Considering that it was the nerve centre for some very delicate and high-stakes undercover operations, the office came across as kind of poky and a bit disorganised, with messy stacks of papers lying everywhere on the desks next to the computers. However, despite the apparent disorder, Bailey knew that there was a system of sorts in place.
‘It’s been a while since you’ve been here,’ said Frank over his shoulder as he led her through the desks towards one of the side rooms.
It was true. Previously, when she’d been working undercover, she’d seldom needed to come to headquarters, apart from the occasional briefing for the bigger or more sensitive jobs. More often, a job would just come through directly on the mobile phone she’d been issued with especially for that purpose and she’d take it directly from there.
Numerous black filing cabinets lined the sides of the rooms, containing files going back years relating to past cases. Noticeboards on the walls were adorned with mugshots linked together by lines tracing the connections between the various individuals within criminal organisations who were the subject of ongoing operations. There were several maps of the UK, including a big one of London, which were dotted with a plethora of coloured pins. All in all, it wasn’t as slick or as high-tech in appearance as people might have expected. But then, at the end of the day, undercover work was primarily about human beings rather than technology.
She followed Frank through the office into a side room that contained little more than a table and two chairs. Through the window, she could see that it had started drizzling outside, the London skyline receding into a grey foggy murk.
He closed the door. They both sat down and he scrutinised her in silence for a few moments.
‘I got a missed call from you the other night. Is everything okay?’
‘Everything’s fine.’ He didn’t need to know about the nightmares.
‘Are you sure you’re up to it? You know, I didn’t actually check the records to see if you’d been signed off as psychologically fit to return to undercover work.’
‘The shrinks all said I was fine.’ But she hadn’t told them the half of it. She just hadn’t been able to bring herself to.
He smiled and nodded slowly. ‘You miss the rush, don’t you? There’s nothing quite like it.’
She knew he spoke from bountiful experience. Frank had worked in undercover roles on countless operations over the years before eventually taking over the reins. He had an ex-wife and a kid he never saw who were casualties of his relentless dedication to the job. And to that end Bailey knew first-hand what a hard taskmaster he could be.
He was right, though. She did miss the rush of working undercover. It made her feel alive like nothing else, especially when normal life made her feel as if she was dying inside. But the buzz wasn’t the only reason she was here. Not by a long stretch. Alice was the main reason.
‘So what’s the deal?’ she said.
The smiled faded. He cleared his throat.
‘As you may already be aware, drugs in prison are a major social issue and a political hot topic. They’re worth up to four times their street value inside and it’s estimated that the drugs trade in the UK prison system is worth around a hundred million pounds a year.’
‘Big business,’ she murmured.
‘We’ve been aware of the problem at HMP Foxbrook for a while now and this operation forms part of the Government’s overall initiative to clamp down on drug use and drug dealing within the wider prison system.’
‘So just how big is the problem at HMP Foxbrook?’ she asked.
‘Well, we know that drugs get into the prison through all kinds of means. Visitors smuggle stuff in. Corrupt staff smuggle stuff in. Stuff gets chucked over the wall. Stuff gets hidden in packages posted to prisoners. Stuff gets flown in by drone. But that’s all small fry. What we’re concerned about here are much larger quantities. We suspect the existence of an organised drug smuggling and distribution ring who are working at scale.’
‘Where’s the budget for this operation coming from?’
‘The operation is being funded by the Metropolitan Police, more specifically the Basic Command Unit which covers the borough that the prison lies in. Drugs detectives from that BCU will be overseeing the operation and they’re also in charge of the budget. They’re the ones I’ll be reporting back to with any intelligence that you gather.’
The Metropolitan Police was divided up into a number of Basic Command Units, or BCUs, each assigned to a specific geographical area of London.
‘So basically the whole thing’s being run by the local drugs squad,’ said Bailey.
‘That’s more or less correct,’ Frank agreed. ‘They want you to uncover how the drugs are entering the prison and they want to identify the key players involved. Once we’ve nailed the perpetrators, we should be able to find out who on the outside is behind the supply of drugs to the prison. We think that a major organised crime group is responsible. When we reach that point, the NCA will probably want to step in, so they’re very interested in the outcome of this operation.’
The National Crime Agency, or NCA, were responsible for tackling organised crime on a variety of fronts, but they only dealt with really large and significant cases, underlining to Bailey that this operation could potentially lead into a major investigation.
‘And Alice?’
‘I want to make it clear right now, Bailey, that your priority is uncovering the drugs ring. Alice’s murder is being investigated by the police separately. Do you understand?’ He fixed her with a stern look and a raised eyebrow.
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘The drugs ring is the priority. But I do also intend to find out who killed Alice.’
‘Well, as I was saying before in the pub, I think her murder was probably connected to her investigation of the drugs ring, so unlocking the identity of her killer is likely to be a key element in cracking this case and securing some serious convictions, and finding out who did it will probably form an integral part of your investigation anyhow.’
‘I figured as much. She must have been onto something serious.’
‘In case you’re not already aware, all murders in custody have to be investigated by the police, the Prison and Probation Ombudsman, the employer and the coroner. But, like I mentioned before, not a great deal of progress has been made in terms of finding out who killed her. But that’s where you, in your undercover role, might be able to shed some light on matters. However, the murder investigation team who are currently investigating her death will not be made aware that you are a police officer and you will not make direct contact with them in any way. Everything goes through me. Do you understand?’
‘That suits me just fine. So when do I start?’
‘The budget’s been signed off so you can start right away. We can get you in there almost immediately. I’ve already obtained the authorisation from your CID detective sergeant to get you released.’ He paused. ‘How’s this Thursday? ’
‘The sixteenth of May?’
‘Can you be ready by then?’
It was only three days away. Quite often in the past, undercover jobs would come up at short notice and Bailey had become used to rapidly dropping everything in order to accommodate them. Working undercover wasn’t a permanent job and it never had been. Whenever she’d gone on an undercover operation her regular casework had merely been put on hold until she had finished or had been redistributed to others to do.
A thought suddenly crossed her mind. ‘When’s Alice’s funeral?’
‘I don’t know at the moment. They’ve done the autopsy, but her body hasn’t been released to the funeral home yet. There’s got to be an inquest at some point and that always holds things up.’
She sighed. ‘Okay, well I guess this Thursday’s fine then,’ she said. ‘No point in delaying things.’
‘That’s what I like to hear,’ he said. ‘You know you’ll probably make a decent bit of overtime from this job.’
‘I’m not doing it for the money.’
‘Do you have a cover story you can use?’
She nodded. She knew the drill. Her cover story was her responsibility. Quite often, there was never any need to resort to it, as a lot of people just weren’t that concerned with hearing about your life. But then, other times, when infiltrating a criminal organisation, you encountered those who wanted to know every conceivable detail about you. So it was always best to have a solid background explanation to hand. ‘What about my exit from the prison when the operation’s over?’ she asked.
‘We’ll find a reason to have you “transferred” to another prison, so it’ll seem realistic when you suddenly have to leave. No one will ever need to know that you were a police officer.’
She nodded in approval.
‘We’ve done our best to keep it out of the news that Alice was an undercover police officer,’ he said. ‘To all intents and purposes, she was just an inmate who got murdered. That’s not to say that someone, somewhere in the prison, might have been aware of her true identity, which could be the reason she got killed. Either way, this time we don’t want to take any chances. So, to keep security really tight, I’ll be working directly as your handler. No one in the prison, not even the Governor, will know who you are. We can’t risk any kind of leak, especially considering that you’ll have no backup whatsoever.’
Part of what she liked about undercover work was not having someone looking over your shoulder, telling you what to do all the time. She liked the freedom of working on her own. Conversely, it meant that there was often no one to fall back on if things took a turn for the worse. You had to rely on your initiative and be able to think on your feet, and that could be scary, but it could also be exhilarating.
‘How will I contact you?’ she asked.
‘I’ll give you a number that you can call me on. It’ll be routed through to the switchboard here. Once you get through to Rita, she’ll put you through to me.’
In a soundproofed room off to one side of the office was the switchboard, operated by a civilian police worker called Rita. A former flight attendant from Essex who was now in her early fifties, she sounded like a generic secretary with her nasal sing-song voice and her brisk efficient tone. But her role was crucial, for the switchboard was the primary point of contact for all the different undercover police officers who were operating at any given time. When a call came through, Rita would answer with the name of whatever false company or organisation had been set up to provide a cover for that particular officer.
‘Is that how it worked with Alice?’
‘That’s how it was supposed to work with Alice. But, being Alice, she managed to get hold of a mobile phone, even though they’re illegal inside.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me. She was always very resourceful.’
‘She would use it to call and text me with updates. We recovered it along with her body. She must have been pretty panicked if she didn’t even have time to use it to call me for help. We downloaded all the data from it, but there was nothing on there of much help.’
‘I’ll see if I can get hold of one once I’m in there.’
Frank shook his head. ‘Uh-uh. I don’t want you doing that, especially in light of what’s happened to her. If the phone is stolen or confiscated, the information on it – the sent texts and numbers called – could compromise your security. So no mobile phones. Got that?’
‘Sure.’
‘You’ll call me via the public phones in the prison. We’ll set up a fake law firm to take your calls, so it will seem like you’re phoning your solicitor. It’ll provide an element of plausibility and it’ll also make it easier to clear the number with the prison as they have to approve all telephone numbers. Crucially, it also means that they’re not allowed to listen in on the calls like they can with normal numbers. We want to maintain maximum secrecy.’ He paused and tilted his head. ‘I’ll also come in and visit you from time to time,’ he said. ‘Just so you don’t get too lonely.’
‘As my lawyer?’
He shook his head. ‘It’d be too risky for me to pretend to be a lawyer in case I bumped into a real one in the waiting room. He’d soon clock that I was a fake. No, it’ll look better if I’m a family member. Like your brother or something.’
‘You don’t look anything like me. Your nose is too big for one thing.’
He snorted at her response. ‘I’ll be your half-brother. Same father, different mothers. That can explain the age difference as well.’
‘Am I expected to wear a wire?’
He shook his head. ‘It’d be too difficult getting it into the prison. And then you’d have to conceal it from your cellmate and also from the guards. There’s too much risk that it could get found.’
‘That’s a relief. I never liked wearing those things anyway.’
‘Your role, therefore, will be primarily to gather intelligence and to inform us about anything that might be going down. You’ll be our eyes and ears on the inside.’
‘And presumably at the critical point you’ll swoop in and make arrests.’
‘That’s right.’
‘So what kind of intel had Alice gathered so far? Do I have anything to go on?’
He grimaced and shook his head. ‘She hadn’t been in there long enough to identify any specific individuals or groups associated with the drugs ring. She’d been in there barely a few weeks before she was murdered.’
Bailey frowned. ‘Yet you said you thought that she was onto something big. And that’s why she might have been murdered.’
‘I can only think that she found something out very suddenly and was murdered before she had the chance to properly tell me about it. The last communication I had with her was a text message in which she refers to the source of the drugs. She says it’s well concealed, or not immediately obvious at any rate.’
‘Can I see it?’
He took out his own mobile and tapped on the screen a few times. He pushed it across the table to her.
She picked it up and looked at the message on the small screen. It was tantalisingly brief.
Source well concealed in prison. Investigating today. Will update later.
‘She never got to update me later,’ he said. ‘She sent this on the day she was killed.’
‘Do you think the source of the drugs is a member of staff, hence the “well concealed” reference?’
‘Could be. That’s why I want to make sure that nobody in the prison authorities suspects that you’re an undercover police officer. But then no one was supposed to know that Alice was a cop either, and that didn’t prevent her from getting murdered.’
Bailey sighed. ‘So no leads and very little information. I’m going in almost completely cold.’
‘Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. There is one possible lead. The murder investigation team interviewed Alice’s cellmate – a girl by the name of Melanie Clarke. But, by all accounts, she was a fruitcake and they couldn’t get anything coherent out of her. But I suppose you could always give it another shot.’
Bailey nodded and filed the name away for future reference.
Frank observed her gravely.
‘You’re going to have to be really careful on this one, Bailey. This is a dangerous job.’
‘What’s new.’