‘OK,’ said the Chief slowly. ‘I know you’ll be keeping our counter-terrorist team up to date with all this, but what did you particularly want to see me about? I get the feeling there’s something else you haven’t told me yet.’
Liz smiled. ‘You’re right – there is something else. As you said, Lester Jackson is well known to the Manchester and Cheshire forces. I gather he’s never been arrested, and I’m told he’s been helpful on more than one occasion. He’s not actually a source, but one of your officers knows him pretty well.’
‘Meaning?’
Liz paused, then said, ‘This is where it gets difficult. What I mean is that your officer may know him too well. So I can’t approach this officer in the normal way and ask for help with Jackson. In fact, I did speak to him on the phone to see what he knew about Jackson, and he gave me a cock-and-bull story – that Jackson was small beer of no possible interest to my Service. He was so dismissive that I didn’t tell him that Jackson was suspected of being an accomplice to terrorists trying to bring arms into this country. To be quite honest with you, Mr Pearson, I just didn’t trust the officer.’
‘Are you trying to say that he is involved in some way with Lester Jackson?’
‘Yes. I’m afraid I am,’ said Liz. She could see Pearson starting to bristle. ‘I should tell you,’ she went on, now feeling very uncomfortable, ‘that the officer in question is someone I used to know. It was a long time ago – in Liverpool where I was seconded to the Special Branch when I first joined the Service.’ When Pearson looked at her curiously she said, ‘The officer’s name is James McManus. He’s Deputy Head of your Special Branch.’
To her surprise the defensiveness she had sensed building in the Chief Constable almost instantaneously disappeared. He nodded and his face grew friendly again, and though it wouldn’t have been right to say he was smiling, he somehow seemed relieved. ‘Are you telling me you think McManus is involved with this arms delivery?’ he asked.
‘No. But I think he may be involved with Jackson in a way that isn’t altogether… healthy.’
Pearson gave a snort. ‘That’s a generous way of putting it. What I think you really mean is that McManus is in Jackson’s pocket, so you can’t trust him to help you investigate.’
Liz said nothing and the Chief waved a dismissive hand. ‘Don’t worry about offending me. Forgive me if I seemed a bit chilly a moment ago – nobody in my job wants to hear that one of his senior officers isn’t trusted. But in this case… you should know that you aren’t the only one with questions about McManus.’
‘Really?’ She found herself half relieved and half upset, but all attention.
‘Absolutely. McManus is one of our most senior officers, as you know, very experienced, with a record anyone would envy. He’s popular, and said to be charming with the ladies,’ he added, smiling at Liz.
She was too old to blush, and she looked straight back at Pearson, expressionless. He went on, ‘But a few years ago, when I was still in Cheshire, I got the feeling that something wasn’t right with McManus’s relationship with Jackson. He wasn’t my officer then, of course, but I did mention it to the Chief here in those days, Sir Charles Worthington. He was a very senior Chief Constable, not long to go to retirement, and frankly he was more interested in international policing and making trips all over the world than in running this Force. Anyway, for whatever reason he did nothing about it.
‘But when I came here I realised that there were certain no-go areas for McManus – certain select villains he didn’t want to pursue. One of them was certainly Lester Jackson. It is true that we do get the odd titbit supplied by Jackson, and McManus uses that to justify his relationship. But nothing ever substantial enough to make it right that Jackson is allowed to operate so freely from that club. And from what you’re telling me he’s now involving himself in even more serious crime.’
Liz listened intently as Pearson went on: ‘For the last three months my Professional Standards Unit has been covertly investigating McManus. They’ve put together quite a significant file and we are just about ready to confront him with the evidence. We know now he’s been taking money from Jackson – and others – to warn them of criminal investigations and keep the CID off their backs. His usual way of doing that is to claim they’re acting as valuable Special Branch sources.’
Liz nodded, though part of her was deeply dismayed. ‘Thank you for being so candid with me. As I told you, I knew Jimmy McManus more than ten years ago when I was very junior in the Service. He was kind to me when some of his colleagues were bullying me; for a time he and I were close. But our relationship ended when I thought he was being dishonest. He was convinced that a man he had been investigating was guilty of drug dealing. When the man was acquitted, Jimmy fitted him up by getting someone to give false evidence against him in another case. I’ve no doubt the man was a drug dealer, and I suppose you could say that in one sense Jimmy was acting on the side of the angels in those days – certainly he thought he was, and he liked to call it “conviction policing”. But I thought it was corrupt, and we fell out. Still, I never thought that he’d go over to the criminals’ side and take money to protect them.’
The Chief nodded. ‘In my experience, conviction policemen are dangerous people to have in a force. They can easily get disillusioned and cynical, and if they have a shaky moral compass in the first place they can become thoroughly crooked. I don’t know enough about McManus’s personal life to understand precisely what turned him bad, but something certainly has.’
Liz said, ‘I’m afraid that what you’ve told me just makes my problem worse. McManus is in a unique position to give me an inside view of Jackson, but not if I can’t trust him. The only other possible source of information I have on Jackson is a young DI in Cheshire called Halliday.’
‘Oh yes,’ interrupted Pearson. ‘He’s a good lad, though a bit green.’
‘Yes. And he’s nothing like as close to Jackson as McManus is. My problem is that we’ve seen enough to know that Jackson’s very alert to surveillance, so I can’t rely on that to find out when this delivery’s due or where it’s going to come into the country. But if I tell McManus what I know, he’ll most likely leak it all to Jackson.’
The Chief Constable said, ‘Yes. I can see the problem. We need to put pressure on McManus to get him to help, but we’ve got to do it in such a way that he doesn’t tell Jackson what’s going on. In other words, we’ve got to scare him rigid.’
The Chief thought for a moment, then said, ‘Here’s what I propose. I said we were just about ready to confront him with what we’ve learned in our investigation. Well, we’ll bring that confrontation forward and we’ll do it tomorrow morning. I’ll make it quite clear to him that we have enough on him to prosecute him for corruption, and if he’s convicted he’s likely to get a good stretch in prison, which he’ll know anyway.
‘If you agree, I’d like to add that we have now learned that he may be involved in acts preparatory to the commission of terrorism. He won’t know what I’m talking about so I’ll tell him that you will be meeting him in the afternoon. You’ll be seeking his help and what you’ll be telling him is Top Secret. If he doesn’t fully support you or if he leaks what you say, we’ll throw the book at him and he’ll be in prison for the rest of his life.’
‘Right,’ said Liz, her breath taken away by the Chief Constable’s decisive response. ‘That should sort it.’