Tango One (6 page)

“What's the story, PM?”

PM shrugged carelessly and scratched the end of his nose. His real name was Tony Blair and he'd been given the nickname the day that his namesake was elected to Number 10. A scar stretched from his left ear to halfway across his cheek, a souvenir of a run-in with a group of white football supporters a few years earlier.

“Jimmy T. took a couple of slugs in the back. Should have seen him run, Bunny. Like the fucking wind. Almost made it.”

Warren shook his head sadly. Jimmy T. was a fifteen-year-old runner for one of the area's crack cocaine gangs.

“He okay?”

“He look dead as dead can be.”

“Shit.”

“Shit happens,” said PM.

“Specially to short-changers.”

That what he did?"

“Word is.”

Warren gestured with his chin over at the police investigators.

“You told the Feds?”

PM guffawed and slapped his thigh.

“Sure, man. Told 'em who killed Stephen Lawrence while I was at it.”

All three youths laughed and Warren nodded glumly. Shootings were a regular occurrence in Harlesden, but witnesses were rarer than Conservative Party canvassers at election time.

“You saw who did it?”

“Got eyes.”

Warren looked expectantly at PM. The teenager laughed out loud but his eyes were unsmiling.

“Shit, man, I could tell you but then I'd have to kill you.”

Warren smiled despite himself. He wondered how much PM would have told him if he'd been standing there in a police constable's uniform.

“You look wound up, Bunny-man. You want some puff?”

“Nah, I'm sorted. Gotta get back to the house.”

“You got a chauffeur, Bunny?”

Warren kept smiling but he could feel his heart start to race.

PM couldn't have seen him getting out of the Vectra, so someone must have seen the car picking him up from his house that morning.

“Minicab,” he said.

“Anywhere interesting?”

Warren chuckled at the question.

“Yeah, PM. I could tell you ...” He left the sentence unfinished.

PM guffawed.

“Yeah, but you'd have to kill me,” he said, nodding his head as if to emphasise each word.

Warren made a gun from his right hand and mimed shooting PM in the chest.

“You take care, PM.”

“Back at you, Bunny-man,” laughed PM.

Warren headed back to the main road, his head down, deep in thought. He was still annoyed at the attitude of the uniformed constable, and he wondered if the man would have treated him any differently if he knew that Warren was also a policeman. Maybe he would have been more civil, thought Warren, cracked a joke perhaps, but it wouldn't have changed the way the man thought about him. The constable's contempt might have been hidden but it would have still been there. He would see the uniform, but it was Warren's colour that would determine the way he behaved.

PM would react to the uniform, not to Warren's race. If he'd known that Warren was a police officer, there would have been no chat, no banter, just hostile stares and a tight face. His type closed ranks against authority, the authority of the white man.

Warren lost out either way.

Warren sighed. He'd wanted to join the Met because he believed that he could make a difference, but Latham had been right: he'd do more good by playing to his strengths, rather than trying to fit into the established system. On the street, undercover, his colour would be a strength. Trapped inside the uniform, it would be a weakness. Could he spend his career hanging around the likes of PM and his posse, though, pretending to be one of them so that he could betray them?

Warren felt confused, and the more he tried to work out how he felt, the more confused he became. While he'd been sitting opposite Latham in the office, it had all seemed so simple; but on the streets of Harlesden, what the senior police officer had proposed looked less attractive. It meant living a lie. It meant betrayal. Being a police officer was about being a part of a team; working with colleagues you could rely on, working towards a common aim, Us against Them. Latham wanted Warren to be one of Them.

Warren shook his head as he walked. No, Latham didn't want him to be one of Them. He wanted Warren to be in a no-man's land; part of the police force but separate from it, part of the criminal community but there to betray it. A lone wolf.

Jamie Fullerton tossed his suit on to the bed, ripped off his shirt and tie and started doing vigorous press-ups. He breathed deeply and evenly as he pumped up and down, pausing every tenth dip and holding himself an inch above the bedroom carpet before resuming his rhythm.

The doorbell rang and Fullerton froze, his torso parallel to the floor, his arms trembling under the strain. Fullerton frowned. He wasn't expecting anyone. He pushed himself to his feet and pulled on his trousers and buckled the belt. He hurriedly put on his shirt and fastened the buttons as he walked to the front door.

The man who'd rung his bell was almost a head shorter than Fullerton with thinning brown hair, a squarish chin and thin, unsmiling lips. He was carrying a laptop computer in a black shoulder bag.

“Jamie Fullerton?” he said.

“Maybe,” said Fullerton.

The man extended his right hand.

“Gregg Hathaway. You're expecting me.”

Fullerton shook Hathaway's hand. The man had a weak handshake and his fingers barely touched Fullerton's skin, as if he were uneasy with physical contact. Fullerton squeezed the hand hard and felt a tingle of satisfaction when he felt Hathaway try to pull away. He gave the hand a final squeeze before releasing his grip.

“Come on in,” said Fullerton.

He stepped to the side and smiled as Hathaway walked by, rubbing his right hand against his jeans. There was something awkward about his right leg, as if it were an effort for Hathaway to move it.

“You don't mind showing me some form of ID, do you?” asked Fullerton as he closed the front door and followed Hathaway into the sitting room.

Hathaway had put his laptop case on the coffee table and was examining the books that filled the shelves on one wall of the room. He turned to look at Fullerton.

“Your name is James Robert Fullerton, you were born on April fifteenth twenty-six years ago, your parents are Eric and Sylvia, your father committed suicide after he lost the bulk of your family's assets in a series of badly advised stock market investments and your mother is confined to a mental hospital outside Edinburgh.”

Fullerton swallowed but his throat had gone so dry that his tongue felt twice its normal size and he started to cough.

“Is that enough, or shall I go on?”

Fullerton nodded.

“You don't look like you're in the job.”

“Neither do you. That's the point. Black with two sugars.”

Fullerton frowned.

“Sorry?”

“You were going to offer me a coffee, right? Black with two sugars.”

“Right. Okay,” said Fullerton. It was only when he was in the kitchen filling the kettle that he realised how quickly Hathaway had taken control of the situation. The man was physically smaller than Fullerton, maybe a decade older, but with none of the bearing or presence that Latham had shown. Underneath the softer exterior, however, there was a toughness that suggested he was used to being obeyed.

By the time he returned to the sitting room with two mugs of coffee on a tray, Hathaway had powered up his laptop and was sitting on the sofa, tapping on the keyboard. He'd extended his right leg under the coffee table, as if it troubled him less when it was straight. He'd run a phone line from the back of the computer to the phone socket by the window.

“You computer literate, Jamie?” said Hathaway, slipping off his leather jacket and draping it over the back of the sofa.

“I guess so,” said Fullerton. He held the tray out, and Hathaway helped himself to the black coffee.

“You're the handler, right?”

“Handler suggests physical contact,” said Hathaway.

“Ideally we won't ever meet again after today.” He gestured at the laptop.

“This is a safer way of keeping in touch.”

Fullerton sat down in an easy chair and put his coffee on the table by the laptop.

“And you'll be handling the others?”

“The others?” said Hathaway, frowning.

“The other members of the team.”

Hathaway's frown deepened.

“Team? What team?”

“I just thought .. .” Fullerton left the sentence hanging.

Hathaway pushed the computer away and sat back, looking at Fullerton through slightly narrowed eyes.

“You do understand what's being asked of you, Jamie?”

“Undercover work,” said Fullerton.

“Deep undercover. Longterm penetration of criminal gangs.”

Hathaway nodded slowly.

“That's right, but not as part of a team. You'll be working alone. You'll have on line access to me, and an emergency number to call if you're in trouble. If necessary we'll send a shed load of people to pull you out, but while you're undercover you're on your own.”

“Okay. Got it.” Fullerton ran his hand through his fringe, brushing his hair out of his eyes.

“But what I don't get is Latham's insistence that we don't get any training. What about firearms? Anti-surveillance techniques? Things like that?”

“You watch gangster movies, Jamie?”

Fullerton was nonplussed by the apparent change of subject, but he nodded.

“See how the bad guys hold their guns? One handed, waving them around, grips parallel to the ground? Half the gang-bangers in Brixton hold them that way now. Couldn't hit a barn door, but they see it in the movies so that's what they do. Okay, so I put you through a police firearms course. We'd teach you to shoot with both hands, feet shoulder width apart, sighting with your stronger eye, exhaling before pulling the trigger, blah, blah, blah. You'd hit the target every time at twenty-five yards, but first time you ever use a weapon in anger you might as well have a flashing neon sign over your head saying ”COP“. Any techniques we give you will identify you as a. police officer.”

“Okay, but what about anti-surveillance? What's the harm in teaching me how to shake a tail?”

Hathaway grinned.

“You've been reading too many cheap spy novels, Jamie.”

Fullerton felt his cheeks flush red and he sat back in his chair, crossing his arms defensively.

“If anyone follows you, it's best you deal with them in whatever way you come up with yourself,” continued Hathaway.

“Use your instincts.”

Fullerton nodded. What Hathaway was saying made sense, but there was an obvious flaw to his argument.

“What if I'm on my way to see you? If I can't shake them, that puts you at risk.”

Hathaway tapped the laptop screen.

“Like I said, that's what this is for,” he said.

“We won't be meeting face to face. All contact will be online.”

“But my cover,” said Fullerton.

“You'll be giving me my cover, right?”

“I'm going to help you with that, of course, but basically we'll be sticking to your true background.”

Fullerton grinned.

“And that includes the drugs, yeah?”

“Sure,” said Hathaway.

“One of the things that trips up a lot of undercover agents is that they can't touch drugs. No court is going to convict if one of the investigating officers turns out to have smoked a joint or snorted a line. You're in a different league. You do whatever comes naturally, and if that involves getting high, then that's up to you.”

“Okay if I do a line now?” Fullerton asked.

Hathaway flashed him a humourless smile.

“I'd rather you didn't.”

“I was joking,” said Fullerton. He could see from the look on Hathaway's face that they didn't share the same sense of humour.

“But won't my drug-taking affect the cases I'll be working on?”

“In what way?”

“Won't my evidence be tainted?”

“No, for a very simple reason. You won't ever be required to give evidence in court. You'll be supplying us with information and leads which will be passed on to the appropriate investigating teams, but it will be up to them to supply the evidence to convict.”

Fullerton picked up his mug of coffee and sipped it slowly.

“So I'm getting official permission to snort coke? Funny old world, isn't it?”

“There's nothing official about this briefing, Jamie,” said Hathaway.

“From the moment you agreed to Assistant Commissioner Latham's proposal, everything has been off the record.”

Fullerton's lips tightened and he put the mug back on the coffee table.

“That's what I figured,” he said.

“Nothing in writing, nothing on file.”

“It's for your own protection, Jamie,” said Hathaway.

“The Met still has more than its fair share of bad apples.”

“Is that going to be part of my brief, too? Corrupt cops?”

“Absolutely,” said Hathaway.

“And will you be giving me specific targets?”

Hathaway smiled.

“You're getting ahead of me, Jamie, but yes, we will be asking for you to look at specific targets. Tangos, as we call them.” There was a document pouch on the side of the laptop case, sealed with Velcro. It made a ripping sound as Hathaway opened it. He took out a large glossy colour photograph and slid it across the coffee table to Fullerton.

“Meet Dennis Donovan. Tango One.”

Cliff Warren picked up the photograph and studied it. It was a man in his mid to late thirties. He had a square face with a strong chin, pale green eyes and a sprinkling of freckles across a broken nose. The man's chestnut-brown hair was windswept, brushed carelessly across his forehead.

“Tango?” he said.

“Tango is how we designate our targets,” explained Hathaway.

“Dennis Donovan is Tango One. Our most wanted target.”

“Drugs?” said Warren.

“One of the country's biggest importers of marijuana and cocaine. Virtually untouchable by conventional methods. He's so big that we can't get near him. Den Donovan never goes near a shipment and never handles the money. He never deals with anyone he doesn't know.”

“And you expect me to get close to him?” said Warren, bemused. He passed the photograph back to Hathaway.