Crystal Jake: The Complete EDEN Series Box Set

The jargon was difficult to comprehend in my state, but one fact was inescapable. I stared at Mr. Fyfield, wide-eyed and trembling. ‘Knowing it could kill him…they sold it to him,’ I whispered.

He looked at me as if I was either stupid or insanely naïve. ‘I’m afraid so.’

I began to hyperventilate. My parents gathered around me protectively. I gasped that I needed a glass of water, which Mr. Fyfield’s secretary immediately fetched. I drank it down and didn’t say a word after that, but finally I was ready to start living again.

Over the next few days I decided that I would join the war on drugs. I made a promise to Luke’s memory. I would do all I could to stop what had happened to him from happening to others. Anyone I saved would live because of Luke’s memory.

I came off the pills. I did research. A lot of it. There were many agencies that I could have targeted, but I found myself gravitating toward undercover work. The idea of using deception to fight deception was perversely pleasing. But, more important, I thought it would be cool to no longer be Lily Strom, the basket case, but an alter ego. Someone new. I could decide who I wanted to be and build her from ground up.

There were two lines of work available as Test Purchase Officers (TPOs) and Undercover Officers (UCOs). Generally TPOs undertook a lower level of undercover work, usually presenting themselves as prostitutes or drug addicts to lure in the small-time dealers. Their assignments were unglamorous, quick in and out jobs that typically lasted only hours.

UCOs were a totally different kettle of fish. They lived in a different world, one shrouded in secrecy, taking on different names, different addresses and totally different ways of life, sometimes for years at a time. The most elite and secretive of these units was called SO10 or SCD10. So secret most police officers didn’t even know it existed.

Although it was easier to be accepted as a TPO I knew I didn’t want to be a TPO. My heart was set on being a UCO. They brought in the big fish. The kingpins. The ones I wanted to target.

‘You’ll have to finish your education if you want to be accepted in an agency like that,’ my father said.

So I diverted all my rage and energy into work, graduated with honors, and applied to be a police officer. They accepted me and sent me to the Police Academy in Hendon. It was a flat, depressing place that looked exactly like one of those eyesore housing estates from the seventies; only it had a large swimming pool and a running track.

The training was undemanding: for twenty effortless weeks they taught us to unthinkingly and unquestioningly obey the chain of command at all times. But I was strangely glad of the strict parameters of authority that we had to conform to.

I came out of it a police officer.

THREE

One year later I stood in front of my commanding officer. ‘I want to be in SO10,’ I said.

He raised his eyes heavenward. ‘They are a bunch of wannabe gangsters.’

That and all further arguments swayed me none at all. SO10 in my opinion was the pinnacle, the elite.

The very next day I made my way to New Scotland Yard carrying a docket of twenty-five pages of forms that I had painstakingly filled in and signed. I had made particular mention of the fact that I could speak Chinese, Norwegian, and my BA was in the Russian language.

On an upper floor, down a narrow, faceless corridor, I found a stable-style door with the magic words SO10 printed on a tiny sticker the size of a matchbox. Male voices and raucous laughter could be heard from within.

I took a deep breath—I had worked so hard and so long to get to this moment—and knocked on the top half of the door. There was no let-up to the mirth and voices within so I was startled when the top half of the door suddenly swung open.

Facing me was a bully of a man: close cropped red-brown hair, a navy blue North Face sweatshirt, gold sovereign rings on every finger, and an insufferably arrogant what-the-fuck-do-you-want expression on his face. It changed when he clocked me, though. In a totally leisurely and insulting way his gaze mentally undressed me. Eventually, his eyes traveled back to meet mine.

‘The ladies’ toilets are not on this floor, petal,’ he advised, a patronizing smirk curling his lip.

‘I…ah… I’ve brought my application form,’ I stammered. I had never imagined such a blatantly sexist brush-off.

Reddish eyebrows flew upwards with exaggerated surprise. ‘Yeah?’

I clutched my application form tightly and nodded.

‘Give it to me, then,’ he said. There could be only one way to describe his expression: highly amused.

He opened it and let his eyes run down it, sniggering and laughing intermittently. When he looked up his face was serious. ‘Right then. You can go now.’

‘Um… Someone will call me?’

‘No doubt,’ he said, in a tone that implied the opposite, and rudely closed the door in my face.

For a second I was too stunned to move and simply stood there. I heard him move into the room and say, ‘You will not believe the skirt that just dropped this off.’

He must have then showed them my photo because the room broke out in low whistles and totally inappropriate comments. One guy said, ‘Call a doctor, I think I’ve just caught yellow fever.’ The group erupted in laughter. My face flamed.

Then a voice, more raspy and authoritative than all the others, said, ‘Give that to me.’ Later I would learn that his name was Mills—Detective Sergeant Mills.

Silence descended while he studied my form. I held my breath.

‘Well, well,’ Mills’ voice pronounced mysteriously. ‘Looks like we found the mouse to catch our lion.’

I turned away and ran down the stairs, my heart pounding like crazy. I knew then: I was going to be a UCO. But at that time I never thought about the logistics of the crazy idea of sending a mouse to catch a lion. I was just ecstatic: I was going to become an SO10 undercover officer.

Two days later I got a withheld number phone call from a woman administrator who said, ‘You have been selected to join the SO10 team. Are you available to come in tomorrow?’

I gulped. Was I available? Bloody hell. ‘Yes,’ I replied smartly.

And just like that I was back at the stable door. This time, though, I had dressed conservatively in black tailored trousers, a white shirt that was buttoned close to the throat and a gray, loosely fitting jacket. My hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail and I wore no make-up. After the last visit I knew what I was in for. And I was not wrong.

The brute who had laughed at my application form came toward me. ‘Get us some tea, will ya? Black, no sugar,’ he said, as he passed me by.

I didn’t miss a beat. ‘Where’s the kitchen?’

He pointed his thumb over his shoulder to indicate somewhere at the back.

I nodded. ‘Anybody else want tea?’

There were two other guys there. Both had the same macho attitude.

‘I’ll have mine with milk and no sugar,’ said one leaning back in his chair and stretching.

‘Black. One sugar,’ said the other without looking up from a book he was reading.

I nodded. No one was wearing name tags so I had no idea who anybody was and no one seemed inclined to introduce me.

I went into the kitchen, a small area with a microwave, toaster, a small fridge and a kettle. I found tea, sugar and milk, and from the back of a cupboard a tea-stained tray.

Just as I finished serving the men, another man walked in.

‘Jolly good, tea. I’ll have a cup, love. Two sugars and plenty of milk.’

I walked to the kitchen fuming, but my expression remained as cool as a cucumber.

I fixed the tea and put it in front of the man.

He waved vaguely toward some filing cabinets. ‘How about putting some order into that fucking mess over there?’

‘Right,’ I said and walked toward it. He was right. It was a fucking mess. I decided to take all the files out and start from scratch.

‘Come on,’ a big, shaven-headed

white man said as he walked past me. I recognized his voice. The man with the authority. I quickly jumped up and followed him into a small office.

‘Close the door,’ he said, as he lowered himself into his chair.

I obeyed. You could tell he had a hair-trigger temper just by looking at the tension in his shoulders. In fact, he reminded me of a standard issue brutish gangster.

‘Sit.’

I sat.

‘How’s it going?’

‘Great,’ I said.