He felt flat, washed through. Simon Rawlings had done him well, too damn well to have deserved betrayal and deceit. But that was the world of an undercover, level one. Everything exploited, and every man. No relationships allowed to count.
It had been the question at the interview board. ‘Let’s put this pretty crudely, Johnny — and my colleague will forgive me the vulgarity. You get to like people in the target area, you get a bit fond of them, you get to see the better sides of them, but the job says you have to fuck their lives. Screw them down, fuck them and walk away … Up for that, are you?’
The board had been a superintendent from the Murder Squad — it had been his question — a divisional commander, a woman in a starched blouse and a well-pressed uniform, and a psychologist, middle-aged, intense stare, not speaking but watching.
He’d said, ‘I would regard myself first and foremost as a police officer. My duty as a serving officer is to obtain evidence of criminal activity. It’s paramount. I’d do my job.’
The friend down in Bristol, the older man, had told him before he headed for London and the interview that he should not flannel his answers, should keep them brief and focused, that he should display honesty at all times, that he should be his own man.
The woman had asked, ‘Can you live on your own, Johnny? Can you survive in an environment that is a lie? Can you field the solitariness of the work, which is demanded by the deception? I promise you, it’s not easy.’
They had been the two big questions and they had stayed in his mind, with his reply: ‘I had a sort of childhood that wasn’t dependent on company. Left to myself, valued my own scene. Didn’t need a shoulder to cry on when I was a kid, and I haven’t been home since I walked out on them and joined up … I did two months in hospital, a convalescent, and I didn’t have a visitor. I’m fine on my own, doesn’t frighten me.’ He had set out his stall, had done it pithily, and his interview before the board had lasted only ninety-two minutes — those of others had lasted in excess of three hours. He’d known he was accepted. Brave words: I’d do my job … I’m fine on my own, doesn’t frighten me. More questions about his ability to live among druggies, alongside prostitutes, close up with paedophiles … Gutsy words spoken, but in the easy times and before they were tested.
He remembered a final statement from the Murder Squad man, who leaned back, sort of avuncular. ‘You, with your background, will reckon to be able to take care of yourself. With us, I’d like to emphasize, you’ll never be beyond the reach of help. We take the safety of our people very, very seriously. We ask them, after due consideration of realities, to go into unpleasant and dangerous situations, but we’re there all the time, close by. And if a situation deteriorates unexpectedly we’re not in the market for heroes. We expect our man to cut and run.’
He reached the steps of the house. He had moved into the room upstairs two weeks before joining the household of Josef Goldmann.
He unlocked the front door, picked up some circulars and started on the stairs.
Ahead of him, as he climbed, was a barely furnished top-floor conversion into a one-bedroom apartment: his home. Where he was alone, where no one needed his lies.
Chapter 4
Maybe it was because of his new status, but that morning he fancied he was more clearly watched.
An instructor had said during the training period, ‘The deeper you go into the organization, the more access you have, the closer you will be observed. The natural suspicion they harbour for an outsider cannot, ever, be totally erased. Each step up means greater care must be taken.’ They had done role-play at the start of the training, simple stuff: buying Class A drugs, dumping counterfeit money on a bureau de change, drinking till late, then they’d been quizzed abruptly about an area and the specifics of the legend, had been tested on their ability to lose the police ethic.
The front door had been opened for him by Grigori. Carrick was eyed, as if he was meat on a slab, no greeting or welcome offered. He could not have said whether his advance in the household made him, now, a competitor for Grigori’s position. He smiled warmly, but the gesture was not returned — and it was strange to him because it was hard to believe in danger when the whoops and shouts of the children billowed down the staircase, there was the smell of cooking from the basement kitchen and of fresh coffee. He’d gone down to the ready room.
An instructor had said, ‘You’ll think you can handle the isolation of the lie, but we don’t know, none of us does. Role-play is useful but it’s a poor substitute for actuality. If you’re going to crack, feel yourself slipping, then for God’s sake come out. Don’t take it as a failure of the macho-man you want to be. There’s no disgrace in not being able to field the pressure.’ They did sleep-deprivation, and slap-around questioning that left small bruises — and had lessons in the use of bugs, where to hide them, and the fixing of tags to cars. Seven of his intake had passed, but two had dropped out and never been referred to again. He’d done as well in his training as he had on his appearance before the selection board, and had told himself that pressure didn’t faze him, or stress.
The internal phone rang.
Viktor for him, to go upstairs. Grigori’s eyes were locked on him till he had gone out through the door. The briefing papers said that Grigori and Viktor were from Perm — wherever that was. They were believed to be former officers in a security police unit and were thought of as long-term associates, providing muscle for the family.
Viktor met him on the first floor. Hard, piercing eyes gazed into Carrick’s. Just the glance, nothing said. The look in the eyes gave Carrick certainty: nothing that he had done so far in the household had yet clinched trust. He wondered, a snap thought, what weapon Viktor had used in his past when he was enforcing protection. A pistol? Unlikely, too clean. A pickaxe handle was more likely. Fire, or power drills and cutters would have been the best and would have given him a rare thrill — like a jerk-off. He smiled again. His aim was to appear simple and straightforward, not stupid, to be a piece of furniture that was there and unnoticed. He reckoned Viktor would have loathed the very idea of employing foreign nationals in the house, but Viktor had only halting English, Grigori less, and the family needed to have around them men who were both reliable and familiar with roads, traffic, driving and … Viktor did not answer his smile.
‘You wanted me up here.’
Viktor jerked his thumb at a door. ‘Mr Goldmann waits you.’
He went through to the salon, used for entertaining, where the drapes were still drawn. The kids’ shouts, behind him and up another flight, were in Russian, but it was just kids’ noise and he sensed nothing of importance; but there had been nothing of importance. If the legend of Johnny Carrick had marked the actual limits of his life, and he had been a bodyguard, handyman, chauffeur to a Russian émigré businessman, who was clean and legitimate, he would have liked them. Nothing to complain about. But he had read a briefing paper, with an attachment, and lived a lie in the house. The family sitting room was at the end of the salon, and beside it was the door to the little office area that Josef Goldmann used. Maybe there was a tickle in Carrick’s throat, a cough he didn’t register, maybe there was a floorboard below the pile that was loose enough to creak. Whichever, the Bossman was alerted, and was in the office door, and he held two tickets — airline style — in one hand.