I said, “Walk with me,” and headed back into the gardens-there were going to be more floaters and more Murder boys coming out of that building. “Tell me something, Stephen. You made detective three months ago, am I right?”

He walked like a teenager, that long springy stride when you have too much energy to fit in your body. “That’s right.”

“Well done. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t see you as the type to spend the rest of your career in the General Unit, tagging along after whatever squad detective snaps his fingers this week. You’ve got too much potential for that. You’ll want to run investigations of your own, eventually. Am I right?”

“That’s the plan.”

“Which squad are you aiming for?”

This time a little bit of the blush made it through. “Murder or Under-cover.”

“You’ve got good taste,” I said, grinning. “So working a murder case must be a dream come true, yeah? Having fun?”

Stephen said, cautiously, “I’m learning a lot.”

I laughed out loud. “You are in your arse. That means Scorcher Kennedy’s been treating you like his very own trained chimpanzee. What’s he got you doing, making coffee? Picking up his dry cleaning? Mending his socks?”

One corner of Stephen’s mouth twitched reluctantly. “Typing up witness statements.”

“Oh, lovely. How many words per minute can you do?”

“I don’t mind. I mean, I’m the newest, you know? All the others have a few years under their belts. And someone has to do the-”

He was struggling valiantly to get it right. “Stephen,” I said. “Breathe. This isn’t a test. You’re wasted on secretarial work. You know that, I know that, and if Scorch had bothered to take ten minutes to read your file, he’d know it too.” I pointed to a bench, under a lamppost so I could watch his face and out of view of any of the main exits. “Have a seat.”

Stephen slung his knapsack and helmet on the ground and sat down. In spite of the flattery, his eyes were wary, which was good. “We’re both busy men,” I said, joining him on the bench, “so I’ll cut to the chase. I’d be interested in hearing how you get on in this investigation. From your perspective, not from Detective Kennedy’s, since we both know just how much use his would be. No need to be diplomatic: we’re talking strictly confidential, just between the two of us.”

I could see his mind moving fast, but he had a decent poker face and I couldn’t pick out which way it was taking him. He said, “Hearing how I get on. What d’you mean by that, exactly?”

“We meet up now and then. Maybe I buy you a nice pint or two. You tell me what you’ve been at the last few days, what you think about it, how you’d be handling the case differently if you were the boss man. I see what I think of how you work. How does that strike you?”

Stephen picked a stray dead leaf off the bench and started folding it carefully along the veins. “Can I talk to you straight? Like we were off duty. Man to man.”

I spread my hands. “We are off duty, Stephen my friend. Hadn’t you noticed?”

“I mean-”

“I know what you mean. At ease, mate. Say whatever springs to mind. No repercussions.”

His eyes came up from the leaf to meet mine, level and gray and intelligent. “Word is you’ve got a personal interest in this case. A double interest, now.”

“That’s hardly a state secret. And?”

“What it sounds like to me,” Stephen said, “is you want me to spy on this murder investigation and report back to you.”

I said cheerfully, “If that’s how you want to look at it.”

“I’m not mad about the sound of that.”

“Interesting.” I found my cigarettes. “Smoke?”

“No, thanks.”

Not as green as he had looked on paper. No matter how badly the kid wanted to be in my good books, he was nobody’s bitch. Normally I would have approved of this, but right that minute I wasn’t in the mood for doing dainty footwork around his stubborn side. I lit up and blew smoke rings up into the smudgy yellow light of the lamp. “Stephen,” I said. “You need to think this through. I presume you’re worried about three aspects of this: the level of commitment involved, the ethics, and the potential consequences, not necessarily in that order. Am I right?”

“More or less, yeah.”

“Let’s start with the commitment. I won’t be asking you for in-depth daily reports on everything that goes on in that squad room. I’ll be asking you very specific questions that you’ll be able to answer with a minimum expenditure of time and effort. We’re talking two or three meetings a week, none of which need to last more than fifteen minutes if you’ve got something better to do, plus maybe another half hour’s worth of research before each meeting. Does that sound like something you could manage, just hypothetically speaking?”

After a moment Stephen nodded. “It’s not about having better things to do-”

“Good man. Next, possible consequences. Yes, Detective Kennedy would quite probably have the mother of all hissy fits if he found out you and I were talking, but there’s no reason why he should. It ought to be obvious to you that I’m very, very good at keeping my mouth shut. How about you?”

“I’m not a squealer.”

“I didn’t think so. In other words, the risk of Detective Kennedy catching you and sending you to the naughty corner is minimal. And, Stephen? Keep in mind that’s not the only possible consequence here. Plenty of other things could come out of this.”

I waited till he asked, “Like what?”

“When I said you had potential, I wasn’t just blowing smoke up your arse. Remember, this case won’t last forever, and as soon as it ends, you go back to the floater pool. Looking forward to that?”

He shrugged. “It’s the only way onto a squad. It needs doing.”

“Following up on stolen cars and broken windows, and waiting for someone like Scorcher Kennedy to whistle for you so you can fetch his sandwiches for a few weeks. Sure, it needs doing, but some people do it for a year and some people do it for twenty. Given the choice, when would you, personally, want to get out of there for good?”

“The sooner the better. Obviously.”

“That’s what I thought. I guarantee you, I will in fact be noticing exactly how you work, just like I said I would. And every time a place opens up on my squad, I remember people who’ve done good work for me. I can’t guarantee the same for my friend Scorcher. Tell me something, just between the two of us: does he even know your first name?”

Stephen didn’t answer. “So,” I said, “I think that takes care of potential consequences, don’t you? Which leaves us with the ethics of the situation. Am I asking you to do anything that might compromise your work on the murder case?”

“Not so far.”

“And I don’t plan to. If at any point you feel that our association is jeopardizing your ability to give your full attention to your official assignment, just let me know and you won’t hear from me again. You’ve got my word on that.” Always, always give them a free out that they’ll never have a chance to use. “Fair enough?”

He didn’t look reassured. “Yeah.”

“Am I asking you to disobey anyone else’s orders?”

“That’s splitting hairs. OK, Detective Kennedy hasn’t told me not to talk to you, but that’s only because it hasn’t even occurred to him that I might.”

“So? It should’ve occurred to him. If it hasn’t, that’s his problem, not yours or mine. You don’t owe him anything.”

Stephen ran a hand through his hair. “I do, though,” he said. “He’s the one that brought me onto this case. Right now, he’s my boss. The rule is, I take orders from him. No one else.”

My jaw dropped. “The rule? What the…? I thought you said you had your eye on Undercover. Were you just hand-jobbing me there? Because I don’t like being hand-jobbed by boys, Stephen. I really don’t.”

He shot upright. “No! Of course I-What are you-I do want Undercover!”

“And you think we can afford to sit around all day reading the rule book? You think I made it through three years in deep cover in a drug ring by sticking to the rules? Tell me you’re having a laugh, kid. Please. Tell me I haven’t been flushing my time down the jacks whenever I picked up your file.”