There went Costain and Sefton now, both in handcuffs but apart: one yelling too theatrically and the other acting stoic. The corrupt egotist and the professionaclass="underline" the latter having seemingly called in the cavalry to save the former. Having watched those two go past, he made sure to watch all the others equally. Toshack came out last. As Quill made eye contact with him, the gang leader dropped his gaze to the ground. Quill perked up at that: maybe something was going to fall out of this after all.
Quill waited until they were all brought inside, and then followed, heading towards the Ops Room. Uniforms coming off the night shift stopped to offer him congratulations as he passed. ‘Fucking Toshack! Kick arse!’
Quill acknowledged the praise, then pushed his way through the double doors that led into the Ops Room. The Operation Goodfellow coppers who hadn’t been out in the field that morning applauded him too. He waved this attention aside, getting irritated with it now. Instead he looked at the room beyond them. For the last four years he’d been living with that familiar smell of soup and aftershave. The room was the usual mess: ancient desktop computers, their drives wheezing; family photos; cut-out headlines and dark copper jokes. A sink that was never cleaned because the first thing Quill had done when he’d got here was to lock out the cleaners, whether vetted or not. The wall was used as a screen for the PowerPoint projector, and had biro marks on it to indicate the picture size for best focus. The Operations Board, covered in Toshack photos and organizational diagrams, with ‘Goodfellow’ written across the top, now had a big black X taped over Rob Toshack’s face. Quill went and gazed at it, and felt distantly annoyed that they hadn’t left that privilege to him. But would he even have bothered to do it? The X still felt like more of a vague possibility than a fact. In the past, Toshack had got out of worse.
Quill located Mark Salter, the DS who ran the room, who looked, deliberately, only appropriately happy. ‘Congratulations, Jimmy.’
‘Yeah, yeah. Tell Ben I want a blood test done on Toshack, and in case he’s flying over Moscow right now, I want half-hourly tests until he’s at a point where the Force medical examiner will agree he’s sober again. We’ll strike while the iron is hot, and won’t wait for the analyst’s report on the tape. Though, knowing her, she’ll get it done in time. I want the brief in now, so call their night desk, get them to wake someone up. And make sure said brief gets a cup of tea and a biscuit. I want every single detail of this,’ he raised his voice so the room shut up and paid attention, ‘done by the book, so at the very least we once again get that king of shit hauled into a courtroom for something.’
‘Yes, Jimmy,’ responded the room in a mix of tired voices.
He gave a nod back to them, then went to fetch his own cuppa: tea bag left in to stew, six sweeteners, milk if it wasn’t already on the turn.
He fell asleep at his desk with the cup beside him, just for ten minutes, but it was a sleep so deep that he woke wondering where he was, feeling that he’d been wrestling with something in his dream. He drank his lukewarm tea and wondered what he’d ever find to do instead of this operation — especially if it came to nothing.
Nothingness, that was his enemy. Meaning: lack of.
He had hours of paperwork still in front of him, and maybe no emotional pay-off at the end of it. Not after four bloody years of it. But he started on it now anyway.
Harry came in looking angry, but kept his voice down to a whisper. ‘Jimmy,’ he murmured, ‘first UC didn’t give it up.’
‘What?’
‘I gave him a clear and secure opportunity.’
Quill rubbed his brow. ‘He might have decided it wasn’t secure enough.’ But the look they shared said that they both knew there was something more to this. Something dodgy. ‘He’s doubtless got a back-up plan, but if he doesn’t go for it, I’m marching uniforms in there and ending his career.’
Costain listened to Mick, the inhabitant of the cell next door, snoring. Until relative silence had settled over the corridor, he’d been waiting for there to be a shout that he was filth. But none came, and finally he relaxed over that. They’d put Toshack straight into the back of a car, and obviously he hadn’t had a chance to tell his soldiers anything. Food, under a metal cover, had been brought in an hour after they’d been booked in. He’d eaten it all. The back-up plan concerning the Nagra was, as always, for Costain to wait until 2 a.m., then put it under the same cover and slide it back through the hatch, into the corridor. Someone with the right level of operational knowledge would be there to collect it. Now it was 1.57 a.m., and he didn’t know what he was going to do.
He’d already baulked at giving the Nagra up at the planned handover. There was a traitor inside SCD 10, maybe inside Gipsy Hill itself, but the traitors wouldn’t know he knew about that until he had handed over that tape. Then, if the wrong person got to hear it, his life wouldn’t be worth shit. He should get rid of it. Unspool it. Wrap it in enough toilet paper and flush it. But then he wouldn’t get the chance to deliberately give it to the right people, and save his career. Not to Quill, certainly! He wouldn’t let him keep the credit. Costain ran a hand over his face, trying to calm down, aware of his heart racing. At least they hadn’t taken a sample or a blood test. On that basis alone he’d be fucked. If he’d known the raid would be going down that same night, he’d have stayed off the sniff.
He decided he would wait until he saw who. . but who might show up that he trusted? The light in the corridor increased slightly, meaning a door had been opened. This was it. A tall figure came and opened the observation slit to look into his cell. Costain felt a jolt of surprise, even of fear. It was Lofthouse, the detective superintendent in charge of Goodfellow. She had the same questioning look on her face as she had displayed when he’d first met her. He had thought it weird at the time. Even being looked closely at by a super was weird for a UC in his position. But this now! This was so far from standard operating procedures.
Lofthouse made eye contact with him, then looked down again towards the food slot. Since she was Quill’s superior. . God, maybe this was all about Quill! Maybe there was nobody else here she could trust. And Costain had to trust someone if he was going to save himself. He reached behind his back for the tape recorder.
At 2.01 a.m., Quill lowered his head to his desk in relief after Harry told him that Lofthouse had taken possession of the Nagra.
He went off for a few hours of proper sleep in the accommodation block, and returned to Ops, blinking in the light of morning, to find that Harry had the intelligence analyst’s report ready for him. He read the report, balled it up, threw it across the room, then had to go and fetch it and smooth it out again. He put in a call to Lofthouse, but was told she wasn’t in yet. Then he turned back to Harry, and lowered his voice.
‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘Someone inside here. No wonder the first UC got freaked out.’
‘Even by my delightful visage? But, no, he didn’t know me from Adam.’
‘We need to get the CCTV record from the custody suite.’