In the Absence of Iles by Bill James Read Free Book Online Page B

the Detective Chief Superintendent, head of CID and handler of the undercover officer, to instruct the undercover officer in PPA, sir.’
    ‘Are judges likely to accept this distinction, A?’
    ‘Which, sir?’
    ‘Posed
accessory as against accessory.’
    ‘Some wigs do find it hard to see,’ A said. ‘Hard-liners. Brainy simpletons.’
    ‘Might they feel the Out-located officer has gone over to the criminal firm for personal gain? This could colour a judge’s attitude and, crucially, his/her summing-up to the jury.’
    ‘That is a danger, yes, sir,’ A said.
    ‘For myself, speaking entirely personally, I acknowledge as much – and I don’t say it with the least pride – possibly the opposite – perhaps I am even conscious of a certain naivety in myself – but I don’t believe I would ever be able to suspend, virtually obliterate, my, as it were, drift towards maintenance of the lawful, a drift accelerated, of course, by nurture. My resultant mind-set demands, pretty well irresistibly, by instinct and by . . . by habit, I suppose . . . habit and choice . . . my mind-set demands
my
complicity with the good.’
    ‘You are programmed for virtue, sir, like George Washington, who could not tell a lie.’
    ‘There are boundaries.’
    ‘But you probably won’t have to make this kind of difficult choice, sir, because I wouldn’t think many ACCs go undercover. ‘
    ‘A complicity of that other, supervisory, kind might be expected of me, though.’
    ‘Distant.’
    ‘Frankly, A, I hardly understand how any police officer can make the switch from law enforcer to lawbreaker.’
    ‘Posed
lawbreaker,’ A replied.
    ‘Even so, I wouldn’t be able to do it, not the actual undercover role.’
    ‘Between those who can act and those who can’t there is a great gulf fixed,’ A replied.
    ‘And then, how do we know which of our officers has this flair? Do we talent-spot at the headquarters panto?’
    ‘Not headquarters. Detectives stationed there are likely to be known to any vigilant crooked crew, and most of them are very watchful.’
    ‘Rural station pantos, then?’
    A seemed to decide big-heartedly to take these questions as serious, not ACPO-level, feeble wind-ups. ‘Many detectives will have done a bit of impersonation in small cases, or at least disguised their own nature for a while when investigating. In a uniformed service, plain clothes themselves are a kind of masquerade. You have to check around to locate – locate! – these possible Out-location candidates and then try to assess which of them would do the undercover job best on a larger scale and, probably, for a longer period. This is a matter of personnel selection, a skill routinely exercised by ACCs and senior CID officers. Not magic, not a mystery carry-on, sir. Nous.’
    ‘And then I believe I’ve heard of another Syndrome, beside PPA.’
    ‘Ah?’
    ‘Is it to do with Stockholm? Something like that?’
    ‘The Stockholm Syndrome, yes, sir,’ A said.
    ‘Where the planted officer or a hostage grows so close to the criminals in mind as well as daily routine that eventually he/she actually, not pretendedly, becomes one of them, in some cases seduced by the prospect of wealth, but sometimes simply won over mentally by the captors. For the undercover officer it becomes no longer a pose.’
    ‘That is another danger, yes, sir,’ A said. ‘This Syndrome takes its name from a siege situation after a bank raid in Stockholm. And it’s similar to the turn-around by the American heiress, Patty Hearst, abducted by a political gang but who then adopted their cause and became one of them.’
    ‘Have you seen anything like it happen to an undercover officer, A?’
    ‘The handling senior officer must always be alert to this possibility, sir,’ A replied.
    ‘A double treachery.’
    A smiled – a smile of sparkling, extensive, sweet,
de bas en haut
contempt, not a face Esther had seen him use previously, but he had a lot. He was on the right side