy,’ he blurted out. ‘Absolutely lovely. Hard-working, hard-playing, hard-everything. . a real team player. Great to be around, and very conscientious. Always on the look-out for his mates. A real copper’s copper. I loved that bloke, I really did.’ He shook his head to signify his sense of loss but did it a little bit too vigorously and saw a bead of sweat fly off onto the carpet.

They all stared at it for a moment, then at him, no-one saying anything, and he thought that, no, this was worse than any undercover op. Even Rentners. His left leg was going up and down like the clappers.

‘Are you all right, Mark?’ asked Gill.

He nodded, just as vigorously. ‘I’m fine, honestly. Just a bit shocked, that’s all. The whole thing’s taken it out of me. Do you mind if I go to the toilet?’

‘Of course not. You remember where it is, don’t you?’

He stood up. ‘Yeah, I do. Straight down the hall, through the kitchen, and right to the end.’

He exited quickly, wiping his brow as soon as he was out of the lounge door. He walked down the hall, through the kitchen and into the room where they kept the washing machine and the tumble-drier. This part of the house was the extension, tacked on a couple of years back. A door opposite him led to the toilet. There was also a door to his right, and this was the one that Stegs opened before stepping into Vokes’s study. It was small, but still getting on for twice the size of Stegs’s, and was a lot more orderly. Photos adorned the walls: of family, of Vokes in uniform, on graduation day, all that sort of stuff. At the end of the room facing the window were his desk and PC.

Stegs walked over to the desk, had a quick check through the neat stack of papers in his former colleague’s in-tray, then opened the top drawer as quietly as he could. There was a transparent box containing floppy disks in there, plus a dog-eared Len Deighton novel (SS-GB, one of Stegs’s childhood favourites) and a black address book. He pocketed the address book straight away, then went to open the box of disks, but it was locked. The lock didn’t look too strong so he took it out and tried to force it open, but it wouldn’t go. He scanned about inside the drawer for a key but there wasn’t one in there. He tried again, pulling harder this time, amazed that a piece of plastic could be so stubborn.

Just then, he heard footsteps coming through the kitchen. His teeth clenched reflexively and he chucked the box back in the drawer, shutting it at the same time.

‘What are you doing, Mark?’

It was Gill’s voice. He turned round from his position staring out of the window into the Vokerman back garden and organic vegetable patch, and gave her a whimsical smile. ‘I was just thinking about Paul. I miss him, Gill. Already. I wish I could have done something, anything. .’ He picked up a photo of Vokes in a ridiculous Hawaiian shirt from the desk and stared at it for a moment, shaking his head as slowly as he could, but with close to a gram of uncut amphetamines soaring through his bloodstream it was never going to be slowly enough.

His words and actions seemed to have the desired effect, however, and the beginnings of a smile appeared on Gill’s face. ‘It’s going to be hard for all of us,’ she said. ‘Paul was a good Christian husband and father.’

‘He was,’ said Stegs, putting the photo back down and walking slowly towards the door. He suddenly had an urge to take a leak for real. ‘It all just seems so. . so permanent.’ She gave his arm a supportive squeeze and he shot her a grim smile. ‘And do you know what? I’ve been thinking about him so much, I haven’t even been to the toilet yet.’

‘Would you like a cup of tea, Mark?’

‘No, thanks,’ he sighed. He couldn’t think of anything worse than another twenty minutes in that lounge. ‘I’d better be going.’ He started to move past her but, like the worst kind of doorman, she blocked his way.

She smiled her grim, worthy smile that Stegs presumed was meant to make him feel part of the flock but came out more like the expression a movie killer pulls just before he knifes his victim. ‘You’ve come a long way to see me,’ she said. ‘Stay for a quick cup. It’ll do you good to talk about things.’

There was something in her voice that said she really didn’t want him to argue, and would take it badly if he did. He knew then that she could smell the drink, and he wondered whether they were going to make an attempt to convert him. For the life of him he couldn’t work out what Vokes had ever seen in her. She was only a small woman, but there was no doubt she had the ability to frighten even the most hardy of men.

‘OK, I’ll stop for a quick cup, but it really will have to be quick. I’ve got a number of important things I have to do this afternoon. I only came to pay my respects.’

‘That’s very kind of you. We all appreciate it. Paul always found you a very capable colleague.’

Damned with faint praise, thought Stegs. Briefly, she looked past him towards the desk and he wondered whether she had any suspicions about what he’d been doing. She then looked back at him, gave him that smile again, and turned away. ‘He was a good man,’ she said, going back into the kitchen, and then repeated it. ‘A very good man.’ He decided she hadn’t.

After he’d finished in the toilet, he went back into the lounge where he was handed a cup of watery tea and then spent a very long fifteen minutes talking about and listening to all the good things Paul Vokerman had done in his life, and how much he was going to be missed. The problem with tragedies is that all the conversations relating to them go round in circles, so not a lot was actually said, but it was said in a different way many, many times. Stegs lost count of the number of occasions he heard the phrases ‘good man’, ‘committed Christian’, ‘sense of justice’ and ‘sadly missed’, but one thing was for sure, it would be a long time before he wanted to hear any of them again. Vokes had definitely been a good bloke, no question, but Stegs didn’t want to share his views on him with a bunch of people like this, so it was with a sense of real satisfaction that he finished his tea and got up to leave, with goodbyes all round.

The vicar stood up, shook hands firmly, and told him that if he ever needed to talk to anyone to please feel free to give him a call or drop him an email. ‘My name’s Brian and I’m always available.’ He handed Stegs a card. It seemed even the servants of the Lord had gone twenty-first century.

Stegs thanked him and told Mother that it was nice to meet her. She nodded severely and said that the Lord always welcomed sinners back into the flock. It wasn’t quite the same as a goodbye but, under the circumstances, it would do. She added that she hoped she might see him again. Not if I catch sight of you first, he thought.

Gill saw him to the door and thanked him once again for coming round.

‘It’s no trouble at all,’ he told her. ‘I only wish the circumstances could be happier.’

‘How well did you know Paul?’ she asked.

He already had one foot outside the door but stopped and looked at her, taken aback by this sudden question. She was staring at him intently as if trying to hunt down lies. It wasn’t the sort of expression he’d seen on her face before.

‘Well enough, I think,’ he said cautiously. ‘Why do you ask?’

She continued to stare intently and he felt himself sweating under her gaze. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, choosing her words carefully. ‘He didn’t seem his usual self recently. I felt that he was concerned about something. That there was a weight on his shoulders of some sort.’

‘He never said anything to me about it, Gill. It’s a very difficult job that he did. Perhaps it was the pressure of that.’

Her expression relaxed and she managed a surprisingly pleasant smile. ‘Perhaps it was,’ she said. ‘It’s a very difficult job that you both do.’

‘Someone’s got to do it,’ said Stegs, trying hard not to sound too much like Clint Eastwood.

She pursed her lips, the conversation at an end. ‘I hope I see you again soon, Mark. I don’t know when the funeral will be. It could be a while.’

‘I’m sure they’ll do their best to wrap everything up as soon as they can,’ he said, before turning away and walking down the footpath in the direction of the street.

It had started to rain again and the sky was an iron grey. He was still speeding but the urge to drink had gone. He needed to walk. To walk and to think. What exactly had Gill meant back there? How well had he known Vokes? Very well, he’d always thought. But like anything in life, you can never quite tell. People you know always have the ability to shock you. But Vokes? No, he’d always had the run of Vokes. I knew him well enough, Gill.

Definitely well enough.

It was four o’clock when he eventually got back to the car. The rain had stopped but the clouds remained, thick and foreboding. He’d walked for a while, but his thoughts had been a jumble: mainly memories of old Vokes interspersed with concerns about his own future now that he was suspended, until finally he’d found himself with a strong desire to go home and have a cup of tea. He hoped the missus wasn’t in nagging mode, and that Luke was either asleep or in good cheer.

But he’d picked a bad time to drive back and he got caught in an almighty jam on the North Circular. He tuned into Capital and found that there’d been an accident further up at Staples Corner (according to the Flying Eye, it was a four-car pile-up), so he was stuck in it, wondering how on earth four cars could have actually got up to the sort of speeds necessary for a collision like that. Usually, you never got to more than thirty miles an hour tops on either of the circulars during the day.

At five to five, when he was stationary again, with the beginnings of a headache and the flashlights of the emergency services visible a few hundred yards ahead, he got a call on the private mobile. He picked it up off the front passenger seat and for the second time that day didn’t recognize the number.

‘Jenner.’

‘Stegs, it’s John Gallan. There’s a few things I need to speak to you about, and I need to do it sooner rather than later.’

‘Do you want to meet somewhere?’

‘It’s official business. Can you come down here?’

‘Where? Islington? To be honest, I’ve been out all day and I’m on my way home. Can we do it tomorrow?’

He heard Gallan sigh down the other end of the phone, but he was in no mood to be helpful. A black Mercedes in the next lane tried to nudge in front of him and Stegs inched forward, blocking his way.

‘Tomorrow’s a bit late.’

‘Is it urgent?’

Gallan paused. ‘It’s important,’ he said eventually.

Now it was Stegs’s turn to sigh. He was tired, but he knew from experience he wasn’t going to get out of it. ‘Listen, if it’s that important, come up to my house. I’m nearly there now.’ He gave Gallan the address.

‘We’ll try to make it as quick and painless as possible.’

‘We?’

‘WDS Boyd and me. We’ll be with you in an hour or so, traffic permitting.’

‘The traffic in this town never permits,’ said Stegs, and hung up.

At the same time, the driver of the Mercedes — a stressed young commuter who appeared to have gone prematurely bald, probably in this traffic jam — snarled at him, actually baring teeth. Stegs pulled out his warrant card and pushed it against the window, at the same time mouthing ‘fuck off’ and inching forward still more. The Mercedes driver backed off.

He wondered if he was going to make it home in an hour himself.