Ryan is doing push-ups on a grimy living-room floor. Bits of fluff and dirt keep sticking to his palms. He’s working out for two reasons: one, he can no longer go to the gym, and two, because he cannot, cannot, cannot get the missing baby out of his mind.
The gym aside, Ryan can do hardly anything he usually can. He can’t go home to see his family. He can’t go out with his friends. He can’t even go back to his old place of abode …
It happened so fast.
He moved here last night, to a bedsit in Wallasey. He’s to live here, eat here, sleep here. It’s two rooms: a bathroom and everything else in one space. Pretty economical, really, he thinks. A sofa that folds out into a bed. A row of kitchen cabinets against the far wall. A television, a landline.
What more could he need? He doesn’t mind. It’s exciting. And, even better, it’s temporary.
He arrived here at one o’clock in the morning, last night, made sure he wasn’t followed, let himself into the bedsit with the key he was given at the station. As he swung his rucksack off his shoulder and on to the grim carpet, he’d let a breath out and thought: I am here.
Leo had finally spelled it out the other day in the cupboard. ‘We want you to go undercover in this group, Ry, now,’ Leo said. ‘Today.’ He held eye contact, not breaking away for even a millisecond, not blinking, nothing. ‘The legend we set up is … well. It’s you.’
‘Right,’ Ryan said with a gulp. All became clear. Just like that. The corkboard. The corkboard was a way in. All the questions about his history, his brother, what he knew …
He wanted this, he tried to tell himself. He wanted an interesting career. But – wow – undercover work. Intercepting a gang. He suddenly wanted to know the fatality rate of undercover police. The odds. His chances.
‘You know, you don’t talk like a police officer,’ Leo said. And then he clarified: ‘That’s what we wanted.’
‘I see,’ Ryan said, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Jesus, so he was an undercover candidate because he was nothing like a policeman? He’d even fucked up the police alphabet. Ryan bit his lip. A sad, soft feeling
came over him, like he had swallowed a hot and melancholic drink.
‘No – I mean, a police officer would say, Can this gent procure me some high-class cocaine? You would say, Got any beak, lad?’
Ryan barks a laugh out.
‘You know. I exaggerate for comedic effect. You’re fucking great at intel, though. That corkboard. Golden,’ Leo says warmly.
‘Thank you.’
And now, Ryan is to be introduced to the OCG by a colleague who’s already in, their inside man.
His phone rings. ‘All set?’ says Leo.
‘Yeah, think so.’ He looks out at the cold estate. It’s the very tail end of winter now. The trees have been reduced to stickmen. The skies are bleak, white, no colour to them at all. The weather is lacklustre, can’t be bothered to do anything at all; no sun, no rain, nothing.
‘Remember, three pieces of advice.’
‘Okay?’ Ryan turns back to face the living room.
‘One: stay in character at absolutely all times, even if you think your cover has been blown. It’s better for people to suspect you’re a bobby than for you to confirm it.’
‘Right.’ Ryan swallows. He is nervous. He can admit that much. It might be cool and stuff, but – what happens if they guess? What if they get ready for the big entrapment and he blows it?
‘Two: at every turn, crims suspect drugs squads. You should, too. You should be mortally offended if accused of being DS, and accuse others, too.’
‘I will. I’m fine with all that,’ Ryan says truthfully. They’re sending him in quite high up, to try and infiltrate the people who tip off the gang that the houses will be empty. Not into the drugs ring, but the theft ring, instead.
‘Three: never fucking tell anyone.’
‘Noted. I mean – that should be number one, really,’ Ryan says. Leo laughs loudly, which makes Ryan’s chest feel full and happy.
In his hand Ryan has his phone, containing a text which he checks and checks again: 2 Cross Street. He’s dressed all in black, as directed.
The text came just as Ryan’s inside man, Angela, said it would. From a blocked number. And this is what they’re trying to figure out: who gets the addresses, and how?
Ryan had not met Angela before, as is protocol within the force: nobody meets the active undercover officers. Angela has been on a four-month-long project to get to know the arm of the gang involved in the thefts, and she’s done a good job so far. She’s stolen four cars and got to know Ezra at the port. In that time, she has never once set foot inside the station, in case somebody saw her.
Ryan met Angela a few nights ago, facilitated from afar by Leo. They exchanged a few words outside a One Stop shop. Angela is organized and serious, resists his jokes, as though they inconvenience her. Yesterday, she introduced Ryan, her ‘cousin’ and ‘experienced thief’ to the gang to bolster her own worth, but also to try to get Ryan to go in higher up. To get to
know the person behind the intel, rather than just the foot soldiers.
And Ryan’s first task to prove himself is this: to go to the address written here on the phone and rob the car.
As easy and as difficult as that.
It’s after two o’clock in the morning. The moon is up, a luminous ball thrown into the sky that stays there for just a night before it falls again.
The house in front of him is sleeping. The owners are away, in the Lake District. The hallway light is the only one on; an obvious timer. If that wasn’t clear enough, the lawn is unruly: a clear tell people are on holiday.
Ryan doesn’t think about it. Just does it. Letterbox open. He’s in luck: this one will be simple, the keys left within reach. He gets the long black pole out, fishes the keys out and pockets them. He unlocks the car with a
gloved hand, slides in and reverses it off the drive without the engine on. If the police ever find this car and run forensics on it, that is when the
undercover unit will disclose him: that this is Ryan, actually. One of the good guys; immune from prosecution.
On an unlit road nearby, he starts the next task. His hands are shaking. He’s never plated a car. The police assumed he’d know how to do it, but he’s always been rubbish at mechanics, DIY, anything like that. He can’t figure out how things go together. He drops two tiny screws, which roll
around on the pavement, blending easily into the tarmac. ‘Shitting hell,’ he says, kneeling down to try and find them with his fingertips.
It takes him forty minutes to plate the car and he cuts his hand, right across the palm, with the sharp edge of the number plate. But it’s done. Another crime committed.
Ryan drives to the port, where he waits, as instructed, for Ezra to be free, then coasts up to him, getting out and handing him the keys.
‘Perfection,’ Ezra says. Right there, at the cold port, Ryan loses his nerve. Imagine, imagine, imagine, is all he can think. Imagine if Ezra realizes who he is. Ryan may not be in danger of getting arrested, but he is definitely in danger of getting fucking murdered.
‘Great,’ Ryan says. His hand is trembling as he reaches to clap Ezra on the shoulder. He disguises it, lets his jaw swing, a common symptom of being on cocaine. Let Ezra think it’s that, that he’s coked up, like his brother’s associates.
Ryan looks just beyond Ezra, to the cargo ships, the brightly coloured cranes against the night sky.
Ezra meets his eyes. Something seems to pass between them, though Ryan doesn’t know what. His knees begin to weaken, and he disguises it by hopping from foot to foot.
‘First one?’ Ezra asks carefully.
‘Yeah. First of many.’ Ryan rocks back on his heels. They will kill him. No matter the police protection, the safe house he will go to if his cover is blown: these people will kill Ryan if they discover him. Stop thinking about it. Just stop it.
‘We’ve done forty this week,’ Ezra says. ‘Forty cars?’
‘Mmm.’
Wow. Ryan blows air out through his mouth. The scale of this is bigger than even he realized.
‘You hurt your hand?’ Ezra asks.
‘Yeah, no big deal,’ Ryan says. ‘Just the number plate.’
‘I did the same with DIY earlier!’ Ezra says, showing Ryan his own palm.
‘Ha,’ Ryan says, his mind spinning.
‘You should get Savlon on that,’ Ezra says casually, like they’re two kids, not men in an organized-crime gang. Fucking Savlon.
