Short Range (The Spider Shepherd Thrillers Book 16)

by Stephen Leather

  ‘Why don’t you come to London next week?’

  ‘You’ll have time?’

  ‘I’ll be working, obviously. But all the jobs are either in London or close by, so I’ll be able to see you in the evenings.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said.

  Shepherd could tell from her voice that she was still far from happy, but he knew there was nothing he could do to make her feel better.

  ‘We’ll have dinner, maybe catch a show,’ he said.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. Again there was a hesitation in her voice.

  ‘Is there something wrong?’ he asked. There was no answer. ‘Katra?’

  ‘There’s something I need to talk to you about, but it can wait,’ she said.

  ‘Tell me now.’

  ‘It’s not something I want to talk about on the phone. It’s okay, Dan, it can wait.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  Again he could hear her uncertainty but before he could say anything she had said goodbye and ended the call. He put his phone away. He sat back in his chair and took the cuttings out of the envelope. He read through them, effortlessly committing them to memory, then used the Whitehill phone to log onto the Whitehill Twitter account. The footies had done a good job of keeping his online presence active, posting at least once a day, usually commenting on something in that day’s papers. When he’d finished he ran the cuttings through a shredder.

  Shepherd arrived at Heathrow Terminal 4 at about eleven-thirty on Friday morning. He checked in for the Air Serbia flight using his John Whitehill passport. He was wearing a leather jacket and cargo pants and had a black baseball cap with ‘LONDON’ across the front.

  He only had carry-on luggage – a small black nylon holdall – and it took him less than twenty minutes to pass through security. As he walked through the departures area he spotted Gary Dexter in the Prince of Wales bar, holding a pint of lager and talking to a group of five other men. They were all casually dressed in jeans, polo shirts and jackets. One of the group was West Indian, and he was laughing loudly at something Dexter had said.

  Shepherd walked by the bar, bought himself a coffee and found a seat that gave him a view of Dexter’s group. He already knew the identities of the men Dexter was travelling with. Their details had been downloaded from the airline’s database through a Europol request. Serbia was not a full member of the European Union but had signed a cooperation agreement with Europol in 2014 and the details had come through within four hours of the request being sent in. Shepherd had called up their passport and driving licence details, and run their names through the Police National Computer.

  The West Indian was Charlie Palmer, no criminal record and no driving licence. Other than his name and address, Shepherd knew nothing about him. Two others were also upstanding citizens who had only come into contact with the police through driving offences – four speeding tickets between them. Joe Atkinson was a rubbish collector working for Camden Council, Simon Hewson was a personal trainer with his own fitness company. Shepherd had checked out the company’s website – Hewson specialised in boot camps for overweight housewives, usually giving them workouts in local parks.

  The remaining two members of Dexter’s group were less savoury. Both had served time in prison. Roger Moorhouse had done two years for a serious assault after an argument outside a pub in Beckenham, and Matthew Scott had served five years for an arson attack in Ealing. There had been a racial element to both crimes. The man Moorhouse had attacked had been a British-born Pakistani and the house that Scott had set fire to had been home to a Somalian family. Both men had been to court many times, usually on charges of criminal damage or breach of the peace, and Moorhouse had been cautioned several times over cannabis use. Moorhouse and Scott were both listed as being members of the British Crusaders, and Moorhouse was listed as treasurer on the group’s website.

  They sank a couple of pints each and at forty minutes before the departure time they headed to the gate. Shepherd followed at a safe distance.

  They had to wait again for boarding and Shepherd sat some distance away. They boarded at one o’clock on the dot. Shepherd was sitting at the back of the plane close to the toilets. He dozed through most of the flight.

  They landed at Belgrade Airport at exactly 5 p.m. He was one of the last passengers off the plane but immigration was efficient and he was in the arrivals area just half an hour later.

  Dexter and his group were standing next to a man in a fleece holding an iPad with the words ‘GUNFIRE TOURS’ on it, along with a middle-aged couple wearing waterproof jackets and carrying backpacks. Shepherd headed over. ‘Sorry,’ he said to the man holding the iPad. ‘John Whitehill. I was at the back of the plane.’ He looked over at Dexter’s group. ‘Sorry, guys, didn’t mean to hold you up.’

  Dexter waved away his apology. The man checked his iPad and nodded. ‘Right, we’re all here,’ he said, in a heavy accent. ‘Follow me to the bus.’

  Shepherd walked with him as they headed towards the exit. ‘I didn’t catch your name,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Branko,’ said the man. He was a couple of inches taller than Shepherd, wearing a camouflage jacket, baggy cargo pants and heavy boots. His hair was receding and what was left was oiled and brushed back. He had thin lips and grey, slab-like teeth that gave the impression he was wearing a boxer’s mouth guard.

  ‘Are you one of the instructors?’

  Branko grunted.

  ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘I’m looking forward to it.’

  ‘Have you fired a gun before?’

  ‘No,’ lied Shepherd. ‘It’s going to be a first for me.’

  ‘You’ll enjoy it,’ said Branko. ‘Everyone does.’

  They left the terminal building. There was a coach waiting, with a ‘GUNFIRE TOURS’ sign in the window. Branko waved for Shepherd to climb on board. He got in and chose a seat halfway down. The middle-aged couple were next and they sat across the aisle from Shepherd. The man leaned over and offered his hand. ‘Ian McAdam,’ he said. ‘This is the wife, Carol.’

  They shook hands, then Carol reached over and shook. They both looked to be in their fifties. He was grey haired, short with a pugnacious look in his eyes. His wife had brown hair so chestnut that it was almost certainly dyed and had unzipped her waterproof jacket to reveal an impressive amount of cleavage. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said.

  ‘We’re from Cumbria,’ said the husband.

  ‘Lovely part of the world,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘When it’s not raining,’ said Carol as she released her grip on his hand.

  ‘You?’ asked Ian. ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘London, these days,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Ever done anything like this before?’

  ‘First time,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Us too,’ he said. ‘Carol here bought it for my birthday present.’

  ‘Nice,’ said Shepherd.

  Branko pulled the door shut. ‘So, this is everyone,’ he said. ‘My name is Branko, I’ll be taking care of you this weekend. And I’ll be one of your instructors.’ He patted the driver on the shoulder and he twisted around and waved. His was in his sixties with a steel grey crew cut and a Desperate Dan chin. He was wearing a sheepskin jacket that was stained and scuffed from years of use. ‘This is Gordan,’ said Branko. ‘He’ll be driving us and is also an instructor. The hotel is about an hour away, maybe an hour and a half, so sit back and enjoy the scenery.’

  He sat down. Gordan put the coach in gear and drove off.

  Shepherd stretched out as best as he could. They drove out of the airport and headed west. They were soon driving through featureless farmland. The road was reasonable but the coach’s suspension had seen better days and it wasn’t a smooth ride.

  At one point they drove through woodland, then more farmland, passing through several small villages, usually a mixture of old stone cottages and new white-painted buildings with orange tiled roofs. Most of the other vehicles on t
he roads were mud-splattered and rusting, though occasionally they were overtaken by a top-of-the-range Mercedes or BMW.

  Shepherd had never been to Sid, but he knew of it. It was the site of the first attack on Serbian soil at the start of the Yugoslav Wars, when Croatian forces had fired artillery rockets into the city, killing four civilians and injuring another dozen. The town was close to the borders with both Bosnia and Croatia though in many places borders seemed arbitrary. Following the war there were virtually no Muslims in the area; the people were predominantly Serbs, Slovaks and Croats.

  The drive took just over an hour. Their destination was a hotel in a small village on the outskirts of the town. It looked as if it had once been a farmhouse but the area around it was now peppered with flat-roofed industrial buildings and single-storey houses on small plots.

  Gordan parked the coach and Branko opened the door and led them along a gravelled path to the main entrance. The reception area had a low ceiling with thick black beams running across it, and a tiled floor. There was a dark wood-panelled desk behind which stood a middle-aged woman with braided hair in a white blouse buttoned up to the neck. She smiled and welcomed them to the hotel in heavily accented English.

  She had arranged envelopes on the desk with their names written on in capital letters. Branko handed them out. Shepherd opened his. Inside was a key with a wooden fob and a typed letter welcoming him, detailing the facilities of the hotel and telling him that if he returned after ten o’clock the front door would be locked and that he would have to ring the doorbell to be admitted.

  ‘We have arranged a buffet dinner for you tonight, in the bar,’ said Branko. ‘You can check in and shower, the food is ready whenever you want it.’ He pointed at a set of double doors to his left.

  Shepherd’s room was up a flight of stairs and at the end of the corridor. There was a single bed with a crucifix on the wall above it and a cheap dressing table with a mirror that was spotted with age. There was a small window offering him a view over the car park, and a chipboard wardrobe. There were two folded white towels at the foot of his bed, a big one and small one. He opened the wardrobe door and saw a mousetrap tucked away in the corner. He realised there was no en suite bathroom so he sat on the bed and read the letter he’d been given but there was no mention of having to share bathroom facilities.

  He took out his mobile phone. He had a signal but only one bar. He phoned Katra but it went straight through to her voicemail. He really wanted to clean his teeth so he picked up his washbag and headed along the corridor. There was a bathroom three doors along. The door was open so he slipped inside and pulled a cord to switch on the light. There was a roll-top bath, a sink with another age-spotted mirror over it, and a walk-in shower with a shower head the size of a dinner plate. He cleaned his teeth, splashed water on his face and then realised there was no towel. He went back to his room and used the small towel on his bed to dry himself. He phoned Katra again but it went through to voicemail. Either her phone was off or she was on another call. He left a short message saying that he missed her and that he would call her back. Then he sent a short text message to a mobile number that connected him to an MI5 computer, just giving his location and confirming that he was okay. Pritchard would be able to access the file if he wanted to, but in all likelihood the message would only be read if something went wrong.

  He went downstairs and into the restaurant. There was a bar running the width of the room, a buffet table facing the door, and a dozen or so square wooden tables each with four straight-backed chairs.

  Dexter and Moorhouse were standing at the bar with Branko. Branko had taken off his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves to reveal a large black scorpion tattooed on his left forearm. Scott, Palmer and Atkinson were huddled together at the far end of the bar.

  Shepherd walked up to the bar and ordered a lager shandy from a woman who looked like the daughter or younger sister of the woman at reception. It wasn’t his favourite drink but he wanted to keep a clear head. ‘So you guys were all in the Army, here in Serbia?’ Dexter asked Branko.

  Branko nodded. ‘Republika Srpska,’ he said. ‘The Serbian Army.’

  Shepherd sipped his shandy and listened. The way Branko said it, he made it sound as if he had served in the Serbian equivalent of the British Army, but it was much more complicated than that. Bosnia and Herzegovina had pulled out of Yugoslavia and at the same time some eighty thousand Bosnian Serb troops left the Yugoslav People’s Army. They were joined by four thousand Christian mercenaries. In Britain they were called the Bosnian Serb Army, and were responsible for a host of atrocities across the former Yugoslavia, not the least being the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre when they murdered eight thousand Muslim men and boys.

  Among the prime movers in the massacre were a paramilitary unit called the Scorpions, and Shepherd didn’t think it was a coincidence that Branko had a scorpion tattoo on his arm. The Scorpions began life in 1991, the brainchild of the head of Serbia’s State Security Services, Jovica Stanisic. He gave it to two brothers to run, Slobodan and Aleksandar Medić, and they named the group after their favourite weapon, the Skorpion, a Czech 7.65 mm machine pistol developed for special forces. The Scorpions became stormtroopers, inspiring fear in the non-Serb population. They were so brutal that after the war ended the Medić brothers were sentenced for war crimes. But Shepherd doubted that Branko would be telling them that story any time soon. He took another sip of his drink.

  ‘You must have seen a lot of action,’ said Moorhouse.

  Branko grinned. ‘Some,’ he said.

  Shepherd was sure that Branko was being modest. The Bosnian War had been a vicious three-sided conflict between Muslims, Serbs and Croats who had been forced to live together in the former Yugoslavia. According to estimates, the war had caused around one hundred thousand deaths and displaced more than two million people. It had been a messy conflict, one that was difficult for outsiders to understand. It quickly became a proxy war with Yugoslavia, Croatia, Muslim countries that supported the Bosnian Muslims, and NATO all throwing in men and weapons as if there was no tomorrow. So, yes, if he had been in the Scorpions, he would have seen a lot of action.

  For his part, Shepherd had been in Sarajevo for two months in 1995, part of an eight-man SAS team tracking a deadly sniper who was killing men, women and children from his post high in the hills looking down on the town. The siege of Sarajevo ended in February 1996 after four brutal years during which time almost fourteen thousand people were killed, over a third of them civilians. There was every chance that Branko would have known the sniper.

  ‘And what sort of guns will we be shooting tomorrow?’ asked Moorhouse.

  Hewson walked in and headed over to Dexter. Moorhouse waved at the barmaid and ordered a pint of lager for him.

  ‘We’ll start with some pistol work and some target practice,’ said Branko. ‘Then we’ll shoot some bigger weapons. Uzis and Kalashnikovs. I have a nice sniping rifle you can all try, a Dragunov. How does that sound?’

  Dexter nodded. ‘That’s great. But we talked about some bigger stuff, right? Grenades and RPGs.’

  Branko pulled a face. ‘We can arrange that for you if that’s what you want. But they’re expensive and they’ll be extra. The regular weapons and ammunition are included in the price you paid, but there will be an extra charge for grenades and RPGs.’

  ‘How much?’ asked Dexter.

  ‘Grenades are a hundred euros each. RPG rockets are two hundred and fifty euros.’

  ‘But you can definitely get them?’ asked Dexter.

  Branko waved his bread roll. ‘Of course. But I will want cash. It will have to be cash.’

  ‘And no receipts?’ laughed Dexter. ‘Sure, not a problem. You can put me down for a grenade and a rocket. Charlie?’

  ‘Sure, why the hell not?’ said Palmer. You only live once.’

  Dexter looked at Atkinson and Hewson and they both nodded enthusiastically. ‘I’m up for it,’ said Moorhouse.

  �
�Me too,’ said Scott. ‘That’s why we’re here, right?’

  ‘What about you guys?’ Dexter asked the McAdams.

  They both shook their heads. ‘It’s a bit rich for me,’ said the husband. His wife nodded in agreement.

  Dexter looked over at Shepherd. ‘What about you, John? Are you a man or a mouse?’

  ‘I’m up for it, yeah,’ said Shepherd. ‘But is it legal?’

  Branko grinned. ‘It’s a grey area, I think that is what you call it in English,’ he said. ‘But we have them in stock and we won’t be seen here, so legal or not there’s no problem.’

  ‘Then sure,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’ll do it.’

  ‘Good man,’ said Dexter, turning back to Branko. ‘So that’s seven grenades and seven rockets. Is that okay?’

  ‘That’s good,’ said Branko. ‘I’ll need the cash up front.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Is that okay?’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ he said. ‘Give me a couple of minutes.’

  Dexter left the room and went upstairs to his room. When he reappeared a couple of minutes later he was holding an envelope which he gave to Branko. Branko opened it and ran his thumb along a stack of euros. ‘Two thousand four hundred and fifty euros,’ said Dexter. ‘Plus a couple of hundred for your trouble.’ Dexter winked at Branko and picked up his pint.

  Branko looked over at Shepherd. Shepherd got the message and took out his wallet. He counted out seven fifty-euro notes and handed them over.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Branko. ‘It looks as if it will be a fun day.’

  Liam Shepherd shouldered his backpack and walked out of Hereford station. He was almost six feet tall, his dark hair cut short, and he was wearing wire-framed Ray-Ban Aviator sunglasses. He was casually dressed in a dark blue polo shirt and Levi’s jeans, the first time he had been out of Army fatigues in almost a week. He used his mobile phone to call a local minicab firm and a white Prius arrived within five minutes. He recognised the driver, a guy who had occasionally driven Liam from home to school when he was younger. The man asked Liam what he was up to. ‘I’m flying helicopters, for the Army,’ he said. ‘At least I will be when I’ve got my wings.’