by Bill James
‘And, then, yes, think Reservoir Dogs. You’ll remember, Tim Roth, the cop spy playing gang member, “Mr Orange”, has to join in the very self-same diamond robbery he has already tipped off his chiefs about, and gets fatally gut-shot by the actual ambush police answering his whisper. Could you face that kind of agonizing irony? Again I say, you possibly shouldn’t mess with undercover if not, because undercover can be very messy.’
Esther chewed on that lot. Of course, she’d known already that undercover presented deeply troublesome, hellishly slippery issues of right and wrong. And, also of course, she’d heard the tale and the rumours about an Assistant Chief Constable, Desmond Iles, whose ground lay not all that far from Fieldfare. Apparently, Iles had very reluctantly authorized the placement of an undercover detective in a local criminal band. * Soon, though, this officer’s real identity got known to the gang, and he was garrotted. Police arrested two men for the murder and prepared what they considered an irresistible case. The court acquitted both. But not long afterwards the pair were found dead, also garrotted. These killings remained a mystery. Some described them as ‘rough justice’. But, surely, police dealt in justice as plain justice, not justice with fancy adjectives stuck on. Esther tried to believe no Assistant Chief would carry out such tit-for-tat attacks, regardless of how racked he might have felt for sending a man undercover, so causing his death. And regardless of how enraged he might reasonably have felt at the perverse failure of the court to convict. She found herself confused by the issues involved here. Did the two villains deserve what came their way, though from no court? Should a senior police officer think like that? ‘“Vengeance is mine,” saith the Lord,’ in the Bible, really emphasizing that ‘mine’. There’s no mention of Assistant Chief Constables.
She liked to think the Fieldfare sessions might bring clarity to these debates she had with herself. And maybe Officer A did offer a kind of clarity, though not a soothing kind. He slapped the problems in front of you squarely, brutally, almost insubordinately, and more or less told you to get lost if such insoluble moral conundrums deeply niggled your pious, prissy soul making you not much more use than a judge. The conundrums deeply niggled Esther’s soul. She’d stay for the full Fieldfare course, though. It was such a treat to get away from Gerald and his little rages. She gathered Desmond Iles totally forbade undercover in his Force since those rough events on his patch, so he probably wouldn’t be at this conference. No nominal roll of those attending had been issued, of course; further security.
Esther hoped Officer A would eventually reach something that could truly be called a personal narrative, as described in the advertisement for this session, i.e. his own story, rather than displays of disdain, tailoring, bum-sucking servility, brilliant footwear and toughness. He did. Soon, he described his selection for undercover duties via psychometric assessment at another of these huge, adapted, Home Office Victorian houses, Hilston Manor. Esther had naturally heard of it and of the magic art, psychometrics – mind and brain measuring. She’d never been to Hilston, though. It and psychometrics were an advance since her own undercover spells.
Now, Officer A grew very heavily technical. Jargon galloped back. Esther made some notes, though she didn’t understand everything she wrote. At the Manor, he said, they used a specially adapted character test based on the findings of the famous psychologist, Carl Jung. This had been originally designed to assess the ability of candidates for high posts in business to read and interpret information, then act on it. It had an obvious bearing on undercover work. A talked of ‘scale scores’, and the ‘high and non-negotiable requirement’ to reach a good, specified level at these skills before qualifying for Out-location. He told of ‘interaction complexities’, ‘profile dimensions’ and ‘fakeometers’, designed to expose those who gave false answers, to conceal unsuitable personality quirks. He mentioned what was dubbed at Hilston ‘the unconfined, or protean, persona’, meaning, apparently, the flair of A and others at becoming something one moment, and then its opposite the moment after, and then a modification of both, or of one, or neither, as thought necessary. ‘I’m sure you’ll all be familiar with Proteus, that classical sea god who could switch shape whenever he fancied.’
From here he went into accounts of his own undercover work in several settings, some requiring the status suits and shoes, some less formal. All these penetrations of villain firms had clearly been deeply dangerous, several successful, a few not, though he told of each absolutely deadpan: another from his stock of ready-made, adaptable, suitable faces.
But Esther realized she had come to think of him not as a face at all, more as a suit, shoes, a stance. The impact of the suit could certainly vary, depending on his stance, and the changeability somehow made it memorable. Although his face had massive changeability, too, this didn’t seem to register on Esther with the same vividness. His shoes, of course, kept their constant, gentle and gentlemanly splendour. And, yes, the suit, also, could at times look for ever just right, and mutedly but undeniably superior, like something worn by Sir Cedric Hardwicke in old films. Or, because of the way A hunched up his body or sidled or twitched, it could look entirely cheap-jack cut and sewn, probably from somewhere poky abroad where the Department of Health and Safety’s writ did not run, and where they’d never heard of the minimum wage; serviceable for a month or two until wear and tear set in; not quite the right size, though nearish; and very, very deniably superior. Sir Cedric would not have been seen dead in it, or even poorly.
His face, then, and physique? He was about six feet and 185 pounds, light on his feet, so necessary for the fashion pirouettes. He had full, reddish cheeks which, at some stages in his array of identities, could make him appear almost genial. His mouth seemed unusually wide and very ready to open up in a good grin of decently looked-after teeth, if the occasion could take it. Esther felt she would have trouble believing what a mouth like that said. But, then, she didn’t know many people whose every word she’d take as true. Who did? After all, lying had its treasured place in serious life. She was at Fieldfare to learn lying as a supreme and useful skill, an accomplishment, a necessary weapon, a revered instrument of good.
At Fieldfare, though, she felt manipulated. Of course she did. If you came on a management course you should expect to be managed. The Fieldfare programme aimed to show how to run ‘Out-located personnel’. At the same time, it had to persuade people like Esther into believing that Out-located work worked. Gravely bad tales about these operations flourished. Think of ACC Desmond Iles. Think of Reservoir Dogs. At Fieldfare they did not attempt to hide the dark aspects. In fact, Officer A foregrounded them. Perhaps Officer B would, too. It was Officer A who brought Reservoir Dogs and the undercover man’s ultimately fatal wounds into the reckoning. Those organizing the Fieldfare session, and scheduling Officer A as an early speaker, must know they had an informed, worried, hard-nosed, sceptical audience who would reject any attempt to present undercover as pushover or routine. And so, Officer A with his harsh warnings and, possibly, Officer B, 1530–1630 hours, with more. The Fieldfare sessions resorted to frankness and honesty, because they couldn’t get away with less.
But, massively on the positive side for those in charge of the meetings must be the fact that Esther, and the rest of the ACPO audience, had signed up and travelled to them. It proved they wanted to run Out-location schemes; had, perhaps, been forced into wanting Out-location schemes because all other ploys hopelessly nose-dived. They needed Out-location. And they’d opted to get along to Fieldfare and hear the latest on how to do it, jargonized or not. Esther would probably have come, even without the bonus of getting shot of Gerald for a while.
All right, Desmond Iles might have decided he did not need Out-location, or found its possible price too great to contemplate – too great to contemplate again. That could be understandable. But Esther had never suffered such a catastrophe, and she, personally, had survived a stint Out-located. She thought Officer A’s warning that undercover might be too morally mes
sy for some of his audience came over as a challenge, not really a warning at all, and probably a challenge by intent. Who at the top of a police force wanted to be labelled dainty and/or prudish? Officers of their various high ranks were accustomed to finding more or less tolerable routes through tricky problems of conscience. Not many of them would be turned off by such apparent discouragement as A offered – or pretended to offer.
His lecture had obviously been choreographed to dispel those problems eventually, anyway, or at least to counter them. This was his object in describing the harsh, sophisticated selection methods of Hilston Manor. Such skilful shaping of his talk was what made Esther feel manipulated. But perhaps manipulated in a worthwhile cause? Officer A abandoned the theorizing now and went for practicalities: OK, OK, yes, he’d admit difficulties existed. So, he’d describe how to deal with them, diminish them. He stressed that only people who came certifiably through the intrusive, gruelling, psychometric tests at Hilston could be considered for undercover duties. This must cut risk. The tests would reveal hazardous, unacceptable weaknesses. And they would identify protective, inbuilt aptitudes. Watching A vary his personality, even his appearance, at the start of today’s show, she decided he must have been born to spy. That was obviously the impression he wanted to get across, and had been chosen by the organizers to get across. And the fact that he appeared here at all – had survived so many of these secret intrusions – proved, didn’t it, that Out-location really could be managed efficiently and securely, given correct selection? He wouldn’t be the only officer with an ‘unconfined, or protean, persona’.
Some formidable teasers did remain. She acknowledged this. Could it be right for any police officer, including an incognito police officer who, above all else, had to stay incognito – could it be right for him/her to witness serious crimes and do nothing, or even, for the sake of her/his play-acting, physically to take part in serious crimes? But this was the kind of footling, purist, unworldly objection judges might raise. Esther’s main job was, in fact, to get major villains in front of a judge – purist, footling, unwordly or not, as it chanced – and then hope for the best. She found when listening to and watching Officer A, that (a) yes, she could believe undercover might help, and (b) another yes, the risk to the spy you chose to commit was possibly justified; chosen from volunteers only, of course. And if your Out-located officer did have to take part in a crime, she’d heard one could seek on his/her behalf what was lumpily termed ‘participation authority’ from the Crown Prosecution Service. She wondered how often the CPS said OK, though.
* See Halo Parade
Chapter Three
Back on her own ground after Fieldfare, Esther found it was Officer B’s talk she remembered best. That might be because B dealt only with the practical: no theorizing, no theology, no hearty kicking around of bouncy moral questions. Instead, B was good on organizations and their structure, a subject Esther liked more than ethical jigsaw puzzles. For instance, months before she went to Fieldfare, Esther and a couple of her most senior CID people had tried to draw a structure plan of the so-called Cormax Turton Guild, the most successful, long-lasting, rich and ruthless crime corpus on their patch. Yes, they had the plan and thought it eighty-five per cent accurate, with Cornelius Max Turton still influential and so far untouchable at the top, despite his retina trouble and arthritic knees and knuckles. Immediately beneath him, and actually responsible for the running of the firm, including all waterfront activities since, at the latest, the famous carnage on 17 November 2004, came Ambrose Tutte Turton, aged forty-one, a nephew, and thirty-seven-year-old Nathan Garnet Ivan Crabtree, nicknamed Palliative, one of Cornelius Max’s grandchildren, second son of his daughter, Annette Veronica Crabtree, and her first husband, Brent Holywell Crabtree.
Brent, of course, became better known after death than when alive and busy, because his obituary in The Times caused noisy protests, not on account of what was said but because it appeared at all, though down the page with a very small photograph, beneath an American woman jazz singer’s and a Classics professor’s. Some readers, MPs, other papers and bishops thought The Times should not allow even this limited publicity to a renowned ex-crook. But, in a hit-back article by one of the editors later, The Times argued that it was actually the scale of Brent Crabtree’s dark renown that made his obituary necessary, in the same way as Hitler’s, Stalin’s and Pol Pot’s deaths had been registered in the paper’s graveyard. The test was not the virtue of the deceased but his/her influence on, and her/his fame or notoriety in, society locally, nationally and possibly abroad. By this standard, Brent Holywell Crabtree had probably earned his broadsheet obit. And the way he died, of course, as well as that Moroccan episode, added the sort of fizz journalists liked. Below Cornelius, Ambrose and Palliative in the Guild structure diagram prepared for Esther, there were occasional uncertainties and alterations, as there might be in any company’s chart, but the general picture remained pretty well correct.
Yes. Yet, although they had the shape of the Guild reasonably right, they still couldn’t stop it operating and winning and growing. And it was this agonizing, humiliating failure that ultimately sent Esther to Fieldfare. She had decided Cormax Turton would have to be quietly, very quietly, intruded upon. Given large luck, resolution and professionalism, in that order, the Guild might be picked to pieces from within.
At Fieldfare, Officer B spoke for about half her time on crooked hierarchies and their systems. As B said, undercover presumed a powerful, aggressive villain empire. Undercover was no use in freelance, private lawlessness. There had to be some complicated, thriving outfit to enter, stay with, get approved of by, trusted by, promoted in, depended on. And to observe, document and parcel up for jail.
Officer B: Meet Ms Vamoose
She was what Esther thought of at first as a ‘hearty piece’ – open-faced, cheery-looking, hair mousy-to-blonde and worn in a shallow fringe to just over the ears, slightly above middle height, not too thin, big-voiced, apparently a bit offhand – though that could be put on – a couple of years younger than A, and nowhere near his league for clothes. She wore a blue and white striped shirt, perhaps a man’s, run-of-the-mill jeans and trainers – the trainers not new – no jewellery, except a big square wristlet watch; eyes blue-black that methodically went left–right, right–left three times over every member of the audience and maybe stored a print of each. Afterwards, she could probably have done a seating scheme with a precise description of all her listeners in their proper spots. This comforted Esther. She felt B might be a fan of elementary method and order and would apply these to the frighteningly shifty and shifting practice of undercover work. True, Officer A had eventually become businesslike and basic in his talk, too, but Esther’s early impression, based only on the look of B, was she would treat almost nothing but the businesslike and basic, and Esther approved of this. She wanted to feel assured that undercover and its strengths and infinite, perilous snags could be nicely tabulated, and regulated. She liked tabulating.
And B knew plenty about the perilous snags. She began with them: ‘You might want to pull your rumbled undercover officer out of the villain stockade in a hurry and with no farewell party or leaving present,’ she said, ‘just, vamoose. Especially no leaving present. Me: I had to come out in a hurry last time. Why I’m talking to you. How I’m talking to you. Me, I’m your vamoose paradigm, ladies and gentlemen. Yes, such a hurry. Now they see me, now no way. But, look, this was not defeat. In fact, a plus. The getaway procedures worked. As I said, why I’m talking to you, how I’m talking to you. Me, I’m here and OK. And I’m ready to go back. Not into the same firm, of course, nor even in the same bit of the country. The word will be around and my description. Hair dye and specs, plus handlebar moustache and bumper bra won’t make me safe there or thereabouts. But in principle, the withdrawal was fine. See it as like using the escape chamber from a submarine stuck on the sea bottom. Big crisis at the time and scary, but, afterwards, just a handy experience extra. And a com
fort – one has shown it can be done and one has done it. Why I’m talking to you. How I’m talking to you. The Song Of The Man/Woman Who Has Come Through.’ Her cheery face grew a few degrees more cheery. She had tidily proved, at least to herself, that risk, properly dealt with, brought brilliant rewards. When they charted her morale at Hilston the graph line must have speared through the frame top. She’d have led a 1940 advance on Berlin from Dunkirk beach.
B said: ‘Well then, what is the typical shape of the kind of firm you’ll send someone to infiltrate? But, hang on, hang on . . . you’ll ask is it possible – sane – to generalize? I think so, I think so. However, let’s start with a negative, shall we? When we talk about an organized criminal gang, this doesn’t mean like, say, the way an army regiment is organized, or an aircraft carrier, with clear lines of command, or ICI, or the C of E, or even a police force. It’s going to be more ad hoc and loose than those. If there’s a family element – very often the case – think of the Krays, and the Corleones, and some of the eternal south-east London crook teams – yes, when there’s a family side, this may give a kind of natural shape – perhaps, dad at the top, as long as he’s still got his marbles and balls, and the offspring in middle-management spots, or below. So, Vito Corleone, the godfather; then his sons and adopted son running lesser jobs, until the eldest boy is tommy-gunned to shreds on the toll bridge; the next son, Fredo, turns out weak; Vito gets doddery; Michael, the youngest, takes over and kicks out Tom the adopted lad. Fiction, but not far from possible reality. We see that, even where there’s a sort of stability to things, based on powerful, wicked, holy kinship, it may be shaky, and therefore vulnerable to penetration.
