Armed and dangerous

I think I understand how undercover agents go bad.  Not how they become turncoats, but how they become obsessed by the target and take the law into their own hands.  In all the best crime novels and films where a drug cartel is unravelled or a terrorist cell unearthed, it is tidy work.  Every last member of the gang is identified, caught, destroyed.  Even the sleepy supporters and reluctant but silent spouses are identified and brought to book for their crimes of indifference.

But in the real world crime is a messy business.  However many clues are gathered on the surface as to the hidden connections of the gang, there will be links and connections that we cannot see, cannot find.  They can be tightly bound together, but in unexpected ways, invisible and impregnable.  Yesterday I decided my standard-issue equipment was not up to the fight.  As a friend of Mum’s used to say, if you have a problem, throw money at it.  I have thrown money at the problem and am now armed and ready for the fight.

I bought obscenely expensive gardening gloves.  (Ian, I trust you are not reading this.)  I bought them for the girls too - not the expensive ones, but gardening gloves all the same: bright green for Ruth and for Oriana, of course, bright pink.

They are wonderful.  They go half way up my arm, are so soft I could play the piano in them (if I’d ever been able to play in the first place, though for the money you’d expect them to play for you) and they are tough.  I can grab brambles, yank ivy tendrils and most importantly of all, tackle my garden enemies and at the end of the day my hands are as soft as they always were, as soft as an old scouring pad.

So now I can dig down for my nettles, hunt down the enemy.  I can fumble about till I get to the root of the problem, wriggle with my trusty new fork and up come the most enormous tubers, the heart of the enemy.  Spotting the first tender shoot, I can follow it back through the wilds of forlorn flower beds and unmown lawn till I reach the hub, the Godfather, then back out to all the other branches of the family, picking up cousins in the snowdrops and uncles in the celandine, in-laws in the lawn and disgruntled teenagers lurking in the dead leaves.  I can get the whole lot. 

I’m loving it.  I want to be a rogue agent, fighting the nettles before they surface, catch them while they’re still sleepers, drag them from their beds.  I don’t want to play by the rules.