Insider (The Glass Family)

by Owen Mullen

  Outside on the street, Douglas pulled the sunglasses down and walked to his car, aware his life had just changed. No more playing nursemaid to over-indulged hopped-up stars who thought their talent allowed them to be terrible people. Luke Glass had a problem and reckoned he was the man to put it right. Flattering. Douglas didn’t let it go to his head. The south London gangster had known about him before he even sat down and was studying his reactions rather than listening to his response to the questions. This morning was his second experience of Glass and he was everything he’d heard – tough, smart, cautious: not somebody you wanted as an enemy.

  The job was his, a long travel from his last day as a police officer in Glasgow and the fight with DCI Symington – the final act in a sordid drama.

  The voice, shrill and all too familiar, roared from the other side of Helen Street Police Office.

  ‘It took a while but I’ve finally got what I need. Say goodbye to your career, Douglas. You’re a disgrace to the uniform.’

  The Manilla folder landed on Mark Douglas’s desk with a slap, sending papers into the air like startled birds. Around the squad room conversation ended abruptly; wary eyes turned towards Detective Chief Inspector Symington.

  DI Douglas put his pen down and slowly lifted his head. He wasn’t surprised: this had been coming for months and he was ready to meet it. From day one, Symington had made it clear he was out to get him. Douglas was a new breed of policeman – in top shape physically and well educated. Donald Symington was neither and never had been.

  The DCI pulled himself to his full six feet, dark eyes glittering malice, chin jutting provocatively, waiting for a response to his public accusation. Knowing he wouldn’t be getting one wound him tighter; his fists clenched and unclenched at his sides as anger rolled off him.

  He leaned on the edge of the desk. ‘I know you’re dirty, you bastard, and now I can prove it.’

  Douglas stretched to pick up the sheets from the floor and didn’t reply. His silence was exactly the behaviour Symington abhorred – dumb insolence he wasn’t prepared to tolerate. He opened the folder and took out the report.

  ‘Your fancy qualifications won’t impress too many people when you’re behind bars. And that’s exactly where you’re going.’

  The junior officer didn’t react; he wouldn’t give Symington the satisfaction.

  The DCI turned to the room. ‘Detective Inspector Douglas believes he’s smarter than the rest of us. Thinks his degree from Strathclyde University entitles him to stick his snout in the trough. He doesn’t get that’s not on in this unit.’ He glared at the DI but spoke to the audience, enjoying the drama he’d created.

  ‘When you see him coming, stand aside or he’ll knock you down. Our colleague’s got places to go and he’s in a hurry to get there.’

  Symington took a page from the folder and began reading. Before he got to the end of the first line, Douglas came round the desk at a run and snatched it from him. The two men locked together, grappling over the paper. Douglas broke free, stepped back and lashed out, catching the senior man squarely on the jaw. Symington stumbled and fell, hitting his temple on the arm of a chair on his way down.

  Instantly, policemen who’d been spectators were on their feet. One of them gripped Douglas in a bear hug and dragged him away.

  Symington’s eyes flickered and opened, glazed and unfocused, as though he didn’t understand where he was. Until he saw Douglas and his thin lips parted in a sneer, satisfaction written all over his ashen face.

  ‘You’re finished in the force. Finished! Lucky if you don’t do time.’

  Crazy delight danced in his eyes.

  Douglas took the warrant card from his wallet and tossed it on the floor beside Symington.

  ‘Tell you what, Donald, stick the job and your report up your arse.’

  He edged out of the Police Scotland car park into the afternoon traffic on Helen Street and turned onto Paisley Road West. A breeze had sprung from nowhere, rustling the branches of the trees, low cloud hung in the sky and it was humid; a storm was coming: a portent?

  Donald Symington wasn’t wrong – Mark Douglas was finished in the force. And in Glasgow. In reality, he was just getting started.

  Douglas slid behind the steering wheel, checked his wing mirror and pulled into the traffic. Everything he’d heard about Luke Glass was true; he didn’t suffer fools and he’d be good to work with, so long as Douglas did what he was told. Not something he was famous for.

  He used one hand to steer and called on his mobile with the other. The person on the other end didn’t speak. Douglas said, ‘Get yourselves on the first train.’

  14

  New Scotland Yard, Curtis Green Building, Victoria Embankment

  DCI Carlisle’s footsteps echoed in the dimly lit basement corridor of the Curtis Green Building on the Embankment, the current home of New Scotland Yard. The subterranean complex was a claustrophobic maze. No one came here; few even knew this place existed. The old Met had been tired and cramped; Carlisle hadn’t liked it – its successor, with its flashy exterior, open-plan office space and hot desks, took a bit of getting used to. The detective heard a noise and stopped in his tracks. Over his shoulder, pipes from the abandoned heating system, lagged and heavy with cobwebs, ran in a line back the way he’d come. He felt his heartbeat quicken and cursed the secrecy surrounding the meeting he was going to. But only for a moment. What he had to report was vital, as important as anything he’d ever been part of. If word got out, a sting a long time in the making would come to nothing.

  In his youth, John Carlisle had been handsome. Now, his hair was thinning, grey at the temples; he needed spectacles but was too vain to wear them. Almost his whole working life had been spent in the Metropolitan Police Service and, at forty-nine, he’d climbed as high as he was going climb. The DCI wasn’t complaining. When he’d joined, if someone had told him he’d rise to detective chief inspector, he wouldn’t have believed them. Carlisle was unmarried; he’d never found the time; the Met was his family. Anyone who betrayed it was his enemy. Before he handed in his badge, he had one final thing to accomplish – clearing out the bad apples that besmirched the hard-won reputation of the service he loved.

  Operation Clean Sweep could make that happen.

  Outside the door at the end of the whitewashed tunnel, a uniform stood to attention. He saluted and Carlisle went in. The room was no more than a glorified store cupboard, home to dusty boxes, paint tins and rusted iron radiators. In the centre, sitting at a folding table left by some forgotten tradesman, two officers – both Deputy Assistant Commissioners – waited for him.

  Carlisle acknowledged the senior men and took a seat. They didn’t speak to each other or him because, beyond their work, they had nothing in common and neither appreciated being dragged out on a Sunday. Carlisle checked his watch and drummed his fingers. One of them raised a disapproving eyebrow and was about to say something when the door opened and a fourth man came in. Assistant Commissioner of Specialist Operations William Telfer was a legend in the service. Known behind his back as Billy T, he was as revered in the ranks as any copper on the force because of his no-nonsense approach to policing the streets of the capital; Telfer was the reason they were in this godforsaken shithole yards from the Thames.

  He nodded to the group and signalled the DCI to begin.

  Carlisle cleared his throat and addressed his superiors. ‘You’re familiar with the history, so I’ll keep it short. Operation Clean Sweep was brought into being to address the problem of police corruption in the Met. As the officer in charge, my first challenge in infiltrating a criminal organisation was to find the right people, people who can live every day with the unimaginable stress of knowing, once they were in, they’d be under constant scrutiny, and that the smallest slip would mean their death.’ He looked at their faces. ‘That takes very special individuals.’

  The intolerant DAC hurried him along. ‘But you found them?’

  Carlisle allowed himself th
e ghost of a smile. ‘One of them, yes. Eventually. Which brought another problem. We’d targeted the Glass family, the biggest criminal enterprise in London. Ruthless bastards. Finding our insider, building up their backstory, then getting them into the game was never going to be quick or easy.’

  Telfer said, ‘I hope you’re going to tell us you’ve succeeded?’

  Carlisle felt eyes bore into him; suddenly, the atmosphere in the room was electric.

  ‘Not yet. What I can say is we’ve got the right person, and it looks as though an opportunity is about to open up. Any break in the chain of confidentiality, it could disappear and our officer with it.’

  ‘Is Danny Glass in the picture?’

  ‘The short answer is: we don’t know. Three years ago, he mysteriously dropped out of sight. Rumour has him in Spain, Portugal, the South of France, even the Caribbean. Danny may still be pulling the strings. Even if he isn’t, his brother Luke wouldn’t hesitate to neutralise any threat. An undercover officer who infiltrates their organisation and gets caught can expect an agonising end.’

  Carlisle scanned the faces. ‘The insider’s identity is the best-kept secret in Scotland Yard. Only a couple of people outside this room know who it is. And that’s how it stays.’

  Telfer said what the others were thinking. ‘God help him, he’s a brave man.’

  Carlisle corrected him. ‘With respect, sir, I never said it was a man.’

  Kenny and Colin Bishop, known as the Awkward Squad behind their backs, were cousins who behaved like an old married couple, stumbling through a series of meaningless squabbles and ancient resentments that flared and were forgotten in their hurry to get to the next petty dispute: people who should never have been together but somehow were. Being in their company was an experience best avoided; the constant wrangling frayed your nerves. Chalk Farm boys born and bred, they couldn’t agree on the day of the week and hated each other. But a lot of money passed through their firm and I’d managed to persuade them to let LBC clean it for them. The Bishops’ shipment wasn’t due to arrive until Wednesday; three days away. If they got spooked and pulled out, it could start a run I wouldn’t be able to stop.

  Kenny was keen for a powwow. Apparently, the cousins were sitting on a pile of cash and needed our arrangement to go ahead almost as much as I did.

  He said, ‘Where do you want to meet?’

  The club would’ve been safer but they couldn’t think I was hiding.

  ‘Wherever suits.’

  ‘Okay. Little Venice at two.’

  His suggestion surprised me and I hesitated. ‘Will Colin be up for that?’

  ‘You’re having a laugh, aren’t you? Fat bastard wouldn’t walk the length of himself. I’ll blame you. Tell him it was your suggestion.’

  Even on a sunny Sunday, their war of attrition never ended. He happily explained his logic. ‘It’s a two-mile hike to Camden Lock. With a bit of luck, he’ll have a heart attack and drop down dead. Wouldn’t that be nice?’

  I left the car in the lane and took the Tube. Two faces I hadn’t seen before travelled with me, thirty-somethings, one black, the other white. Spotting them wasn’t hard: the T-shirts and baseball caps were fine, but it was too warm to be wearing jackets. Underneath, they’d be carrying.

  At Warwick Avenue I got off and strolled towards town. I was early, the Bishops wouldn’t be here yet, so I sat on a wooden bench in Rembrandt Gardens and tried to get my head round the last thirty-six hours: people had been executed in cold blood; money had been stolen; my reputation was on the line and I might have a sister I hadn’t known about yesterday; a stranger had just informed me my security was shit and I was going for a walk with the Odd Couple.

  Apart from that it was just another lazy Sunday.

  Big cities have one thing in common: only the very rich or the very poor live in the centre. Little Venice was the exception. Secret London – the side most folk were unaware existed.

  The Basin, close to where the Regent’s Canal and an arm of the Grand Union Canal met, was like glass. When I was seventeen, I’d brought a girl here on a day very like this. We’d held hands and I still remembered her whispered ‘I love you’ and how it made me feel. Two weeks later she dumped me for another guy.

  A boy of eleven or twelve fished for roach off the side, completely absorbed in threading bait on a hook. Out on the island, the reflection of an enormous willow tree darkened the water, the tips of its slender branches trailing. I was in the shade, but up on the road on the other side, the sun bleached a line of white Regency-style houses, where women in sunglasses, hats, and print dresses licked ice creams and hung on the tanned arms of the men with them.

  Suddenly, I needed a holiday.

  When Kenneth Bishop suggested meeting here, my instinct was to say no. Staying out of sight until we knew what was going on made sense; in the circumstances, it wasn’t feasible: places to go and people to see – after the Bishops it would be the turn of Bridie O’Shea in Kilburn.

  If somebody wanted me, they could come and get me.

  There were worse places to die.

  The cousins arrived together, bickering their way towards me, Kenny Bishop, tall and beanpole thin, Colin, short and overweight, both talking at once, mouths going, nobody listening. Comical if you were in the right mood. Today, I wanted to bang their stupid heads together to make them stop. Then, I realised how it worked: Colin was a bad-tempered little clown but it was Kenny who kept it going, winding him up and complaining when he reacted.

  Or maybe none of that was true. Maybe I was rationalising behaviour that had gone beyond explanation.

  Dressed in suits, they looked more like old-fashioned insurance agents than millionaire scallywags. I didn’t laugh too hard – the feuding cousins had put their differences aside well enough to button up most of north London and make a fortune in the process. Kenny was Mr Reasonable, Colin, Mr Touchy. How they’d spent their wealth said something about them: Colin had bought the properties on either side of the house he’d been born in and knocked them into one. Kenny lived in a six-bedroom town house in Chalcot Square, Primrose Hill, near the zoo. Not an entirely inappropriate location for his cousin. Rumour had Colin Bishop down as gay and addicted to cocaine; insecure about his appearance and prone to take offence – he’d stuck a broken bottle in a guy’s face in Kentish Town because he thought he was taking the piss. Unfortunately, Colin Bishop thought everybody he met was taking the piss. Behind his back, most of them were.

  I didn't like them. I liked their money. But it came at a price.

  Listening to their fucking yammer was that price.

  We started walking and for ten misguided minutes, I believed it might be all right. The cousins had gone quiet – a rare thing – taking it all in. Over my shoulder, I sensed the two new friends Ritchie had on me weren’t far away. The Bishops appeared to be alone. They wouldn’t be; they’d have people here, too.

  Kenny watched a tour boat chug by, the skin at his eyes crinkling in the glare. The happy tourists prompted him to speak. ‘You know,’ he said wistfully, ‘I could live here.’

  Colin sniffed and sneered. ‘Who’re you kidding? You’d hate it. Too many people for a start.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t. I like people.’

  ‘Yeah, you would. Imagine it with the rain coming down in sheets.’

  They were off. I filtered them out and soaked in as much of the scene as their vexatious presence would allow. Further along, someone I recognised leaned against the fence at the top of the embankment. Felix Corrigan nodded and I nodded back. George Ritchie really was taking no chances.

  Four narrowboats painted black and orange, purple and green, red and brown, blue on blue were moored under a leafy part of the path. If I’d been alone, I would’ve taken the time to drink it all in and enjoy it. I wasn’t. I was with these two.

  The stalemate couldn’t last and, though I missed the signal that passed between them, I knew one had. Kenny glanced at Colin and spoke for both of them. ‘We’r
e hearing things that give us pause, Luke. Word is you’re in a bit of bother.’ His face was flushed. He tugged a leaf off an overhead branch and threw it in the water. ‘Sounds like you’ve upset somebody. To say we’re concerned, well…’

  Colin came at me like a terrier worrying my ankles, in my face, mixing accusations with questions he answered himself. ‘You talked us into trusting you. Given what went down the other night, who would? Not the Bishops.’

  ‘Colin—’

  ‘All the main players are in, you said. No opposition, you said. Unless you’ve got a bloody handle on it, the deal’s off.’

  I looked at the sun beating down on the water. ‘Colin—’

  ‘We’re not talking pennies here, Glass. We need assurances. A guarantee that—’

  His cousin caught his arm. ‘Shut it, Col. Let the man speak.’

  Colin Bishop was sweating, breathing heavily through his nose. He wanted to go for me – part of me wished he would. It would’ve been fun to toss the outraged little bastard into the canal, but it wouldn’t keep the deal on track. Even so, I was tempted. A jogger bought him a reprieve.

  I reasoned with him. ‘That’s why I’m here, Colin. Except, I didn’t talk you into anything. I presented you with a business proposition, which you agreed to.’

  His eyes were ablaze with the conviction of someone who believed his own bullshit. His breath smelled of caramel and sour cherries and I realised he was drunk. They both were. I hadn’t been early; they’d got here before me and squeezed in a session, most likely in The Bridge House just off the towpath. Colin threw caution to the wind and rubbed it in. ‘Yeah, before you took a right pasting. Before you got turned over.’

  The urge to hurt him was almost too much. I let him get it out; he was going to, anyway.

  A husband and wife and their three kids were coming towards us. I faked a smile and waited till they’d passed before replying. I was angry – a lot was riding on this conversation and these fuckers had turned up pissed. I said, ‘I’ll level with you. It’s common knowledge the club took a hit on Friday night. But it’s sorted.’