Free Gangbuster by Peter Bleksley Page A

telephone call to allow the surveillance team backing me up to stand down and go home. I wasn’t going to keep them up all night watching a flat while I was inside enjoying myself. And they might get nosey with their video cameras.
    The pillow talk suggested she was warming to me a bit too much, a bit worrying as I knew she was eventually going to get busted. I put it to the back of my mind. She beckoned me back to bed for a final session before breakfast. Forget the cornflakes! Obviously, I didn’t have time to go home to shave or change and headed straight off to the Yard to update my bosses … or tell them as much as I thought they should know.
    I dragged myself into the squad office bleary-eyed and bedraggled, completely shagged out. They would have panicked if I hadn’t been there first thing so it was important to put in an appearance whatever my condition. I went into the guv’nor’s office clutching my receipt from the restaurant, one of the best in town, and started the debrief, if you’ll pardon the expression, about how the meeting had gone.
    I told them the drug deal was progessing well. It was likely to go off pretty soon. Then came the burning question, which from my appearance they knew the answer to already: ‘Well, did you take her out after the meet?’
    I said, ‘Yes, it was good.’
    ‘Did you give her something to eat?’
    ‘Yes, Guv.’
    ‘Plenty of drinks?’
    ‘Oh yes, Guv, plenty.’
    ‘You don’t look as if you’ve been home.’
    ‘No, I haven’t.’
    ‘So you stayed then?’
    ‘Er, yes, Guv.’
    They knew by the smile on my face that they needn’t ask much more. But there was only so much I was prepared to tell them, a lot was personal now. I didn’t feel they needed to know we’d been at it all night in more positions than the Kama Sutra or that she had kept herself fuelled up on crack. Our secrets and lies.
    Then came the tricky business of the bill. It was close on £200 and I knew the Yard could be difficult with some expenses. My boss took it from me and said straight away, ‘Oh that’s not too bad, Blex.’ I looked at him a bit surprised, then looked at where his finger was … right by the VAT figure. I said, ‘No, sorry, Guv’nor, you’re looking at the wrong line … that’s just the VAT.’ He just went, ‘Fucking hell.’ So I said with a big grin on my face, ‘It was worth it.’
    We planned to do the cocaine deal on a Saturday morning and I’d persuaded Perez to use his basement flat, in Abingdon Road, W8. I’d done a close recce and knew it was a flat that the police could access easily, it wasn’t a Fort Knox. The whole geography of the area suited me and my knowledge of this type of operation. Jo and I agreed that after we had done the trade we were going to Brighton for the weekend to celebrate our first successful deal of many, a new Bonnie and Clyde partnership. Poor cow. She turned up on the day, although she wasn’t strictly a part of the deal, and was scooped up in the raid along withPerez. It was a good nick, a foreign envoy using diplomatic channels to smuggle in cocaine and flogging it all over London. Quite a capture. He was later jailed for possession of a kilo of cocaine with intent to supply.
    As Jo was being nicked, I’d legged it off down the road to make it look like I had escaped, hoping she wouldn’t put two and two together and know that it was me who had stitched her up. Guilty conscience, I suppose. My colleagues searched the weekend bag she had packed for going away with me and found a nice batch of freshly-baked hash cookies and two wraps of cocaine. When the team met up later for a drink, it was, ‘Oh, you really were going to have a good weekend away, weren’t you?’
    Jo was charged with possessing the drugs intended for our weekend treat but not with the main cocaine conspiracy in order to protect our undercover operation. She got fined for it, and not jailed thankfully. I don’t know whether she ever realised that it