Stephen Leather - Tango One

The constable continued to stare at Warren contemptuously. Warren forced a grin and winked.

"You have a nice day, yeah?" he said and walked away.

Warren's heart was pounding, but the only visible sign of his anger was the clenching and unclenching of his hands. He would have liked to have confronted the officer, at the very least to have hit back verbally, but he'd long ago learned that such confrontations with authority were pointless. There was nothing he could say or do that would change the way the man behaved. It was best just to smile and walk away, although knowing that didn't make it any easier to swallow.

Three Jamaican teenagers were huddled outside a news agent wrapped up in gunmetal-grey Puffa jackets with gleaming new Nikes on their feet.

Warren nodded at the tallest of the youths.

"What's the story, PM?"

PM shrugged carelessly and scratched the end of his nose. His real name was Tony Blair and he'd been given the nickname the day that his namesake was elected to Number 10. A scar stretched from his left ear to halfway across his cheek, a souvenir of a run-in with a group of white football supporters a few years earlier.

"Jimmy T. took a couple of slugs in the back. Should have seen him run, Bunny. Like the fucking wind. Almost made it."

Warren shook his head sadly. Jimmy T. was a fifteen-year-old runner for one of the area's crack cocaine gangs.

"He okay?"

"He look dead as dead can be."

"Shit."

"Shit happens," said PM.

"Specially to short-changers."

That what he did?"

"Word is."

Warren gestured with his chin over at the police investigators.

"You told the Feds?"

PM guffawed and slapped his thigh.

"Sure, man. Told 'em who killed Stephen Lawrence while I was at it."

All three youths laughed and Warren nodded glumly. Shootings were a regular occurrence in Harlesden, but witnesses were rarer than Conservative Party canvassers at election time.

"You saw who did it?"

"Got eyes."

Warren looked expectantly at PM. The teenager laughed out loud but his eyes were unsmiling.

"Shit, man, I could tell you but then I'd have to kill you."

Warren smiled despite himself. He wondered how much PM would have told him if he'd been standing there in a police constable's uniform.

"You look wound up, Bunny-man. You want some puff?"

"Nah, I'm sorted. Gotta get back to the house."

"You got a chauffeur, Bunny?"

Warren kept smiling but he could feel his heart start to race.

PM couldn't have seen him getting out of the Vectra, so someone must have seen the car picking him up from his house that morning.

"Minicab," he said.

"Anywhere interesting?"

Warren chuckled at the question.

"Yeah, PM. I could tell you…" He left the sentence unfinished.

PM guffawed.

"Yeah, but you'd have to kill me," he said, nodding his head as if to emphasise each word.

Warren made a gun from his right hand and mimed shooting PM in the chest.

"You take care, PM."

"Back at you, Bunny-man," laughed PM.

Warren headed back to the main road, his head down, deep in thought. He was still annoyed at the attitude of the uniformed constable, and he wondered if the man would have treated him any differently if he knew that Warren was also a policeman. Maybe he would have been more civil, thought Warren, cracked a joke perhaps, but it wouldn't have changed the way the man thought about him. The constable's contempt might have been hidden but it would have still been there. He would see the uniform, but it was Warren's colour that would determine the way he behaved.

PM would react to the uniform, not to Warren's race. If he'd known that Warren was a police officer, there would have been no chat, no banter, just hostile stares and a tight face. His type closed ranks against authority, the authority of the white man.

Warren lost out either way.

Warren sighed. He'd wanted to join the Met because he believed that he could make a difference, but Latham had been right: he'd do more good by playing to his strengths, rather than trying to fit into the established system. On the street, undercover, his colour would be a strength. Trapped inside the uniform, it would be a weakness. Could he spend his career hanging around the likes of PM and his posse, though, pretending to be one of them so that he could betray them?

Warren felt confused, and the more he tried to work out how he felt, the more confused he became. While he'd been sitting opposite Latham in the office, it had all seemed so simple; but on the streets of Harlesden, what the senior police officer had proposed looked less attractive. It meant living a lie. It meant betrayal. Being a police officer was about being a part of a team; working with colleagues you could rely on, working towards a common aim, Us against Them. Latham wanted Warren to be one of Them.

Warren shook his head as he walked. No, Latham didn't want him to be one of Them. He wanted Warren to be in a no-man's land; part of the police force but separate from it, part of the criminal community but there to betray it. A lone wolf.

Jamie Fullerton tossed his suit on to the bed, ripped off his shirt and tie and started doing vigorous press-ups. He breathed deeply and evenly as he pumped up and down, pausing every tenth dip and holding himself an inch above the bedroom carpet before resuming his rhythm.

The doorbell rang and Fullerton froze, his torso parallel to the floor, his arms trembling under the strain. Fullerton frowned. He wasn't expecting anyone. He pushed himself to his feet and pulled on his trousers and buckled the belt. He hurriedly put on his shirt and fastened the buttons as he walked to the front door.

The man who'd rung his bell was almost a head shorter than Fullerton with thinning brown hair, a squarish chin and thin, unsmiling lips. He was carrying a laptop computer in a black shoulder bag.

"Jamie Fullerton?" he said.

"Maybe," said Fullerton.

The man extended his right hand.

"Gregg Hathaway. You're expecting me."

Fullerton shook Hathaway's hand. The man had a weak handshake and his fingers barely touched Fullerton's skin, as if he were uneasy with physical contact. Fullerton squeezed the hand hard and felt a tingle of satisfaction when he felt Hathaway try to pull away. He gave the hand a final squeeze before releasing his grip.

"Come on in," said Fullerton.

He stepped to the side and smiled as Hathaway walked by, rubbing his right hand against his jeans. There was something awkward about his right leg, as if it were an effort for Hathaway to move it.

"You don't mind showing me some form of ID, do you?" asked Fullerton as he closed the front door and followed Hathaway into the sitting room.

Hathaway had put his laptop case on the coffee table and was examining the books that filled the shelves on one wall of the room. He turned to look at Fullerton.

"Your name is James Robert Fullerton, you were born on April fifteenth twenty-six years ago, your parents are Eric and Sylvia, your father committed suicide after he lost the bulk of your family's assets in a series of badly advised stock market investments and your mother is confined to a mental hospital outside Edinburgh."

Fullerton swallowed but his throat had gone so dry that his tongue felt twice its normal size and he started to cough.

"Is that enough, or shall I go on?"

Fullerton nodded.

"You don't look like you're in the job."

"Neither do you. That's the point. Black with two sugars."

Fullerton frowned.

"Sorry?"

"You were going to offer me a coffee, right? Black with two sugars."

"Right. Okay," said Fullerton. It was only when he was in the kitchen filling the kettle that he realised how quickly Hathaway had taken control of the situation. The man was physically smaller than Fullerton, maybe a decade older, but with none of the bearing or presence that Latham had shown. Underneath the softer exterior, however, there was a toughness that suggested he was used to being obeyed.