doors hung open crazily. When he had been fiercely tired, his head sagging, the sight of the photograph on the wall had stiffened him. Joey Cann was near the end.
The computer hummed with the latest instruction, then the format of cross-examination flickered on to the screen and locked. He read.
Question: And you were alone in the surveillance vehicle? Answer: I was.
Question: It was after eleven o'clock that night?
Answer: It was.
Question: Up to that time, eleven o'clock that evening, how many hours had you worked?
Answer: Seventeen.
Question: How many hours had you worked that week?
Answer: Ninety-four.
Question: You were tired? You were desperately tired?
Answer: I was doing my job.
Question: How many hours' sleep had you had that week – an estimate?
Answer: Thirty-five or forty – I don't know.
Question: What was the weather that night?
Answer: I can't recall, nothing exceptional.
Question: According to the Meteorological Office, there was low cloud and intermittent drizzle – but you don't recall?
Answer: I don't remember.
Question: Had you eaten in that seven teen-hour shift?
Answer: We usually try and get a burger – but 1 don't remember what I eat.
Question: I'm getting a picture of a tired man, and a hungry man – you are aware that hunger increases tiredness?
Answer: I suppose so.
Question: The distance between yourself and the vehicle in which you 'identified' Mr Packer was seventy- seven metres. Is that correct?
Answer: I believe so.
Question: You were tired, you were hungry, the visibility was poor, you were the length of three cricket pitches from the target of your surveillance, but you maintain that you are certain that you could identify Mr Packer?
Answer: I do, and 1 am.
Question: Had you, yourself, cleaned the windscreen of your vehicle?
Answer: No.
Question: When was the windscreen last cleaned?
Answer: I don't know.
Question: Don't you have the records that will tell you, records from the vehicle pool?
Answer: I don't have them.
Question: Was there a street-light close to the vehicle in which you allege Mr Packer was sitting?
Answer: There was enough light for me to make an identification.. .
Question: I asked whether there was a street-light close to that vehicle – was there?
Answer: I don't recall.
Question: On the map plan you have provided us with there is a street-light almost directly above the car you had under surveillance. Did you know that?
Answer: The light was satisfactory for an identification.
Question: According to the records of Haringey Council Roads Department, that light had been reported out of action eighteen days before and had not been repaired by the relevant date – does that surprise you?
Answer: I identified Mr Packer.
Question: Did you take photographs that night?
Answer: Yes.
Question: Where are those photographs?
Answer: They didn't come out.
Question: Didn't come out?
Answer: Correct.
Question: I see you wear spectacles – are they for general use?
Ansiver: Yes.
Question: How long have you been wearing spectacles?
Answer: Since I was a child.
It was a public demolition. The man in the witness box was as good as any of the Sierra Quebec Golf team at surveillance and had been made to appear an un-reliable amateur in court. The cool reasonable politeness of Mister's QC dripped off the transcript
… Joey heard the door open but did not look up.
He scribbled his notes. An informant had retracted, fingerprints had gone missing, the star witness had fallen on his face. It had been the systematic and clinical destruction of three years' work.
There was a spluttered hacking cough behind him.
'Putting the world to rights?'
He recognized the hoarse, guttural voice of the senior investigation officer. Joey closed down the computer, took his time, then swivelled in his chair. 'I was looking for what we did wrong.. . '
'Bollocks… I tell you what you are, Cann, you're an arrogant little prick.'
'Am I?'
'An arrogant shite with an attitude, problem.'
'Is that right?'
Joey stared at him, his gaze unwavering. He saw the blotched face and the puffy bags under the man's eyes. He saw yesterday's shoes, scuffed and scraped, and a pair of suit trousers that had been thrown on the floor. The man's eyes blazed at him.
'We went to the pub last night – I don't know how many pubs we went to. Some of us threw up, some of us fell over – two pubs put us out. We had a kitty and a banker, fifty quid each, and we packed it in when the banker said he was skint. We stayed together till all the mini-cabs were lined up and ready to go. No one was left behind. We got home. We were a team, the whole of SQG, except you. You were too fucking superior to be a part of the team. 'I was looking for what we did wrong.' You think you're the only one who cared. You think you're the only one with the intelligence to know what went 'wrong'. This is a team game, Cann, and until you realize it you're going to stay an arrogant little shite without a friend in the world. We don't have heroes here, we don't bloody want crusaders. Some of the best investigators in the business were in this team, but they're not good enough for you, and you piss on them. I doubt you'll ever learn… Stupid bugger, we all care, we all gave three years of our lives to put Packer away. Go home, go and dig your bloody garden.'
'I don't have a garden.'
'Your bloody window-box, then.'
'I don't have a window-box.'
'Then why don't you just fuck right off out of here?'
He knew that the SIO had eight months until retirement. The man would have retired well if he had been able to boast gently that he had prosecuted and put away Albert William Packer, the Untouchable. Little doors would have opened on to the well-paid circuit of security consultancy. The SIO had had the big one within his grasp and he had let it go down the drain.
Joey stood, stretched, then went to the wall and carefully took down the photograph of Mister's arrest, prising it slowly away from the paintwork so that the corners weren't torn, then he rolled it up and put it into his bag.
The SIO lurched towards him and the fat finger, bright with last night's mahogany nicotine stains, stabbed at Joey's chest.
'You know why we hate heroes and crusaders, Cann? Why we root them out? Why? They put the safety of
