Simon Kernick - The Crime Trade

‘That’s always the way,’ he said. ‘There’s no justice in this fucking world. Poor old Pete, I always liked him. Did you get to the funeral?’

Patrick shook his head and went back to pouring the rest of the beer, having seemingly lost interest in the conversation. ‘Nah, I didn’t,’ he replied eventually, and walked away with the pint.

They all fucked up in the end, thought Stegs. The small-time thieves, knifemen, the fences, the dealers, the thugs, all those who worked on the wrong side of the crime trade. They all thought they’d live for ever, breathing the ripe air of freedom, but it never worked like that. He’d always liked Pete, though. He’d been a laugh, a good bloke to be around. They’d had some good times together. Stegs tried not to picture him wasted and rasping in a prison hospital bed. Instead, he pictured a smiling Jack Brewster, the way he’d been before Frank Rentners had tattooed his back with a steam iron, and he remembered that Brewster too was now dead. Someone had garrotted him a few months back, then dumped his corpse in Mulgrave Pond in Woolwich, case unsolved.

They all fucked up in the end.

Stegs drained his drink and, catching Patrick’s eye, ordered another one.

At 6.45 on the morning after the failure of Operation Surgical Strike, I was woken by the shrill bleeping of the alarm. Immediately, my thoughts went back to the events of the previous day and I wondered if we’d got hold of O’Brien. They then moved on to the woman lying next to me, which served to cheer me up a bit. Tina Boyd’s a very attractive woman. I’m not bad-looking (honestly), but I can’t help thinking she’s a league or two above me. Still, if she wants to slum it, I’m not going to complain. I leant over and kissed the pale skin of her back; she groaned painfully, then mumbled something about me getting the kettle on. I took pity, hauled myself out of bed, and went through to the kitchen to do her bidding.

We’ve been together a few months now, Tina and I, even though it’s always been a rule of mine not to get involved with work colleagues after a particularly bad experience a long time ago. But sometimes you’ve just got to make an exception. You don’t get that many chances to get yourself into a decent relationship with a good-looking woman, and as the years fly by they get fewer and fewer, so one night last November when we’d been sat together in a car, staking out the home of a well-known local sex offender, I’d decided that it was now or never. I’ll be straight with you, I’m one of the world’s shyer people when it comes to making my feelings known to the opposite sex. Having been married for thirteen of the previous fourteen years, and involuntarily celibate for the other, I was a long way out of practice, but I’d had this feeling for a while that Tina might have some of the same feelings for me as I had for her, so it wasn’t an opportunity I wanted to miss.

But how do you go about it after fourteen years? I’d said, ‘Hey, look over there,’ and pointed in the vague direction of the house we were watching. She looked, and I leant over and kissed her on the neck, catching her unawares.

She’d then swung round and shot me an expression of shock, the sort I would imagine her pulling if a favourite uncle had just pinched her arse, and I got the sort of terrified sinking feeling I haven’t experienced since school.

‘John?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you just kiss me?’

‘I couldn’t help it,’ I said, trying without success to sound casual. ‘You’ve got a nice neck.’ Not a great line, I admit, but the best I could come up with in such difficult circumstances.

‘Oh, shit.’ She wasn’t looking at me as she said this, but rather over my shoulder in the direction of the pavement.

‘What is it?’ I demanded, turning my head.

Which was when she grabbed me by the short and curlies and gave them a squeeze that was halfway between affectionate and bloodthirsty.

‘Now we’re quits,’ she said, laughing.

There then followed one of those movie silences when we both looked at each other, wondering whether a fleeting kiss and a painful grope were going to lead to anything else.

After three seconds they did, and we kissed. Properly this time. Then finally carried on with the surveillance (which, unlike the relationship, never came to anything), and so far we haven’t looked back.

I came back into the bedroom with two cups of strong coffee. She was sat up in the bed now — naked, groggy and very desirable. I briefly thought about trying to get her interested in a bout of morning glory but knew that it would be a lost cause. Tina Boyd was not a morning person.

‘Are you feeling a bit better today?’ I asked, handing her one of the cups.

The previous night, when we’d got back to my flat in Tufnell Park, she’d talked about leaving the Force, saying she’d had enough of working so hard for so little reward, only to have everything blow up in her face. I think she felt that what had happened yesterday was partly her fault, and since it had cost the lives of six people, it had hit her pretty hard.

‘Not a lot,’ she answered, sipping her coffee. ‘The people killed yesterday are all still dead, and one way or another we’re going to have to prove that it wasn’t us who messed things up.’

‘Don’t blame yourself. Yesterday wasn’t your fault or mine. We did everything right in the build-up, and in the end we had nothing to do with setting up the final meet, so we’re in the clear. Remember that.’

She sighed loudly. ‘I know, but at the moment it doesn’t make me feel any better.’

I sat down on the bed and gave her a supportive smile. ‘You’re not still thinking about leaving, are you?’

‘How would you feel if I did?’

‘Are you going to?’

‘I’m thinking about it. I’ve got a degree, I could get a decent job. Something that pays more but with a lot less stress.’

‘We could do with you staying. You’re a good cop. We’re losing too many of them as it is. Soon there’ll only be me and Knox left.’

‘That’s the way it goes sometimes, John. It’s just not working for me at the moment, that’s all, and I can’t see it getting any better. It might do us some good as well. It’s hard work trying to keep the whole thing quiet at the station, and we do see a lot of each other. I don’t want either of us to start getting bored.’

She had a point, and I was pleased to hear that she thought our relationship was going somewhere. We didn’t live together yet but slept in the same bed more nights than not, and, although we never talked about the future and what it would bring, I’d already upped the ante by introducing her (fairly successfully) to my twelve-year-old daughter, Rachel. The idea of us making something of it was a nice one. I still didn’t want to lose her from the job, though. I meant it when I’d said she was too much of a good copper, and I also meant it when I said that they’re getting rarer.

‘Just don’t make any hasty decisions,’ I told her. ‘Yesterday was a bad day. I don’t think either me or you’ll see a worse one, not on the job anyway.’

‘I’m thinking about it, that’s all.’ She took another sip of the coffee. ‘In the meantime, I want to get hold of that arsehole O’Brien.’

Which was as good a place to start as any.

In the car on the way into the station we didn’t speak much, letting BBC Radio 5 Live do the talking. The events at Heathrow appeared to be the hot topic of the day. By now most of the main details were in the public domain and it had become clear that a Scotland Yard sting had gone horribly wrong; that one police officer (name as yet unreleased) had been killed; and that, incredibly, the targets of the sting had themselves become a target for a group of armed robbers, one of whom had managed to shoot someone dead before he himself had been killed by armed officers. From the DJ to the breathless people phoning in, no-one could quite believe what had happened. Some of the callers bemoaned the fact that this sort of thing could take place in England, others seemed genuinely pleased that the police had finally become what Derek from Brent described as ‘trigger-happy’. He claimed that it was about time the coppers started hitting the criminals. ‘Normally the bastards’ll do anything not to hurt them. It’s pathetic. The law’s a joke. All softly softly and make sure you don’t upset anyone.’ He’d continued on with this rant for several more minutes, veering between supporting and criticizing the police, but remaining happy that they’d managed to kill three gunmen. ‘I bet they was all black as well,’ he’d added, at which point the DJ had cut him off, saying that there was no need for that sort of talk.