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Ryan delivers the third car in as many weeks to Ezra. It’s the dead of the night, between three and four. He’s knackered. He’s never been able to lie in, so he’s hardly getting any sleep. His arms and legs feel heavy and he’s cold, his body trembling.
‘Thanks very much,’ Ezra says to him.
Just as he’s about to leave, his colleague, Angela, arrives. ‘Ah ha,’ Ezra says.
Angela smiles at Ryan. It’s a careful smile. One that says familiar, but not in cahoots. She’s wearing tracksuit bottoms, no make-up, hair scraped back into a ponytail, ashy roots showing. ‘I have a Merc for you,’ she says to Ezra. ‘Bit tricky as the key was just out of reach, so I had to go in. Broke the little window above the toilet with the hammer.’
Ezra rubs a hand over his beard. ‘Right – right. But the owners were out, though?’ He checks this like a friendly office manager, not a criminal, then dutifully ticks the car off on his clipboard. ‘Plated?’
‘Yep,’ Angela says. ‘No alarm.’
It’s a chilly night. March, but still frosty, the air ice-rink cold. Ryan’s eyes feel gritty. It’s slowly dawning on him that being undercover is – like most jobs – sometimes tedious, sometimes irritating, and very tiring.
‘Yeah, amazing how many people don’t turn it on when they go on holiday,’ Ezra says, but his tone goes down at the end, is dark, ironic somehow. Like he’s making a private joke with himself.
Angela is not an idiot so changes tack, though Ryan wants to press him, to just ask the question: So how do you know they’re away? ‘Anyway – should be a good one,’ she says. ‘It’s pretty new.’
‘The Middle East like a Merc,’ Ezra says. He’s a man of few words. Ryan recognizes just his type. Kelly was similar. Cards close to his chest. His explanations credible enough so as not to invite any questions, but absolutely nothing more than necessary given away. You didn’t even know he had evaded you most of the time, came away with no answers, usually laughing, then thought: Hang on. You can learn a lot from him.
‘You got your texts for tomorrow?’ Ezra says. This is another thing about undercover: the lines between work and play become so blurred. Ryan isn’t supposed to be on shift tomorrow but, really, what can he say? ‘Sorry – not down to work?’
‘Yep.’
‘You’re good kids, you two,’ Ezra says. And Ryan thinks how funny it is that, underneath it all, this statement is completely true, only not quite in the way Ezra thinks.
‘I love it,’ Ryan says. ‘Easiest money I ever made. Imagine having a fucking normal job where you give half to the taxman?’
Ezra makes a noise that sits somewhere between a grunt and a laugh. ‘Yeah, clock in, clock out. National insurance. No second homes in Marbella,’ he says.
Marbella. More intel. They can try to trace the money that he bought that asset with.
‘Exactly.’
‘These rich twats don’t need their second cars, anyway,’ Ezra adds. Ryan scuffs the ground with his foot. He has learned, during his time in the police, of the power of silence, and he exerts that, now, for the first time. He can tell Ezra is about to say something significant. ‘But it was such a fucking circus with the baby.’
Ryan keeps his face completely expressionless, though his body has begun to sing with anticipation.
‘Too right,’ Angela says delicately. ‘Bad eggs, were they?’
‘Ha. Eggs,’ Ezra says. ‘You talk weird sometimes, you do.’
Ryan winces, barely detectable to Ezra, Ryan hopes.
‘Two fucking pagans,’ Ezra says.
Pagans. Gang-speak for disloyal foot soldiers. It’s all information that might lead Ryan upwards, towards the big guy. And, more importantly – to Ryan, anyway – to the baby. If he could get the baby and let the gang go, he would. He can’t sleep for thinking about her. Alone, scared. In God-knows-whose custody. Missing her mother. He cannot, he cannot think about it.
They start walking towards the cars so that Ezra can check them in. The forecourt is littered with broken glass and cigarette butts. Ryan thinks idly again of the risk he’s taking. Of the notion that he has consented to this danger. He wonders suddenly, from nowhere, what the fatality rate for undercover police officers is, how often they get rumbled. How often they overstep the line in the quest for information.
‘How did they not even see a baby, though?’ he says. Angela scratches her nose, an agreed cue to rein it in, but Ryan ignores her.
‘Fucking jokers, right?’ Ezra says, becoming more animated. ‘Think they just didn’t care.’ He holds his hands up. ‘And I didn’t care about no fucking baby. But I do care about the fucking jacks from the Major Crime Unit being on to us.’
Angela’s nose must be really itchy, but Ryan continues asking questions. He can’t stop. ‘The baby just head on to the ship, in the end, then?’
They’re at the cars, now, and Ezra leans a hand against the bonnet. He turns his head to look properly at Ryan, a slow, animalistic rotation. Eventually, their eyes meet, and Ryan sees flint and thinks he’s fucked it.
But he hasn’t.
