used a cold, pebble-rattling voice. It took Joey a few sharp seconds to realize why there was no warmth. They were not friends, pals, chums, mates.
He had been told during the phone call bringing him in, from the CIO's personal assistant, that a new team would reactivate Sierra Quebec Golf, and that he was to meet, and brief, the team-leader replacing Finch. He thought that the banter, wit and crack of the old team was dead. He turned to face Gough and saw no welcome offered him.
'I'm lumbered with you.'
'Don't expect me to apologize.'
'I was told I needed you because you're the archivist.'
'I know more about it than anyone else.'
'And that you're an arrogant shite.'
' I do my job as best I can.'
'The "best" is only adequate. Go short of the best and you're out on your neck.'
'Thank you.' He meant it. Joey felt a surge of gratitude and relief. In his room, over the weekend, he had lain on his bed, toyed with a takeaway, sipped and not enjoyed his beers, and imagined a life divorced from Albert William Packer. Anything, he'd thought, other than the work around Packer would be second-rate.
He noticed the scrubbed clean, babylike, out-of-doors complexion of Gough; the skin on his cheeks, veined, was the same as his father's down on the estate in Somerset. The shoes, polished and cracked, were the same as his father wore, and the suit when his father went up to the house to meet with the owners. There was the scrape of a match then the face was diffused behind pipesmoke.
A gravelled question. 'How did you come in, Joey?'
'I walked to the Underground, took a tube from Tooting Bee to Bank, then walked.'
'Did you see any soldiers?'
'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
He had been told during the phone call bringing him in, from the CIO's personal assistant, that a new team would reactivate Sierra Quebec Golf, and that he was to meet, and brief, the team-leader replacing Finch. He thought that the banter, wit and crack of the old team was dead. He turned to face Gough and saw no welcome offered him.
'I'm lumbered with you.'
'Don't expect me to apologize.'
'I was told I needed you because you're the archivist.'
'I know more about it than anyone else.'
'And that you're an arrogant shite.'
' I do my job as best I can.'
'The "best" is only adequate. Go short of the best and you're out on your neck.'
'Thank you.' He meant it. Joey felt a surge of gratitude and relief. In his room, over the weekend, he had lain on his bed, toyed with a takeaway, sipped and not enjoyed his beers, and imagined a life divorced from Albert William Packer. Anything, he'd thought, other than the work around Packer would be second-rate.
He noticed the scrubbed clean, babylike, out-of-doors complexion of Gough; the skin on his cheeks, veined, was the same as his father's down on the estate in Somerset. The shoes, polished and cracked, were the same as his father wore, and the suit when his father went up to the house to meet with the owners. There was the scrape of a match then the face was diffused behind pipesmoke.
A gravelled question. 'How did you come in, Joey?'
'I walked to the Underground, took a tube from Tooting Bee to Bank, then walked.'
'Did you see any soldiers?'
'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
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