Tango One by Stephen Leather Read Free Book Online Page B

betrayed them? And if he had, did it matter in the grand scheme of things? Or did the ends justify the means? He looked at his watch again. It was time to go.
    Tina wound down the window and flicked ash out. Some of it blew back into the car and she brushed it off the seat.
    “Sorry,” she said to the driver.
    He flashed her a grin in the rear-view mirror.
    “Doesn't matter to me, miss,” he said.
    “First of all, I'm a forty-a-day man myself. Second of all, it's not my car.”
    “You work for the police, right?”
    “Contract,” said the driver.
    “Former army, me. Did my twenty years and then they said my services were no longer required.”
    Tina took another long pull on her cigarette.
    “Do you want one?” she asked, proffering the pack.
    The driver shook his head.
    “Not while I'm driving, miss. You know what the cops are like. They did that sales rep a while back for driving with a sandwich on his seat.”
    “Yeah. It was in all the papers, wasn't it? You'd think they'd have better things to do with their time, right?”
    The driver nodded.
    “You'd think so. Mind you, army's pretty much the same. It'd all go a lot more smoothly if there was no bloody officers, pardon my language.”
    Tina smiled and settled back in the seat.
    “You know what that was about, back there?” she asked.
    “No, miss. We're mushrooms. Keep us in the dark .. .”
    “And feed you bullshit. Yeah, you said.”
    “It's got to be important if they're using us, that much I can tell you. Our company isn't cheap.”
    Tina closed her eyes and let the breeze from the open window play over her face. She wondered who would contact her. Her handler, Assistant Commissioner Latham had said. No name. No description. Her handler. It had the same echoes as pimp, and Tina had always refused to have anything to do with pimps. When she'd worked the streets, she'd worked them alone, even though a pimp offered protection. So far as Tina was concerned, pimps were leeches, and she'd despised the girls she'd seen handing over their hard-earned money to smooth black guys in big cars with deafening stereo systems. Now Tina was getting her own handler. The more she thought about it, the less comfortable she was with the idea, but when doubts did threaten to overwhelm her, she thought back to Assistant Commissioner Latham, with his ramrod straight back and his firm handshake and his immaculate uniform. He was a man she could trust, of that much she was sure. And he was right: there was no way she could have expected to serve as a regular police officer, not with her past. Try as she might to conceal what she'd once been, it was bound to come back to haunt her one day. At least this way she was being up front about her past, using it as an asset rather than fearing it as the dirty secret that would one day destroy her career. But could she really do what Latham had asked? Go back into the world she'd escaped from and work against it? She shivered and opened her eyes. Maybe that was exactly what she had been working towards her whole life. Maybe that was the way of vindicating herself. If she could use her past, use it constructively, then maybe it had all been worth it. Her cigarette had burned down to the filter and she flicked it out of the open window.
    The Vectra turned into the road where Tina lived and the driver pulled up in front of the three-storey terraced house.
    “Here we are, miss,” he said, twisting around in his seat.
    Tina jerked out of her reverie.
    “Oh, right. Cheers, thanks.” She put her hand into her handbag.
    “I suppose I should .. .”
    He waved her offer of a tip away with a shovel-sized hand.
    “It's all taken care of, miss. You take care, hear?”
    Tina nodded and got out of the car. She stared up at the house as the Vectra drove away. The paint on the door and windows was weathered and peeling and the roof was missing several slates. One of the windows on the top floor was covered with yellowing newspapers. An old woman