It’s Ryan’s fifth day at work, Friday, and five minutes ago everything changed. He arrived at the station and this man, this Leo, told him he wasn’t working on response today. He walked Ryan into the large meeting room at the back of the station, more of a boardroom, and Ryan had watched curiously as he locked the door behind them.
Leo is maybe in his late forties, slim but jowly, his hairline receding. He speaks with a jaded kind of brevity, as though he’s never not talking to idiots. Similar to Bradford, but not at Ryan’s expense. Not yet, anyway.
Unlike Bradford, whose reputation Ryan now knows to be that of an embittered junior, Leo’s generally regarded as a crazy genius. Much worse, in many ways, but much more interesting, too.
They have just been joined by Jamie, who is maybe thirty. These men are not only in plain clothes but in actual scruffs: Jamie is in jogging bottoms, a stained T-shirt and a black baseball cap. Leo looks like he is about to go and coach a football team.
Ryan is feeling fairly uneasy at this point, sitting opposite these men, a giant table between them. ‘Sorry – what is this …?’ he starts to ask.
‘We’ll get on to that,’ Leo says. He has a cockney accent, a signet ring on the little finger of his left hand which clinks against the wooden table.
‘Where did you say you’re from, Ryan?’
‘Manchester …’ Ryan says, wondering if he’s about to get sacked. ‘Can I just ask –’
Next to him, Jamie takes his baseball cap off and rubs at his hair. He puts the cap on the table, very deliberately, it seems to Ryan, over the recording equipment. Ryan’s eyes track to it. ‘Nine nine nine response is pretty boring, isn’t it?’ Leo asks.
‘For sure.’
‘Look. How do you fancy doing something more interesting? We can call it research.’
‘Research?’
‘We need information about an organized-crime gang operating around Liverpool.’
