COMMISSIONER REES SEES THE ARMED police guards stiffen as they spot him. He nods a hello, then enters the steel-and-glass block of a building.
—A meeting with the minister as soon as is convenient, the message had said.
Well, here he is.
No. 2 Marsham Street, also known as the Home Office, is the government department in charge of the internal affairs of England and Wales, which includes policing. The current home secretary, Charles Nixon—one of the prime minister’s closest advisers and possibly next in line for the top job—is the minister Rees has been summoned to see. The message didn’t say why he wanted to see him so urgently, but Rees has a pretty good idea.
He steps into the elevator and presses the button to take him to the sixth floor. The lift is glass, as is most of the interior of this fishbowl of a building, and Rees watches the floors flash past, the business of government passing through the open-plan offices like food through the gut of some giant transparent creature, often with similar end results. Rees is not a big fan of politicians or the machinations of government.
He reaches into his pocket and thumbs the lid off his bottle of pills. He’s not a fan of open-plan offices either, modern panopticons that make everyone feel like they are being watched all the time. Jeremy Bentham had developed the idea in the eighteenth century as a type of architecture suited to prisons, insane asylums, and any other institution where surveillance was necessary. The basic idea was that people who felt they were constantly being watched would self-police and be more productive as a result. Now the whole world is a panopticon, which says all you need to know about modern society.
He palms the pill and pops it in his mouth under the disguise of a cough, knowing he is probably being watched right now—by the worker bees in their open-plan offices, by the surveillance cameras within the lift and the outer atrium, by the whole damn country after the shitshow of yesterday’s press conference.
The lift slows and the doors open onto the executive floor, revealing a large seal of Her Majesty’s government on the opposite wall, lion and unicorn rampant on either side of the crown. Rees heads past it and along the main corridor, where a host of assistants look up from their desks. He knows he’s supposed to tell them he’s here and wait for a summons, but he’s in no mood for petty power plays today so marches straight up to the door of the minister’s office, raps once on the wooden surface, then opens it.
Charles Nixon is behind his desk, a large slab of something dark and expensive covered with stacks of documents and the morning papers. Laughton’s photograph stares out from most of them.
“Ah, John,” Nixon says, “thanks for coming over at short notice.” He gestures at a thin, gray man sitting opposite. “I think you two have already met.”
The gray man unfolds himself from his seat and extends a pale hand. He is pencil thin, with a long nose, rimless glasses, beady eyes, and a boring but expensive gray suit. He looks like a rat made human. He’s vaguely familiar, but Rees can’t quite place him. Civil servant probably, one of the gray men of government, quite literally in this case.
“Spencer Bates,” the man says, giving Rees a bony handshake. “We met very briefly last autumn at our shareholders’ meeting.”
“Oh yes, Shield Group,” Rees says, remembering the corporate waste of time he’d been forced to attend. “How are you?”
“Good, thanks. Great, actually. Business is booming. Whoever said crime doesn’t pay clearly never worked in the private security sector.” He laughs at his own joke. Rees does not. He looks back at the minister, who is staring down at the acreage of newsprint on his desk. “Bloody bad timing, all this. I mean, we knew the crime figures would cause a few ripples, but this Highgate knife murder has turned it into a bloody tsunami. Any closer to catching this missing husband?”
“Actually, sir, we’ve found him.”
“Really!?”
“We traced him to an unlisted address and sent in an armed task force to make the arrest.”
“So he’s in custody?”
“No, he’s on his way to the morgue. He was murdered, seemingly by the same person who killed his wife.”
Nixon shakes his head and looks back down at the newspapers. “They’re going to have a field day with this. Now they’re going to say we have a serial killer on our hands.”
“Well, sir, technically a serial killer is someone who kills three or more people over a period of more than a month.”
“Oh, come on, John, don’t be naïve. The tabloids don’t give a shit about dictionary definitions. I must say I’m concerned about the way you’ve handled all this, it demonstrates a worrying lack of judgment. At a time when the Home Office and policing policy in general are under intense scrutiny, you seem to be going out of your way to give the press a stick to beat us with. We knew the latest crime stats were going to generate some negative press, that’s why we sent the spin doctors down to help you manage the message.” He picks up The Daily and holds it up. “Hiring your own daughter to help investigate a high-profile knife murder is not managing anything, especially when it seems her book helped this ‘not technically a serial killer’ cover his tracks.”
“With respect, sir, I didn’t hire her, and Laughton Rees is a highly respected academic in the field of criminology who is eminently quali—”
“She’s your daughter, John. Doesn’t matter how well qualified she is, hiring her or allowing someone else to hire her was a huge mistake. Smacks of nepotism.”
Rees glances across at the thin gray man, whose name he has already forgotten again. He would normally be circumspect in the presence of a civilian, but Nixon invited the man here and seems to be speaking frankly enough in front of him, so Rees decides to do the same. He turns back to Nixon.
“I agree it was unfortunate timing that a wealthy white woman in a posh neighborhood went and got herself knifed to death on the same day the crime stats were published. Maybe if it had just been another black teenager in Tottenham the press wouldn’t have cared so much and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“That is absolutely not true.” Nixon glances uneasily at the gray man. “The government is just as concerned as you are, about every single crime.”
“Then tell me who Kai Mustafa is.”
Nixon shoots his guest another uncertain look. “Kai . . . ?”
“Mustafa. Fifteen years old. Died after jumping or being pushed off a bridge following a knife attack. He was killed just a few hours before Kate Miller, but I notice you didn’t pull me into a meeting to ask me how that investigation is progressing, or any of the other twenty-one knife-related deaths this year. If you really cared about crime, sir, then you and your party would not have cut the police budget by nineteen percent over the past decade and you wouldn’t need to employ teams of spin doctors to try and disguise the annual crime figures.”
Nixon sits back in his chair and regards Rees for what seems like an uncomfortably long time. “How long have you been commissioner now, John—six years, seven?”
“Seven. Eight in January.”
Nixon nods slowly. “That’s a long time on the front line, all that censure, all that pressure. You must be worn out. To be honest, you do look a bit tired, John.”
Rees studies the home secretary, soft stomach straining against expensive, high-thread-count cotton, and plump, pink, manicured hands laced together and resting on top. Rees is probably fifteen years older than Nixon, but he’d like to take him out on a 5K run and see which of them looked tired after that. “It’s been a tough week,” he says instead.
“Of course,” Nixon replies, “and I do have sympathy. In fact, I organized an emergency meeting last night with the PM and the chancellor where we discussed policing, among other things, and agreed to allocate an additional four hundred and fifty million to the police budget, spread over two years.”
Rees is floored. A large chunk of his time in office has been spent campaigning for greater investment in the force and now here he is, effectively being promised a huge bag of cash on the back end of a bollocking. It doesn’t make sense. There has to be a catch, and somehow it involves the man in the gray suit sitting next to him.
“Thank you, sir,” he says.
“Don’t thank me yet. This increase in funding comes with two conditions. The first is that we want to formally announce it in the spring statement, so not a word is to be whispered about it before then.”
Rees nods. He could do with the money sooner and wonders why they’re waiting when an announcement now would instantly change the narrative about policing. Then he realizes what the second condition must be.
“You want me to step down,” he says, a statement, not a question.
Nixon shakes his head. “I don’t want you to go, John. I know we’ve butted heads a few times, but it’s never felt personal. You’re doing your job, I’m doing mine. But the simple truth is that every senior public servant has a sell-by date. Doesn’t matter how good you are at your job or how many successes you have, the longer you stand up there in the full glare of the public’s gaze and the more shit they throw at you, the more it sticks, until no amount of PR polishing or water under the bridge can wash it away. And this current situation, this high-profile case, a double murder now with your name tied to it through your daughter, it’s just too much. You’ve become the story, John. So if we announce the budget hike with you still in charge it would be like giving someone a pot of gold in a dirty bucket. That’s why we need to clear the decks first, appoint someone new so we can announce the extra funding as part of their succession. The police get their funding. Your successor gets a flying start. Everybody wins.”
Rees fixes him with an even gaze. “Almost everybody.”
Nixon smiles. “No, everybody wins.” He turns to the man in the gray suit. “Spencer has a proposition. Go ahead, Spence, tell him what we discussed.”
“A position has become available on our board,” he says as if he’s selling insurance, “a non-executive director role that you would be eminently suited for.”
Rees nods. “Convenient.”
“We’re always looking to bolster our boardroom expertise at the senior end of security work, and you, with your years of experience, would be an absolutely perfect fit. It’s not a full-time position, so you would be free to pursue any other interests you had such as charity work, or golf, or whatever else you haven’t had much time for over your many distinguished years of service.
“Your salary package would, of course, be commensurate with your experience and high standing in the security field and would start at three hundred and twenty thousand a year, plus share-linked bonuses and a full health-care package. We can hammer out all the details later, but, well, there it is. We would be more than delighted to have you on board at Shield Group, if you choose to join us.”
Nixon creaks forward in his chair. “Three hundred grand, John. That’s more than you’re getting now only without all this crap.” He grabs another newspaper and holds it up. “Plus there’ll be another little bonus in next year’s New Year’s honors list. Sir John Rees. How’s that sound? You’ll never have trouble getting a table reservation again, not with that on your company credit card.”
Rees looks at the thin gray man. Private security firms like his made their fortunes by plugging all the gaps in national and domestic security left by government policy, either deliberately or through incompetence. “It’s a very generous offer,” he says. “Can I think about it?”
“Of course.” Nixon rises abruptly from his seat and heads over to the door with the clear intention that both men should follow. “Though we’ve scheduled a press conference for this afternoon to announce you’re stepping down, so it would be great if you could make your mind up by then.”
He stops by the door, leans in, and lowers his voice so only Rees can hear.
“Don’t make me fire you, John. The press might enjoy it, but I certainly wouldn’t.” He pats Rees on the shoulder and opens the door wide. “Sorry to rush you gentlemen, but I’ve got a policy meeting in five minutes.” He smiles and points a finger at Rees. “Go catch your killer, John, then you can go out a hero. Like I said, everybody wins.”
He smiles one last time, then closes the door.
Rees stares at the closed door for a moment, then turns to the gray man.
“Nice to meet you again, John,” the gray man says, holding out his hand.
“Likewise,” Rees says, shaking it.
He still can’t remember his damn name.