member.
Today, everything was different. She was looking at the world through a different lens. From the perspective of a drugs courier, nothing was quite the same. Every face on the street was a potential cause for concern. Every dodgy doorway could pose some unnamed threat. To walk down Old Compton Street was to tiptoe into the danger zone, antennae bristling and every sense quivering with alertness. She wondered how criminals coped with these levels of adrenaline. Just one morning and she was jittery at some deep level, her stomach clenched and her skin clammy. Simply trying to keep her pace down to a stroll took every ounce of effort she had to give.
She turned into Dean Street, her eyes scanning the pavements and the roadway, constantly checking to see if anyone was taking an interest in her. Something tricky was bound to be lying in wait for her, and she wanted a sense of what that might be.
Carol spotted Damocles up ahead of her on the opposite side of the street. It looked like a typical Soho café-bar, all designer chairs and marble tables, exotic flower arrangements visible through the smoked-glass window. She kept on walking till she reached the next corner, then circled the block so that she came back down Dean Street in the opposite direction.
She was almost level with them when she saw them. She’d never worked Drugs, but she was familiar with the plain clothes cars they used. This one looked like a bog-standard Ford Mondeo, but what gave it away were the twin tail pipes of the exhaust. This had a lot more under the bonnet than the standard engine. The stubby radio aerial sticking out of the rear window was confirmation enough if she’d needed it. The driver sat behind the wheel, ostensibly reading the paper, a baseball cap pulled down to shield the top half of his face.
Where there was one, there would be more. Now she had a better idea of what she was looking for, Carol carried on ambling down the street. There was another car she was fairly sure was Drugs Squad, again with the driver in place behind his newspaper. Directly opposite Damocles, two men were making a very thorough job of cleaning the window of a newsagent’s. A third man was bending over a bike, pumping up the rear tyre very slowly, checking the pressure with his fingers every few seconds.
Two car loads, she thought. That meant six or eight officers. She’d clocked five, which meant there were probably another three she hadn’t spotted. If she was their target, the chances were that the others were already inside the café. Fine. So be it.
Time for a little improvisation.
What Carol hadn’t registered was the battered white van parked behind the Mondeo. Inside, it was fitted out with state-of-the-art surveillance kit. Morgan, Thorson and Surtees perched on swivel chairs, headsets clamped to their ears. ‘That’s her, isn’t it?’ Thorson said. ‘She’s changed the way she looks, but it’s her.’
‘You can always tell by the walk,’ Surtees said, reaching across her to snag a Thermos he’d had filled with café latte from his favourite Old Compton Street bar. ‘The one thing it’s almost impossible to disguise.’
Morgan stared intently into one of the video monitors. ‘She’s carrying on to the corner. That’s two passes. She’ll go in next time.’
‘She handled those two thugs well,’ Surtees said, pouring out his coffee and pointedly not offering any to his colleagues. Morgan, he knew, would have his inevitable bottle of San Pellegrino stashed somewhere. Thorson he’d never liked enough to want to share anything with.
Thorson glared at him as the rich aroma of the coffee hit. She never seemed to manage to be as prepared for things as that anally retentive bastard Surtees. He always made her feel inadequate. She suspected that Morgan knew that, and that it was one of the reasons he kept them working together. He always liked to keep people on their toes. It meant he got results, but she couldn’t help feeling that it was sometimes at the expense of the nervous systems of his team members. She craned her neck to look at the monitor over Morgan’s shoulder. ‘All units in place, target entering,’ she heard through the crackle in her headset. ‘On my word, not before.’
Carol had come back into sight, this time moving with a determined stride towards the heavy glass and chrome doors of Damocles. Morgan clicked the mouse linked to the video display and the picture changed to the inside of the café. Another click and the screen split into two images. One showed the whole of the interior, the other focused on the man sitting reading and smoking at a table in the rear. They watched as Carol walked in and made straight for the bar. She chose a stool towards the back of the room, a little distance from the man she’d been told was her contact. But she made no attempt to catch his attention. She said something to the barista, who supplied her with a mineral water.
‘A pity we couldn’t get audio in place,’ Surtees said.
‘There’s far too much background noise,’ Thorson said. ‘We tried a mike under the table, but the marble blocked out anything worth hearing.’
Carol reached into her bag and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. She took one out and put it between her lips.
‘I didn’t think she smoked,’ Thorson said.
‘She doesn’t.’ Morgan frowned at the screen. ‘What is she up to?’
Carol made a show of searching in her bag and pulling a face in disgust. She looked around her and her eyes lit on the man at the corner table. She hitched herself off the stool, leaving her bag on the bar, and walked across to him. Now her body was between the man and the camera and they couldn’t see what was happening. She bent down, then eventually stood up, the lit cigarette between her fingers. ‘A long time to light a fag,’ Morgan said, suspicion in his voice. ‘She’s not following the script.’
‘Good for her,’ Thorson said softly as Carol returned to her bar stool. She sipped her drink and toyed with the cigarette, stubbing it out before it had burned halfway down. Then she was on her feet in a blur of movement, grabbing her bag and heading for the toilets. As she opened the door, her contact jumped to his feet, leaving his magazine, and followed her.
‘Oh shit,’ Morgan said. ‘Is there an exit out there?’
Surtees shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea. It was Mary who checked the place out.’
Thorson coloured. ‘There’s a fire exit. It’s alarmed …’
As she spoke, the peal of a security siren screamed. At the same moment, all hell broke loose in their ears.
Carol ran down the narrow service alley between the tall buildings. She didn’t have to look over her shoulder to check her contact was behind her; she could hear his heavy footfalls closing on her with every step. They emerged on a narrow side street, the pavements busy with people returning to their offices after lunch. Carol slowed to a brisk walk, her contact falling into step beside her. ‘Fucking hell,’ he said. ‘You trying to kill me?’
‘I spotted a geezer from the Drugs Squad sitting outside the café in a car,’ she said, still firmly in character. ‘Him and his storm troopers turned over a mate of mine’s place a couple of months back. They didn’t get anything then, and I’m fucked if I was going to let them get anything now.’ A nearby police siren swirled through the air. ‘We’ve got to get off the street.’
‘My motor’s over in Greek Street,’ he said.
‘They might have clocked that an’ all,’ Carol said impatiently. She jinked across the road between the traffic-jammed cars, heading for a dingy corner pub. She pushed open the doors. It was still busy from the lunchtime crowd and she squirmed her way to the rear of the room, checking he
