Liz had done her homework before she’d made an appointment to see the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police. She already knew that Greater Manchester was one of the largest police forces in Britain and she was expecting to find that the Chief Constable was one of the old school, a man who had risen through the ranks, man and boy a policeman, near to retirement and fiercely loyal to his colleagues and to the old style of policing.
What she found was that Chief Constable Richard Pearson was forty-seven years old, the youngest Chief Constable of any of the larger forces in England. He had degrees from Nottingham and Edinburgh Universities and a D.Phil. from Oxford and had been a part-time officer in the Territorial Army for a number of years. He had risen fast through the police ranks and had been in his present post only six months, appointed as part of a push from the Home Office for a new image for policing. He had previously spent two years as Chief Constable of the Cheshire force. With all this information filed away in her mind, Liz set off in quite cheerful mood on the train to Manchester, thinking that perhaps the interview with the Chief was going to be less tricky than she’d thought.
The Police HQ was a three-mile taxi ride from the station, on a smart new industrial estate, full of brick-and glass buildings dominated by the service industries. After signing the register in the large atrium and receiving a visitor’s pass to hang round her neck, Liz waited, sitting on a sofa in front of a low table spread with newspapers and assorted police leaflets, one of which was covered with photographs of Manchester’s most wanted criminals. She flicked through these with interest and was not in the least surprised to find that Lester Jackson was not among them. She was musing that he was probably worse than any of those whose mugshots were on display when a young female constable arrived to escort her to the Chief’s office on the top floor.
A tall, lean man with a shock of blonde hair got up from the desk as she was shown into the room and came forward with a big smile and a hand held out. As she shook it Liz said, ‘Thank you for seeing me at such short notice.’
‘It sounded important.’
‘It is,’ she said as they sat down in easy chairs in a corner of the room. ‘We’re working on a counter-terrorism case that involves a young British man of Yemeni origin. His mother lives in Eccles.’
‘That’s part of our Salford West Division,’ said the Chief.
‘He doesn’t live there. He’s a student at SOAS in London – though he’s told the college he’s from Yemen and he’s given them false identity details. But he’s Eccles born and bred and he comes home periodically.’
Pearson gave a half-smile. ‘I suppose even terrorists have mothers. Do you have a name for this chap?’
‘We do. His name is Atiyah. We call him Zara and we’ll be briefing your counter-terrorist team as things develop. But Zara is not the reason I’m here to see you.’
Liz paused but Pearson said nothing. She went on, ‘We believe that Zara is due to receive a shipment of guns and ammunition from abroad – it’s coming from one of the ex-Soviet republics – Dagestan. We’re not sure exactly when but believe it will arrive in the next week or so – as part of a delivery to a middleman in Manchester, who we think regularly receives shipments through this route as part of a criminal business.’
‘Does the middleman have a name?’
‘Lester Jackson. He owns a club called Slim’s in Wilmslow – it’s a combination of flash restaurant, small-time casino and brothel.’
The Chief Constable nodded. ‘I know all about Jackson and Slim’s. I was Chief in Cheshire before I came here. But I wouldn’t have associated him with terrorism.’
‘No, I understand. And I don’t think he is directly involved in terrorism. I think he’s just making some extra cash by adding the weapons to one of his regular deliveries. I very much doubt if he realises all the consequences of what he’s involved in.’
‘How did he get drawn into this?’
‘I think it must be through his transport contact in Dagestan. It’s complicated, but the whole affair seems to have originated with a corrupt government minister in Sana’a in Yemen. We think he has been buying weapons in Dagestan and selling them on at a huge profit to whoever will buy them. He seems to have agreed to supply a bunch of jihadis – and Zara is one of them. At first we thought they were going to use them in the Arab Spring countries, but it’s beginning to look as if they plan to use them here.’
‘OK,’ said the Chief slowly. ‘I know you’ll be keeping our counter-terrorist team up to date with all this, but what did you particularly want to see me about? I get the feeling there’s something else you haven’t told me yet.’
Liz smiled. ‘You’re right – there is something else. As you said, Lester Jackson is well known to the Manchester and Cheshire forces. I gather he’s never been arrested, and I’m told he’s been helpful on more than one occasion. He’s not actually a source, but one of your officers knows him pretty well.’
‘Meaning?’
Liz paused, then said, ‘This is where it gets difficult. What I mean is that your officer may know him too well. So I can’t approach this officer in the normal way and ask for help with Jackson. In fact, I did speak to him on the phone to see what he knew about Jackson, and he gave me a cock-and-bull story – that Jackson was small beer of no possible interest to my Service. He was so dismissive that I didn’t tell him that Jackson was suspected of being an accomplice to terrorists trying to bring arms into this country. To be quite honest with you, Mr Pearson, I just didn’t trust the officer.’
‘Are you trying to say that he is involved in some way with Lester Jackson?’
‘Yes. I’m afraid I am,’ said Liz. She could see Pearson starting to bristle. ‘I should tell you,’ she went on, now feeling very uncomfortable, ‘that the officer in question is someone I used to know. It was a long time ago – in Liverpool where I was seconded to the Special Branch when I first joined the Service.’ When Pearson looked at her curiously she said, ‘The officer’s name is James McManus. He’s Deputy Head of your Special Branch.’
To her surprise the defensiveness she had sensed building in the Chief Constable almost instantaneously disappeared. He nodded and his face grew friendly again, and though it wouldn’t have been right to say he was smiling, he somehow seemed relieved. ‘Are you telling me you think McManus is involved with this arms delivery?’ he asked.
‘No. But I think he may be involved with Jackson in a way that isn’t altogether . . . healthy.’
Pearson gave a snort. ‘That’s a generous way of putting it. What I think you really mean is that McManus is in Jackson’s pocket, so you can’t trust him to help you investigate.’
Liz said nothing and the Chief waved a dismissive hand. ‘Don’t worry about offending me. Forgive me if I seemed a bit chilly a moment ago – nobody in my job wants to hear that one of his senior officers isn’t trusted. But in this case . . . you should know that you aren’t the only one with questions about McManus.’
‘Really?’ She found herself half relieved and half upset, but all attention.
‘Absolutely. McManus is one of our most senior officers, as you know, very experienced, with a record anyone would envy. He’s popular, and said to be charming with the ladies,’ he added, smiling at Liz.
She was too old to blush, and she looked straight back at Pearson, expressionless. He went on, ‘But a few years ago, when I was still in Cheshire, I got the feeling that something wasn’t right with McManus’s relationship with Jackson. He wasn’t my officer then, of course, but I did mention it to the Chief here in those days, Sir Charles Worthington. He was a very senior Chief Constable, not long to go to retirement, and frankly he was more interested in international policing and making trips all over the world than in running this Force. Anyway, for whatever reason he did nothing about it.
‘But when I came here I realised that there were certain no-go areas for McManus – certain select villains he didn’t want to pursue. One of them was certainly Lester Jackson. It is true that we do get the odd titbit supplied by Jackson, and McManus uses that to justify his relationship. But nothing ever substantial enough to make it right that Jackson is allowed to operate so freely from that club. And from what you’re telling me he’s now involving himself in even more serious crime.’
Liz listened intently as Pearson went on: ‘For the last three months my Professional Standards Unit has been covertly investigating McManus. They’ve put together quite a significant file and we are just about ready to confront him with the evidence. We know now he’s been taking money from Jackson – and others – to warn them of criminal investigations and keep the CID off their backs. His usual way of doing that is to claim they’re acting as valuable Special Branch sources.’
Liz nodded, though part of her was deeply dismayed. ‘Thank you for being so candid with me. As I told you, I knew Jimmy McManus more than ten years ago when I was very junior in the Service. He was kind to me when some of his colleagues were bullying me; for a time he and I were close. But our relationship ended when I thought he was being dishonest. He was convinced that a man he had been investigating was guilty of drug dealing. When the man was acquitted, Jimmy fitted him up by getting someone to give false evidence against him in another case. I’ve no doubt the man was a drug dealer, and I suppose you could say that in one sense Jimmy was acting on the side of the angels in those days – certainly he thought he was, and he liked to call it “conviction policing”. But I thought it was corrupt, and we fell out. Still, I never thought that he’d go over to the criminals’ side and take money to protect them.’
The Chief nodded. ‘In my experience, conviction policemen are dangerous people to have in a force. They can easily get disillusioned and cynical, and if they have a shaky moral compass in the first place they can become thoroughly crooked. I don’t know enough about McManus’s personal life to understand precisely what turned him bad, but something certainly has.’
Liz said, ‘I’m afraid that what you’ve told me just makes my problem worse. McManus is in a unique position to give me an inside view of Jackson, but not if I can’t trust him. The only other possible source of information I have on Jackson is a young DI in Cheshire called Halliday.’
‘Oh yes,’ interrupted Pearson. ‘He’s a good lad, though a bit green.’
‘Yes. And he’s nothing like as close to Jackson as McManus is. My problem is that we’ve seen enough to know that Jackson’s very alert to surveillance, so I can’t rely on that to find out when this delivery’s due or where it’s going to come into the country. But if I tell McManus what I know, he’ll most likely leak it all to Jackson.’
The Chief Constable said, ‘Yes. I can see the problem. We need to put pressure on McManus to get him to help, but we’ve got to do it in such a way that he doesn’t tell Jackson what’s going on. In other words, we’ve got to scare him rigid.’
The Chief thought for a moment, then said, ‘Here’s what I propose. I said we were just about ready to confront him with what we’ve learned in our investigation. Well, we’ll bring that confrontation forward and we’ll do it tomorrow morning. I’ll make it quite clear to him that we have enough on him to prosecute him for corruption, and if he’s convicted he’s likely to get a good stretch in prison, which he’ll know anyway.
‘If you agree, I’d like to add that we have now learned that he may be involved in acts preparatory to the commission of terrorism. He won’t know what I’m talking about so I’ll tell him that you will be meeting him in the afternoon. You’ll be seeking his help and what you’ll be telling him is Top Secret. If he doesn’t fully support you or if he leaks what you say, we’ll throw the book at him and he’ll be in prison for the rest of his life.’
‘Right,’ said Liz, her breath taken away by the Chief Constable’s decisive response. ‘That should sort it.’
‘We’ll have him in at eleven tomorrow. I’ll tell him to be ready to see you at two pm, but I don’t think I’ll tell him who he’ll be seeing – unless you want me to. Surprise sometimes helps on this sort of occasion. What do you think?’
‘I agree,’ said Liz weakly. The Chief Constable was well into his stride now.
‘If you care to come here at about one o’clock I’ll brief you on how it went before you see him. Does that suit you?’
‘Yes. Thank you,’ said Liz.