That was it. Given a chance of escape, all the anger and aggression seeped out of me and I turned and made a run for it, wondering what the hell was going to happen now that I’d made an enemy of the gangster some had taken to calling ‘the acid man’.
For a while, nothing did happen. I kept my head down, hoping that he’d forget about it, and got on with my work. In those days, like a lot of undercover officers, I only worked part-time for CO10, and I was back on my day job at Camden CID, a good few miles from Jason Slade’s stomping ground, when one day, about two weeks later, my boss, Dougie MacLeod, took me aside and asked me if there was anything I wanted to tell him.
Dougie was the kind of guy you didn’t try to bullshit. Like all the best coppers, he could smell it from a mile off, and as he sat behind his desk waiting for me to speak, I realized that he knew something. So I told him everything, throwing myself at his mercy, and saying I didn’t know what had come over me.
When I’d finished, he told me that Jason Slade had found out exactly who I was, as well as where I was based, and had put a contract out on my head. ‘He wants you dead for what you did to him, Sean. It made him look bad and it’s done a lot of damage to his reputation. Damage he’s very keen to repair.’
I couldn’t help but feel a small amount of satisfaction on hearing that, but unfortunately it was somewhat overshadowed by the fact that he was also willing to pay money to have me killed. There aren’t that many contract killers operating in south-east England, but there are more than enough to take Slade up on his offer.
‘How much is the contract for?’ I’d asked.
He gave me a dirty look, but I could tell that behind it he was amused. ‘Twenty grand. At least double what you’re worth.’
The thing was, he could have lectured me about how stupid I’d been. He could also have recommended me for disciplinary action. He could even have said he’d washed his hands of me and that I was going to have to sort it out myself. It was only a couple of years after my football hooligan infiltration op, which had all gone so badly wrong, so he’d have been justified if he had. But Dougie MacLeod wasn’t like that. He cared for his people and he was pragmatic enough to know how tough it could be being an under-cover operative.
Instead, he left me to sweat (which I duly did), then a week later he took me aside again and told me that the whole thing had been sorted, and that the contract was now rescinded. He also told me that he’d enrolled me on a course of specialist sessions with a psychiatric counsellor in an effort to sort out my problems, and that if I ever crossed the line again, that would be it. He’d make sure I was drummed out of the force.
It was years before I found out what had actually happened. Apparently, Dougie had talked to my boss at CO10, Captain Bob, who’d initially wanted to sack me but who’d eventually been persuaded by Dougie to give me a second chance. The two of them had then put the word out among London’s bigger underworld players that if the contract was carried out there’d be serious repercussions from the police, not only against Slade himself, but against all the capital’s organized criminals. It was all bluster, of course, but it must have done the trick because there was never any comeback from Jason Slade or any of his cronies, although the last I heard Slade was still running the Essex drugs scene, and sticking two fingers up at the authorities.
But the relationship between Dougie and me became strained after the Slade case, and although I worked hard to pay my debt to him by attending all my counselling sessions, and keeping as much on the straight and narrow as possible (and being largely successful at it too), eventually I came to accept that it was never going to be the same again, which was one of the reasons I ended up moving full-time to CO10.
I still missed Dougie and the old crowd at Holborn nick, though, and now and again, particularly when things weren’t going well in my life, I turned up at the Fox and Hounds, the pub round the corner where we used to drink. I needed some of the old camaraderie that night, so, after spending way too much time sitting at home trying to work out how I was going to get out of this latest situation, I took a round-about walk to the Fox and Hounds, stopping only to throw the gun I’d used that day — now dismantled and disinfected, missing the firing pin, and wrapped in several layers of cloth — in an overflowing skip on the way.
It was just after half past six when I stepped inside my old haunt for the first time in far too long. The pub was busy, but I recognized a few familiar faces in the crowd gathered round the bar, although fewer than I’d been hoping for. Dougie was there, of course, but then he’d always enjoyed a drink. He was talking to a group of about half a dozen people, and I was pleased to see that it included Simon Tilley, who’d joined Holborn CID in the same year as me, and who was one of the few people I’d stayed in touch with. They were all laughing and joking, and there was that feeling of camaraderie that I’d been missing for most of the last few years.
The problem with working undercover is you don’t get much of an opportunity to build relationships, either with colleagues or socially. You spend so much time living a lie that you begin to forget who you really are and what makes you tick. It was close to a year since I’d had a girlfriend, nearer five since there’d been anyone serious. Sometimes I thought about quitting undercover work and going back into CID, or maybe putting in to join Dougie MacLeod’s murder investigation team. But I knew I’d get bored if I did, because I’d miss the buzz that undercover work provided.
I reminded myself of that as I bought a drink at the bar and sauntered over towards the mêlée of coppers.
Simon spotted me straight away, coming over pint in hand and putting a friendly arm on my shoulder. ‘Hello, mate, haven’t seen you in a while. What brings you here?’
I told him I was just passing through, and he pulled me over to the main group. I caught Dougie’s eye and he smiled, with just a hint of awkwardness, and put out a hand. ‘Sean. How’s life at CO10?’
I told him things were OK and that we’d had a few decent results recently, pleased he hadn’t heard I was on long-term sick leave.
He nodded, looking distracted. ‘Well, it’s good to see you,’ he said, and I knew then, with real disappointment, that he was bullshitting, that he didn’t think it was good to see me. I wanted to tell him that I’d done all right in the end, even though the events of that day were still at the forefront of my mind, but there didn’t seem to be much point if he wasn’t listening, and anyway, Simon was already introducing me to several of his more recent colleagues.
I did the usual glad-handing thing as Simon explained to them I was now a big-time CO10 operative bringing down organized crime’s Mr Bigs. He then told me that they’d had a bit of a result themselves, catching the killer known as the Night Creeper. I was familiar enough with the case. It had had plenty of coverage in the media, and I knew that Dougie’s team had been heavily involved in the hunt for him because Simon had told me about it the last time we’d seen each other for a drink.
I talked about it with Simon and his colleagues for a few minutes, and it was clear they were all pretty elated that they’d nicked such a high-profile suspect, and that there seemed to be enough evidence to secure a conviction, which is always the hard part. I was pleased for them, but I also couldn’t avoid the feeling that I was an impostor. This was their result, not mine. Their celebration. Simon might have been making an effort to make me feel welcome, but it wasn’t really working, and I found myself quickly growing bored. And with the boredom came the reminder that I was a man potentially in a lot of trouble.