Hathaway looked as if he might say something, but then he nodded curtly and limped out of the room.
Latham turned and looked out of the window. He had a nagging feeling that he'd done something wrong, that in some way he'd betrayed the three individuals who'd been brought to see him. He'd lied to them, there was no doubt about that, but had he betrayed them? And if he had, did it matter in the grand scheme of things? Or did the ends justify the means? He looked at his watch again. It was time to go.
Tina wound down the window and flicked ash out. Some of it blew back into the car and she brushed it off the seat.
"Sorry," she said to the driver.
He flashed her a grin in the rear-view mirror.
"Doesn't matter to me, miss," he said.
"First of all, I'm a forty-a-day man myself. Second of all, it's not my car."
"You work for the police, right?"
"Contract," said the driver.
"Former army, me. Did my twenty years and then they said my services were no longer required."
Tina took another long pull on her cigarette.
"Do you want one?" she asked, proffering the pack.
The driver shook his head.
"Not while I'm driving, miss. You know what the cops are like. They did that sales rep a while back for driving with a sandwich on his seat."
"Yeah. It was in all the papers, wasn't it? You'd think they'd have better things to do with their time, right?"
The driver nodded.
"You'd think so. Mind you, army's pretty much the same. It'd all go a lot more smoothly if there was no bloody officers, pardon my language."
Tina smiled and settled back in the seat.
"You know what that was about, back there?" she asked.
"No, miss. We're mushrooms. Keep us in the dark .. ."
"And feed you bullshit. Yeah, you said."
"It's got to be important if they're using us, that much I can tell you. Our company isn't cheap."
Tina closed her eyes and let the breeze from the open window play over her face. She wondered who would contact her. Her handler, Assistant Commissioner Latham had said. No name. No description. Her handler. It had the same echoes as pimp, and Tina had always refused to have anything to do with pimps. When she'd worked the streets, she'd worked them alone, even though a pimp offered protection. So far as Tina was concerned, pimps were leeches, and she'd despised the girls she'd seen handing over their hard-earned money to smooth black guys in big cars with deafening stereo systems. Now Tina was getting her own handler. The more she thought about it, the less comfortable she was with the idea, but when doubts did threaten to overwhelm her, she thought back to Assistant Commissioner Latham, with his ramrod straight back and his firm handshake and his immaculate uniform. He was a man she could trust, of that much she was sure. And he was right: there was no way she could have expected to serve as a regular police officer, not with her past. Try as she might to conceal what she'd once been, it was bound to come back to haunt her one day. At least this way she was being up front about her past, using it as an asset rather than fearing it as the dirty secret that would one day destroy her career. But could she really do what Latham had asked? Go back into the world she'd escaped from and work against it? She shivered and opened her eyes. Maybe that was exactly what she had been working towards her whole life. Maybe that was the way of vindicating herself. If she could use her past, use it constructively, then maybe it had all been worth it. Her cigarette had burned down to the filter and she flicked it out of the open window.
The Vectra turned into the road where Tina lived and the driver pulled up in front of the three-storey terraced house.
"Here we are, miss," he said, twisting around in his seat.
Tina jerked out of her reverie.
"Oh, right. Cheers, thanks." She put her hand into her handbag.
"I suppose I should .. ."
He waved her offer of a tip away with a shovel-sized hand.
"It's all taken care of, miss. You take care, hear?"
Tina nodded and got out of the car. She stared up at the house as the Vectra drove away. The paint on the door and windows was weathered and peeling and the roof was missing several slates. One of the windows on the top floor was covered with yellowing newspapers. An old woman lived there, so Tina had been told, but she'd never seen anyone going in or out.
She unlocked the front door and pushed it closed behind her. The door was warped and the lock didn't click shut unless it was given a hard push. The area had more than its fair share of opportunistic thieves wandering around looking for an opportunity to pay for their next fix. The hallway smelt of damp and the flowery wallpaper was peeling away from the corner over the door. Tina's flat was on the ground floor, tucked away at the back. It had originally been the kitchen and scullery of the house, but the developer had managed to cram a small bedroom, a poky sitting room and a kitchenette and bathroom into the space. There was barely enough room to swing a cat, but as Tina would joke with the few friends she'd had around, she was allergic to cats anyway.
She let herself into her flat and kicked off her clunky black shoes, tossing her handbag on to the sagging sofa by the window. Latham hadn't told her when her handler would get in touch, or how. Did that mean she was to wait in until he called? They had her mobile number so maybe he'd phone. Tina realised that she was already thinking of her handler as a 'he', but it could just as easily be a woman.
She went through to her cramped bathroom and ran herself a bath as she wiped off her make-up. She poured in a good slug of bath salts, lit a perfumed candle, and soaked for the best part of half an hour. After she'd towelled herself dry she dressed carelessly, throwing on an old pair of jeans and a baggy sweater, and tied her hair back with an elastic band.
She padded into the kitchenette and switched on the electric kettle, then swore out loud as she remembered that she'd intended to buy milk on the way home. She opened the fridge in the vain hope that there might be a splash of milk left in the carton, then jumped as her doorbell rang.
She rushed out into the hallway and opened the front door. A short man in a brown leather jacket was standing on the doorstep. He ran a hand across his thinning hair. In his other hand was a black laptop computer case.
"Christina Leigh," he said, a statement of fact rather than a question.
"Yes?" she said, frowning.
"Gregg Hathaway. You're expecting me, right?" he asked.
Warren heard the wail of an ambulance siren as he got out of the Vectra and headed down Craven Park Road towards his house. He didn't want his neighbours to see the car or the driver. The noise barely registered with Warren as he walked through the crowds of shoppers. Sirens be they police, ambulance or fire engines were an all too regular occurrence in Harlesden. He turned left and saw that his street had been closed off midway with lines of blue and white tape. Three police cars had been parked haphazardly, their doors open and blue lights flashing.
In the middle of the road a man and a woman dressed in white overalls were studying a red smear and what looked like a pool of vomit, and a man in a sheepskin jacket was drawing chalk circles around several cartridge cases.
There was a gap in the police tape along the pavement, so Warren went over to the overweight uniformed constable who was guarding it. He nodded down the road.
"Okay if I go on through?" he asked.
"I live in number sixty-eight."
"Sorry, sir, this is a crime scene. You'll have to go back to the main road and cut through Charlton Road." The officer was in his forties with chubby face and a drinker's nose.
Warren pointed down the road.
"But that's my house there."
"Nothing I can do, sir. This is a crime scene."