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reach a verdict and the judge sent him down for twenty-five years. That was three months ago, but last week someone else confessed to killing Cameron. And we’ve no reason to think that he was lying. The killer is another Yardie drug-dealer, who was arrested after a road-rage incident in Harlesden.’ She put another police photograph on the board. ‘Name of Sexton Packer. Sixpack is his gang name. A man in a van pulled in front of him and gave him the finger, so Packer got out and broke it. Snapped it in half. At the time an Operation Trident unit had him under surveillance so they pulled him in and found a gun in his glove compartment and a kilo of Colombia’s finest. He was processed at Harlesden police station and the cops put an undercover guy in with Packer.’
    ‘Risky.’
    ‘The cop’s been under cover for over a decade. Very hush-hush, one of the few black undercover cops the Met has. They won’t even tell me who he is.’ She smiled. ‘Probably because they know I’d try to poach him. Anyway, this undercover guy spent twelve hours in a police cell and another three days on the remand wing of Wandsworth prison with Packer. Packer’s still on remand, but he’s got a top brief and is claiming that the car wasn’t his and he didn’t know about the drugs or the gun, and if his track record is anything to go by he’ll probably walk. But what got Operation Trident all hot and bothered was that Packer told their man he’d killed Cameron and that he reckoned the police had fitted up Screwball.’
    ‘The forensics were faked?’
    ‘Packer doesn’t know how they did it, or why, but he’s adamant that he killed Cameron. Knew the make of gun, and when and where it happened.’
    ‘So now what?’ said Shepherd. ‘Screwball gets out?’
    ‘It’s not as simple as that,’ said Button. ‘There’s no hard evidence and Packer isn’t likely to stand up in court and repeat what he said. And there’s no way that the undercover cop can give evidence. No, the way things stand at the moment, Screwball continues to serve his sentence. But we need to find out who set him up. Because it was almost certainly cops that did it.’
    ‘That’s a jump, Charlie,’ said Shepherd.
    ‘Not necessarily,’ said Button. ‘If it was one of Packer’s competitors, they wouldn’t bother with a set-up, they’d just arrange a drive-by. No, whoever did it had to have access to the gun in the first place – and who better to relieve a bad guy of his weapon than the police? Packer was regularly turned over by the cops, and during one search they could have found the gun and kept it.’
    ‘And you think it’s the same cops that have been riding roughshod over the Yardies?’
    ‘That seems logical enough,’ said Button. ‘What’s the alternative? That we’ve got two groups of vigilantes on the go?’ She shook her head. ‘The commissioner thinks it’s one group and so do I.’ She reached into her file and took out three photographs, all of young white men who were bruised and bloodied, and put them up on the whiteboard. ‘Three of north London’s most prolific housebreakers have ended up in Casualty over the past year,’ continued Button. ‘All three had horrific hand injuries and all claimed to have been involved in unlikely accidents.’
    Sharpe grinned, and Button glared at him. ‘It’s not funny, Razor. One of them was a sixteen-year-old kid.’
    ‘Yeah, well, when I walked a beat in Strathclyde, we had ten-year-olds breaking into houses,’ he said. ‘They’d get in through the bathroom window and let their mates in. Steal everything that wasn’t nailed down and trash the place for good measure. Scum of the earth, burglars, and the courts these days let them off with a slap on the wrist. Same with car thieves and joy-riders. Maybe if a few more got their hands smashed, they’d be less likely to do it.’
    ‘Maybe you’d be better off applying for a job with the Saudi police,’ said Button. ‘These men