Harry laughed. ‘You’re never that lucky.’
Quill looked at him a bit sharply, then realized that he had done so and cuffed the DS across the shoulder before he could apologize. Do as I say, not as I do; they should have that written over the door at Hendon. He banged on the back of the driver’s seat, and saw her raising an eyebrow at him in the rear-view mirror. ‘Faster, love. We want to be back at the Ops Room for “Auld Lang Syne”, don’t we?’
Shit, shit, shit!
Kev Sefton was his actual name, and right now he was carefully making himself look out of the window of the SUV because he couldn’t look at that bastard sitting beside him. The convoy had gone to two more houses, both within ten minutes’ distance of the first. They’d been empty, too. Both times Toshack had headed up into the loft while he got the soldiers to ‘bang about’. Sefton had tried to keep his mind on the job, but. .
The bastard knew. He’d been on his back since he’d joined Goodfellow, and that was the reason Sefton didn’t know how Costain came to know about his ‘protected characteristic’, as the blunt jargon put it. He’d always stayed away from the Gay Police Association, the Black Police Association. . He hadn’t thought much about why he should have joined them, or why he shouldn’t. He’d been out, sort of, at his last nick. A few of the lads had asked, so he’d told them. And then his DI, Pete Grieves, had, too, over a pint — deliberately nothing official. ‘I should think you qualify us for some sort of grant, lad, representing two minorities for the price of one,’ he’d said. Sefton had laughed along, only realizing later how the conversation had left him feeling. . he still didn’t know how he felt about it.
But there was meant to be a firewall between his present UC life and the nick where he’d first worked.
And, however he knew, Costain had decided that now, on the night the op was going to crash and burn, was the time to really have a go. He’d been at Sefton ever since he was brought in. That superior look in his eye, ’cos he was the real thing and Sefton was the fraud, the posh boy with the put-on accent. There were so many things Costain had stopped him from mentioning in his reports: so many little infringements that added up to a damning picture. ‘Let’s not mention how long I was alone in there, mate. I might have been a bit rough with him there, mate. Not worth mentioning the toms, is it, mate?’ He was always so friendly during that thirty seconds, and Sefton always kept silent, and then the smile dropped away and the mask was back. He had rank on him, but that was no excuse. He’s put a gag on you, and you let him! You keep letting him!
It was obvious the man was using. Sefton suppressed his fury yet again. You did undercover one of two ways: you either stayed yourself, playing a part all the way; or you became something else, something that suited your undercover situation. I’m still me. But you’ve lost yourself. Undercover was a big deal for black coppers, because so many of the OCNs were of African ethnicity. Maybe you didn’t get to do all the management courses, maybe your experience became too narrow to attract promotion, maybe you were just a tool like a phone tap or a surveillance team, but it felt like the most meaningful contribution you could make. And that in a culture where, no matter what anyone said, your opportunities felt narrow anyway. But, when Sefton saw that glazed-eye coldness in Costain’s face tonight, he knew: This bastard’s going to bring me down with him.
Sefton’s mum had taught him something, from his earliest days of getting kicked about. ‘Wish good things at them,’ she’d said. ‘Wish good things at them hard.’ Then she’d make a serious, ridiculous face. He had kept that as a habit of mind, like not walking under ladders. He glanced at Costain now and wished paydays and promotion for the sod, contorting his face with the effort of wishing it.
‘You all right, Kev?’ asked Toshack. Which made Costain look round quickly, and satisfyingly. There, Mum, wherever you are now, it worked — sort of.
He instantly dropped the expression. ‘Come on, boss,’ he said, in that West London accent he’d sold to Quill as a black kid trying too hard. The voice he hated, if he was being completely honest, because it reminded him of all the kids around him when he was growing up, but not of himself. It was a voice he’d learned to adopt. ‘We’ll move heaven and Earth for you, you know that?’ Yes, sir, master — Toshack liked that, so Costain gave it to him. ‘But tell us who we’re after. We all want a drink at midnight, don’t we?’
There, the look on Costain’s face! Fabulous, darlings. ’Cos second UC Sefton kept daring to show initiative, and that was recorded on that bloody tape of his. Assuming Quill had actually passed it to him. And assuming he’d switched it on.
‘You’ll get to toast the New Year at midnight,’ Toshack reassured him. ‘Back at the house. If we don’t find it this time. . it’s last orders for me, ’cos I’ll be gone soon after.’
Sefton looked just a bit worried and puzzled, but inside now he was yelling.
As the soldiers strode up the path of their last suburban semi, Sefton finally made eye contact with Costain. They hung back until everyone else had gone inside.
‘Your call, skip,’ he said to Costain, as the familiar crashing noises began inside.
Costain looked splendidly uncertain. His lovely criminal lifestyle was coming to an end, and he was going to have to either call it now or add to the pile of disciplinary charges. ‘Go on, then,’ he said.
Sefton looked towards the house, then carefully took his mobile, with the tracer in it, from out of his other pocket. He texted one word to a number which, if called, would connect to a bloke who called himself Ricky, who would ask, ‘What’s up, Kev?’
The single word: Midnight.
Costain had placed himself between Sefton and the window, and now he pointed to himself. ‘I’m going to get him,’ he said, ‘before it goes down.’
Sefton watched the lead UC, as he marched towards the house, and once again he sent all his bloody good wishes after him.
TWO
Gipsy Hill was indeed a hill, and the nick was situated near the top of it; at the highest point above sea level that any police station in London occupied. Quill had just stepped out of his vehicle in the Hill’s car park which was, as usual, lit up like a stadium. Well, a stadium where a few of the lights were broken. It was just past 11 p.m., at the very end of the old year.
‘Midnight!’ he was saying into his Airwave radio, while Harry marched beside him, talking equally urgently into his phone. ‘So we’re assembling at a quarter to, round the corner from the house in Bermondsey, which means we have to be out of here-’ He paused when he heard the sound of engines behind him, and turned to see a line of unmarked cars rolling in, followed by an Armed Response Vehicle out of Old Street. ‘-right now!’ He then exclaimed, ‘You beauty!’ before correcting himself, ‘Sorry, ma’am.’
Harry waited until his superior had switched off the radio. ‘You still reckon Toshack’s going to run for it?’
‘Not so much now. I’ve been talking to the uniforms who’re moving in on every place he’s been to, and he’s been making a fuckload of noise at every one of them. That’s hardly sneaking out of the country. That’s more like desperation. He’s looking for someone important to him: an old flame, or a kid he lost track of. If he’s cashing in, it’ll be with a shotgun to his own forehead on the stroke of midnight. Only, instead, we’ll be there to hear his confession.’
Harry coughed a laugh. ‘At least then we’ll get him for possession of a firearm.’
They got into one of the waiting cars. As police officers in Metvests came running out of Gipsy Hill police station to start filling up the other vehicles, Quill waved for his driver to join the convoy.