‘All right,’ I said, wondering whether this was all they had on him. I found myself hoping so, and hoping too that there was an innocent explanation for it. I didn’t want to see old Stegs get thrown even deeper into the mire.
‘And take Tina if you can. We’ve got another meeting scheduled for nine a.m. tomorrow. You can let us know how it went then. We should also have the initial results of the post-mortem at that point, so we’ll have a more exact time of death for both victims.’
Malik was a fast mover. But I was pretty sure we were all going to have to be fast movers on a case like this, one where even the politicians were interested in seeing a result.
It made me glad I hadn’t made any plans for the next few days.
9
Stegs was writing a book about his exploits undercover in SO10. It had been done before by former officers of course, several times, but he was certain there was still a market for this kind of materiaclass="underline" tales of derring-do amid the violent world of cops, robbers and killers. That last bit was the first sentence of the synopsis for Undercover Cop, the tell-it-all novel he was hoping was going to attract some serious literary attention of the financial kind once he released it into the public realm. He’d decided on the title after much thought, concluding that it was best not to try and be too subtle with the punters. Tell them straight what it was all about, no fannying around. The plan was to finish it, get an offer in from someone big, then retire from the Force and give the bastards a richly deserved two fingers.
Progress, however, had been slow. Stegs had been writing it for more than two years and was still only on page twenty-seven. He’d had a lot of trouble with the first chapter, in which he’d described his schooldays. He couldn’t seem to get the right combination of tough and vulnerable and had found it particularly hard to avoid mentioning the name Monty without making the whole thing sound wrong, and in these sort of things you had to be authentic. He’d finally moved on to chapter two a few months earlier, having given himself the new name of Martin for chapter one, and was now at the training stage in Hendon. A few more pages and he’d be on to the good stuff: football riots, his first case at SO10, the sex, the drugs, the rock and roll. And any other bullshit he could think up.
On the morning after the death of Vokes, Stegs made a vow to turn adversity into opportunity and use his period of suspension to make a concerted push on Undercover Cop. This was at twenty to seven while he sat feeding baby Luke at the breakfast table. The missus, meanwhile, was carrying out a two-pronged pincer attack: on the one hand complaining about the fact that he hadn’t got in until quarter to two the previous night; on the other bemoaning the Jenner family’s lack of money. The latest Visa bill received the previous day, which was being waved like a piece of evidence, showed that they owed?2,311. And sixty-eight pence, if you wanted to be exact. This was on top of the latest bank statement brandished three days earlier, which carried the grim news that the joint account was?240 in the red with a week still to go before Stegs received his pay.
‘We can’t carry on like this,’ she said in a voice that was a mixture of angry and pained, a tone peculiar to her that he always thought would have been better suited to someone who’d been constipated for a week and wanted to blame someone else for it.
Money had been becoming more and more of an issue recently. The missus’s sister was married to an insurance broker in the city called Clive who liked to flash the cash, and it was making the missus jealous. They also had a kid a couple of months older than Luke, a real ugly bruiser called Harry who had a flat, bashed-in face that looked like it had been used as a hammer by Mike Tyson, but who was always dressed up in the latest designer clothes. Clive, the missus’s sister and young Frankenstein were off to a villa in the south of France for three weeks in August, and had invited the Jenner family along. The missus wanted to go but Stegs wasn’t keen on the idea. He’d said it was because they couldn’t afford it, but in reality it was much more to do with the fact that he couldn’t stick Clive, who was about as full of life as the Unknown Soldier. But since then the missus had got it into her head that Stegs was going to have to change jobs in order to solve their financial woes and put them in a position where they could go on fancy holidays and dress Luke up in the manner he deserved. Not that the little bugger appeared too bothered about his sartorial elegance as he sat there drooling lumpy porridge all over his romper suit.
Stegs decided to use the nuclear option and nip this broadside in the bud by telling her that Vokes had been the officer killed yesterday, and that he himself had been present only minutes before it had happened. It had the desired effect. Her hand went to her mouth, and her eyes widened. ‘Oh God, Mark. It could have been you. Are you all right, baby?’ She grabbed him in an intense hug, crumpling the Visa bill against his dressing gown, and causing a burst of jealous displeasure from Luke who started screaming and spraying bits of porridge everywhere. The missus was not a big woman — in fact, her mother thought she was too thin (mind you, the mother was pushing fifteen stone) — but on that morning she had a grip of steel, and Stegs felt himself losing breath.
‘It’s all right, love,’ he gasped. ‘I’m fine. It’s going to be OK.’ Not if you don’t fucking let go of me, it won’t.
She sobbed silently into his shoulder, unlike Luke who sobbed loudly into his ear, occasionally hitting it with pieces of half-eaten shrapnel. Stegs felt bad that he’d broken it to her like he had, and not for the first time he cursed himself for being so thoughtless. She didn’t have the most comfortable of lives at the moment and he ought to go a bit easier on her.
She pulled away from him and turned her attention instead to Luke. ‘It’s all right, Lukey, Lukey, Lukey. It’s OK, babe. Mama’s here now.’ Like a wild animal who’d met his match, Luke calmed down and his screams became the occasional hiccoughing sob. The missus took the porridge spoon from Stegs and began refilling her son’s face. He gave Stegs a nasty look out of the corner of his eye, as if to say, ‘Watch it, she’s mine.’ Stegs, to his shame, gave him one in return. That kid was going to have to learn a bit of respect.
The missus turned to him, still feeding Luke. She’d recovered now, but there were still tears in her eyes. She’d only met Vokes twice — once when they’d gone round there for dinner, and another time for a meal in the West End (neither occasion had been very successful, in part due to Gill’s rampant Christianity, which meant you had to be careful what you said) — but she was aware that Stegs had worked with him for a while, and that they were close. ‘Have you spoken to Gill?’ she asked.
‘Not yet. I will do, though.’
‘Poor thing. It’s going to be awful for her.’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘Imagine losing your husband like that. And with kids as well. You’re going to go round and see her, aren’t you?’
He didn’t feel any better about doing it than he had the previous night, but he knew he didn’t really have much choice. ‘I’ll go and see her later today. She’ll probably have her family and the police round this morning.’
‘It’s just so. . so awful, Mark. What happened?’
Stegs didn’t like talking about his job with the missus. He never had. To be fair, she’d never been that interested, and on those occasions when she had asked, he’d always cited security reasons for not saying too much. This time, though, he knew he wasn’t going to get away without at least telling her something, not least because she was going to be able to get most of the details from the news and the papers, so he gave her as brief a rundown as possible of what had happened, making no mention of his suspension. In his story, he’d been at the scene in one of the other rooms, but at no time had he been in any danger. Vokes had been the one taking the risks (Stegs explained that he didn’t get directly involved in the more dangerous situations, describing his responsibility as back-up, which she seemed to buy) and, unfortunately, things had gone wrong. ‘He was just unlucky, you know. It’s very, very rare that these jobs go tits-up.’