Simon Kernick - The Crime Trade

Put bluntly, it had been a fuck-up of the first order, and afterwards Stegs had blown his top on Flanagan. ‘He called him a lot of names,’ said Clay. ‘Some real choice ones. Told him in no uncertain terms that he should have known that Brewster, the guy who was their contact, had been under suspicion, and made sure that they had proper back-up. I assume you know Flanagan?’

I nodded. ‘Yeah, I know him,’ I said with the right degree of ambivalence.

‘Well, you know what a wanker he is, then.’ I didn’t say anything so he continued. ‘Instead of holding his hands up and admitting he’d made a mistake, he reported Stegs to his bosses at SO10 and here and accused him of gross insubordination. Stegs ended up being disciplined, and almost got put back in uniform. I think if I hadn’t stood up for him, he would have been too.’ He lit a new cigarette with the butt of the old one. ‘And Flanagan ends up being promoted, even though the bloke he’s meant to have been sorting out, Frank Rentners, is still in business down there and doing very fucking nicely thank you. Now there’s justice for you.’

So that explained a few things. No wonder the two of them hadn’t got on. No wonder, too, that Flanagan hadn’t exactly been effusive in defence of Stegs’s character and innocence in the meeting this morning.

I didn’t say anything to Clay about any of this. Instead, I asked about Stegs’s disciplinary record aside from the Flanagan incident and was told, with some reluctance, that he’d been cited twice in the past: once for assaulting a prisoner nine years previously when he’d still been in uniform, and the other time for embellishing his expenses. That had been three years ago. I asked what had happened.

‘He just added a few things in that maybe he shouldn’t. The amounts involved weren’t a lot — a few quid here and there, that’s all. It happens, you know that.’ His look told me that if I thought that fiddling the expenses was a big deal, then I wasn’t living in the real world.

I told him I knew it happened, and after a few more minutes the meeting drew to a close without me uncovering anything else of any note about Stegs Jenner, other than confirming the fact that his boss liked him, which I suppose was one thing, although I wasn’t sure that a character reference from someone so jaded and tired as DCI Tom Clay was that much of a recommendation of innocence.

I stopped off back at the nick on the way to my meeting with Naresh Patel to go on the system and check Stegs’s record within the Force. It was pretty much what Clay had said: a not exactly spotless disciplinary record, which was probably why he’d never risen above DC level, but nothing too untoward or crooked, and nothing that Clay hadn’t mentioned. On the expense fiddles there were no details of the money involved, and I decided to take Clay’s word for it and assume the amounts weren’t a lot, since his penalty had only been a fine, not a demotion.

I arrived for the interview five minutes late (problems on the Victoria Line), and Patel, who I suspected worked to office hours, was keen to get started. However, if I thought that this would make him keep it short, I was very much mistaken. A bookish young man you’d probably avoid going to the pub with, he was a real stickler for detail and made me go over, step by excruciating step, what I’d seen, when I’d seen it and whether or not any of it could have been avoided. Were adequate warnings given to the suspects? Was it a life-threatening situation? I know he was only doing his job but I felt like grabbing him by the collar and telling him that when criminals are brandishing guns — particularly when they’re already in the process of using them, as they had been on that day — then it’s always a life-threatening situation; and if you’re the copper who’s unlucky enough to have your finger on the trigger then maybe you might pull it a couple more times than regulations insist. It’s easy to stand back at a safe distance and raise doubts about whether the SO19 officers had acted beyond their remit; it’s a lot harder to decide when you’re on the spot. And that’s the problem we have as coppers. Not only are we up against the criminals, we’re also up against the establishment as well. They might be trying to be fair and impartial, but, ultimately, the only people who end up benefiting from their actions are the ones who least deserve it. You know what they say. The road to hell and all that. .

As it was, I stated categorically at every available opportunity that I hadn’t seen a single officer do anything wrong. ‘It was a botched operation,’ I concluded, ‘in so far as unforseen elements compromised it and caused the shooting to start, but it was ended as professionally as possible by the people on the ground.’ I’d practised that phrase on the way over there and it came out just right.

‘And do you have any idea what caused the arrival of these unforseen elements?’ Patel asked in slow, careful tones tinged with natural distrust, as if he half expected my reply to be a lie. ‘How they could have known this alleged drug deal was happening?’

‘At the moment,’ I said, ‘none whatsoever.’

His nod of acknowledgement had something of the sceptical about it. ‘Thank you,’ he said, after a supremely long pause, switching off the tape recorder. ‘I may need to speak with you again.’

It was six o’clock by the time I left and a wet, and unseasonably cold, drizzle was falling over the cacophony of central London’s dirt-fumed rush hour. Even Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, those grand bastions of the city’s tourist trade, looked forlorn. Definitely a good night to be getting home.

When I got back to the nick to collect my car, it was half-six and the murder squad meeting had broken up. Apparently, they were round the Roving Wolf with members of the station’s CID, enjoying a few end-of-week drinks — a loose tradition not harmed by the fact that the start of the weekend usually heralded another two days’ work for most of us. On another night I would have stopped by and joined them for a couple, but tonight tiredness got the better of me and I drove straight home.

It was five to seven when I shut the front door of my flat behind me for the last time that night. The first thing I did was try Tina’s mobile, but she wasn’t answering. When I’d spoken to Flanagan earlier, he’d told me that she’d called to say that she wasn’t going to make the meeting either, and I wondered whether she’d picked up a lead. If so, I’d find out soon enough. I was expecting her round later, as I did most nights these days.

I pulled a beer from the fridge, then sat down in front of the TV, trying to push the thoughts of the day out of my head. A copper can work too hard, and sometimes I felt I was almost living my cases and that, aside from Tina, and perhaps my daughter, they were the only things governing my existence. I needed a holiday. We both did. I hadn’t had a trip abroad for two and a half years, when I’d spent two weeks in Barbados with my ex-wife and daughter. It had been a good time — good food, good weather, a little bit of scuba diving — but it also felt like a long time ago. I wondered how to broach the subject of going away together to Tina. Something like that would make our relationship official at the station since there was no way we could both take time off at the same time without it being commented upon, particularly when we’d be coming back with suntans. But I didn’t much fancy going on my own, so something was going to have to give.

Tina came back at seven-thirty, looking tired, but still as gorgeous as ever. The drizzle outside had turned into a downpour and her hair was tousled and wet, curling up around the smooth, pale skin of her face. I immediately got a surge of lust that knocked the cobwebs off my exhaustion straight away. She came over and gave me a kiss on the lips. I could smell the scent of her skin, and the lust went into overdrive. A tubful of Viagra wouldn’t have had a more positive effect.