Read Online Agent of the State by Roger Pearce - Free Book Online Page A

They were part of a shrinking Special Branch core, experienced and tested, yet viewed with suspicion by the new SO15 imports from the boroughs, including Weatherall. Adrenaline was still flowing and, as Pepe brought over the bacon sandwiches and coffee, Melanie teased Langton, a human cannonball in his motorcycle leathers as he’d piled on top of Jibril. Langton, a divorced former sports teacher and motorcycle nut, reacted like she was paying him a compliment. ‘Yeah, and you couldn’t wait to jump me, could you?’
    Fargo was always tucking his shirt back in his trousers, and did so now as he squeezed behind the table. He winked at Mel. ‘Welcome back,’ he mouthed, to let her know he had heard about her ordeal in Hackney. The team was close enough for no one to ask her about her kidnap and violent escape, knowing she would talk about it in her own good time. Fargo was forty-three but single, living with his ageing mother in a maisonette in Edgware. There was a rumour of a sister with Down’s syndrome, but Fargo never talked about her. He seesawed between starvation fish diets in 1830 and late-night fast-food binges, and this week he was overweight.
    ‘Time to go back on the sardines, Al,’ said Justin, half his age and skinny, patting Fargo’s stomach. But Fargo just signalled Pepe for another round.
    When they were settled, Kerr told them to write down every single memory. The earlier the original notes from the field, the greater the credibility, so it was vital to make a record while memories were fresh. Trusting no one, Kerr concentrated solely on building a cast-iron cover over his team. In less than forty minutes they had emerged with a single coherent account, with times, places, people and events in the right order. When the mud-slinging started, he intended to ensure that his team was shielded by the facts, so he told Fargo to copy the ops-room log and his own notes made in the heat of battle and lock everything away in 1830. That was Kerr’s first duty, well above taking a bollocking from the commander.
    As Kerr was leaving, Langton told him he’d better stick Weatherall’s diary down his trousers. That got everyone laughing, but they all wished him well, for John Kerr was their number-one guy, the leader who stayed on the plot, bought the grub and always took the hit for them.
    Kerr arrived in Weatherall’s outer office at 10.06. The PA and front of house was Donna, an immaculately groomed Jamaican in her fifties. Known as ‘the weathervane’, because she signalled Weatherall’s mood, she gave Kerr a thumbs-down from twenty paces, as soon as he rounded the lift lobby, distracting him with her glittering fingernails.
    Donna had been around the Met for a long time, watching bosses come and go through a decade of casual racism into the crazily PC nineties. ‘You look like you’ve already been in a fight,’ she murmured, taking in Kerr’s dishevelled appearance as he sailed through the office.
    ‘Thanks a lot.’ He entered without knocking or breaking step, then winked as he closed the door on her.
    ‘Morning, ma’am.’ Kerr knew Weatherall liked ‘ma’am’ to rhyme with ‘palm,’ but only ever managed a short a .
    ‘You’re late,’ she snapped, glancing with disapproval at Kerr’s stained jacket and tieless collar. He wondered if she knew about the siege in Hackney only a couple of hours earlier. The commander of SO15’s intelligence unit had the best office in the Yard, a corner plot on the eighteenth floor with panoramic views of St James’s Park and beyond. There were easy chairs and a long meeting table, but Weatherall saved these for her equals. To engage with the lower orders she remained behind her desk. Generations of Special Branch commanders had enjoyed the green-leather-inlaid oak desk once occupied by Viscount Trenchard, former Marshal of the RAF and Metropolitan Police Commissioner. But Trenchard’s pride and joy had been dismantled alongside the Branch, replaced with