In the Absence of Iles

by Bill James

  4. If a police brigade doesn’t – because I’m cute enough to guess it’s a trap – they’ll try some other cover-peeling ploy, and then another, until they’re satisfied, or not.

  ‘Because of “Dawn, Dawn, Dawn,” I knew it was time to leave. Oh, yes, debatable, almost always debatable – but, me, I left. I said to myself, “I’m half sick of shadows.” Self-eject. And the majority view of the chiefs back in my territory was I judged it right: no panic on my part, just good, subtle observation. Not a large majority said so, but a majority. Any undercover type would be content with that. It’s like, “Sod brass approval, I’m safe, undisfigured, unmaimed, undead.” If there’s some brass approval, that’s all right, too. OK, it’s not canonization, but not a stoning, either.’

  Chapter Four

  When it came to the push and they had someone more or less settled and safe and due to be productive within the Cormax Turton Guild, Esther found it weird to load the inspector heading the on-call aid unit with £1000 in old notes, no fucking fifties. The money bulked him out, put pounds on him, you might say. Obviously, the unit must also handle other emergency situations: it would be preposterously expensive to have a stand-by team only for possible undercover rescue. But possible undercover rescue was the main job and everyone taking part knew it.

  All the unit wore dark blue bullet-proof vests, which added inches to their chest measurements, anyway. And then the inspector – or, in fact, the inspectors, because, obviously, they would change every shift of this non-stop duty – the inspectors had to get a thick, rubber-banded wodge of mixed fives, tens, twenties and no fucking fifties into one of their pockets, and a pocket reached easily and fast if they stormed Guild nests and failed to find at once the undercover detective they had come to save and bring out. The money could not be split up and spread around several pockets in more manageable chunks: to avoid delay, the size of the bribe must be plain instantly, and its healthy concentration of fives, tens and twenties, and the inspired, savvy freedom from fucking fifties. This money would be offered only if things had come to look more or less hopeless. In the early stages, the purpose of the raid could not be disclosed and certainly not the name of the officer – not his/her real or any adopted name. The point was, he/she could still be somewhere within the firms with his/her cover intact: the raid might have been triggered in error. To start chucking the money about and asking for his/her whereabouts must expose him/her, and condemn him/her.

  Inspectors would already be festooned with gear – pistol, flashlight, cuffs, baton, walkie-talkie, laser gun, maybe: no good at all going streamlined on this kind of job. The thing about the money, though, was, yes, it made whoever carried it that little bit fatter, that little bit bigger as a side-on target, suppose the Guild expected a rescue onslaught, and hit back. The Guild had a reputation for hitting back – also for hitting first – generally at other, competing guilds, syndicates, firms, gangs like Claud Seraph Bayfield’s. But a police attack might also get blasted. The Guild looked after itself, had lasted and meant to keep on lasting. If the Cormax Turton had gone in for official notepaper, it could have included under its mastheaded name the impressive boast, ‘Established 1986’.

  Ultimately, Esther and the inspectors found that the best place for a currency bundle was the inside breast pocket of their combat jacket. The plump money mound lifted one side of the bullet-proof vest a couple of inches and got the inspectors the title, ‘One-tit-team-boss’, except for a woman inspector, of course. A little ritual occurred three times a twenty-four-hour day when the inspector standing down passed the special cash-wad to his/her replacement. Esther watched occasionally. It made her think of Swiss Guard troops after sentry duty ceremonially handing the keys of the Vatican to their relief unit. One possible gain: there must be a fine chance that, if an inspector were hit in the chest by a bullet, the body armour plus the lumpy plug of utterly non-fifties cash would stop it.

  To get the thousand from police funds, Esther had been obliged to do some smart, prolonged and earnest talking. Not everyone could be told what the sum might be needed for. Eventually, Esther did land it from the float used to pay informants their secret salaries and fees, which she could argue was the same shady ballpark. Even some of those who did understand how the cash might be spent thought the idea far-fetched. They couldn’t accept that during a frantic, all-out attack on the Guild there’d be any chance to do a late, desperate, swift, dab-in-the-hand, confidential deal with some nonentity member of the firm for pointers to the undercover officer’s whereabouts: obviously none of the family, Turton or Crabtree, themselves would be buyable. Oh, God, possibly nobody in the Guild would be. After all, who’d want to save a filthy spy, even for a thousand? Or, to word it another way, for only a thousand, taking into account the vast risk of vengeance on the bribee later, and not much later. Naturally, one or two of Esther’s colleagues considered any kind of bung to a villain as bad, but especially one openly, brazenly provided for in an attack plan. She saw the sense of such objections, yet continued hard seeking the finance. And she realized why – could analyse herself well enough. The process went this way:

  (a) At Fieldfare she’d slowly grown convinced that to use undercover against the so-called Guild was right and necessary, even, perhaps, a duty. How else to smash a crooked network established 1986 and to date invincible? This decision came very hesitantly, painfully. The non-attendance of Desmond Iles and the reason for it affected her almost as much as what she heard from the platform; but only almost as much. She guessed – was sure – Iles declined because after that appalling loss of one of his people he now considered undercover work stupidly hazardous. He’d know he would not be persuaded by anything offered at Fieldfare. As for Esther, she finally had been persuaded, just about, persuaded despite that strong message from Desmond Iles: particularly strong, because done by his silence, his absence, his refusal to recognize even the possibility of effective undercover. Yes, she got the message, but still caved in to the positive side.

  (b) Just the same, her uncertainties and fears hung on in the back of her head. And to quieten them, kill them off, she found she needed to stick absolutely and slavishly to everything constructive she heard at Fieldfare. She became unwilling to depart in even minor detail from advice offered there. Those suggestions and recommendations she transformed into iron edicts. They bound her. Pathetic? She was an Assistant Chief but found herself taking orders from Officers A and B who would be sergeants at the highest. Sometimes Esther felt she had fallen into a sort of voodoo superstition, as if scared that to flout any part of the instructions from A and B and the rest of the Fieldfare performers would bring big punishment – big punishment signifying loss of the Out-located officer and failure of the operation . . .

  (c) She felt ashamed of such mental cowering, but could not escape it. In some ways this was mad, as well as pathetic, and she realized it. After all, B had said ‘at least a thousand’ in reserve cash for the possible rescue. This clearly meant it could be more, perhaps should be. But, because B quoted a thousand, the figure took on a sacred quality for Esther and she would not vary it, up or down. The same with timing. The retrieve crew should be sent in after a six-hour unexplained communications break because . . . because, hadn’t B stipulated six hours? Some would probably regard this as too soon, perhaps panicky: the undercover officer might be in no danger but simply hadn’t found a free, unobserved moment to make a call. Could it be wise on account of nothing more than a glitch to destroy a scheme so tricky to set up? Esther would have replied that an Out-located officer was always in danger and an unscheduled six-hour failure to make contact amounted to more than a glitch. In any case, some glitches killed. At Fieldfare, B had spoken about the Godfather film. Esther recalled a line or two from it now. Marlon Brando, as Vito Corleone, retiring head of the family, is tutoring his son, Michael, the new Don. In his macho way, Vito says: ‘I’ve spent all my life trying not to be careless. Women and children can be careless. Men, no.’ Well, Esther would al
so try not to be careless, and she had come to associate carelessness with any failure, even trivial, to observe the rules and rubric laid down by B.

  By A, too. He didn’t do only the theology and theory of Out-location. He would talk the practicalities if forced. And he was forced when taking questions. He had the full, preposterous jargon stored about him and could retaliate with real clunking zing. Esther had already heard some of it when he spoke about Hilston Manor. Then, later:

  Officer A: on ‘the necessarily restrictive methodology of undercover’

  God! He’d been asked from the floor whether the returns from Out-locating were ‘quantifiable – quantifiable in the normal sense of quantifiable’. Did any data exist to demonstrate that the gains from such tactics justified, ‘in the normal sense of justified’, the expensive manpower/womanpower commitment? This commitment could be listed as:

  1. the Out-located officer him/herself;

  2. any stand-by help party at constant readiness, admittedly for other responses besides Out-location rescue, but chiefly for that, and involving, presumably, at least six officers, some gun-trained;

  3. the Out-located detective’s upper-rank contact handling selection, briefing and debriefing. Selection, particularly, might swallow huge amounts of time: a widespread search for possible talent would be needed, a shortlist, a final choice.

  ‘Quantifiable?’ A said.

  ‘In the normal sense of quantifiable.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘To put it crudely, A, profit and loss.’

  ‘Yes, that’s crudely enough,’ A said.

  ‘The bottom line.’

  ‘I’ve heard of it,’ A replied.

  ‘We are accountable to our Police Committees.’

  ‘Yes, I understand that, sir,’ A said.

  ‘Important budgetary aspects. I recognize that in some ways Out-locating is a special, perhaps mysterious, carry-on, and we can never disclose full details to lay people. Yet, we have to convince our respective Committees – and rightly have to convince them – we have to convince these Committees we are providing value for money, and value for money in all aspects of policing. As far as scrutiny is concerned, there can be no no-go areas. No, no no-go areas.’

  ‘No, no, I don’t think any such study has been done,’ A said. ‘I can’t think how it would be. This kind of work doesn’t fit into an account book.’

  ‘I’m not sure we could get away with that excuse.’

  ‘It would be worth a try,’ A said.

  ‘And then, another point, does this type of activity fit into everyone’s work scheme?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I notice that Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles is not present at our conference.’

  ‘I don’t have a nominal roll of those attending,’ A said. ‘It’s not available for general inspection.’

  ‘There was a bad business on his ground involving an Out-located officer, wasn’t there?’

  ‘Things can go awry, sir. It would be absurd to say otherwise.’

  ‘Is that why he’s not present? Has he measured profit against loss and found loss wins?’

  ‘I can’t answer for him, sir. I wouldn’t pretend to know the mind of an ACC, and particularly not the mind of ACC Iles, who is, I understand, rarely easy to read. This isn’t to slander him behind his back. I’ve been told Mr Iles would never claim to be unduly predictable. Obviously, you’ll know the Latin tag sui generis, sir. Latin. Meaning one-off. I gather Mr Iles couldn’t be more sui. If he has a nickname it might be that.’

  ‘All right, all right, but listen, A: you looked hostile . . . yes, totally hostile . . . others must have noticed it, too . . . yes, you looked damn hostile, possibly vindictive, when I used the word “quantifiable”. I could almost hear you mutter to yourself, “Here comes a load of standard management-speak.” The fact is, though, A, that we are managers and have to meet management criteria, tiresome as they might seem to someone of your . . . to someone at your place in the service. For instance, I would love to see a case study and evaluation of the number of crimes revealed and prosecuted or prevented by a typical Out-located officer over a measured period. In the normal sense of evaluation. Perhaps, after his experience, Mr Iles would, too. Might we be given that during our stay at Fieldfare? An exemplar. This would be a very persuasive piece of research.’

  A said: ‘It’s quite possible there’d only be one.’

  ‘One crime?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ A said. ‘Likely.’

  ‘This, you see, is what I mean.’

  ‘Which, sir?’ A replied.

  ‘The considerable cost, as against what’s accomplished. There’s a black hole aspect here.’

  ‘In the normal sense of black hole?’

  ‘The expense open-ended, not subject to scrutiny or control.’

  ‘Out-location is generally aimed at identifying a single, major planned episode of villainy,’ A said. ‘This is central to what is labelled, I’m afraid, “the necessarily restrictive methodology of undercover”. Any embedded officer is focused on one crime, one potential crime. Usually, she/he cannot deal in plurals. That’s where “necessarily restrictive” comes in. If he/she passes on good information about other projects and these are ambushed by police, members of the firm will soon sense they have a whispering alien aboard. Every recent addition to the payroll will be watched, and that’s sure to include our officer. His/her background will have already been checked, yes. But now it will get a real going over. And she/he might be put under serious interrogation, with no solicitor or tapes present to ensure humane treatment. No first aid present, either. In general, a planted officer will need time to secure his/her position within a firm, and should not be asked to supply tip-offs too early, because such tip-offs might betray and kill her/him, as well as the Out-location project.’

  This had brought A back to the grey-area philosophizing he seemed to enjoy most. ‘And so we have the situation already outlined where an undercover officer must do nothing about crimes he/she is aware of, and might even have to take part in, for the sake of preserving his/her role and achieving a big prosecution later. It is a situation that can be exploited by defence lawyers, and one not at all condoned by some judges. The technical name for it when described in confidential Out-location manuals is “Posed Participation as Accessory”, or the “PPA Syndrome”. Naturally, we, the police service, would wish to stress the “posed” – i.e. the display only aspect – the seeming, concocted, rather than true, nature of the behaviour as accessory to crimes. But the courts don’t always go along with this. They want everything honest and clear. They’ll see a crime as a crime.’

  ‘Perhaps that is understandable.’

  ‘Perhaps, sir,’ A said. ‘It’s like Oscar Wilde, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is? The play’s The Importance of Being Earnest, not The Importance of Being Honest.’

  ‘Wilde gets a note from Lord Alfred Douglas’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, addressed to “Oscar Wilde posing as a sodomite”. Posing. Wilde chooses to take this as meaning he is a sodomite, which, in Queensberry’s view, he is, of course, and disastrously sues, the silly sod.’

  ‘Well, Oscar Wilde is something else. But the procedure you outline means, doesn’t it, that a police officer – the officer about to go undercover – has actually to be ordered by his/her superiors to ignore or even assist in any criminal activities of the firm where she/he is embedded, except for the specific, targeted offence? In turn, this would imply that senior officers of the police service, officers of ACPO rank and above, might be proactive parties to the . . . what do you call the Syndrome?’

  ‘Posed Participation as Accessory – PPA, sir.’

  ‘In other words, via this PPA, Assistant Chief level officers themselves become complicit with gang crimes, at one remove. Disturbing?’

  ‘Posed complicity and probably at two removes, sir,’ A said.

  ‘Why two?’

  ‘ACPO level officers would not n
ormally instruct undercover detectives direct in PPA, sir. The ACPO level officer will instruct, say, the Detective Chief Superintendent, head of CID and handler of the undercover officer, to instruct the undercover officer in PPA, sir.’

  ‘Are judges likely to accept this distinction, A?’

  ‘Which, sir?’

  ‘Posed accessory as against accessory.’

  ‘Some wigs do find it hard to see,’ A said. ‘Hard-liners. Brainy simpletons.’

  ‘Might they feel the Out-located officer has gone over to the criminal firm for personal gain? This could colour a judge’s attitude and, crucially, his/her summing-up to the jury.’

  ‘That is a danger, yes, sir,’ A said.

  ‘For myself, speaking entirely personally, I acknowledge as much – and I don’t say it with the least pride – possibly the opposite – perhaps I am even conscious of a certain naivety in myself – but I don’t believe I would ever be able to suspend, virtually obliterate, my, as it were, drift towards maintenance of the lawful, a drift accelerated, of course, by nurture. My resultant mind-set demands, pretty well irresistibly, by instinct and by . . . by habit, I suppose . . . habit and choice . . . my mind-set demands my complicity with the good.’

  ‘You are programmed for virtue, sir, like George Washington, who could not tell a lie.’

  ‘There are boundaries.’

  ‘But you probably won’t have to make this kind of difficult choice, sir, because I wouldn’t think many ACCs go undercover. ‘

  ‘A complicity of that other, supervisory, kind might be expected of me, though.’

  ‘Distant.’

  ‘Frankly, A, I hardly understand how any police officer can make the switch from law enforcer to lawbreaker.’

  ‘Posed lawbreaker,’ A replied.

  ‘Even so, I wouldn’t be able to do it, not the actual undercover role.’

  ‘Between those who can act and those who can’t there is a great gulf fixed,’ A replied.