Undercover by Bill James Page B

roundabout, oblique way.
    Also, he thought Iris would be puzzled by the arrangement and wonder where the fifties came from. She knew Tom didn’t usually get his cash in forgery-prone, half-ton chunks, and she’d regard them as symbolic in some fashion of the changes taking place, unhealthily symbolic.
He
regarded them as symbolic himself, didn’t he, though not altogether unhealthily symbolic? Iris would think he already planned not to be home for Steve’s birthday.
    It turned out that while he’d been at the meeting with Rockmain and Lambert, she’d Googled ‘Undercover Policing’ and downloaded some material, mostly American. ‘A remarkable amount of it is about looking after the safety of the undercover officer,’ she said.
    â€˜That’s good, isn’t it?’ he said.
    â€˜In a way it’s good, yes. But the fact it’s treated as so important must mean there are big risks,’ she said. ‘Pages of precautions. And justification of close relationships.’
    He could tell she’d struggled to speak about that last item. He preferred to ignore it. ‘Yes, they’re risks that have been recognized, faced up to, and can therefore be countered,’ he replied.
    â€˜â€œTherefore.” That sounds very neat and optimistic, Tom,’ she said. ‘QED, like those geometry problems we used to do at school.’
    â€˜The people who actually control and run undercover are learning, adapting, improving all the time.’
    â€˜Because the risks are always there and getting worse?’ she said.
    Tom couldn’t work out whether she worried more about his safety than she did about the women an undercover officer might feel compelled to familiarize himself with as part of his cover; or the reverse.
    â€˜Listen to this, Tom,’ she replied and read from a piece of A4: ‘“There are officers who have an unexplainable flair for picking out villains, and, likewise, some villains have an unexplainable flair for picking out undercover spies.”’
    â€˜We’re trained to defeat that type of flair,’ he said.
    She looked at the sheet of paper again. ‘It says undercover officers can give themselves away by too much liveliness in their eyes. Druggies’ eyes look blank. How could they train you not to have lively eyes? Think dull? Think desperate? Think cold turkey?’

TEN
    AFTER
    A t around midday following the first film-show Maud said they should have a break and gave Harpur and Iles further documents, statements and Press cuttings, then led them to a small conference room. It had several easy chairs and a long oak table. A buffet lunch with a bottle of claret, a bottle of Sauvignon, a jug of tap water, cutlery, glasses, plates and a corkscrew were laid out there. ‘Please read the material, help yourselves to a meal, veggie, meat or fish, yogurt desserts, and perhaps we could reassemble at half three in the cinema,’ she said. ‘Early afternoon I’m spoken for – have to interview a Chief Constable and kick him in the scrote for lassitude bordering on torpor.’
    â€˜It could be any one of ten,’ Iles said. ‘Torpor would be brilliant progress in at least three of them.’
    â€˜Won’t take me more than an hour,’ Maud replied.
    And it obviously didn’t. The new, three thirty session opened with a picture on the screen of what Harpur assumed to be the edge of Mitre Park, where the Volvo and career Wheels, Jamie Meldon-Luce, would have waited. As well as actual driving talent, and the skills and electronic tool-kit to crack any car’s security, a Wheels should know how to hang on and hang on for a latecomer; know how to make sure loyalty, solidarity and patience blocked out panic. This was a situationer photograph only, taken in the daytime and with no parked Volvo or any other vehicle present. The houses in the background looked markedly unshabby. Harpur came