‘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.
‘Are you joking?’ Ezra says. ‘Of course I didn’t let them put that baby on the ship.’
Ryan pauses, holding his breath. They’re teetering now, on the edge of something. Just as he’s about to ask, Angela reaches her hand out. You’d never know what it meant unless you knew.
‘Yeah, I mean – good call,’ Ryan says. His instincts agree with Angela, this time. But look where they got him first. He can tell his handler, who can tell the CID, that the baby is in this country. Not shipped out to the Middle East. Thank God.
Evidently, stopping was the right decision, because Ezra says: ‘I’m heading to see the boss tomorrow night.’
‘The mastermind,’ Ryan says. He is even starting to sound different. Phasing out the Welsh accent he inherited from his father. How easy it would be to lose yourself for ever in this life. To live – literally – the life of another identity so much that you might become it.
Ezra points at Ryan. It’s so cold that his jaw is trembling, the air that chalk-dust dry of snow.
‘You should come.’ He looks at Angela, then uses her undercover alias: ‘You, too, Nicola.’
Day Minus One Thousand Six Hundred and Seventy-Two, 21:25
Todd is thirteen.
He’s four and a half feet of thirteen-year-old boy. He smells of biscuits and the great outdoors. He’s currently in the back of their old car that they trade in for a better model in a few years’ time, kicking Jen’s chair in the way he did that she hated and is now nostalgic for. Sort of.
It is the first of April. As soon as Jen woke up this morning, the sun a yellow melted pool on their hallway floor, she remembered this day, this weekend. It is Easter Sunday.
They are on their way back now from a village fair, followed by dinner. Simple things, family things. Jen has forgotten herself for some of the day, laughing at her son’s banter, her husband’s quick remarks.
It was a perfect weekend, the first time around. The weather had made it. They’d spent almost all of it outside, with friends, barbecuing, a small party with their inner circle. And, on the Sunday, in this exact car ride, Jen remembers so vividly Kelly looking at her and saying, And we’ve still got a whole bank holiday tomorrow, too.
She wonders curiously why she remembers that exact phrase so well. Some days, she supposes, are brighter than others, more memorable. Some days, even the great ones, like their wedding, fade away into history.
And now here they are again. Jen remembers spending a portion of this car journey worrying she had upset her father at the office on the Thursday night about a directions hearing on a case. She wishes she could stretch an arm back into the past and shake that Jen. Life is so short. It rushes by. He’ll be dead one day, she would tell her, but she can’t. Jen is that Jen, today.
The car is dark and quiet, the radio on low, the heater on high, just the way she likes it. Her skin feels stretched. She had forgotten that they both got burnt, today, the first time, and they made exactly the same mistake today. That deceptive British springtime sun, the air refrigerated, the sun molten.