Undercover by Bill James Read Free Book Online Page A

not to guess what was happening. You couldn’t brick wall all the inevitable queries. That would only magnify uneasiness and, maybe, resentment. Your replies to questions needn’t be too detailed, though: they could be ‘redacted’, to borrow a modish term. ‘I don’t get it, Tom,’ Iris said.
    He reckoned this meant she
did
get it – or, at least the permitted outline of it – but wanted him to give her a full, clear description of what he was taking on. She’d be able to endorse it or counter it point by point then. Iris liked system. Obviously, life did need some system. Tom thought it shouldn’t get to domineer, though. Iris had a brother, Jeremy, a Cambridge graduate, who often – it certainly
seemed
often – spoke about the intellectual ‘rigour’ instilled there. Iris hadn’t been to Cambridge, but she could offer her own, home-made rigour. Tom didn’t go much for Cambridge rigour, anyway. Hadn’t that Lord who ‘authenticated’ the flagrantly phoney Hitler diaries become head of a Cambridge college? Dacre, his name? A faker fooled Dacre.
    Tom realized that Iris might have been expecting the kind of announcement he’d made today – expecting, and possibly dreading. After all, he’d been away for a month on that course in undercover objectives and skills at Hilston Manor, the handsome country mansion, once home of a great nineteenth-century railways man. It was still handsome, but the industrialist and his heirs had gone, and the house and grounds now served as an assessment and training depot for all British police forces.
    The course he’d attended had as its official, magnificently uninformative title, ‘Actual Progressive Policing’ (APP). Those selected were instructed to tell anyone outside who asked about it that the object was to improve police integration within the community. The last phrase – ‘within the community’ – should be used verbatim and with a pious tone, his tutor said, because the word ‘community’ had lately developed a kind of gorgeously holy tinge, and to be ‘within’ that blessed fold made things even holier: the curious would consider it crude to go on nosing if once blocked by this cosy, sanctified formula. He’d tried it on Iris, and she’d replied: ‘Rubbish. You’ve been learning how to spy, haven’t you, Tom? Active Progressive Policing means getting disguised into a gang.’
    Now, she said: ‘It’s a different police patch, and they want you to move there?’
    â€˜Not
move
there. Not a permanent thing, of course. A sort of secondment.’
    â€˜Which sort?’
    â€˜Strictly task related. When it’s completed I’ll be signed off. A very limited arrangement. Like a company calling in an IT expert to deal with some specific snarl-up.’
    â€˜What are you an expert at? What type of snarl-up?’
    Iris had one hell of a down on jargon – assumed always that its purpose was concealment and evasiveness, not communication; anti-communication. OK, OK, she might be right. Often Iris got things right. He wouldn’t want a wife who didn’t. It could be a sodding pain, though.
    â€˜There’ll be a full briefing before things get properly under way,’ he said.
    â€˜Before what gets properly under way?’
    â€˜Some kinds of work can’t be rushed,’ he replied. ‘It’s not like answering a nine nine nine.’
    â€˜Which kinds?’
    â€˜Secondments of this sort.’
    â€˜Which sort?’
    â€˜Secondments are very various – and quite common. They allow a beneficial spread of resources.’
    The gobbledegook shit made her grimace. ‘How long do secondments of this particular sort last?’ Iris asked.
    â€˜It depends.’
    â€˜On what?’
    â€˜On the degree of progress.’
    â€˜What kind of progress?’
    â€˜Progress