Stephen Leather - Tango One

They'd been sitting in the van outside Mark and Laura Gardner's house for almost twelve hours and had been about to call it a night when Den Donovan had arrived. There was no doubting it was Tango One: they had a dozen surveillance photographs of him sellotaped up around the darkened window that they were looking through. They'd photographed him arriving in the black cab and going into the house, and waited patiently for him to come out.

The man in the fawn raincoat had caught Vincent by surprise. She hadn't noticed him pull up in his Ford Fiesta and she had no idea how long he had been sitting there waiting for Donovan. The first she'd seen of him was when he walked up behind Donovan, his hand moving inside his raincoat.

Vincent's partner had sworn out loud.

"Fuck, he's got a gun!"

"Bollocks," Vincent had said, clicking away on the camera.

"If this was a hit, he'd have the gun out." As the words left her mouth she'd had a sudden feeling of doubt, that maybe she'd called it wrong, but she kept on taking photographs. She'd known she was right as soon as the man called out Donovan's name. If it had been a professional hit, the man would have shot Donovan in the head from behind, there'd have been no warning.

Vincent had been impressed by the speed with which Donovan had moved once he'd been aware of the man. There didn't appear to have been any fear on Donovan's part: he'd moved instinctively, putting the man down and then throwing himself on top. Vincent had kept on taking pictures while her partner continued to curse.

"Fuck me, look at that!"

They'd both watched as Donovan took the envelope from the man's pocket.

"What the hell's that?" Vincent's partner had asked.

"His lottery numbers," Vincent had said scathingly.

The man in the raincoat drove off in his Ford Fiesta.

"Fill in the log, Connor," said Vincent, still clicking away in the camera. She couldn't wait until her bosses at the Drugs Squad saw the pictures. She'd have to find a way to make sure that Connor was otherwise engaged that way she could claim more of the credit for herself.

Laurence Patterson kept Donovan waiting in Reception for fifteen minutes, but had the good grace to hurry out of his office apologising profusely. He pumped Donovan's hand and ushered him into his office.

"Got a client just been pulled in on a robbery charge, he's screaming blue murder. Sorry."

"Business is good, yeah?" asked Donovan, dropping down on to a low black sofa. A huge white oak desk dominated one end of the palatial office, but Patterson always preferred to talk to his clients on the sofas by the window and its expansive view of the City. Patterson's firm hadn't deliberately chosen the location to be close to London's financial powerhouses the offices were just a short walk from the Old Bailey, where the firm's criminal partners did most of their work.

"Busy, busy, busy," said Patterson, sitting down on the sofa opposite Donovan.

"Can I get you a drink?"

Donovan shook his head. He handed Patterson the writ that the solicitor's clerk had given him. Patterson read through it quickly, nodding and murmuring to himself. He was barely out of his thirties and Donovan had used him for almost seven years. Patterson had a razor-sharp mind, an almost photographic memory and had the ear of the best barristers in London. His father was a bigtime villain, now retired on the Costa Brava, whose coming-of-age present to his son had been the names and private telephone numbers of six of the most corrupt coppers in the UK. Patterson had helped get charges dropped against members of Donovan's team on several occasions. He wasn't cheap, nor were his police contacts, but they guaranteed results.

Patterson shook his head to the side, throwing his fringe away from his eyes. He had a long, thin face and a slightly hooked nose, and with his inquisitive eyes he had the look of a hawk on the hunt for prey.

"Seems pretty straightforward," he said.

"But you can overturn it, right? I want to take Robbie back to the Caribbean with me."

Patterson rubbed the bridge of his nose and screwed up his eyes as if he had the beginnings of a headache.

"Cards on the table, Den, it's not really my field. This domestic stuff is a specialised area. Would you mind if I pass you over to one of my colleagues?"

Donovan shifted uncomfortably on the sofa.

"I'd prefer you to handle it, Laurence."

Patterson grinned.

"Better the devil you know, eh?"

Donovan shrugged. That was part of his desire to have Patterson on the case. He know he could trust Patterson, and didn't relish the idea of having a stranger rooting through his personal business.

"We can do it that way, Den, but to be honest, all that would happen is that you'd talk to me, I'd run it by her, then I'd tell you what she told me."

"She?"

"Julia Lau. She's been here for donkey's and there's nothing she doesn't know about family law."

"Lau? Chinese?"

"That's right. And she's fucking inscrutable, Den."

Donovan wrinkled his nose. He still didn't like the idea of bringing in a lawyer he didn't know.

"You'd be better off having her arguing your case than me, Den. How's it going to look if you've got a criminal lawyer by your side in a custody fight? I keep people out of prison, Den. I don't discuss the finer points of parental control."

Donovan nodded.

"And she's dead safe, yeah?"

"Anything you tell her is privileged, Den. Like talking to a priest."

Donovan grinned.

"It's been almost thirty years since I spoke to a priest, and that was to tell him if he patted me on the backside again I'd set fire to his church. Okay, when I do I meet her?"

"I'll get her down now. I'll sit in on the initial briefing, yeah?"

"Cheers, Laurence."

Patterson went over to his desk and picked up his phone. While he was speaking, Donovan stared at a large canvas on the wall opposite him. It was about five feet wide and four feet high and was nothing more than three red squares on a yellow background. Donovan frowned as he looked at the painting, trying to work out what, if anything, the artist had been trying to say. The colours were vivid and the squares were accurately drawn, but Donovan couldn't see anything in the painting that a reasonably competent six-year-old couldn't have copied.

Patterson replaced the receiver and walked back to the sofas.

"How much did you pay for that?" asked Donovan, gesturing at the canvas.

"Fucked if I know," said Patterson.

"Purchasing gets them by the yard, I think."

"But you chose it, right?"

Patterson twisted around to get a better look.

"Nah, my secretary makes those sorts of decisions. They get rotated every few weeks."

"Yeah, it'd look better turned around," said Donovan.

"It's just something to look at. Makes the clients feel that we've got a creative side."

Donovan chuckled.

"You've got that all right," he said. Patterson's creativity had got him out of more than his fair share of scrapes, especially when he'd been named as Tango One.

There was a double knock on the door. It opened before Patterson had time to react, and Julia Lau walked in. She was one of the most unattractive women that Donovan had ever seen. She was overweight, bordering on obese, and her thighs rubbed together in a dark green trouser suit as she waddled over to the sofas, clutching a stack of files and notebooks to her large chest. Her face was almost circular, with thick-lensed spectacles perched precariously on the end of a bulbous nose. When she smiled she showed a mouthful of grey teeth.

"Mr. Donovan, so happy to meet you," she said, extending a hand. Her accent was faultless, pure English public school.

Donovan shook hands with her. She had pudgy, sausage-like fingers with ornate gold rings on each one and fingernails that were bitten to the quick.