Gallowstree Lane Read online

  ‘Lizzie! You working on Perseus then?’

  ‘Just started today.’

  She could feel the attention of the office on her and the increasing status that Steve’s friendliness was bestowing. He was chatting away as if they were old friends, even though the truth was that they didn’t know each other well. Three conversations in total maybe. But one of them she would neither forget nor ever mention: when he had persuaded her not to throw her life away for a dead teenager and a dead friend.

  He smiled. ‘I hear you’ve got a baby.’

  ‘Yes, a boy, Connor.’

  ‘Congratulations. Got a pic?’

  She swiped to her photos and handed him her phone.

  Steve glanced at her. ‘He’s got your eyes.’

  He handed the phone back and offered her his. She saw a girl, long dark hair, sixteen maybe, in a tight-fitting dress and heels.

  ‘That’s Abbie.’

  He reached to the phone and swiped right: two teenage boys, arms round each other laughing. Shirts open at the neck. He tapped the one on the right.

  ‘My eldest, David. Starting at uni next year. Going to be a doctor. Can you believe it? And my youngest, Adam.’ He took the phone back. ‘Anyway, they don’t need me any more. Except for the money, of course!’

  ‘I’m sure that’s not true.’

  He patted her hand quickly. ‘What have they got you doing?’

  ‘Oh, typing transcripts. Very glamorous.’

  ‘It’s a start, I suppose.’ He paused. ‘But a bit beneath your abilities.’

  She blushed but was flattered. ‘I don’t know about that. What about you?’

  ‘I’m a UC on Perseus.’

  ‘A UC? I had no idea.’

  He smiled. ‘That’s how it’s meant to be.’ He looked over his shoulder towards the partitioned office. ‘I’d better crack on.’ He searched inside his bag. ‘Since you’re doing transcripts, would you mind doing this one?’ He handed her a CD. ‘Sorry to ask, but I think the boss might need to review it quite urgently.’

  ‘Not a problem. I’ll do it right now.’

  The disc contained two files. Lizzie clicked on the first one.

  Steve was climbing some steep narrow stairs, followed by a young man who was almost completely obscured. The stair light was off.

  She saved a document and exhibited it.

  LJG2/11.10.16

  Two men climb interior stairs. One is the undercover officer known as Steve. Nothing is said.

  She clicked on the other file. The camera gave a high view of a small bedsit. The Steve she saw was subtly different from the Steve she knew – down at heel, down on his luck, a bit humiliated by life. The boy followed him, his head down, face entirely hidden by his hoody. Music was playing and the boy spoke. She typed.

  Unidentified juvenile: What’s this shit?

  UC Steve: Cheeky arse. That’s Steely Dan.

  There was Steve’s crumpled smile, the one that creased the edges of his eyes. Everyone felt good around Steve. Everyone trusted him.

  It was only when the boy sat down – there was an old car seat on the floor – that Lizzie saw him properly. She paused the media player to make sure.

  It changed everything that she knew him. She had a sense of Ryan, that he was real, a real person being played.

  UC Steve: You heard about that thing … That boy, Spence I think his name was.

  The camera, wherever it was hidden, gave a good view of whoever sat in the car seat. Ryan shrugged. To everyone else it would be just gossip – the chat of the neighbourhood, of stabbings and violence and stuff happening – but watching it, there was no doubt in Lizzie’s mind that Steve’s comment had been a prompt. He didn’t press it. She typed.

  UC Steve: I’m having a korma. Fancy some?

  A plate of korma was in Ryan’s hands. He sat and ate like a hungry dog. Steve chucked him a Coke.

  UC Steve: Cool you down then.

  There was a moment of silence. Lizzie was free to watch, not worrying about her fingers travelling over the keyboard. Steve’s back was turned. He was making a cup of tea. And Lizzie thought, what cop doesn’t know the value of silence?

  Ryan:

  I knew him … The boy that got shanked. I knew him.

  UC Steve:

  Oh yeah?

  Ryan:

  Me and him ran.

  She could not type what followed – the silence so painful it made her want to clench her hands into fists. Ryan sitting on that chair holding his can of Coke. He had fished his top lip down between his teeth and it moved under the pressure of his anxiety. The silence stretched but Ryan did not fill it. He didn’t talk about what Spencer was like or how far back they went. Nothing like that. He wasn’t like one of those vox pops on the TV who bigged up his knowledge of a murdered person and in doing so tried to big up himself and his place in the world. No, whatever it was that was holding Ryan on the edge of tears, he kept inside.

  UC Steve: Sorry to hear that.

  Ryan twitched.

  Ryan: You got any blow?

  And she thought of herself in the yard, pretending to smoke and finally giving Ryan the cigarette. She wondered whether Steve had the same considerations. She didn’t know the rules for undercover officers. Was he allowed to give cannabis to a juvenile? It was an irrelevant question, she realized. Why would he give comfort now when comfort would be the very thing that stopped Ryan talking?

  UC Steve: Sorry, I’m out.

  More silence. One more attempt …

  UC Steve: Good friend, was he?

  Ryan was looking down but still he did not speak. And then Steve changed the subject. For the boy who didn’t speak, things got businesslike. If you wanted to be close to Steve, you needed to talk. Steve was all about information. Ryan offered the phone he’d stolen. It wasn’t the best – engraved with the victim’s name. Where he had offered solace, now Steve offered carelessness.

  UC Steve: You’ll see yourself out then?

  And Ryan was going down the stairs, small and alone. Lizzie thought with a pang of her little Connor and how it would be not to pick him up when he cried. Was Steve always listening? she wondered. Always gathering information? Was any of his kindness real?

  But Ryan was real, certainly, going down the street with his lonely burden of knowledge.

  She paused the recording. The door to the office at the end of the room had opened and Steve was stepping out. He looked across at her and smiled.

  ‘See you, Lizzie.’

  It echoed inside her like a transcription.

  UC Steve: See you, Lizzie.

  She saved the file and thought for a moment. DS Angel was absorbed in his screen. Nothing about him made her want to talk to him, but she went over.

  ‘I’ve done a couple of those files.’

  ‘Good.’

  She was as uninteresting to him as if she worked in a factory putting cherries on cakes. She was just ten fingers typing, a secretary with a warrant card. She knew the myth about this kind of officer. You worked your balls off – so to speak – until eventually they noticed you and valued you. Except in her experience, this kind of officer never did value you, and when he did notice you it was only to be irritated.

  ‘I’ll just introduce myself to the boss, if that’s OK.’

  He looked at her briefly, indifferent to the point of rudeness. ‘OK.’

  She moved over to the office Steve had been in and knocked.

  ‘Yes.’

  She put her head around the door and was about to speak when she saw him. Briefly she was dumbfounded. Then furious. Then confounded again. She stepped into the room and said the first thing that came into her head.

  ‘Is this a coincidence?’

  Kieran smiled broadly. ‘Don’t be silly.’

  Her mind was racing, but still she had a little space to notice that word. Silly.

  ‘You asked for me specifically?’

  ‘Of course.’

  A little smile had appeared
on his face and Lizzie remembered how that expression with its suggestion of wickedness and fun had charmed her once. Hard to believe now.

  She said, ‘After our argument last night, why ever would you ask to work with me? I would think being in the same team together would be the last thing you wanted.’

  Had he actually tutted? She couldn’t believe it.

  ‘After our argument last night,’ he was saying, belittling the word with his emphasis, ‘I lay awake trying to think what was best for Connor. Not what was best for me.’

  He raised an eyebrow and waited.

  ‘You didn’t think to run it past me first?’

  ‘Honestly? It never even crossed my mind that you might be angry at being given this chance. Most officers with your level of experience would bite my hand off for a posting here.’

  Your level of experience.

  There it was: the familiar high ground, the superior knowledge, the ability to bestow gifts. She had been a fool to ever be so in love with him. She remembered it in a painful instant: how her breath had changed whenever he’d come into the room. How thrilled she’d been to bump into him in a corridor or sit in any car that he was driving.

  ‘You could have given me a choice.’

  ‘Better for you that you just get moved here, don’t you think? I’m sure you don’t want to be known as the ex-girlfriend.’

  ‘KK … Trask, that is. My borough commander. Does he know about you and me?’

  He smiled again, and she remembered Trask’s parting wink. ‘He might do.’

  The strange thing was that Kieran seemed to think she might find it funny too. It was dawning on her what had happened. KK hadn’t moved her to the confi op because she was talented. No, she was moved because one of his old mates had asked for her. She thought of that poster Ash had given her. The damsel in the palm of an ape.

  ‘Oh fuck you, Kieran,’ she said. ‘Fuck you.’

  Kieran opened his desk drawer and took out a piece of paper, which he passed across the desk. Lizzie studied it: a screen shot from the Police National Computer bearing the name of her neighbour, Sandy. There was a criminal caution: possession of Class B with intent to supply. She put the paper on the desk.

  ‘You’ve run my neighbour through the PNC? That’s against the law.’

  ‘Oh grow up.’

  ‘Grow up?’

  ‘You’ve left our son with a drug dealer.’

  ‘That caution was ten years ago. It could mean anything. She was nineteen. She probably simply gave a joint to a friend. It’s just another of your excuses …’

  Kieran was speaking but Lizzie could barely hear him. Now she could never leave Connor with Sandy again. There was another little bit of help gone from her life. He wanted her to fail. He was raising his voice. Everyone in the office could probably hear him.

  ‘You want the impossible – you want an interesting career in the police and you want to keep Connor too. I try to help you and look how you react.’

  ‘You just don’t get it, do you?’

  ‘You’re right. I don’t. All I can see is someone who wants to have her cake and eat it.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I want. After all, that’s what you have. You’ve always had your cake and eaten it. That’s your thing.’

  Bugger! She was crying. She pushed a tear away quickly with the back of her hand. He didn’t speak. Then he said, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t ask you first.’ After a pause he added, ‘But I meant well. If you work this op, we’ll have more control over your hours and you’ll get to do some proper policing. What does it even matter how you got here? Perseus is an opportunity for you. It’s introducing you to specialist work. Don’t you want that?’

  She looked at him, startled out of her tears into something else.

  ‘Specialist work? Kieran, I’m a bloody typist!’

  ‘Everyone has to start somewhere.’

  ‘You ever start with typing?’

  ‘I was young and single when I started—’

  She interrupted. ‘And a man?’

  He tutted. ‘I didn’t have a baby that needed looking after.’

  All of a sudden she just felt defeated. All she wanted was to get the hell out of his office. Then she remembered what she had come in to talk about.

  ‘I had an email from Sarah Collins this morning – you remember Sarah?’

  ‘God, that woman! How could I forget her?’

  ‘She’s the SIO for a recent street murder. Spencer Cardoso?’

  He shrugged. ‘OK.’

  ‘She’s looking for a key witness and she thinks it might be a boy I arrested yesterday. Ryan Kennedy. I just transcribed a conversation from Steve’s flat. It looks very much like Ryan is the witness she’s looking for. We’ll have to tell her.’

  Kieran leant back in his chair. This was something different now: professional Kieran, reserved, unknowable. He gave an impression of considering what she’d said, but Lizzie wasn’t convinced.

  ‘What do you know about Perseus?’

  ‘Nothing – except how to format the transcripts.’

  He sighed at her cynicism. ‘Sit for a moment?’

  Wary and suspicious of his motives, she sat. There it was once more – his listen to the grown-ups voice.

  ‘Perseus’s objective is to disrupt firearms importation. We’ve been developing the intelligence for about two years. The Bluds have been responsible for at least seven murders over the last fifteen years and a lot of serious crime: violence, drugs importation, intimidation. They’ve finally come to the top of the Met’s in-tray because their leader, Shakiel Oliver, has been developing ambitions. He’s had long-term beef with his rivals, the Soldiers, and it looks like he’s aiming to consolidate. He’s hooking up with a supply chain that runs from Romania through Belgium. The product is military grade: automatic weapons, ammunition, grenades.’

  He waited for her to reply. Lizzie shrugged. ‘OK, firearm importation. Serious crime. Terrorism possibly. I get it.’

  ‘It’s not just Shakiel and the Bluds we’re after. We’re after the foreign dealers too. Shakiel is expecting a handover of product. To be sure of long-term convictions, we need that delivery to happen. This is what we’ve spent so much time and effort developing. We can’t throw it away on the off chance that one of the tiny cogs in our operation may have been a witness to something. Do you understand that?’

  The pressure was hard to resist. Still, she tried. ‘But it’s not shoplifting we’re holding back on. It’s a murder inquiry.’

  ‘We’re not obstructing the investigation in any way. You’ve already said that Sarah knows about Ryan. She doesn’t need us in order to follow that lead. Ryan hasn’t even told us anything. What do we add? Nothing.’

  Lizzie thought of Ryan sitting in that old car seat chewing his top lip. She saw him going down the stairs, so small and alone.

  ‘What about Ryan? Don’t we have a duty of care—’

  Kieran interrupted. ‘Do we have a reason to suspect he’s in any particular danger? I mean anything substantially different from the danger he’s in the whole time?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything about this murder.’

  ‘He’s running with a gang. He’s in danger all the time. But it’s not down to us. That’s his life. We can’t be squeamish about him or anyone else. If we want to disrupt the supply of firearms we have to let things run until we’re ready to make the arrests. Otherwise we blow the op. We’ve discussed Ryan. He’s authorized. He’s no more at risk now than he was before Perseus. Once we’ve made the arrests, he’ll be safer.’

  Safer? He’d be in prison anyway. Ryan would be one of the arrests, that stolen phone just one of many offences, she suspected. She imagined in an involuntary rush of sympathy how betrayed he’d feel when he realized how Steve had been playing him.

  Kieran was talking again, something now of the official briefing in his voice.

  ‘There’s an established and accepted principle here. Only the small group
of people working on the op know about it. It has to be like that. People can’t help themselves; if they know, they give it away. If Sarah knows we’re into Ryan, it will change how she talks to him, what she says.’

  Then he smiled at her, as if apologizing for knowing so much more than she did. The conversation was over.

  Lizzie stood up. ‘Well, I need to think about working on this operation. I’m going for a walk.’

  ‘That’s fine. If you decide not to take the posting, there’ll be no consequences. But I have to be clear on one thing. You are not free to talk to Sarah about Perseus. Don’t be mistaken about that. That’s a lawful order.’

  18

  Kieran watched the door shut. He laid his hands on his desk and stared into the corner of the room.

  Steve had raised it too. More toned down than Lizzie, but nevertheless …

  ‘Seems to me that Ryan knows more about Spencer Cardoso’s murder than he’s telling.’

  Steve knew the score. He knew how to do the right thing and how to record that he’d done the right thing. He’d told Kieran that he’d given Lizzie the disc to transcribe urgently and that he’d made a note in his records that he’d informed his handler. Kieran could consider the buck passed.

  His skin was tingling with sudden uncertainty. He had been careful not to leak a trace of it to Lizzie, but alone in his office he allowed the possibility to rush through him that Ryan and his dead friend were going to wreck two years of careful work.

  The street stabbing of a nobody! It was its own little tragedy, but the sad truth was it happened all the time. Spencer’s murder was a symptom, not the disease. Ryan and Spencer were bit parts; Shakiel was star billing. Kieran just needed the street to stay calm for another twenty-four hours so that the delivery could go ahead. No point at all sending Shakiel down for a few drug deals. That wasn’t what two years of Perseus had been for.

  Beyond mere preparation: even the baby cops knew that phrase.