'No.'
'Did you see any police with guns?'
'No.'
'Did you go through any road-blocks, were you body-searched, did you have to produce ID?'
'I didn't.'
'This is just so that we understand each other, so you get to appreciate where I'm coming from, and where I'm going to. If the threat were terrorism, a similar threat, a threat on the scale we face now and today, then there would have been troops on the streets, guns, blocks and identity checks. Headlines in papers, worried faces on TV, pundits chattering – but it's not terrorism. It's crime… At the height of a terrorist campaign, assassinations and bombs in railway stations, how many people get hurt, get killed
– ten a year, maximum ten? What I'm saying, Joey, terrorism is pine marten's piss compared with the threat of crime. Where I come from, where I was reared, we have a small church, a free church, that makes a deal of laughter from people who don't know us. Our church believes in the power of evil. We don't make excuses for evil, we believe it should be cut out, root and branch, then burned. Crime is narcotics, narcotics are evil. They kill and they destroy. They threaten our values. There are no 'sunlit uplands' in crime fighting, no bayonet charges, heroic it is n o t…
Do you get where I'm coming from, and where I'm going?'
'I think so.'
'Do you think I'm a mad, daft beggar?'
'I think I'd feel privileged to work on your team.'
'You can walk now.'
'I'd like to stay.'
'Why did the case go down?'
'All the usual suspects: incompetence, intimidation and corruption.'
'Listen hard to me, young man. We are losing the war against the importation of class A drugs. With our seizures we are not even touching the customer's supplies. We are incapable of creating shortages on the street. We are hemmed in by the restrictions of legal process, by the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, and we can shrug and walk away, and say tomorrow'll be better. It won't, it'll be worse.
I don't accept that. I have to win, Joey, and I will walk over people in my way to do it. I'll walk over you, if I have to, and not break stride. What's going on now, the volume of narcotics importation, shames us. It'll destroy us, it's a cancer in us. I'll tell you what I like – when a judge says, 'Fifteen years. Take him down.'
What I like better is when the guy then turns and shouts, 'I'll fucking kill you, see if I won't.' If you go after them hard you break the power. Without the power they're rubbish. You bin rubbish. When the pressure is exerted on an evil man he makes mistakes. When he makes mistakes you have to be there
… You may be arrogant – you may have an attitude problem – but it means nothing to me, as long as you're going to be there and ready when the mistake's made.'
Joey said, 'I want to be part of that being there.'
'Do me a cartwheel.'
Joey switched on the computer. A cartwheel was a diagram to show the organization of a criminal enterprise. He drew a box in the centre of the screen. He typed the two names in the centre of the box: Mister and the Princess.
'He's always called Mister. It's the code on the phones and how he expects to be addressed – we think it started off as respect. He wanted to be Mister Packer.
She's Primrose, her code and what he calls her is the Princess. She's a part of his firm, talked to and trusted.
He doesn't play about, he's totally loyal to her.'
Joey drew a circle around the box, and then the spokes from the box to the circle. He typed at the end of a spoke the Cruncher. 'All the prime associates are coded names. The number cruncher, the accountant, Duncan Dubbs. He does the finance on every significant deal – wasn't at the Old Bailey.'
He was passed a sheet of paper by Gough.
His brow furrowed as he read the pathologist's report, the layperson's version. 'I don't understand what was for them in Sarajevo.'
'It'll keep. Go on.'
He typed another name. 'Henry Arbuthnot is the Eagle, that's legal eagle. He's the solicitor on retainer, and he does all the contracts.'
More names and more spokes, and the cartwheel formed. Joey said that Atkins, the soldier Tommy Atkins, was Bruce James, ex-Royal Green Jackets, the armourer who produced the weapons used by the Cards, the Cardmen/Hardmen, who were the enforcers, and he named the three principals. Then there was the Mixer, Mixer/Fixer, who acted as the firm's general manager and made the routine arrangements.
He drew the last spoke line, and he wrote in the Eels. 'Eels is wheels – that's Billy Smith and Jason Tyrie. They drive for him. They're both from the block he grew up in, and both from Pentonville days. That's the inner team. Oh, and there's a name I don't have, and a code. It's the information spoke – might be us or the Crime Squad – and it's important. It's on the inside.'
Gough gazed down at the cartwheel.
The drawing represented the fruits of Joey's life over the last weeks, months, years. The cartwheel was the obsession that held him. The hook had caught him from the first day he had been given the archivist job in Sierra Quebec Golf. All the photographs and all the tape transcripts were on the computer, but they needn't have been. They were lodged in Joey Cann's mind. Locked in that room, with the screen for company, he had learned more about Mister than any of the men and women who had tracked the cars, watched the house, tried to follow the money, and who could go out at the end and drink until they couldn't stand. He had overheard it said, but never to his face, that it was obsession, and sad. Joey thought he had been thrown a lifeline.
'What's the weakest link?'
'There may be one, but we never found it. What I t h i n k… '
'What do you think, Joey?'
'He reckons he's beaten us, and he'll be running now to catch up on his life – I think the weakest link is Mister.'
It was off his tongue, and he wished he hadn't said it. He looked at the cartwheel he'd made laughing at him prettily from the computer screen, and wondered whether Gough thought him foolish.
He looked round to see if his opinion was sneered at but saw only Gough's back, going out.
'I'm taking you with me,' Mister said.
The Eagle's voice fluttered. 'Are you sure? – Is that really necessary?'
'Yes, that's why I'm taking you.'
'Don't you think I'd be more use here?'
'No, or I wouldn't be taking you.'
There were two locations where Mister had always felt talk was safe: one was the Clerkenwell office of Henry Arbuthnot, Solicitor at Law, above the launderette. Under the terms of the published Intrusive Surveillance – Code of Practice, authorization for bugs and taps in premises where client met legal adviser could not be given by a policeman or a Customs officer. Section 2 paragraph 7 demanded that authorization came from a commissioner. Section 1 paragraph 8 stated a commissioner was a 'person who holds or has held high judicial office and has been appointed by the Prime Minister for a term of 3 years to undertake functions specified in Part III of the Act (Police Act 1997)'. Serving and retired judges were likely – the Eagle swore to it – most times out of ten to throw back the request. The office was safe territory.
Josh, the clerk, was making coffee, and never came in before he'd knocked and been told to enter.
'We go on Thursday. Mixer's doing the tickets.'
'I'm not sure that I've the background or, indeed, the expertise required.'
'Are you turning me down?'
The Eagle never disagreed with Mister. Privately, personally, buried from sight, he had been against the venture from the day the Cruncher – the barrow-boy
– had raised it. With mounting dismay he had noted Mister's ever-growing enthusiasm for the branch-out into
