‘Notwithstanding,’ he said, in that lawyer-speak he favoured, ‘this must never be allowed to happen again. You do understand that? Bobby Mahoney does understand that?’
‘Of course,’ I told him, ‘that’s why I am here personally. That’s why Mister Finney has accompanied me today.’
‘Good,’ he said as if the matter was concluded, ‘would you walk with me in my garden?’
I nodded, assuming he didn’t just want to show me his rhododendrons. Finney and I both rose with Amrein and the bodyguard opened the French windows for us to step through. Amrein looked at Finney, ‘would you excuse us for a time?’ he asked. Finney looked at me for confirmation and I nodded. Amrein and I walked out onto a manicured lawn so immaculate he must have had a platoon of Eastern-Europeans attacking it each morning with nail scissors.
‘There are some matters I don’t like to discuss in front of employees. Ours or yours,’ he told me.
‘Please,’ I urged him, ‘speak freely.’
‘I will. Thank you.’ He assured me, ‘the Drop has never been late before. Not once. Not in all these years,’ we were walking across the lawn, heading for a clump of trees by a wall at the far end, ‘of course you don’t have to give me an explanation,’ he said calmly but I was left with the impression that it would be much better for us if I did.
‘A little local difficulty,’ I assured him.
‘Local difficulty?’ he mulled that ambiguous phrase over, clearly unsatisfied by it.
‘An employee of ours turned out to be untrustworthy,’ I said, bending the truth a little.
‘Mmm, I see.’
‘All organisations have them,’ I said, ‘just as all major businesses have problems from time to time. That’s not what matters. What matters is how you deal with those problems.’
‘And you have dealt with this… problem?’
‘It’s in hand,’ I assured him.
‘Good,’ he said firmly. ‘There is one other thing; Serious and organised.’
‘Expressing an interest in us?’
‘Yes,’ he said calmly, as if an old family friend had been asking about our wellbeing. My heart sank. One of the reasons we paid the Drop every month was to avoid the close attention of SOCA. Perhaps DI Clifford was right after all.
‘They aren’t even policemen,’ I said dismissively, ‘just glorified customs officers,’
‘Technically speaking, they are not actual police officers – but that will be of little consolation to any of us if they succeed in bringing Bobby Mahoney down.’ He was right and I was more worried than I let on. Because SOCA was relatively new, it was still a bit of an unknown quantity. ‘We’ve heard they’ve opened another file on Mister Mahoney. They developed a strong interest in certain aspects of his business following that very public and regrettable incident in Ibiza.’
‘That was more than two years ago,’ I reminded him.
We’d been looking for a share of the action in Ibiza for some time. The Scousers had had the whole island tied up for years and were making a fortune. The place had a steady supply of clubbers looking for Es and blow and the customs officials were woeful; undermanned, under-resourced and frankly uninterested. Keeping it all to themselves was just being greedy, though we realised the Scousers wouldn’t see it that way. We reached an accord of sorts, eventually, but not before they lost a couple of their lower level men in a very public shoot-out with some of Bobby’s young turks. Apparently both sides were driving parallel at high speed along the highway, trying to shoot the shit out of each other, till one car overturned, killing the Scouse dealers. It was all very unsubtle and it took quite a bit of sorting out but we got there in the end. Why? Because of the cash and because, whatever you might see in the movies, nobody really wants to be at war. They just want the money to keep on flowing like water.
‘Everybody knows what Bobby does,’ I told him, ‘proving it is the issue and nobody has ever come close to that.’
‘Indeed, which is why their new-found interest concerns us,’ Amrein cleared his throat and continued, ‘what do they have? Why are they sparing man hours when they cannot afford to waste time on no-hope investigations? In short, what have they got on Bobby Mahoney?’
‘Are these rhetorical questions?’ I asked, ‘or are you going to tell me what you’ve found?’
‘They have an insider,’ he said, ‘somebody in your business, someone who has enough information to put a case together against Mister Mahoney that will lead to a conviction, and a very long prison sentence.’
I was stunned. ‘There are only half a dozen men in our organisation who could even attempt to do that.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘and you are one of them.’ He looked me in the eye and smiled, ‘that should narrow it down for you when you begin your investigation. You are responsible for Mister Mahoney’s security are you not?’ I nodded, ‘then you have work to do, if you are to keep him from dying in prison.’
‘We pay handsomely for this kind of information,’ I reminded him, ‘is that all you have for me? What about a name?’
‘We are working on that, I can assure you,’ it was my turn to look unimpressed, ‘for some time now we have been attempting to infiltrate SOCA,’ he continued, ‘recently we succeeded in getting a man into HUMINT, the department responsible for Covert Human Intelligence.’
‘I know what it is. They turn and run sources,’ in other words they recruited rats, sometimes for money, sometimes for the promise of a place on the UK equivalent of the witness protection programme. It was just like DI Clifford had described it. Most often these guys turned against their bosses because they had been caught red-handed doing something that would get them twenty years on its own. Then they received a simple choice: go down for the rest of your natural life or grass up your boss. The only trouble with choosing to be a rat is the strong chance the boss’ll find out about it and shut you up forever before you get near a trial. ‘So if you have discovered there’s a rat, why don’t you have a name for me?’
‘It’s not that simple, as I am sure you will appreciate. Our man must move carefully. He can’t just tap into a computer file with the word ‘sources’ on it and look for a name he recognises. If he opens a file on Bobby Mahoney his accessing of it will immediately be logged and he will be exposed. His enquiries must be more circumspect.’
‘What if these circumspect enquiries take too long? What if our rat disappears into the programme next week and Bobby is arrested the next day?’
We’d all be fucked, me included. That’s what.
‘I’m afraid that’s a risk you must live with, for now.’
‘Easy for you to say,’ I said.
We had reached a glade and I noticed for the first time that, set back against the far garden wall was a little summer house. It had glass windows, an ornately carved door and a timber roof. It looked old, like it had been put up long before by a dutiful family man, so his wife and children could take afternoon tea here overlooking the lawn. It was hard to imagine a world as genteel as this could ever have existed.
‘Beautiful isn’t it?’ Amrein noticed I was looking at the summer house, ‘and so quaint, don’t you think, the product of a more innocent era. I think that is why I appreciate it so.’ We both stood in silence for a moment in front of this expensive little folly then he said, ‘thank you for coming down,’ as he offered me his hand and I shook it. ‘I will look forward to your next visit, which I feel certain will be more timely.’
‘It will be.’
He turned to look me in the eye, ‘I do hope so,’ he said it placidly, with a hint of the implied regret he would feel over what he would be forced to do if it wasn’t. As threats go it was very low key but he used those four simple words masterfully. They left me in no doubt that another late drop would simply not be tolerated.