And Angie had walked out of the door, leaving her to make her own decision.
The one thing it told her was that Angie knew someone who worked at West Midlands Police headquarters in Lloyd House. She knew them pretty well, too — well enough to persuade them to break the rules.
When someone was on your side, you were supposed to feel grateful that they were willing to buck the system and help you achieve justice. Diane had never been able to figure out why that feeling of gratitude didn’t come.
She’d always tried to go by the book, to follow procedures and not put a foot wrong. Yet she saw officers breaking the rules all the time. And not just back in the 1990s when she first joined up. Even now there were people willing to bend the rules, play the system or totally cross the line.
Was there some honourable justification she could claim for implicating herself in a breach of the rules? Did it really make any difference? The outcome would be the same, if she was found out.
And who had done this to her? Who was it who’d placed temptation in front of her? Her own sister.
If she couldn’t trust her own sister, who could she trust?
Angie Fry had changed. She was no longer so skinny, her shoulders no longer so thin and angular. Diane knew that Angie had been fighting to control the weight she’d put on after the pregnancy, but she could see now that the battle was lost. Her habit of carrying the baby in a sling had pulled her shoulders down, making her look slow and ungainly.
And her face had changed too. It was the approach of middle age, of course. Angie had had a child relatively late, as so many women did. When Diane looked at her now, she saw a slow-moving middle-aged woman — which she would never be herself, surely? It was if an alien had taken possession of her sister’s body.
Angie had a flat on the eighth floor of Inkerman House, a Birmingham City Council tower block overlooking the Aldi store at Newtown Shopping Centre and a huge Royal Mail delivery office on New Town Row. It was barely a mile from the police station in Aston where Diane had been based.
Diane stood by the window for a moment, gazing out over the familiar streets. Then she glanced down at a parking area below the tower block.
‘Is that your old red Suzuki down there?’ she said. ‘Have you still got it?’
Angie came to stand beside her.
‘The Jimny? Yes, that’s mine.’
‘I always thought it looked a bit odd to have a four-by-four in the middle of Birmingham.’
‘I just like it. It’s not too big, like some of the monsters you see on the roads.’
‘And there’s a baby seat for Zack, I suppose.’
‘Obviously.’
Angie looked at her curiously.
‘So what is it all about, Di?’ she said. ‘What’s so urgent that it made you come all the way down here from Nottingham? It wasn’t just to admire my car.’
‘I want to ask you about your dealings with the National Crime Agency,’ said Diane, conscious of the stiffness of the question.
Her sister picked up on the tone straight away, of course. And she wasn’t the kind of person to let it go unremarked.
‘Really? What is this?’ she said with a laugh. ‘Am I being interviewed as a suspect? Shouldn’t I be given a caution? What about a lawyer?’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Diane. ‘But I’ve got to ask you. There’s a reason.’
Angie became more serious.
‘I told you about the NCA,’ she said.
‘Yes, you were recruited as an informant when you were in Sheffield.’
‘They’ve had a pretty bad rap over the years, but some of them were good to me. They were conducting a covert operation against some major drug gangs. So they approached me and made me a CHIS. Isn’t that your jargon?’
‘A covert human intelligence source.’
‘Right. A posh name for an informant. A snitch, a nark.’
‘You put yourself at risk.’
‘Of course I did. I had regular contact with some dangerous people.’
‘But why?’
‘Why? Di, there comes a time in your life when you have to make a decision, to bite the bullet and make a major change of direction. That was the moment for me, sis. I’d been heading in the wrong direction for years. But I managed to kick the heroin and get clean. I wouldn’t be here now with Zack if I hadn’t made that decision at the time I did.’
‘Right.’
For Diane, being a single mother saddled with a screaming child didn’t seem like an objective she would aim for herself, let alone regard as some kind of dream outcome. But she’d learned to accept that Angie was different. Her sister had powerful maternal instincts that she’d searched for in her own heart and failed to locate. That was the way things were, and there was nothing to be done about it.
‘My handlers got a bit nervous when you started making inquiries about me, and even more when your friend started asking questions.’
‘Ben Cooper?’
‘Yes, dear old Ben. He ruined things for me. They dropped me not long after that. I was too exposed, they said. My handlers said I should go back to Birmingham. So I did. And here I am. It was a pity really. The money was good.’
It was hard for Diane to imagine, even now. To be a CHIS, Angie must have signed a contract and been allocated to a handler. Diane’s brain filled with extracts from the Code of Ethics relating to Section Seventy-One of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. Written authorisation from a designated authorising officer, a standard application form providing details of the purpose for which the source would be tasked, details of any confidential material that might be obtained. A risk assessment, of course.
Then someone would have kept detailed records of every task, and been prepared to account for their actions to the chief surveillance commissioner. Angie made it sound so informal. But that wasn’t the way it worked any more, the street detective with his private snouts. It would all have been logged and documented.
‘When you told me about your time working for the NCA, you said you were telling me because you might need my help,’ said Diane. ‘What did you mean by that?’
Angie shrugged. ‘Down here it’s different. West Midlands Police. Do I need to explain it to you?’
‘You think there are some dirty cops?’
‘Do I think so? I suppose you remember what happened to your old buddy Andy Kewley? He talked too much, that bloke. Far too much. It’s not going to happen to me.’
‘Have you been threatened?’
‘Not directly. That wouldn’t be their style. It’s always just something that someone has heard and decides to pass on. You know what it’s like.’
‘Is that why Zack’s dad got the boot?’
‘He was on the way out anyway. But yeah — Craig was a remnant from an old lifestyle. I had to clear the decks. I’m with Sonny now, and I’ve got Zack. I’m a different person, sis.’
‘Yes, I can see that.’
‘So I need to know that I can rely on you if push comes to shove. It may not happen. But I didn’t want to have to start from scratch explaining it all you. So I made you aware of the situation.’
‘You’re worried about Zack, aren’t you?’ said Diane, feeling she’d experienced a sudden insight.
Her sister snapped at her impatiently, ‘Of course I’m worried about Zack. Wouldn’t you be?’
Diane held up a hand placatingly. ‘I’m sure everything will be fine. Look, they’ll have forgotten about you by now.’ Then she had a sudden doubt. ‘Unless there’s a court case outstanding. One where your evidence will be used against someone.’