Undercover by Bill James Page B

shagged the fuzz.
    They claimed promiscuity became part of the police job, blind-eyed, or even openly tolerated, by senior officers. One of the march banners Tom saw on television news read: ‘Why detectives are called dicks.’ Former undercover officers quoted by a tabloid said if you didn’t have it away here and there you’d be a freak – and therefore noticed and suspected. The reporter commented that this sounded like ‘noble-cause concupiscence’ and gave ‘penetration’ a second meaning. A headline boomed: ‘Undercover leg-over.’
    Iris had probably read some of these articles, but he knew she wouldn’t bring up that category of worry. She’d see it as an insult to suggest he might have to multi-fuck his way to full fellowship and acceptance by the tribe. Perhaps she’d like
him
unprompted to mention these newspaper stories and dismiss such behaviour as gross and sleazy. He didn’t though. Silence might be wiser, he decided. In any case, he wasn’t concerned with a
pro bono publico
protest group, where there’d most likely be an equal number of youngish men and women made hot and horny by enthusiasm for the cause, and therefore very much up for it: a kind of solidarity. Tom had to find a place in a professional, crooked firm. There wouldn’t be many women, perhaps none. Sex shouldn’t figure, surely.

EIGHT
    AFTER
    M aud stopped the film for a while and turned in her front-row seat to talk to Iles and Harpur behind. Maybe she’d decided, after all, to show some politeness and avoid pissing Iles off. She didn’t put the Projection Room overhead light on, and they remained in three-quarters darkness. Harpur found this soothing. He recalled happy popcorn sessions in the stalls while watching movies as a youngster, though these shouldn’t have happened because his Plymouth Brethren Sunday School condemned cinema as worldly. He’d strayed now and then. Popcorn would probably have been all right, but not in a cinema. The trouble was,
people
went to the cinema and St Paul had told the Corinthians to come out from among people and be ‘separate’.
    Maud said: ‘It’s simpler if we continue using Mallen’s cover name, Parry, in our discourse here. I think it would be apropos for me to give you some notion of his character and personality. Very limited parts of this you’ll find in the trial transcript, but, regrettably, the trial was not about Parry or his murder. There’s been no trial about Parry’s murder yet, has there? Which is why I want this investigation, re-investigation, by you two eminently thorough, impartial and committed detectives.’
    Iles gave a bit of a groan. He did not usually mind flattery, and, in fact, would generally fail to find flattery flattery at all, simply a justifiably awed stocktaking of his assets. But he’d suspect praise now because they were in Home Office precincts, listening to someone doing well here, and who must, consequently, be a conspiring, egomaniac two-timer: conspiring very specifically against
him
. In any case, the Assistant Chief would hate having his abilities referred to as equal to Harpur’s, or even comparable to. The ACC could just about swallow blandishments, but not if he knew Harpur was getting them, too. Suckholing to Iles had to be carried out with discrimination, a discrimination which should naturally exclude Harpur, or it would be suckholing with no special distinction for the hole being sucked.
    â€˜I meant it – about your famed doggedness, your dedication to a task,’ Maud stated with a very genuine-seeming smile.
    â€˜Thanks,’ Iles said. ‘It
is
a big help if you tell us when we can rely on what you’re saying because you mean it, as against all your other chit-chat when you don’t.’
    â€˜Selection methods for undercover people utilize research done here in GB and in the USA,’ Maud replied.