CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Michael Quinn did not ask Leah to forgive him.
That made it worse.
He sat upright in the hospital bed with one arm immobilised and the colour slowly returning to his face. The room had one window, one chair and an NCA officer outside who had been instructed to stop Michael leaving despite the fact Michael currently required help putting on socks.
Leah closed the door.
Michael looked at her empty hands.
"No warrant card."
"Calder confiscated it."
"Probably wise."
"Don't make jokes."
"Right."
She stood instead of taking the chair.
"Richard thought you were protecting him."
Michael's face changed immediately.
No confusion.
No defence.
"You read the letter."
"Drew did."
Michael looked toward the wall.
Leah said, "The operation was cancelled."
"Yes."
"Venn cancelled it."
"Yes."
"And you knew Hale's intelligence was false."
Michael breathed out slowly.
"I suspected."
"You knew enough to object."
"Yes."
"But you didn't warn Richard."
Michael closed his eyes.
"No."
Leah felt something cold settle behind her ribs.
"Why?"
"Because I thought I could still save the case."
There it was: the case.
Michael opened his eyes again.
"I had eighteen months inside Hale's network. If I openly broke with Venn, I lost access, witnesses, everything. I told myself I could get to Richard before Hale did."
"Did you?"
"No."
"Did you tell Mum the truth?"
"No."
"Did you tell Drew?"
"No."
"Daniel?"
"Eventually."
Leah laughed once.
"Of course Daniel got the secret version."
Michael flinched.
Good.
She wanted him to.
"Richard was shot before I reached the yard," Michael said. "Hale had moved the meeting. Terry gave him the new location. By the time I found Richard, he was dying."
Leah stared at him.
"And then you hid evidence."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because Venn arrived first."
"Still not enough."
"I know."
Michael looked at his hands.
"Richard had a ledger page and a cassette in his coat.
Venn searched him. I had taken both before Venn arrived.
I told myself I was preserving evidence.
Then I did not submit it because I knew Venn controlled the exhibit chain.
That choice became another choice. Then another.
By the end I wasn't preserving a case. I was hiding my own failures inside it. "
Leah sat down finally.
"You disappeared."
"Yes."
"Mum thought you were dead."
"I know."
"I thought you were dead."
His voice broke slightly.
"I know."
"You don't get points for looking sad."
"I'm not asking for any."
She hated him for saying the correct thing.
Michael looked at her.
"I am going to plead guilty to whatever I did that the evidence supports."
"That's broad."
"It needs to be."
"And then?"
"Then a judge decides whether my motives matter."
Leah stared at him.
"Do they?"
"Some of them. Not enough of them."
Silence.
Michael said, "And North End."
Leah's eyes lifted.
"We already named it. You used me because the case mattered more than the daughter."
"Yes."
"The worst part is it worked. Evidence survived, the route collapsed, and men like you always reach for that afterward."
"I won't."
"Good."
Her throat tightened.
She hated that too.
Michael looked at her.
"I loved you the entire time."
Leah stood.
"Love isn't an alibi."
"I know."
"Stop saying that."
"Right."
She went to the door.
His voice stopped her.
"Leah."
She looked back.
He did not ask for forgiveness.
He did not ask her to visit.
He said, "Don't leave policing because of me."
She stared at him.
"I wasn't planning to."
Something like relief crossed his face.
She opened the door.
"And don't die before sentencing."
Michael blinked.
"Is that concern?"
"Administrative convenience."
"Right."
She left.
DCS Imogen Shaw was waiting two corridors away.
Fifty-one. Dark suit. Silver hair cut short. No visible sense of humour.
She held Leah's warrant card inside a clear evidence sleeve.
Leah looked at it.
"Bit dramatic."
"You are an undercover officer who entered a sexual relationship with the vice-president of the criminal organisation you were infiltrating while your father, a presumed-dead former detective, manipulated the operation from outside the authorised chain. Dramatic happened before I arrived."
Leah considered that.
"Fair."
Shaw raised one eyebrow.
Leah immediately disliked Drew for contaminating her vocabulary.
They entered a small office.
Calder sat at one end of the table.
An IOPC investigator sat at the other.
Recorder.
Notebook.
Water nobody would drink.
Shaw said, "This is not currently a misconduct interview under caution. That may change depending on your answers. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"Did you know Michael Quinn was alive when you entered North End?"
"No."
"Did you know Daniel Sayer was alive?"
"No."
"Did you know Venn was compromised?"
"No."
"When did your relationship with Drew Sayer become sexual?"
Leah gave the date.
Shaw wrote it down.
"You were still operational."
"Yes."
"Did you report it?"
"Not immediately."
"Why?"
Leah thought about lying.
Then remembered the entire week.
"Because I wanted him and I knew reporting it would end my deployment."
Calder looked at the table.
Shaw did not react.
"Did the relationship affect your operational decisions?"
"Yes."
"In his favour?"
"Sometimes."
"Against him?"
"Sometimes."
"Explain."
Leah did.
Not beautifully.
Not heroically.
She admitted warning Drew, using him for access, believing him against the evidence, nearly arresting him anyway, and every place procedure had bent under an operation corrupted before she entered it.
Shaw listened for fifty-eight minutes.
Then closed her notebook.
"Your authorisation was corrupted before you entered the field."
Leah said nothing.
"That does not excuse your breaches."
"I know."
"Stop helping me."
Leah almost smiled.
Shaw continued.
"Your immediate suspension remains. The criminal aspect of your conduct is, at present, unsupported. The misconduct review will continue."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning you are not being arrested today."
"Low bar."
"Apparently this week requires one."
Calder coughed into her hand.
Shaw ignored her.
"You will not return to undercover duties in Hull. Possibly ever."
That landed harder than Leah expected.
Undercover work was not only adrenaline. Leah had spent years learning how to enter a room as somebody else, hear the lie beneath the lie and make dangerous people forget she was watching.
It was craft. Identity. The part of policing that made her feel unnervingly competent.
It had also nearly killed her.
She should have felt relieved. Instead she felt grief, anger and the humiliating sense of being evicted from a version of herself she had chosen. She was not sure she wanted undercover work back. She hated that the choice had been taken from her.
Shaw slid a sheet across the table.
"There is another option if the review clears you to remain in service. Regional Organised Crime financial intelligence. Your accounting background is useful. Your knowledge of the Line is unusually useful."
Leah looked at her.
"You're offering me a job while suspending me."
"I am telling you a door exists. I am not promising it will still be open after the panel."
"And Drew?"
Shaw's expression changed by one millimetre.
"What about him?"
"If North End survives and he's president."
"You declare the relationship. You do not work investigations touching North End. You accept that some colleagues will think your judgement is compromised forever."
"Is it?"
Shaw looked at her for a long moment.
"Everybody's judgement is compromised by something. Professionalism is what you do after admitting it."
Leah sat back.
"That almost sounded human."
"Do not repeat it."
The meeting ended ninety seconds later.
Outside, Leah found Drew sitting on the floor against the opposite wall.
Not a chair.
The floor.
"What are you doing?"
"Waiting."
"There are chairs."
"Pete stole mine."
She looked through the glass panel of the family room.
Pete Lawson was asleep across three chairs.
"Fair."
Drew grinned.
"There it is."
"I hate you."
"No you don't."
She sat beside him.
For a minute neither spoke.
Then Drew held out Richard's letter.
"Read it."
Leah did.
When she reached the end, she folded it along the old lines.
"The chair is wood."
"Yeah."
"You're still going to the meeting."
"Yeah."
"And you're going to tell a motorcycle club to stop selling cocaine."
"That's the current plan."
"How do you think that's going to go?"
Drew considered it.
"Somewhere between badly and arson."
Leah handed the letter back.
"Need help?"
"Police help?"
"No. Suspended girlfriend help."
He looked at her.
The word sat between them.
Girlfriend.
Ridiculous after guns, dead fathers, cocaine and international corruption.
Still somehow more frightening.
Drew's mouth moved.
"You okay with that word?"
"Don't ruin it."
"Right."
She leaned her head against his shoulder.
"What did Shaw say?" he asked.
"I may still have a career."
"Good."
"Not undercover."
He looked down at her.
"How do you feel?"
Leah watched a porter push an empty wheelchair past the end of the corridor. "Like somebody changed the locks on a room I built myself."
"I spent years learning how to disappear into other people. I don't even know if I wanted to do it forever. That isn't the point."
Drew waited.
"I was supposed to choose when I stopped."
"Then don't choose what comes next tonight."
She looked at him. "That was unexpectedly sensible."
"Keep it quiet."
"Fair."
She elbowed him.
Hard.
Pete woke in the other room and shouted, "If you're shagging in the corridor, some of us are injured."
Leah closed her eyes.
Drew called back, "Go to sleep, Pete."
"Can't. Morphine makes me observant."
Leah looked at Drew.
"This is the club you're saving?"
Drew sighed.
"Apparently."