'Latte,' said Sharpe. 'Tall or big or grande grande or whatever pa.s.ses for large here.' or whatever pa.s.ses for large here.'

Shepherd bought two latte lattes and a cup of breakfast tea for b.u.t.ton, then the two men walked out of the station and along Praed Street. The office was above a travel agent's. There were eight b.u.t.tons on a panel by the entrance and he pressed number five. They both waved up at the CCTV camera covering the door and the lock clicked open.

Sharpe went in first and Shepherd followed him along a scruffy hallway, with a threadbare carpet that had once been scarlet but was now a muddy brown, and up a flight of wooden stairs.

b.u.t.ton already had the door open for them. She smiled as she took the tea from Shepherd. 'You're always such a sweetie,' she said.

'Teacher's pet,' whispered Sharpe. He dropped down onto a black vinyl sofa under the window overlooking the street. To the right of the door was a small kitchen area with a sink, a microwave and a fridge, and to the left a door led to a small bedroom.

Shepherd sat down at the table. b.u.t.ton closed the door and joined him. Her briefcase was on the floor. Behind her, a large whiteboard was fixed to the wall. 'So, the good news is that it looks as if Grimshaw and his crew are all going to plead guilty,' said b.u.t.ton. 'I can't see them getting away with less than ten years. And Maloney's going to get a darn sight longer than that.'

'Deserves it, too,' said Shepherd. 'Any joy getting him charged with rapes from the other jobs?'

'The cops are working on it,' said b.u.t.ton. 'It's the age-old problem, though, that rape victims don't want to appear in court.'

'Yeah, well, who can blame them?' said Shepherd. 'Would you want to stand up in front of a man like Maloney and describe to a court what he did to you? I can see the b.a.s.t.a.r.d standing there grinning and lapping it up.'

'The line they're trying to sell is that if they can get enough evidence then he'll plead guilty.'

'And his lawyer will get the sentences running concurrently, which means he won't serve any extra time for the rapes,' said Shepherd. 'Maloney's an animal. He should be locked away for life.'

'He'll get close to that, Spider, don't worry. Even without a rape charge he'll go down for armed robbery and for GBH on Toby Rawstorne and s.e.xual a.s.sault on the girl. The really bad news is that Rawstorne has lost his spleen and he's threatening to sue us all.'

'For what?' said Shepherd.

'His lawyer's claiming that the police were using him as bait. And that because of police recklessness, his family was put at risk.'

'I didn't know where we were going until we were there,' said Shepherd. 'I took a h.e.l.l of a risk sending you the text when I did if they'd caught me it would have ended then and there in the van.'

'And we got the armed-response unit there as quickly as we could,' said b.u.t.ton. 'But Rawstorne's house is in the middle of nowhere and we were in the depths of Somerset when all is said and done. The armed cops out there are okay, but they're not up to the standards of CO19.'

'We're lucky they didn't turn up on tractors,' said Sharpe.

b.u.t.ton ignored the interruption. 'Anyway, that's all been explained to him, but his lawyer's arguing that we were negligent and is threatening to sue us.'

'If it hadn't been for the police turning up when they did, Maloney would have killed him and his family,' said Shepherd. 'We saved them. How stupid is he? If I hadn't infiltrated Grimshaw's gang the robbery would still have gone ahead and his daughter would have been raped. And the beating he got was nothing to do with me.'

'No arguments there,' said b.u.t.ton. 'But he does have a point. We could have pulled them in the planning stage. Got them for conspiracy.' She caught the look of disgust that flashed across Shepherd's face. 'I'm just saying, Spider, that you can see it from their point of view. It was my call to let the operation run.'

'And it was the right call,' said Shepherd. 'No one knew that Maloney was going to turn nasty. We needed to catch them with the gear.'

'Their lawyer is demanding full details of the operation, including any undercover operatives.'

'Which, of course, he isn't going to get,' said Shepherd.

'Of course. I just wanted you to know where we stand, that's all.'

'I sometimes wonder if it's worth us doing what we do,' said Shepherd. 'The courts go easy on the guys we do put away, and the people we're trying to help want to sue us.'

'Everyone's a victim,' said Sharpe, sourly. 'Everyone except the cops. And us.'

b.u.t.ton laughed. 'Looks like I'd better give you your next a.s.signment before you start talking about quitting,' she said. She picked up her briefcase, opened it and took out a thick file. Sharpe finished his coffee and joined them at the table as b.u.t.ton stuck a large photograph onto the whiteboard. It had been taken using a long lens but the detail was sharp. Three men in wheelchairs were being wheeled away from an Air Jamaica jet. Two had leg casts, one had his arm in a sling and all had facial injuries. 'Orane Williams, Leonardo Sach.e.l.l and Dwayne Brand, a.k.a. Glenford Barrow, big wheels in the Clansman Ma.s.sive gang and frequent visitors to our sh.o.r.es,' said b.u.t.ton. 'Shown here returning to Kingston.' She used a black marker pen to write the names on the whiteboard.

'Good riddance, I'd say,' said Sharpe.

'I can't argue with that,' said b.u.t.ton. 'But someone gave them a h.e.l.l of a going over before they left the UK. Broken legs, fractured arms, smashed kneecaps, broken teeth, a ruptured spleen and other a.s.sorted injuries. The guy in the middle there lost both his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es.'

'I've heard of the Clansman Ma.s.sive,' said Shepherd. 'Didn't I read somewhere that raping an underage girl formed part of their initiation ceremony?'

'You don't want to believe everything you read,' said b.u.t.ton. 'But they're hard b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, that's for sure. They were dealing drugs and running hookers in north London and are thought to be responsible for a number of shootings being investigated by Operation Trident. It's not the first time they got very busy in 2006 but when things got too hot they went back to Jamaica and returned with new ident.i.ties.' She stuck another surveillance photograph onto the whiteboard. This one showed Jamaican police officers surrounding the three injured men. 'Someone tipped off the Jamaican cops. There were outstanding warrants against all of them and they're now in custody. They'll be sent down for a long, long time.'

'Rum and c.o.kes all round,' said Sharpe. 'What's SOCA's interest?'

'In the past year a dozen Yardies have returned to Jamaica in a similar state. Beaten to a pulp but not prepared to say a word to the police here.'

'Good riddance to bad rubbish,' said Shepherd. 'Someone's giving them a taste of their own medicine. I doubt anyone's shedding any tears for them.'

b.u.t.ton stuck a police photograph onto the whiteboard, a front view and two side views. It was a man in his fifties, rat-faced with a small moustache and thinning hair. 'Oliver Barrett,' she said. 'Convicted paedophile, served eight years back in the nineties for a.s.saulting two toddlers. He was murdered two months ago. His body was found under a railway arch in Kilburn.' She stuck several scenes-of-crime photographs onto the board. 'Strangled with a length of rope,' she said.

'A dead paedophile. Again, I don't see why SOCA would be interested,' said Shepherd.

'Stick with me, Spider,' said b.u.t.ton. 'But I will tell you that a police van was seen driving away from the railway arch a couple of hours before the body was discovered.' She put up another photograph. A black man with short hair and a jagged scar across his cheek stared sullenly at the camera. 'Jake Fellows, known to his friends as Screwball.' b.u.t.ton wrote the name and nickname on the whiteboard. 'He was recently sent down for life for murdering a rival drug-dealer, and this is where it all gets very interesting.'

'Another Yardie?'

b.u.t.ton shook her head. 'British born,' she said. 'Jamaican mother, Geordie father. Brought up in Newcastle but moved down to London in the nineties. Nasty piece of work. Operation Trident had been looking at him for years until one day he was handed to them on a plate. Anonymous phone call that he had crack cocaine in his car. Drugs Squad picked him up and it was a good tip he had half a kilo hidden in his spare tyre. But what was much more interesting was the Glock they found with the drugs. It had been used to kill another drug-dealer, guy by the name of Winston Cameron Churchill to his friends. Cameron was shot twice in the head and the bullets were a match to the gun in Screwball's car.'

'Which he denied all knowledge of, presumably,' said Sharpe.

'Why, Razor, have you become psychic in your old age?' said b.u.t.ton. 'Screwball denied all knowledge of the drugs and the gun, but the forensic evidence and the gun did for him. Police had found an oil leak in the road opposite Cameron's house, and it was a match to the oil in the sump of Screwball's car. There were half a dozen cigarette b.u.t.ts on the pavement and the DNA on them was a match to Screwball's.'

'Bang to rights,' said Sharpe.

'The jury certainly thought so,' said b.u.t.ton. 'Took them less than an hour to 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 s.e.xton 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 b.u.t.ton. '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 b.u.t.ton. 'If it was one of Packer's compet.i.tors, 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 b.u.t.ton. '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 b.u.t.ton. 'All three had horrific hand injuries and all claimed to have been involved in unlikely accidents.'

Sharpe grinned, and b.u.t.ton 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. Sc.u.m 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 b.u.t.ton. 'These men were a.s.saulted and nearly crippled, and no matter how you cut it, that's not the role of the police in a civilised society.'

'Charlie, nothing that you've said directly points to the cops,' said Shepherd.

'Yeah, it could be the militant wing of Neighbourhood Watch,' said Sharpe.

b.u.t.ton opened her mouth to snap at Sharpe, but Shepherd put up a hand to interrupt her. 'Razor actually has a point,' he said. 'It could be civilians. There are plenty of anti-drug groups that have got fairly violent in the past. Could be civilian workers within the Met. I don't see why you're a.s.suming it's cops that have gone bad.'

'The van that was seen near to where the dead paedophile was found. We have a partial number plate.'

'And how did we get that, pray tell?'

'A dosser with a pretty good memory, considering he's an alcoholic who's been on the streets for going on twenty years,' said b.u.t.ton. 'He remembered the first two numbers and there were three letters in the plate that were his daughter's initials, so that was enough to tie it to one of three vans used by the Territorial Support Group in north-west London.' She wrote the numbers and letters on the whiteboard and underlined them.

'The TSG?' said Sharpe. 'I remember the good old days when they were the SPG, the Special Patrol Group. A rose by any other name.'

'The SPG was disbanded in 1987,' said b.u.t.ton, archly. 'But, yes, the TSG, or CO20, carries out the same function as the SPG used to, pretty much.'

'They're the heavy mob,' said Sharpe. 'They go in with shields and truncheons where other bobbies fear to tread.'

'They have an anti-terrorism role, these days,' said b.u.t.ton. 'But you're right. They are there to provide a level-one response to disorder throughout the capital, and reducing crime that has been determined to be a priority.'

'Like I said, the heavy mob,' said Sharpe.

Shepherd nodded thoughtfully. 'And the plan is to send me and Razor in as cops?'

'Just you,' said b.u.t.ton. 'I doubt we'd get away with two new faces appearing at the same time. I'll arrange for you to report for duty next Monday so you'll have the rest of the week off. I'll talk to Jenny Lock and get a place fixed up for you in north London.' Jenny Lock was one of SOCA's dressers, providing the props necessary to back up an undercover legend. Shepherd had met her two years previously when she'd helped provide his background for a job in Belfast. b.u.t.ton slid a sheet of blank paper across the desk. 'We'll need a signature for the warrant card and ancillary ID. Name of Terry Halligan.'

'Terry or Terrence?'

'Terry,' said b.u.t.ton.

Shepherd signed the sheet of paper and gave it back to b.u.t.ton. She took a thick file from her briefcase and gave it to him. 'Some light reading for you,' she said. 'There's a lot to absorb there so take it home with you. I'll need you back in London on Sunday bring it with you then. It's got all the details of the Serials you'll come across.'

'Serials?'

'The operational units of the TSG. Basically three vans each with a sergeant and six constables, all reporting to an inspector. We know that the van seen in Kilburn came from the TSG base at Paddington Green, just down the road from here. We think, because of the operational duties they were on that day, that we can narrow it down to two of the Serials. But in the file I've included photos and details on all the TSG staff at the station, plus any other senior officers you might come across. I've already checked that there's no one at Paddington Green that you've run into before.'

'I'm not happy about going under cover against cops,' said Shepherd.

'Your legend will be watertight,' said b.u.t.ton.

'That's not what I'm worried about,' said Shepherd. 'They're cops, Charlie. We're on the same side.'

'They've committed a.s.sault, GBH, perjury, they've faked evidence, and there's a very good chance that they've committed murder,' said b.u.t.ton.

'They've beaten up Yardies, put a drug-dealer behind bars and maybe killed a paedophile,' said Shepherd.

'They've broken the law, Spider. We can't be selective about justice. People either obey the law or they don't.'

Shepherd tapped the photographs of the three injured Yardies on the airport Tarmac. 'Don't tell me you feel sorry for them. We're better off without them in our country, and if the government was doing its job they wouldn't be here in the first place. And don't get me started on paedophiles. You know as well as I do that there's no curing a paedophile. They'll keep on offending until they die. The only way of dealing with them is to lock them up so they can't get near kids.'

'There's a few psychologists that would argue with you there' said b.u.t.ton.

'Once a nonce, always a nonce,' said Sharpe. 'And that's a fact.'

'Thank you for your input, Razor,' said b.u.t.ton. 'But it's also a fact that murder is a crime, no matter who the victim is.'

'You're a mother, Charlie. How would you feel if someone molested her? Or worse?' said Shepherd.

'I'd rather not think about it but, frankly, it's irrelevant.'

'I know that if anyone ever deliberately hurt Liam, they'd have me to deal with.'

'I do hope you're not condoning vigilantism, Spider.'

'I'd do what I had to do,' said Shepherd.

'Is that what you think these cops have become?' asked Sharpe. 'Vigilantes?'

'That's exactly what we think,' said b.u.t.ton.

'There's no profit involved? They're not ripping off their cash or drugs?'

'There's no evidence of that, no.'

Sharpe sat back and folded his arms. 'Then I for one think we should just leave them to it. Or give them a medal.'

'Well, thankfully, the fate of the British criminal justice system doesn't rest in your hands,' said b.u.t.ton.

'Again, Razor does have a point,' said Shepherd. 'We're SOCA, the Serious Organised Crime Agency. My understanding is that we'd be going after drug-dealers, people-traffickers, armed robbers.'

'What these guys are doing is serious and organised,' said b.u.t.ton.

'But they're cops. We go after villains.'

'In this case, the cops are villains,' said b.u.t.ton.

'Professional Standards investigate bad cops,' said Sharpe. 'That's what they do.'