Clay's eyes narrowed. 'What's that got to do with Stegs?' he demanded through a haze of smoke.
'He knew the victim, and the victim had links with what happened on Wednesday. We've been trying to keep that part out of the papers, but I don't suppose it'll be too long before someone leaks it.'
'I saw a mention about it on London Tonight, but I haven't had a chance to read the papers for weeks, so I'd probably miss it if it was leaked. There's no time, that's the problem. No time for anything when you're a copper. Apart from policework, that is.' He took another drag on the cigarette, and eyed me as if he was somehow laying down a challenge. I got the feeling then that Clay didn't trust me much. 'Well, let me tell you this, Stegs Jenner's a good copper. One of the best. He's had the occasional run-ins, and his career's not entirely unblemished, but I'd take him back here full-time tomorrow if I could. And I sincerely fucking hope that he doesn't end up getting hounded out of the Force, because he doesn't deserve it.'
I nodded. 'Look, I've met him a few times myself and, for what it's worth, I tend to agree with what you're saying. Now, this incident when him and Flanagan fell out. What was it all about?'
'Why do you want to know?'
The question bordered on hostile. I was going to have to tread carefully on this one. Tom Clay obviously had a lot of time for Stegs and was not going to want to say anything that made his situation worse.
'I want to know because I'm trying to build up a picture. Personally I like him, but at the moment there's questions being
raised about his integrity, and I just want to make sure that I've got all the information I can.'
Clay continued to watch me like a hawk. Then he cleared his throat with a rattling cough that did not bode well for his long-term health and began. 'It was when Flanagan was running CID at Greenwich. There was a drug importer and thug down there called Frank Rentners who was looking to expand his business, and Flanagan was interested in making sure he didn't. So he brought in Stegs and Vokerman. The first meeting was in a pub and neither of them were wearing wires, but SO11 had a tracking device under Rentners' car just in case they changed venues, so the handlers could intervene if anything went wrong.'
He then told me the whole story about how the two SO10 men had ended up having to watch another man being tortured while being told that they'd be next, and how they'd only just managed to persuade Rentners that they were kosher dealers, and therefore escape relatively unscathed. The way the operation had been controlled had been slapdash. According to Clay, Flanagan had only put a couple of DCs in as back-up since the risk of things going wrong on a first meeting was considered small. The DCs had followed the two Mercedes carrying Rentners and his entourage but had lost them quickly, and had then called the control room to alert them to this fact. However, it seemed that Flanagan had still considered the SO10 men a low priority because, by the time the car was tracked to the house and officers had arrived there, more than two hours had passed since they'd left the pub. The officers on the scene had been unaware of what was going on inside and had even seen Stegs and Yokes leave. By the time the police had finally approached the house and knocked on the door at ten to three, Rentners and the rest of his men had also left, along with an injured Brewster. Brewster had declined to press charges and had immediately disappeared from view.
Put bluntly, it had been a fuck-up of the first order, and afterwards Stegs had blown his top on Flanagan. 'He called him a lot of names,' said Clay. 'Some real choice ones. Told him in no uncertain terms that he should have known that Brewster, the guy who was their contact, had been under suspicion, and made sure that they had proper back-up. I assume you know Flanagan?'
I nodded. 'Yeah, I know him,' I said with the right degree of ambivalence.
'Well, you know what a wanker he is, then.' I didn't say anything so he continued. 'Instead of holding his hands up and admitting he'd made a mistake, he reported Stegs to his bosses at SO10 and here and accused him of gross insubordination. Stegs ended up being disciplined, and almost got put back in uniform. I think if I hadn't stood up for him, he would have been too.' He lit a new cigarette with the butt of the old one. 'And Flanagan ends up being promoted, even though the bloke he's meant to have been sorting out, Frank Rentners, is still in business down there and doing very fucking nicely thank you. Now there's justice for you.'
So that explained a few things. No wonder the two of them hadn't got on. No wonder, too, that Flanagan hadn't exactly been effusive in defence of Stegs's character and innocence in the meeting this morning.
I didn't say anything to Clay about any of this. Instead, I asked about Stegs's disciplinary record aside from the Flanagan incident and was told, with some reluctance, that he'd been cited twice in the past: once for assaulting a prisoner nine years previously when he'd still been in uniform, and the other time for embellishing his expenses. That had been three years ago. I asked what had happened.
'He just added a few things in that maybe he shouldn't. The amounts involved weren't a lot a
few quid here and there, that's
all. It happens, you know that.' His look told me that if I thought that fiddling the expenses was a big deal, then I wasn't living in the real world.
I told him I knew it happened, and after a few more minutes the meeting drew to a close without me uncovering anything else of any note about Stegs Jenner, other than confirming the fact that his boss liked him, which I suppose was one thing, although I wasn't sure that a character reference from someone so jaded and tired as DCI Tom Clay was that much of a recommendation of innocence.
I stopped off back at the nick on the way to my meeting with Naresh Patel to go on the system and check Stegs's record within the Force. It was pretty much what Clay had said: a not exactly spotless disciplinary record, which was probably why he'd never risen above DC level, but nothing too untoward or crooked, and nothing that Clay hadn't mentioned. On the expense fiddles there were no details of the money involved, and I decided to take Clay's word for it and assume the amounts weren't a lot, since his penalty had only been a fine, not a demotion.
I arrived for the interview five minutes late (problems on the Victoria Line), and Patel, who I suspected worked to office hours, was keen to get started. However, if I thought that this would make him keep it short, I was very much mistaken. A bookish young man you'd probably avoid going to the pub with, he was a real stickler for detail and made me go over, step by excruciating step, what I'd seen, when I'd seen it and whether or not any of it could have been avoided. Were adequate warnings given to the suspects? Was it a life-threatening situation? I know he was only doing his job but I felt like grabbing him by the collar and telling him that when criminals are brandishing guns particularly
when they're already in the process of using them, as they had been on that day then it's always a life-threatening situation; and if you're the copper who's unlucky enough to have your finger on the trigger then maybe you might pull it a couple more times than regulations insist. It's easy to stand back at a safe distance and raise doubts about whether the SO19 officers had acted beyond their remit; it's a lot harder to decide when you're on the spot. And that's the problem we have as coppers. Not only are we up against the criminals, we're also up against the establishment as well. They might be trying to be fair and impartial, but, ultimately, the only people who end up benefiting from their actions are the ones who least deserve it. You know what they say. The road to hell and all that. . .
As it was, I stated categorically at every available opportunity that I hadn't seen a single officer do anything-wrong. 'It was a botched operation,' I concluded, 'in so far as unforeseen elements compromised it and caused the shooting to start, but it was ended as professionally as possible by the people on the ground.' I'd practised that phrase on the way over there and it came out just right.
'And do you have any idea what caused the arrival of these unforeseen elements?' Patel asked in slow, careful tones tinged with natural distrust, as if he half expected my reply to be a lie. 'How they could have known this alleged drug deal was happening?'
'At the moment,' I said, 'none whatsoever.'
His nod of acknowledgement had something of the sceptical about it. Thank you,' he said, after a supremely long pause, switching off the tape recorder. 'I may need to speak with you again.'
It was six o'clock by the time I left and a wet, and unseasonably cold, drizzle was falling over the cacophony of central London's
dirt-fumed rush hour. Even Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, those grand bastions of the city's tourist trade, looked forlorn. Definitely a good night to be getting home.
When I got back to the nick to collect my car, it was half-six and the murder squad meeting had broken up. Apparently, they were round the Roving Wolf with members of the station's CID, enjoying a few end-of-week drinks a loose tradition not harmed by the fact that the start of the weekend usually heralded another two days' work for most of us. On another night I would have stopped by and joined them for a couple, but tonight tiredness got the better of me and I drove straight home.
It was five to seven when I shut the front door of my flat behind me for the last time that night. The first thing I did was try Tina's mobile, but she wasn't answering. When I'd spoken to Flanagan earlier, he'd told me that she'd called to say that she wasn't going to make the meeting either, and I wondered whether she'd picked up a lead. If so, I'd find out soon enough. I was expecting her round later, as I did most nights these days.
I pulled a beer from the fridge, then sat down in front of the TV, trying to push the thoughts of the day out of my head. A copper can work too hard, and sometimes I felt I was almost living my cases and that, aside from Tina, and perhaps my daughter, they were the only things governing my existence. I needed a holiday. We both did. I hadn't had a trip abroad for two and a half years, when I'd spent two weeks in Barbados with my ex-wife and daughter. It had been a good time good food, good weather, a little bit of scuba diving but
it also felt like a long time ago. I wondered how to broach the subject of going away together to Tina. Something like that would make our relationship official at the station since there was no way we could both take time off at the same time without it being commented upon, particularly when we'd be coming back with suntans. But I didn't much fancy going on my own, so something was going to have to give.
Tina came back at seven-thirty, looking tired, but still as gorgeous as ever. The drizzle outside had turned into a downpour and her hair was tousled and wet, curling up around the smooth, pale skin of her face. I immediately got a surge of lust that knocked the cobwebs off my exhaustion straight away. She came over and gave me a kiss on the lips. I could smell the scent of her skin, and the lust went into overdrive. A tubful of Viagra wouldn't have had a more positive effect.
'Let me just get out of these clothes,' she said. Then we'll talk.' An invitation, if ever I'd heard one.
'Talking wasn't what I had in mind,' I said as I followed her into the bedroom.
I wasn't sure whether she was up for it or not, but it was either that or she was feeling sorry for me, because she took me in her arms and nature took its all-too-swift course. I'm not the world's greatest lover, nor does the mood take me every waking hour like it does some men, but when I put my mind to the task I can be pretty successful, if I say so myself. Dogged rather than devastating, but Tina seemed to enjoy it which, as she would tell you, was the main thing.
'Well, that wasn't exactly romantic,' she said after we'd finished and were lying naked on the bed, she smoking the obligatory cigarette, 'but it did the trick.'
'We aim to please,' I told her, thinking that there weren't many things better than sex with someone you care about. 'Do you fancy something to eat?' Though good food was probably a close second.
'Are you cooking?'
'I've even bought the wine.'
She smiled, ruffling my hair. 'I could get used to this.'
'Fine by me. I'm hoping you do.'
We looked at each other for a moment and I suddenly felt awkward, as if I'd just been caught putting pressure on her. These last few weeks I'd been finding it harder to keep the pace of our relationship casual, but I was also keen not to scare her away, knowing that she wanted to take things one step at a time.
'I'll go and rustle something up for us.' I kissed her on the cheek, threw on my dressing gown and headed into the kitchen to attempt to produce some home-made chicken fried rice.
While the rice boiled and the chicken browned in the wok, I cracked open the bottle of white wine and poured half the contents into two large glasses. A few minutes later, Tina followed me in, dressed in a white dressing gown and slippers, her hair wet from the shower, and it occurred to me, not for the first time since we'd got together, that I was a very lucky man.
'Smells nice,' she said, coming over and giving me a kiss on the cheek.
'So do you.'
She stepped away, picked up her wine, then asked me what I'd found out that afternoon. Whatever she said about leaving the Force and doing something a bit more in line with her background and education, she lived the job just as much as me. I was sure she wouldn't last five minutes in an office, dealing with customer enquiries or adding numbers to balance sheets. Our job was a bad one, whatever the recruitment ads might say. Underpaid and under-supported, over-stressed and increasingly over-dangerous. But it was still addictive to the right sort of person, and Tina, like me, was the right sort of person. Maybe it was one of the reasons I liked her so much. Because she knew the pressures, and unlike a lot of the wives and girlfriends of coppers, she could tolerate them.
I gave her a brief rundown of my interview with Clay, and she raised her eyebrows when I told her about Stegs's previous run-in with Flanagan.
That's an interesting one,' she said, lighting another cigarette and taking a decent-sized gulp of the wine. 'I thought there was some tension between them on Wednesday. I found out something as well.'
'What?'
'Stegs used to partner up with a guy called Jeff Benson at SO10, before he worked with Yokes. I spoke to Benson today. He left the Force three years ago, very suddenly. Just before he slung his hook, he got inside the Holtzes, posing as a doorman who was also a drug dealer and enforcer. He was well inside too, not just on the periphery. It took him months, but he got to the point where they trusted him, and he even got introduced to the big boss, Stefan Holtz.'