The creative writing course I am attending recently broke up for the end of the second term, leaving me with a few class-less weeks before it restarts in late April. The second term was spent writing and editing our second chapters, which have now been submitted for marking. I posted the first chapter here a few weeks back.
Following that post, I’ve put the second chapter up here. To recap, the working title is ‘Cover’ – it’s about an undercover policeman who uses an investigation into drug trafficking to feather his own nest and follows his increasingly desparate moral descent, dragging others with him.
It’s still a work in progress, and will almost definitely experience a re-write of some kind. I realise I might be being overly optimistic by posting a 2,000 word plus blog post, but hey…
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Chapter Two
Sullen but co-operative, Mitchell went through the booking-in process with the custody sergeant at Paddington Green station and was escorted to a cell where he sat and waited. The white walls and featureless confines gave Mitchell a blank canvas on which to play out the car park incident over and over again in his mind.
He lay back on the thin plastic mattress and shut his eyes in an attempt to block out his surroundings. He needed to be focussed and single-minded if he was to stop the situation slipping beyond his control, but it wasn’t long before a more familiar, persistent set of recollections returned to him. A chaotic slideshow played inside his head like scenes cut from a film and discarded on the editing room floor. Piles of spent brass cartridges lying in the dust. The moist, sweet smell of sweating soldiers crammed inside armoured vehicles. Toothless Afghan villagers staring at him and his men and long shadows cast over the desert floor by a setting sun. It wasn’t just the horror and the dislocated fragments of fire-fights that stayed with him, it was the everyday transactions of his two tours. Mitchell had come to accept them now. No point trying to fight something in your own head.
Keys rattled in the cell door and he was summoned out. A uniformed officer accompanied by a couple of grim-faced detectives in suits and ties stood waiting in the corridor. Had he been a normal suspect in a double murder case he would have had to endure hours of waiting while the investigating officers compiled their notes and arranged his legal cover, preparations for the start of a lengthy investigation and interview process. But this was no standard case. The detectives didn’t introduce themselves and Mitchell didn’t recognise them, which was probably a good thing. Un-cuffed, he was led back in silence through the labyrinthine bowels of the station to the secure car park. He was shown to an unmarked police car and told to sit in the back while the two detectives got in the front.
Mitchell knew where they were headed. The Met had commandeered a grim 1960s three storey building which had once been council offices. Most of the large open plan space was used for storage, the rooms filled with packing crates full of non-sensitive paperwork and office equipment. The top floor was the operational headquarters for Operation Whetstone.
The anonymous detectives walked him up the cold stairs, their footsteps echoing down the empty stairwell. Mitchell imagined this was what it would be like to live in a totalitarian state and find yourself at the hands of the security forces; taken from your cell to an undisclosed location for interrogation and an uncertain fate. The building was unheated, adding to the clinical feel of the place. Almost totally devoid of colour and human touches. Most of the staff working on the operation had finished for the weekend, and those who would have been here now had been sent home. Clusters of empty desks filled the office space, chairs patiently awaiting their occupants.
He was ushered into a meeting room and the door closed behind him. At the far end was Detective Superintendent Neal Winters, sitting at the head of a long expanse of desks. The two men maintained their respective positions at either end of the room until Mitchell broke the deadlock by making an exaggerated show of rubbing his wrists – soothing the cuff-marks left from his earlier arrest – as if to show Winters the discomfort he’d endured over the last hour or so.
“Well?” Winters asked.
Neal Winters was a career policeman. Decades of walking the beat, criminal investigations and countless hours of paperwork and strategy meetings had put him at the head of the Metropolitan’s Covert Operations Group. From this vantage point he looked down on Mitchell. He could summon him, interrogate him, berate him, promote or fire him. He expects you to do most of the talking and only cuts in to tell you what to do or when you’re wrong.
“It was pretty much like I told you on the phone.”
“You got jumped by some machinegun wielding foot soldiers and returned fire, killing two men?”
“That’s right.”
“You didn’t recognise them?”
“No. They looked Turkish or Greek. Middle Eastern maybe.”
“You’re going to have to write a report on this, for my eyes only at this stage.”
Mitchell nodded.
“And you’re offline until we know more of the details,” Winters said, pointing a bony finger at him to emphasise his point.
“For how long?”
“For as long as it takes us to deal with the investigators and work out what type of shit this is likely to cause at street level. You’re either looking at being thrown back into standard detective work or a charge for double murder – and right now I have no idea which way it’s going to go.”
Mitchell swallowed hard. Firing weapons on duty always led to lengthy and painful investigations. He should have seen the possibility coming, but it was still hard to hear. He didn’t want to ask how he’d been freed without even an informal interview after killing two men. But he knew it wouldn’t have happened without Winters’ intervention and a whole stack of begrudging sign-offs from the very top.
“All I was doing was walking back to my car. Why give me a gun if I can’t defend myself?”
“I’ve heard it countless times before over the years,” Winters said, in a tone that suggested he didn’t want to hear any form of excuse. “A police shooting is bad enough for a standard firearms unit, but there is nothing standard about this. You’ve got the easier end of the deal.”
“What? I was the one almost gunned down in a car park. I’m the one who has to live with the death of those two men…” Mitchell shouted, jabbing himself in the chest.
“Yes, but this whole operation is my vehicle. I run it. I pick the personnel. I make the decisions. I spend millions pounds of tax-payers money on something that might land us in prison or at least discharged from the force with no pension if it goes wrong. I authorised the firearms issue for you. As far as the Home Office is concerned, I pulled the trigger.”
Winters was shouting now. Mitchell had only seen him do it a couple of times – and only at other people – and it was a sobering experience. He was on the streets, but Winters was the one dealing with the fallout, convincing people behind closed doors that all the expense and risk would be worth it in the end. But now neither of them were so sure.
“And you’re certain there weren’t any witnesses. Just you and the shooters?”
“Yes, like I said earlier. They chose the location well – a deserted car park and a CCTV blind spot.”
Mitchell could see Whitaker making a run for his car after witnessing the shootings. Right now he almost wished he’d killed Whitaker too. Caught in the crossfire, an innocent man tragically caught up in gang violence. It would have been depressingly plausible, Mitchell thought.
“Good.” Winters moved to the window and stared down onto the streets below. The building looked out onto a nondescript part of London. A dual carriageway, industrial units. A rail line and rows of housing. “Do you think this was Cleavis’ crew?” he asked, still peering out into the darkened streets.
“I don’t think so.”
“What makes you think that?”
“For one I can’t think of a reason why they’d want me dead. We’re in the middle of negotiating a deal with them. Plus, they wouldn’t use hired muscle to do it, especially not Turks or Greeks or whatever. They’d have their own guys for that.”
“Exactly what I was thinking,” said Winters, as if he’d only asked to confirm his own thoughts on the matter.
“So where does it leave us?” Mitchell asked.
“Right now, it leaves you writing a report on the incident, and me with a lot of explaining to do.”
Mitchell nodded. He turned to leave, but Winters spun away from the window to face him.
“Where are you going? Write it now. I want an account of the events, second by second. Leave nothing out.” He marched over to the door and flung it open. The two detectives came in and stood awaiting orders.
“Don’t let Detective Mitchell leave until he’s finished. When he’s done, call me and I’ll collect it.” Mitchell sighed and let his head hang in resignation. Winters left him with the two detectives standing by like teachers making sure a detention was served.
***
Baba was a fat man. Fifty-eight years of over-eating, smoking, not exercising, and generally not giving a fuck about his weight had made him seriously obese. His walk had become a lumbering waddle. Just moving from room to room robbed him of breath and made him break into a sweat. His breathing rattled and wheezed, as if forced from a tired and over-taxed set of bellows. But he didn’t care. He was rich. He was respected in his community.
Wreathed in cigarette smoke and eating a plate of dolma, Baba sat alone in the back room of the Agiri Social Club in Haringey watching his favourite soap opera on a Kurdish satellite channel. People knew not to disturb him during the show. This was his personal time. Surrounded by stacks of tubular steel chairs and Formica-topped tables, it was his private sanctuary. Baba liked the down-at-heel simplicity of his surroundings. No sumptuous office or plush suite for him.
There was a knock at the door – it was Ozi and Mamir. Baba had been expecting them. He looked over from the TV and they both gave a slow, negative shake of their heads in unison. Baba turned back to his TV show. The two men stood in the doorway, not sure if they should stay or leave. Baba picked up the last remaining dolma and crammed the whole thing into his mouth. Ozi and Mamir watched his cheeks bulge and his grey, bristly moustache twitch as he chewed and then finally swallowed his food. He then wiped his face and hands with a napkin and took one last, long drag on his cigarette before crushing it into the ashtray. He grabbed the empty plate and hurled it, discus-like, at the two men. It smashed into the wall, covering them in shards of china and scraps of food. He stood up, almost knocking the table over as he did so.
“They let him get away?” Baba bellowed in Kurdish.
“No, Baba. That man killed them both,” Ozi replied.
“What?”
“We don’t know what happened, but they’re both dead.”
“What happened to the man?” Baba asked, his huge bulk trembling with anger.
“We don’t know,” Mamir said softly, staring down at the cracked vinyl floor tiles at his feet.
Baba seized the large glass ashtray and launched it at the TV. The screen smashed and the picture vanished with a loud terminal-sounding pop. The sudden absence of the soundtrack was deafening.
“Get hold of Cleavis for me. I want to know what the fuck is going on.”
Ozi and Mamir scrambled out of the room. Baba stood alone, surrounded by broken glass and crockery. Something fizzed and crackled in the wreckage of the TV set. He sat down again, gasping for breath, his fingers franticly tearing open a fresh packet of cigarettes. This was a complication Baba could have done without.
~~~
Wow – you made it to the end of the post? I thought a 2k+ word post would be too much for most people, but maybe I was wrong. Of course, you may have just skipped to the end, but I prefer to think you read all the way to here. 
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There are only five more weeks of my writing course to go until it’s all finished – time flies.
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