Read Online Undercover by Bill James - Free Book Online

‘On the face of it – yes, on the face of it – Parry looked ideally suited. Most police chiefs prefer their undercover officers to have had at least four or five years of ordinary detective experience. And ideally they should be in settled domestic relationships: this is taken as proof of a balanced, businesslike, well-rooted nature.’
    Iles said in a quibbling, fussy, unnaturally quiet tone, sort of decorous seminar mode: ‘Harpur tended to get himself well-rooted
outside
the home environment. Very well rooted. That is, of course, outside his
own
home environment. Other people’s home environments were quite another consideration, and could be shamelessly—’
    â€˜Parry had done six years as a general duties detective,’ Maud explained, ‘and was in what appeared to be a classic, two-child family situation. He fitted the approved age range – early thirties to early forties.’
    â€˜Fucking lunacy,’ Iles said.
    â€˜Now, clearly, there can be, and are, objections to this pattern of recruitment,’ she said. ‘Should officers with dependants be favoured for what is undoubtedly exceptionally risky work? If something goes wrong it isn’t only the officer who suffers.’
    â€˜I don’t allow undercover on my ground,’ Iles said. ‘Not married or single or civil partnership. Not young, not not-so young. We had a death there, too, you see.’ 2
    Iles had never completely recovered from his distress at the murder of Ray Street, an undercover man put into terminal danger with the ACC’s agreement. Now and again, Harpur would see him slide back into almost disabling grief and self-condemnation. This sensitivity seemed to clash with his usual bland flintiness and snarling poise; though, yes, quite often he could fall into the screaming abdabs, lip-froth included, about his wife, Sarah, and Harpur, a liaison long over. Iles had become obsessed about the safety of his people. Maybe the indecisiveness and hesitance that resulted had killed his chance of a Chiefdom somewhere. He did believe there was a conspiracy against him, Home Office-based, but conceivably wider than that, taking in the European Parliament, the Church of England, St Andrew’s golf club and the BBC. Perhaps his paranoia had some cause. Perhaps it didn’t: he might be a natural second-in-command; eternally second.
    â€˜Both GB and the US recommend mature, father or mother figures for undercover,’ Maud replied. Obviously, she had very quickly worked out a procedure for coping with Iles: ignore him, or use waffly generalities to swamp his bleats. Perhaps this speed and ruthlessness was natural to graduates with fucking Firsts from fucking Oxford in Latin, Greek and the side dishes.
    Maud said: ‘Occasionally, it’s true, the police brass opts for a comparatively new recruit to infiltrate a villain outfit: they pick someone who hasn’t had time to develop a standard police mindset and attitudes which might automatically take over suddenly in a crisis undercover and betray him or her. Also, the officer will be unknown to local criminals. He or she might have gone straight into plain clothes and be free from any lawman, law-woman, history. A possible boon. However, as we know, an alternative way to guard against recognition exists: choose a mature officer but from a different Force. This brings us to Parry.’
    â€˜But it doesn’t, of course, bring Parry back to his family,’ Iles said.
    â€˜Naturally, neither safeguard can be totally efficient, and we certainly have to wonder whether the distance tactic worked for him,’ Maud said. ‘Members of crooked firms move about the country looking for better business, or to be near a girlfriend or boy friend, or to escape a spell of police heat on their usual ground, or to look at second homes to invest their smart gains in. And one of them could have run across Parry before he took on his