City of Sins. Daniel Blake

if she was going to kiss him after all.

      ‘Noah,’ she said. At least, that’s what it sounded like to Patrese. Noah.

      She walked back out into the light.

      Tuesday, July 5th

      The office had a weekend feel to it. Half the staff had taken an extra day or two round about the holiday itself, and so Patrese found himself with a morning uninterrupted by the usual round of meetings and briefings.

      If he was going to go through with this, he wanted to get it right. In the few months he’d been with the Bureau, he’d been struck most of all by the scale on which things were done. Resources were ten times what he’d been used to in the Pittsburgh PD. Cases were larger and more intricate, focusing on serious criminals rather than the lowlife who formed the staple of every Homicide cop’s beat. Hell, even the agents’ suits were better, their shoes shinier.

      He pulled from the shelf the Bureau’s Manual of Investigative Operations and Guidelines – MIOG, as it referred to itself, with the usual inability of any bureaucracy to resist an acronym – and found section 137, ‘The Criminal Informant (CI) Program’.

      Worse than having no human sources, the text began, is being seduced by a source who is telling lies.

      Typical Bureau, Patrese thought; assume the worst, right from the get-go. But he took the point. He didn’t know the first thing about Cindy, and until he did, his default would have to be that she was yanking his chain unless specifically proven otherwise.

      Failure to control informants has undermined costly long-term investigations, destroyed the careers of prosecutors and law enforcement officers, and caused death and serious injuries to innocent citizens and police.

      This, too, Patrese knew full well. He’d run informants in his days on the Pittsburgh Homicide beat, usually gangbangers in between prison sentences who’d have sold their grandma for a hit of crack and lied as easily as they breathed. Smart lawyers picked government cases apart on technicalities, the perps walked free, and heads rolled; sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally.

      Cindy was, potentially at least, a different kettle of fish altogether. Whether that would make her easier or harder to control, Patrese had no idea.

      Informants must be classified according to one of the following 12 categories: Organized Crime (OC); General Criminal (C); Domestic Terrorism (DT); White-Collar Crime (WC); Drugs (D); International Terrorism (IT); Civil Rights (CR); National Infrastructure Protection/Computer Intrusion Program (NI); Cyber Crime (CC); Major Theft (MT); Violent Gangs (VG); Confidential Sources (CS).

      White-collar crime, Patrese presumed, given Cindy’s position, though he couldn’t help but feel the categories were pretty arbitrary. Where did violent gangs end and drugs begin? Couldn’t major theft also be organized crime?

      The FBI considers the following factors in determining an individual’s suitability to be an informant:

      1. Whether the person appears to be in a position to provide information concerning violations of law that are within the scope of authorized FBI investigative activity.

      He had to presume that Cindy was in such a position, else she wouldn’t have come to him in the first place. As Varden’s PA, she must be privy to vast swathes of information, much of it private and sensitive. Tick that.

      2. Whether the individual is willing to voluntarily furnish information to the FBI.

      She’d approached him, hadn’t she? Not the other way round. Another tick.

      3. Whether the individual appears to be directed by others to obtain information from the FBI.

      Unlikely. If Varden wanted to find out something from the FBI, all he had to do was ask Phelps. In any case, Patrese had been a cop, if not an agent, long enough to recognize the moment in an investigation when a suspect, snitch, witness, whoever, started asking questions rather than answering them.

      4. Whether there is anything in the individual’s background that would make him/her unfit for use as an informant.

      Patrese didn’t know the first thing about Cindy, of course; not even her surname. Something Polish, it had sounded like when Phelps had introduced them, but he couldn’t have repeated it, let alone spelled it.

      He Googled ‘Varden’, found the company website, and dialed the main switchboard. Best not to announce his interest too clearly, he thought.

      ‘Good morning, Varden Industries.’

      ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘I’m calling from FedEx. We have a package for someone in Mr Varden’s office, but I’m afraid the surname’s illegible. It’s a Cindy someone.’

      ‘That’ll be Mr Varden’s PA, sir. Cindy Rojciewicz.’

      ‘Spell that for me, please.’

      ‘Certainly, sir. R-O-J-C-I-E-W-I-C-Z.’

      ‘Thank you. The courier will be round later.’

      Patrese hung up, logged into the National Instant Criminal Background Check database, and entered Cindy’s name.

      No matches.

      Then he Googled her.

      Turned out her father was a congressman. Roger Rojciewicz, Republican, and therefore known in Washington as 3R. He represented Louisiana’s first congressional district, which comprised land both north and south of Lake Pontchartrain, including most of New Orleans’ western suburbs and a small portion of the city proper. And he seemed quite the bigshot: chairman of the Congressional Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, and a member both of the Homeland Security Subcommittee and the Committee of Appropriations too.

      No surprise how Cindy had got her job with Varden, then.

      About her personally, Patrese found much less. She was pictured on a high school reunion website, and she’d written condolences on a tribute board to a teenager who’d committed suicide. Every other appearance she made on the web was Varden-related, and pretty anodyne at that: job applications, media inquiries.

      He wondered if he’d have been so keen to find out more about her without an official excuse, and realized that he already knew the answer.

      5. Whether the nature of the matter under investigation and the importance of the information being furnished to the FBI outweigh the seriousness of any past or contemporaneous criminal activity of which the informant may be suspected.

      See above, Patrese guessed.

      6. Whether the motives of the informant in volunteering to assist the FBI appear to be reasonable and proper.

      This was key. Informants tend to be motivated by one or more of MICE: money, ideology, compromise, ego. Cindy’s behavior the previous day had suggested ideology more than anything else. She’d used the words ‘terrible’ and ‘tainted’, as though whatever she wanted to tell him was some great moral wrong which needed righting.

      But there could be – in Patrese’s experience, there usually was – more to it than that. Informants never had just one reason for snitching, and the reasons they did have were rarely static, waxing and waning in importance as an investigation progressed.

      Points seven through ten were all things Patrese would find out only once the investigation had begun: whether they could get the information in a better way; whether the informant was reliable and trustworthy; whether the informant was willing to conform to FBI guidelines; and whether the FBI would be able to adequately monitor the informant’s activities.

      Point eleven concerned legalities of privileged communications, lawful association and freedom of speech. One for the lawyers to argue over. All billable, of course.

      12. Whether the use of the informant could compromise an investigation or subsequent prosecution that may require the government to move for a dismissal of the case.

      Patrese thought for a moment. He wasn’t aware of any current investigation