Agent of the State Read online

  When he bowled out, less than two minutes later, he was on the run, firearm concealed in the shoulder holster beneath his jacket, kicked by an adrenaline rush.

  Thoughts accelerating ahead of his body, he calculated the threat. It was supposed to have been a routine job, short-term infiltration of a European gang of cocaine smugglers. Kerr had tasked Detective Sergeant Melanie Fleming as the undercover officer. She was to be the courier for the last leg of the importation, the cut-off between the importer and the UK receivers.

  Kerr was operational head of the Covert Operations Unit. For decades his élite team had conducted the most secret work in Special Branch. There were three types of activity: surveillance, often armed and at close quarters; the recruitment and running of agents (or ‘covert human intelligence sources’, as they were now officially termed); and ‘technical attack’, the euphemism for bugging.

  It was a wide remit, sensitive, political and risky, with always too much going on. Sometimes other departments ‘borrowed’ his undercover operatives, which was what had happened with Melanie. Two days earlier he had offered her to the Anti-corruption Unit, the cops who investigate other cops. They were known as the ‘rubber-heelers’ because you could never hear them coming. How could it have gone so wrong?

  He punched the lift button. ‘Fucking amateurs,’ he muttered. The risk assessment from his opposite number had been crystal clear: in the event of compromise, there was a negligible risk of violence. That was his absolute, cast-iron assurance. Yet it seemed that, in the course of a single night, what had started as a regular sting operation had erupted into a siege, with Melanie as the hostage. Kerr had the lift to himself. The sit-rep was opaque and his mind a maelstrom of questions. The threat to Melanie had no up-side, but coldly, calmly, John Kerr knew exactly what he was going to do.

  On the ground floor a cluster of female records staff crowded round the lift doors. He was working with them on a stronger system of human-source protection and found himself face to face with their head, a civil-service high flyer with stilettos to match her ambition. He felt her hand on his arm but kept moving. ‘Sorry, Jules, gotta crack on,’ he murmured. ‘Catch up with you later.’

  His phone vibrated and he took the call. ‘I’m going to the car now,’ he said, racing down the spiral staircase to dig out his Alfa Romeo 156T Spark from the Yard’s cramped, subterranean garage. ‘Pick you up usual place.’

  He was still inserting the BlackBerry into the hands-free as he spun up the ramp, scattering another bunch of workers emerging from St James’s Park Tube station. His Tetra radio mainset shared the glove compartment with a makeup bag Gabriella kept for emergencies when she stayed over. He switched it to Channel Five, the protected frequency used by his surveillance teams.

  Accelerating into the thoroughfare he narrowly missed his commander’s dark blue Toyota Prius as it crossed his path onto the Yard’s forecourt. From the back seat Paula Weatherall lowered the window to glare at him. He knew the reason - one of the girls in Registry had tipped him off. Weatherall had been studying the Met’s summary of the inquest into Jean Charles de Menezes, the innocent Brazilian electrician shot dead by police two weeks after 7/7.

  Among those criticised were Kerr’s surveillance officers, who had followed him to the Tube. Believing Jean Charles was a suicide bomber, one operative had tried to arrest him in the Tube seconds before firearms officers had shot him. Afterwards Kerr had staunchly defended his bravery to the Met’s top brass and anyone else who wanted a fight. His lone voice had set him apart as a maverick, but falling out with the bosses had never troubled him.

  This morning, Paula Weatherall was having a working breakfast with the commissioner. Kerr knew that, too, because he made it his business to find out the hierarchy’s significant diary fixtures. She looked ready to say something, but Kerr already had the blue Kojak light on the dash and squirted the siren to get her driver out of his way.

  Two

  Thursday, 13 September, 07.03, Victoria Street

  Dodge was instantly recognisable from his bulk, at least two hundred and twenty pounds (which he regularly denied), the ruddy face beneath an unkempt shock of white hair, and the baggy grey suit that always looked like he slept in it. But it was the intelligence in his ice-blue eyes that drew everybody in. He was waiting at the corner of Victoria Street and Strutton Ground by the entrance to the market. Surprisingly agile, he jumped in while the Alfa was still moving, inputting the satnav as Kerr accelerated down towards Westminster and the Embankment.

  ‘Head for Mare Street, Hackney.’ After three years in London, Dodge’s Belfast accent was as hard as ever. ‘Stronghold’s a Victorian house, converted ground-floor flat.’

  ‘It’s all right, Dodge,’ said Kerr, switching off the device as the Alfa split the pack of vehicles trailing onto Parliament Square. ‘I’ve worked that ground a lot.’

  ‘Negotiators are in a junior school,’ said Dodge. ‘Same street.’

  The man Kerr had chosen to lead his undercover team was a former RUC agent runner in his early fifties. Everyone called him Dodge, irrespective of rank, but no one knew why. In another life he had survived an IRA assassination attempt near the border and moved his wife and daughter overnight twice, so they guessed it had something to do with that.

  ‘How bad is it?’

  Dodge steadied himself as Kerr slid round the square. ‘Two male hostage-takers.’ Dodge often claimed he had given up smoking, but the cough always gave him away. ‘Serious traces with Europol and heavy duty.’

  ‘Any demands yet? Threats against Mel?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘What’s the firepower?’

  ‘Shotgun and handgun. At least. Hostage-takers believed Turkish.’

  ‘Believed? For Christ’s sake, Dodge.’

  ‘The tossers are only just giving us the full story.’ Despite the engine noise, as Kerr wove in low gear through the congestion around Parliament, Dodge’s tone was conversational. He could have been out on a Sunday-afternoon drive with his family. ‘They took Melanie in the van on the dummy run to South Mimms services, showed her the handover spot in the lorry park, then straight back. Everything as planned.’

  ‘Did she let us know?’

  ‘Coded text around midnight.’ Dodge was looking dead ahead. ‘She did everything right, John.’

  ‘Of course.’ Kerr knew Dodge was making a point. In the pub he was the life and soul, buying more than his share and sneaking outside for a guilty smoke. But in the field he was always deadly serious. Renowned for his meticulous attention to detail, he had never lost an agent yet.

  ‘They drove back to the address,’ he said, ‘unloaded some gear, then all three went out for grub.’

  ‘What coverage did they have on them?’

  ‘Uninterrupted mobile surveillance. That’s what they’re claiming, anyway. But we think they had a loss.’

  Kerr was accelerating hard now, racing east along the Embankment, with County Hall and the London Eye across the river to their right. ‘Uniforms gave them a pull as they were parking up on the way back,’ continued Dodge.

  ‘Set-up or coincidence?’

  ‘Everyone’s insisting it was a routine stop. Whatever, the bad guys panicked, whacked a couple of shots at the patrol car and escaped into the stronghold. You know the rest.’

  Traffic was thinning so Kerr cut the siren. ‘No, Dodge,’ he said, ‘I bloody don’t know.’ Melanie was thirty-four, but to Kerr she was like a daughter, the more so since his own daughter had stopped speaking to him. ‘How the fuck does Melanie suddenly become a hostage?’

  ‘The uniforms were shitting themselves and got out of the way. But the driver saw them drag a female from the van. They were covering her with the shotgun. She was struggling hard, fighting.’

  ‘And the rubber-heelers didn’t tell us our officer was compromised for, what, three hours?’

  ‘Nearer five. “Need to know”. Usual bullshit.’

  ‘With Melanie at the end of
a shotgun? We subcontract our best and brightest because they can’t do the job themselves, then they keep us out of the loop? Who the fuck do they think they are?’ Kerr was silent for a second as he kicked through a clear space in the road, but he wasn’t waiting for an answer. ‘Next time they can screw up with their own officers. I’m gonna crucify them.’

  Dodge looked at him. ‘I believe you.’

  Kerr had held misgivings about the role of the Anti-corruption Unit from the outset. They had the lead because this operation was complicated by the connection, somewhere along the line, to a corrupt police officer. The primary purpose of the infiltration was to identify and trap this individual. ‘How did Melanie get blown, Dodge? There’s no way she would have slipped up. She’s too good. Who betrayed her?’

  ‘Perhaps no one. Maybe the patrol car spooked them and they’re using her as a human shield. She may be their means of escape.’

  In covert ops there were no absolutes, only compromise, half-truths and missing pieces of the jigsaw. ‘What do we know about the informant they used for the intro?’ said Kerr.

  ‘Not much. Think they graded him B2.’

  ‘Which is probably an inflated write-up,’ said Kerr, ‘so he might have snitched on her.’

  ‘Our undercover officer compromised by the rubber-heelers’ snout?’ Dodge whistled. ‘Jesus. There’s a strapline for the commissioner.’

  ‘And that’s not the worst case, Dodge. What if something leaked to this bent cop and he sabotaged the whole thing?’

  ‘Or her cover may be intact,’ said Dodge. ‘Let’s go with what we know.’

  They turned north towards Hackney, using the siren again, and came head to head with a black Range Rover, double-parked and blocking the road. The driver was sitting behind the wheel with the engine running, a stocky, cigar-smoking cliché of stubble, dark glasses and bling. Complacent and unprepared, he simply shrugged when Kerr waved him out of the road, gesturing that his passenger was in one of the shops.

  Kerr waited a couple of seconds with the siren going, then was out on the street, sprinting to the Range Rover. He had the driver’s door open before the man could react. Jerking him out of the vehicle, he shoved him into the line of parked cars, leapt behind the wheel and reversed at speed into a potholed builders’ yard. Dodge started to follow his boss out of the car, but too slow.

  When the driver went to remonstrate, Kerr swung him into an armlock and threw him against a wall, so hard Dodge could see his face distorted against the rough brickwork, sunglasses crushed, cigar smoke curling up from the pavement. For a moment Kerr leant close, speaking urgently into the man’s free ear, then walked calmly back to the Alfa, tossing the Range Rover keys into the gutter.

  ‘Couldn’t you just have asked him?’ laughed Dodge, as Kerr accelerated away, checking his mirrors.

  ‘Any witnesses?’

  ‘Don’t think so. But he’ll complain.’

  Kerr glanced sideways and shook his head. ‘No, he won’t.’

  ‘What did you say to him?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’ They came to a junction and Kerr fell silent as he negotiated a knot of traffic through the red light.

  ‘You’re all right. No one saw a thing.’

  ‘For all we know Melanie was compromised before she even got in the van.’ Kerr’s voice was low, despondent. ‘This is my fault, Dodge.’

  There was nothing more to say. They drove on a couple of miles, Kerr deep in thought as he coursed through the traffic. Eventually Dodge looked at him again. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m gonna bring her back, of course.’ The Glock sat comfortably against Kerr’s ribs.

  Three

  Thursday, 13 September, 07.36, Hackney

  The stronghold was in Ferris Street, just south of London Fields. It stretched diagonally for half a mile between Hackney Road to the south and Mare Street to the east, with speed bumps every twenty metres. It was a mixed residential thoroughfare of crumbling council blocks alongside grand Victorian terraces converted into well-maintained private flats. Halfway down, the street made a gentle curve to pass beneath the railway line.

  The hostage-takers were holed up in a ground-floor converted flat twenty metres west of the railway bridge. Three doors up from the target address there was a primary school. The cops had taken it over as their control post, filling the playground behind the blue metal railings with vehicles.

  The whole area was eerily quiet, with nothing moving. Residents’ cars remained parked on each side of the street, rush hour cancelled for the duration.

  Local cops had diverted the traffic, sealing both ends of the street and setting up an inner cordon to create a sterile area within fifteen metres of the stronghold. Residents had been evacuated from the nearest four houses each side of the target house, and from seven across the street. Most had gone to work, but about twenty rubberneckers loitered, a couple still in their nightclothes, on the safe side of the white tape. A pair of bored, hi-vis PCs, arms crossed, chewing gum, stood apart from them.

  Kerr had cut the siren but everyone heard the engine racing as he swung into the street, and turned to watch. The cops stopped chewing and stiffened, evidently weighing the possibility of being mown down. He skidded to a halt over the police line and flashed his ID.

  ‘DCI Kerr, SO15.’ Kerr still regarded himself as a Special Branch officer, although he wasn’t allowed to use the term any more. These days, it was all policing by numbers. His élite unit now lay buried in a flow chart.

  The younger and shorter of the cops took a step forward. His face was raw with acne scars and the oversized helmet sat low on his head, emphasising his squatness. He looked unimpressed as he bent down to check Kerr out. ‘Guv’nor says no one’s to come through.’ There was a white flash of spearmint and Kerr felt a speck of saliva against his cheek. He could see the tape of the inner cordon thirty metres ahead and, just beyond it on the left side of the street, the school. He peered through the windscreen at a sniper on the roof opposite. ‘I need to speak with the negotiators right now.’

  ‘Sure you do.’ The cop stood upright and started chewing again, back in his comfort zone. A clipboard had appeared and he made a show of reading it. ‘But you’re not cleared.’ The boy tried to stare Kerr down but stepped back with a snapped tape curling round his boots as the Alfa leapt forward. ‘Oi!’ he called after Kerr.

  Kerr parked on the nearside of the school, out of sight of the stronghold. He spotted a pair of snipers behind the garden walls across the street.

  The primary school was a peeling mid-sixties block with large square windows and a flat roof. Kerr stepped out of the car and held up his ID to the snipers. He looked unofficial in his green-flecked jacket and grey trousers, but Dodge was wearing his suit, so he gestured to him to lead the way. At the school gate a PC was wielding another clipboard, but he was young and Dodge’s fat swagger conveyed seniority.

  The radio crackled with a message from the man on the outer cordon as Dodge introduced himself on the move, shovelling grit into his Belfast accent. ‘Negotiators are expecting us,’ he growled. Senior, experienced and battle-hardened. The PC pointed out the room as they slid past.

  The negotiating cell was in the head teacher’s office. Directions were unnecessary, as they had already taped their sign on the door. Dodge hung around outside to deter intruders and give Kerr time. Negotiators operate in pairs: one to negotiate, the other to signal ideas or reminders. Kerr eased the door open. He entered silently to find two detectives in shirtsleeves and headphones sitting at the cramped desk. They were hunched over the phone, which lay dead in the middle, as if their combined will might bring it back to life.

  He didn’t recognise either of them, which was good. ‘John Kerr, Anti-corruption Unit,’ he lied, offering his hand before they could react. He was expecting the secret Masonic handshake and they did not disappoint. ‘Just checking if you need any more from us.’

  Number One slanted his headphones and pointed to the whiteboa
rd in the corner, used to record threats, demands and deadlines. Trendy waterproof coat slung over the back of his chair, he had gone for the tieless look, with the top buttons of his red check shirt undone and the sleeves tightly rolled to display tanned biceps. Pinned to the wall beside the board was a rough drawing of the stronghold: kitchen, bathroom, front room and bedroom. Communal front door, then a lobby with doors to the two flats. The one to the left led up the staircase, the other into the stronghold. No sign of any rear access. ‘Not unless you can add anything to that.’

  Top left on the white board were Europol mugshots and identities of the two perpetrators with their religion, Muslim, and a scrawled felt-tip summary of the convictions acquired in their rampage through Europe. Two were for armed robbery. Both were flagged as extremely violent, but it was the word ‘RAPE’ that screamed out at Kerr. Under ‘hostage’, where Melanie’s cover name should have been, they had simply scribbled ‘FEMALE’ followed by a question-mark. He needed answers quickly, but his voice was casual as he asked, ‘Anything happening?’

  Number One nodded at the phone. ‘We’ve established contact three times. Guy on the left of the board slammed the phone down eleven minutes ago and we’re waiting for him to get back.’

  ‘Any demands?’

  ‘Breakfast is as far as they’ve got. They’ll probably want a car to the airport by this afternoon. But they’re going to prison or the mortuary.’ He was a young man trying to sound tough. The Lodge had sent a novice to bargain for Melanie’s life, and this made Kerr angry.

  ‘Are they all together in one space?’ he asked.

  ‘Snipers have a sighting in the front room.’

  ‘So, how soon will you raise them again?’

  Junior glanced at his mate. ‘We’re giving them time to reflect.’