After questioning costs, trimming sails and cutting corners, he would annotate and parenthesise his documents, aware of every grammatical nuance, never stopping to consider the bigger ethical and moral dilemmas posed by his job. He kept his pens tidy and his head below the parapet and worked all the hours God sent, never thinking that one day someone might fire him just to wipe the look of smugness from his face. In this sense Faraday was the perfect civil servant, remembering everything and understanding nothing. He toiled on the accumulation and expedition of data, not in the hope of advancement, but in the resigned expectation that one day it would require him to betray his superiors.
Faraday would not be drawn into a meeting with Raymond Land, the ineffectual temporary acting head of the PCU, because he knew that Land would want to complain about his retirement package. He was quite happy to return John May’s call, however, because the detective had always treated him with equanimity, no matter how petty the official’s requests sometimes seemed. So it was that he made himself available at short notice and appeared at Fortnum & Mason for afternoon tea on the dot of four, to be met by a phalanx of sycophantic waiters armed with very tiny, very expensive sandwiches. Faraday appeared to be unaware that this kind of afternoon tea was an elaborate ritualistic parody provided for tourists who wanted to believe that the London of 1880 still existed. The froufrou pink-and-cream décor, the tea-strainers and doilies and cake stands, were the trappings of a cheap seaside boardinghouse elevated to absurdist theatre props, but all that shot over his balding head.
‘Well, this is a nice surprise,’ Faraday lied, leaning back while a member of staff draped a bleached linen square across his lap. ‘I heard about your unfortunate mishap with the lease at Mornington Crescent.’
‘A technical formality, I’m sure,’ May lied back, accepting tea as pale as urine, piddled from a great height by a constricted silver spout. ‘It’s simply a matter of finding new premises.’
‘Not so simple, sadly.’ Faraday offered up a look of pantomimed injury. ‘Mr Kasavian, our security supervisor, doesn’t feel there’s really a pressing need for operational units like the PCU anymore.’
‘One of the unit’s main remits has always been to prevent loss of public faith in law and order,’ said May.
‘A rather nebulous concept, one feels,’ said Faraday, lasciviously eyeing the sandwiches.
‘Not when it involves the potential loss of millions, perhaps even billions, of pounds.’
Faraday’s fingers had been straying waywardly toward a Bath bun, but now he was brought up short. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.
May knew he had to build his case carefully. ‘London is a major global crossing point, and King’s Cross is now the crossing point of London. As the home of the largest and most complex regeneration project in Europe, it’s undergoing the biggest upheaval in its millennia-old history. It’s where the channel tunnel arrives, and is set to act as the terminus for the Olympics. The government is hoping to attract billions in overseas investment to the area, and the building schedule must be strictly maintained if contracts are to be honoured. Of course you know all of this.’
‘Oh, indeed. Of course. Understood.’ Faraday looked blankly at May as he struggled to puzzle out the connection with the Peculiar Crimes Unit.
‘In fact, the area of wasteland between Euston and St Pancras is set to become an entirely new London district, with new policing requirements. It represents a potentially phenomenal contribution to the national economy. I’m sure you were copied in on the estimates, Leslie. By 2020 there will be around sixty-five million passengers a year passing through the King’s Cross Interchange. That’s more than the number of passengers currently passing through Heathrow Airport. It’s a tricky balance—preventing the area from descending into chaos while so much planning and building takes place. The number of undercover police officers operating in the King’s Cross area has recently been tripled. The crack dealers and con-men who used to hang about in the streets have all been moved on. And of course after seven/seven there’s always the threat of terrorism to deal with.’
‘What about the more domestic problems? Sex workers and teenage gangs are still an issue, I believe.’
‘True, they keep trying to come back. The gangs are based in the big public housing estates that border the area, but there are special units tackling those, and they’re having considerable success. Sex workers will always appear at points where so many journeys start and end, but the clip joints are closing, which means that they don’t have anywhere to take the punters. MAGPI—the Multi-Agency Geographical Panel—meets regularly with the Safer Neighbourhood Team to discuss harm reduction strategies, and the Met uses outreach services to conduct Environmental Visual Audits to reduce anti-social behaviour. King’s Cross will never again be as run-down as it once was. Teams of architects and construction engineers have already moved into key properties bordering the site. So it’s essential not to return to the bad old days of organised crime. But there are bound to be new territorial battles in the area. As it becomes more prosperous, hard-line criminals will be trying to move back in.’