"But that means .. ." Warren began.
Hathaway held up a hand to silence him.
"That's what the Home Office says, but between you, me and that cheese plant in the corner, the likes of Dennis Donovan don't pay a blind bit of notice to the Home Office, so why should we?"
"That's a dangerous route to start along," said Warren.
"You're saying the rules aren't fair so you're going to break them?"
"What I'm saying is that established procedures aren't going to catch Dennis Donovan. We're going to have to be more .. ." He searched for the word.
"Creative," he said eventually.
"But if it ever gets out that I've been acting as an agent provocateur, all bets are off," said Warren.
"He'd be able to take you to the European Court of Human Rights, any conviction would be quashed, and he'd sue you for millions."
"But he won't ever find out," said Hathaway.
"No one will. You are going to be so far undercover they'll need a submarine to find you. That's why we've gone to all this trouble, Cliff. Only a handful of people will know what you are doing, and they'll never tell. From now on your only contact with the police will be me, and we'll only be communicating via a secure website."
"So I really will be on my own?"
"It's the only way, Cliff. Are you up for it?"
"I guess so." He saw from the look on Hathaway's face that the answer wasn't emphatic enough.
"Yes," he said, more determinedly.
"Yes, I am."
"Good man," said Hathaway. His fingers started to play across the keyboard. Warren moved over to sit next to him.
Tina rolled over and hugged her pillow. She'd been in bed for almost three hours and was no closer getting to sleep. Her mind was in a whirl. Her meeting with Latham. Her briefing from Hathaway. It had all been such a shock. One minute she'd been all geared up for joining the Metropolitan Police, wearing a uniform and pounding a beat. The next, she was preparing to become a lap-dancer, which, no matter how Hathaway had portrayed it, was in her eyes only one step up from being a street-walking prostitute. She'd worked hard for her qualifications. Bloody hard. She'd set her heart on a career, a real career, and that had been taken away from her. By men.
She felt tears well up, but screwed her eyes tightly closed, refusing to cry. It always seemed to be men who were screwing up her life. Her stepfather, crawling into her bed late at night, whispering drunkenly and licking her ear. The punters, always trying to get her to do it for free or without a condom. Her neighbours, sneering and leering as she left to walk the streets in short skirt, low-cut top and knee-length boots. The police, patronizing and condescending. And now Latham and Hathaway. They were worse than pimps. Worse than her punters.
She opened her eyes and sat up, still clutching the pillow to her stomach. A sudden wave of nausea swept over her and she rushed to the bathroom. She barely managed to get her head above the toilet bowl before throwing up. She flushed the toilet and drank from the cold tap, then wiped her mouth with a towel. She stared at her reflection in the mirror above the sink.
"Bastards," she said.
"Bastards, bastards, bastards."
She went back into the sitting room and dropped down on to the sofa. Could she trust them? And was she even capable of doing what they wanted? She felt nauseous again and took deep breaths to steady herself. What if it went wrong? What if she wasn't up to the job, what if she slipped up and someone found out that she was an undercover cop? Hathaway had given her a phone number to memorize. Her way out. Her once in a lifetime 'get out of jail free' card. Two years down the line, three years, would there still be someone at the end of the lifeline? She stared at the phone on the coffee table. A voice on the end of the phone and a website were to be her only points of contact, Hathaway had said. She drew her legs up underneath her and rested her head on the pillow. One of the reasons she'd been so keen to join the Met was because she wanted to be a member of a team, to be surrounded by colleagues who could support her if she was in trouble, to be part of a group. The police she'd come across when she'd worked the streets had always been the enemy, but she'd envied them their camaraderie. She knew the girls on the streets with her, but they were the competition. They might help each other out with loans or cigarettes and even offer advice on which punters to avoid, but there was never the familiarity and intimacy that the police had. Tina wasn't sure if she had what it took to work on her own. Undercover. Living a lie.
Tina reached over and picked up the phone. She placed it on the pillow and ran her fingers along the smooth, white plastic.
Twenty-four seven, Hathaway had said. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, there'd be a voice at the end of the phone. One call and she'd be pulled out.
She picked up the receiver and listened to the dialling tone, then put it back. She ran her hands through her hair and then rubbed the knotted muscles at the back of her neck. She stared at the phone. What if he'd been lying? What if there was no lifeline? She snatched at the receiver and tapped out the number on the keypad as quickly as she could, not wanting to give herself time to change her mind. It started to ring. Tina closed her eyes. It was answered on the third ring.
"Yes?" It was a man's voice. It might have been Hathaway, but Tina couldn't tell, not from the single word.
There was a faint buzzing on the line, like static.
"What do you need?" said the voice after a long pause. It was flat and emotionless, almost mechanical, but Tina was sure now it was Hathaway.
"Nothing. Wrong number," she said and replaced the receiver.
She replaced the phone on the coffee table and carried the pillow back to her bed. She lay down and curled up into a foetal ball and within five minutes she was fast asleep.
Three Years Later Marty Clare took a long draw on his joint and held the smoke deep in his lungs as he watched the two girls on the bed. The blonde was on top, the redhead underneath, their legs and arms entwined as they kissed. Clare scratched his backside, then exhaled slowly, blowing blue smoke over the two girls.
"Come on, girls, let the dog see the rabbit," said Clare in his gravelly Irish accent. The two girls moved apart. The redhead reached up for the joint and Clare handed it to her as he slid down next to the blonde. Sylvia, her name was. Or Sandra. Clare hadn't been paying attention to their names. All he'd been interested in was how much they'd charge for a threesome, and the price had been reasonable considering their pneumatic breasts and model-pretty faces. They were Slovakians, the blonde twenty-one and the redhead barely out of her teens. From the way they were going at each other on the bed, Clare figured they were probably genuinely bisexual. Not that he cared over-much either way: the evening was about satisfying Clare's urges, not theirs.
Clare kissed the blonde and she moaned softly and opened her mouth, allowing his exploring tongue deep inside. She reached down between his legs and stroked him. Clare felt the redhead's tongue on his back, gently licking between his shoulder blades.
The redhead reached and gave the joint to the blonde, then pressed her lips against Clare's mouth, practically sucking the breath from him. She rolled on top of him and began to move downwards, kissing and gently nipping at his flesh with her teeth. Clare ran his fingers through her hair and groaned in anticipation of the pleasures to come. The blonde sat up with her back against the headboard and blew smoke up at the ceiling. Clare held out his hand for the joint. As she passed it to him there was the sound of cracking wood and shouts from the room next door, then booted footsteps and shouts. The bedroom door crashed open and half a dozen uniformed policemen burst into the room with a series of rapid flashes that temporarily blinded Clare.