Roberta’s mind was not really on her family-related duties even though it was the anniversary of her mother’s passing. She was a crack shot and had been close to representing the country at the Olympics so in her honour, a clay pigeon shoot in aid of charity was held every year.

While she was there in body, her mind kept thinking about the data that Leroy James had presented her with on Friday.

Over an early dinner Saturday evening, her father smiled and said,
“Ok darling, what is distracting you so much that you only hit one clay out of twenty today? Everyone noticed that you were off your game. One of the clients even suggested that you might be pregnant…”

His attempt at a joke fell flat on its face.

“Sorry about being a pain today, Dad. I received some disturbing information from an informant on my way down here on Friday. Please don’t ask me to share it as it involves a couple very bent officers at my nick.”

Her father smiled.
“I’m guessing that you are wondering what you should do about it as this information involves someone in your nick and whom are your superiors? And… that you are unsure if their bosses are in on the act as well?”

Roberta smiled back at her father. That was the only answer that she was prepared to give.
“Something like that. I don’t know who I can trust.”

“Then go above them and direct to AC-12. You might be surprised at what they have to say. You already know Chief Super Monahan, don’t you?”

Then he put his hand on his chin. That was a sign of her father thinking… hard.

“I’m guessing here that at least one of the officers involved was responsible for blocking that commendation?”

Roberta shook her head.
“The commendation that I didn’t want… but please dad, I need to handle this myself, ok?”

“Ok, I’ll not mention it again but if I can help in any way, you know where I am even if it is just to drop a hint or two to the right departments of the government.”

He smiled before adding,
“Just remember that if you get mired in officialdom, ask yourself, what your mother would do?”

Roberta smiled.
“I know, divert around the problem. Bypass the snakes in the grass and approach the problem from a different direction.”

“Good. Now get back to London and formulate your plan of campaign. When is your next rest day?”

“Thursday… why?”

“Bide your time. Watch and listen. Play them at their game. Don’t make waves. Don’t do anything with AC-12 until Thursday at the earliest. Then you will have less chance of jumping to the wrong conclusion.”

“I know all that.”

“Do your immediate bosses know about your meeting with this informant?”

“Only in vague terms. All they know is that my informant requested a meet on Friday. They don’t know where the meet was due to take place or why. I made sure that I wasn’t followed. But I do have to report to my Chief Inspector and Inspector about the meeting.”

“Then my dear, it is clear to me that you will need to concoct a story about the meeting. It has to be believable enough to keep them from suspecting your real plan.”

Then he looked at the clock.
“Get your things and I’ll run you to the station. We should just be in time to get you home this side of midnight. You are due back on duty tomorrow morning, aren’t you? Then get to that new flat of yours and try to get at least some sleep. Otherwise, we’d both have to be up at the crack of dawn for me to take you home. At least this way, I can sleep in a bit.”

He grinned at Roberta. She was still thinking… hard.

“And I still have to write a report on my meeting for Monday.”

“Then you will have plenty of time while on duty tomorrow to get your story straight and true, unlike your aim today.”

Roberta laughed before disappearing to get her overnight bag.

[Sunday Morning]
“Ok, PC Galbraith. Something is on your mind. You nearly went down a one-way street just now, the wrong way…”

Her partner for the day, Sergeant Freeman had alerted her at the last minute. Sergeant Hill was away on a day's leave as his granddaughter was being Christened in Chelmsford.

“Sorry Sir. I was trying to work out what to put in my report to the Chief about my meeting with an informant on Friday.”

He looked at Roberta and nodded his head.
“I take it that it was a bust?”

“Almost. The informant had information on the car ringing gang that we busted last month. Most of it was already known to us. All he gave me, was one new name.”

“So? Just say that and add in what he told you. It is for others to make the judgement calls not us foot-soldiers.”

“I know all that but it won’t satisfy Sergeant Hill. I put his nose well out of joint by showing the email from the Chief Super authorising me to leave early on Friday.”

Sergeant Freeman laughed.
“Sergeant Hill is an idiot but don’t quote me on that. How he got his stripes is still a mystery to many in the Met. His bark is far worse than his bite.”

Roberta shook her head.
“You aren’t down to be on patrol with him all week starting tomorrow.”

“Keep your head down and you will be fine.”

“That’s easy for you to say that, Sarge.”

“Grin and bear it Roberta. It isn’t your fault that he hates women officers. To him, women should be in the home raising children. How he squares that up with our ultimate boss being a woman is between him and his maker. Personally, I think that he’d glass her if he had a chance. The word, ‘Neanderthal’ is often used to describe him, but please don’t quote me on that.”

Roberta sighed.

“Why the big sigh?”

“I seem to get paired up with them and their ilk wherever I go. Before coming here, I was in Colindale with Sergeant Green.”

“Ouch! I see where you are coming from. He was just like our own Sergeant Hill.”

Roberta remained in deep thought for the rest of the patrol. She still had the report to write and that was not going away. Sergeant Freeman, to his credit, did not pester Roberta any more during the rest of the shift.

[Monday morning]
“Constable Galbraith!” said the Chief Inspector.
“My office now!”

Roberta went off to face the inevitable dressing down from the Chief.

“Close the door behind you,” said the Chief.

She did that and stood in front of his desk.

“This is an interesting report, Constable. Interesting for what it does not say. Am I right?”

“Sir?...”

The Chief managed a smile.

“Am I right in guessing that something happened in that meeting that you can’t divulge at least yet?”

“Sir… I am sorry but I gave my word to the informant whom I have to protect. There are bigger things at stake. My problem is that I don’t know what to do with that information at the moment.”

That was a lie. She did know what to do.

“Then sleep on it until you are good and ready. My door is always open. What you are experiencing is exactly what most officers go through at least once in their career. There are times when you have information that feels like it wants to tear you apart.”

“Thanks Sir. I will take that advice and sleep on it.”

“Please let it be known to Sergeant Hill that I tore you off a strip for not providing a report about the meeting with your informant. Tell him that there was nothing to report as they didn’t show up.”

Roberta managed a small smile.
“Thank you, sir.”

As she went to leave his office the Chief said,
“You did not deserve to be kicked out of CID. I read the case files. It was your diligence, creative thinking and downright stubbornness, that allowed us to solve the case, when others would have given up. What I’m trying to say is, if you want to transfer out of this nick then I won’t stand in your way.”

“Thank you, sir but I’m not ready to throw in the towel just yet. As you know, I did put in for a transfer but it was rejected out of hand by the Chief Super on the recommendation of the DCI. If I request another transfer so soon and it gets rejected, it will go down on my record as a black mark. I don’t want that to happen.”

She left him with a smile on his face. He wished that he had ten more like her under his command. Her approach to problem-solving was so different from any officer that he’d ever met, but it worked and for that he was thankful. Going by the book was not in her vocabulary. If anything, she was writing a brand-new book on crime solving. He could see little bits of several fictional detectives in her work. Holmes, Morse and even a bit of Columbo all mixed up and transported to the 21st Century. Her reports indicated something different in the way she looked at a crime and her approach to solving it had so far, worked a treat. What it was that she had, he could not put his finger on but that old cliché came to mind. 'If she could bottle whatever it was that she had, then she'd be a very wealthy person'.

[The following Thursday]

Roberta headed into the city after another restless night but she had finally decided what to do with the information she had received from Leroy James. As it was her day off, she’d let it be known that she was going to meet an old school friend for lunch. She was deliberately vague about where it was apart from somewhere in central London.

In reality, the lunch was to be with her father. He would want to know what she’d decided to do about involving AC-12. He was actually present in the House of Lords all day, but that was not for general circulation amongst her fellow officers. If they discovered who she really was then there would be a lot of trouble heading her way.

But… first, she had a meeting to go to and she didn’t want anyone following her.

Bank tube station is a great place to lose a tail. Its location when combined with the adjacent Monument station, has nearly twenty exits to the street as well as four tube lines, the Docklands Light Railway and last but not least, the Waterloo and City Line all intersecting in one place. Plus, it is always busy during the working day.

After arriving on the Central Line, Roberta went down to the DLR platforms but then she took the escalator up to the Northern Line followed by the travelator down to the Waterloo and City Line. She was just in time to get on a train before it departed. Anyone tailing her would be unable to follow her for at least a few minutes. By which time, she could be on a train to more than fifty destinations.

At Waterloo Station, she transferred to the Jubilee Line and travelled just one stop to Westminster. Her destination was an anonymous office block close to the old London Transport HQ at St James’s Park. This was one of AC-12’s main offices. AC-12 is the department whose job it was to bring corrupt cops to justice. The people who work there are not popular with the rest of the force for obvious reasons.

The previous day, her father’s secretary had arranged through some very discreet back channels a meeting between her and Superintendent Mark Wilson. He worked for the same Chief Super that she’d met at Westminster Hall.

“Please come in and take a seat Constable,” said the Super.

“Thank you, sir.”

“I have read your file. In the short time that you have been in the force, you have certainly made an impact, yet you are still in uniform?”

“Sir, I was in CID but following my work to bust the art gang, I evidently put more than a few noses out of joint. That was compounded by the possible commendation from the Chief for that work which didn’t go down well with my DCI. So back to uniform it was.”

He looked up from her file and said,
“I hope what you are bringing me is not in the hope of getting revenge?”

“No Sir. I am not like that at all. I didn’t want the commendation and I told the commissioner in my letter to her.”

“Constable, that must have taken guts, but the way that you did it did not offend anyone. Rather the opposite if what I have been told off the record.”

“Sir, I just want to learn the ropes and be a good officer. I just happened to know a lot about art and… well, I was in the right place at the right time. What I have for you is very different, but just as important.”

He smiled.

“First off, please tell me how you came into possession of this information.”

“Sir, I have been able for some strange reason been able to develop a bit of a working relationship with a leader of a local street gang. They control the drug trade on the Broadwater Farm estate and you know what that means to the force. By control, they do their best to keep hard drugs out and they make sure that what is sold is not bad stuff. The last thing they want is for a load of their clients to die from bad smack. That would result in a vastly increased police presence which would not solve anything other than providing a sound bite for a politician. The result is an uneasy truce. They keep bad smack out and therefore overdoses down to a very low level and we don’t go in heavy handed like we did once before.”

The Superintendent smiled.
“That is a very good assessment of the situation. I spent some time at your nick as a Chief Inspector not long after those very nasty riots. Keeping our distance and softly-softly policing is not to everyone’s cup of tea, but we all saw how going in strong ended. We don’t want a repeat of those dark days. Having a truce of sorts with the gang running drugs into the ‘Farm’ is about as good as it is likely to get.”

He looked Roberta right in the eye.
“I take it that this information came from the gang leader himself?”

“Yes sir, it did. He requested a meeting because of the impending import of some really bad smack onto his turf and that at least one officer from my nick is involved.”

The Super smiled. Roberta was sure that he was thinking ‘now we can get down to business’.

“This is what he gave me.”

She passed over the photos.

Before the Superintendent looked at them, he asked.
“Could these have been doctored?”

“I looked at them with a magnifying glass and I could not detect anything untoward.”

“Good.”

Then he looked at the photos. He spent at least twenty seconds on each one.

“I know where some of these were taken. Whoever did it was good. Good, in that they didn’t get seen especially given the low light levels when some of these were taken.”

When he was done, he put them down.
“So, what’s the story behind them?”

“Sir, my informant said that his crew had got wind of an operation to oust him and his crew by selling a load of bad smack on the estate and blaming him. He said that his sources indicated that the smack would be cut with almost pure Fentanyl and Ketamine. The result would be highly addictive and very dangerous. The death toll would mount very quickly and an operation to root out the current gang would be hard to refuse. Once they are out of the way, the new lot could move in and peddle this lethal stuff.”

“I agree with that description. Who are the officers involved?”

“Sir, before I give names, can you look at the picture of the interior. It was the first image.”

“Ok, so what is so interesting about this.”

“Those two prints on the wall are sketches by Da Vinci himself and were reported stolen from a collection in the Bordeaux region of France almost five years ago. If they are the originals then where did the money come from for their purchase. Because of my knowledge of art, I know that they were sold at auction in 2001 for well over seventy-five thousand euros each. That auction was run by a top Auction House in Paris. My family had a single work in the same auction so I am sure that somewhere at home, there is a copy of the auction catalogue if it is needed.”

She took a deep breath and continued.
“While the price of art sold at auction so long ago is no guarantee of their current value but, it is an indication. Over the weekend, I used a contact to check on the all of the major art auction sites. They reported there have been no copies of these two sketches on the market since the end of WW2.”

“This checking, could it be traced back to you?”

“No sir, but my informant told me that the two officers that I suspect of being involved with this new drug trade were also running point for the Art Smuggling gang. With them banged up waiting for trial, these two may well be in need of funds to continue to fund their lifestyle. Hence their willingness to tie up with the new drug gang. This photo is of the interior of one of their homes. For obvious reasons, it was taken during the execution of a crime and without the right guarantees, it can’t be used in evidence unless something else takes us to the home.”

“That is some leap of faith Constable. I hope that it is more than just a feeling?”

“No sir it isn’t. If you read the second report that I wrote for the NCA about the murder of the art dealer, I did mention that there was a high probability of someone in the Met running point for the gang. Certain officers were making sure that the SOCO teams that were deployed to the crime scene that I was investigating, were always pulled off to work on another case before they had completed their work. While that is clearly circumstantial more than one of the SOCO team told me that these so called ‘Top Priority Cases’ were hardly worth them attending. That’s probably why they never discovered the video recorder or the fake pallets. It was down to me to find them.”

“That does make sense, but I will make sure that I read that report. I have to admit that in the few minutes that you have been here, I can see that you look at the world in a very different way to almost everyone else I have ever met.”

Roberta didn’t react.

“Who then?” he said pointing at the photo of the sketches.
“Who was the contact that gave you the information? Who took the photos?”

“Sir, if I were to tell you the name of the officer my informant fingered, then my whole career in the force could be at jeopardy. I can say that the searching was not done in London or even in this country. I have no idea who took the image but I did recommend that they engage the services of a solicitor who specialises in criminal cases to represent them”

“Ok, just how did you know what to look for?”

“Sir, I know where three more of the sketches in this series are located. They are on the walls of a Chateau in the Bordeaux region of France.”

“Ah… Hence your knowledge of art then?”
“Something like that.”
Then Roberta said,
“Sir, those three sketches have been in the ownership of my family for over three hundred years, but that is not for general release if you know what I mean.”

“This informant of yours just happened to know this?”

“No sir, because of the publicity around the art case, an ‘unknown’ officer at Tottenham nick had played a crucial role in helping to bring the case to a head. That officer as you know, was me. It was my childhood in that part of the world that allowed us to identify and later arrest Antoine de Scudery. The two sketches in these photos were stolen from a Chateau on the banks of the river Gironde. We, as in my family, had a couple of bad harvests due to some late frosts in 2005/06 and we sold two prints to the owners of this Chateau to cover those losses. We had only purchased those specific prints a few years earlier in order to complete the collection. We sold them with the understanding that we’d get first refusal if they ever decided to sell but the thieves stole them before our finances had recovered enough to buy them back.”

“The new owners grew a different grape variety as they produce Sauterne wines. Those grape varieties flower later than the Chardonnay grape and were not affected by the frosts. That is how I know about those sketches. No one else knows about this theory of mine. Plus, very few people outside of the Bordeaux region know about the thefts. We don’t talk about the art that we own for obvious reasons.”

“Ok, so this officer has a lot of unexplained income. Are you implying that it is from art smuggling and now, drug trafficking?”

“The art smuggling ended with the arrest of Antoine de Scudery or at least in it’s original form.”

“That is a good point, please continue.”

“Sir, when I tell you his name, I am sure that a few bells will ring. His most recent posting before Tottenham was in Brixton. While he was there, the drug wars exploded as I am sure that you are well aware. There were many deaths from the sale of drugs being laced with very dangerous chemicals.”

“Detective Chief Inspector Barnes is the officer in question. Plus, Sergeant Hill seems to be involved as well. Sgt Hill did not want me to attend my meeting with the informant. He tried his hardest to stop me from going, but I had orders in writing from the Chief Super.”

“This is all very interesting and does deserve further investigation.”

“Sir… I sense a but coming?”

He managed a small smile.
“I was about to say, ‘but do not expect results overnight’.”

Roberta shook her head.
“If this bad smack hits the estate, then who knows what will happen? The riots from last time may pall into insignificance. I fully expect that DCI Barnes will make the place unstable and then move on, rinse and repeat.”

“What is his financial motive for all this? That’s what I don’t get?”

“Sir, I am of the opinion that he is just the advance party for something a lot worse. At the moment, the Farm seems to be pretty quiet and most of those at the nick, like that. A lot of that is down to my informant and his crew. Remove them from the equation and who will move in? You can choose between the Russians, Serbians, Albanians, the Jamacians and even the Turks from Green Lanes who are well known to have a direct line to the supply of Afghan Heroin. The market for anything and everything from a bit of weed to very bad Fentanyl, will be wide open for the new players to exploit.”

The Super looked at the photos again.
“PC Galbraith, you are wasted in the Force. You should be a politician.”

Roberta smiled.
“One in the family is enough. Don’t bother to search for them as they go by a very different name to mine.”

“At the very least, you should be in CID. I can see from just our short time together, that you have a good brain and look at the world in ways that most people would find strange. That is probably why you were drummed out of CID. One or two of your immediate superiors probably thought that you were a threat to their cozy jobs.”

“Sir, that is your opinion and one that I could not possibly comment on.”

He laughed.
“What did I say about a politician?”

“I will make sure that this issue is investigated with some urgency. Your prediction about open warfare is well founded and something that we all want to avoid.”

“Thank you, sir. That is all I can ask.”

Roberta left the meeting feeling not only unclean but slightly worried. AC-12 were not known for working fast. The feeling of being unclean was because most officers only became involved with AC-12 when they were themselves under investigation.

She was about to cross over Victoria Street near St James’ Park tube station when a voice from behind her said,

“Snitching on your fellow officers then Galbraith? That won’t go down well with the troops in N17.”

She turned to find Sergeant Hill standing behind her with his arms crossed and a smug grin on his face.

[to be continued]