Short Range (The Spider Shepherd Thrillers Book 16)

by Stephen Leather

  ‘Tell him I’m sorry.’ She sniffed.

  ‘Are you okay, Katra? Have you been hurt?’

  ‘No, I’m okay.’

  ‘And is Liam with you?’

  ‘Yes, yes, he is.’

  ‘And is he okay, Katra?’

  ‘They hit him but he’s okay now.’

  There was a yelp and then David was back on the line. ‘So you have proof of life? You are satisfied?’

  ‘Yes, David. I am. Thank you.’

  ‘So now you will pay the money?’

  ‘Mr Shepherd will talk to the bank tomorrow,’ said Thatcher. ‘The banks are shut now, obviously. But you have to understand he is not a rich man. He is a civil servant.’

  ‘He owns his own house, right?’ said David. ‘Everyone in England owns their own house. He can borrow from his bank.’

  ‘Yes, but that will take time. And then he will have to get the money to Slovenia.’

  ‘No,’ said David. ‘You will hand the money over in London.’

  ‘To whom?’ asked Thatcher.

  ‘I will tell you who to give the money to once it is ready. You have twelve hours.’

  ‘David, I’m sorry but that is not enough time.’

  ‘If you do not pay half a million euros in twelve hours, they will die.’

  ‘But if they die you will get nothing,’ said Thatcher patiently. ‘If they die, nobody wins. Mr Shepherd loses his family, you lose your money. But if we work together to come to a satisfactory arrangement, then Mr Shepherd gets his family back and you get your money. Isn’t that worth waiting a few hours for?’

  ‘Twenty-four hours, then,’ said David tersely. ‘You have twenty-four hours to get the money.’

  ‘How about this, David. I will call you in the morning and I will update you then.’

  ‘Twenty-four hours or they will die,’ said David, then he ended the call.

  Thatcher took off his glasses and smiled. That had gone better than he had expected.

  Shepherd had just arrived back at the Hampstead flat when his phone rang. It was Chris Thatcher. ‘I’ve had proof of life,’ said the negotiator. ‘I’ve spoken to Katra and she says that she and Liam are okay.’

  ‘How did you manage that?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘I gave David enough time to get to them and I called him. I explained that a phone call would work better than a photograph and he agreed.’

  ‘That’s brilliant, thank you.’

  ‘So David wants five hundred thousand euros. I said you’d have to talk to the bank so that gives us some time. We can then go back with a counter offer.’

  ‘I can’t thank you enough, Chris.’

  ‘Not a problem,’ said Thatcher. ‘If anything happens overnight I’ll call you, otherwise we start again in the morning.’

  Shepherd ended the call and began pacing around the small room. David had gone to see Katra and Liam and had used his mobile phone. If the Slovenian phone company came through with a location map of where the mobile had been, there was a good chance he could find where Katra and Liam were being held. In the UK, the GPS function allowed for mobiles to be tracked within a few feet, but he didn’t know if the same technology was available in Slovenia. He’d find out one way or another soon enough. All he could do now was wait, and waiting wasn’t something he was especially good at.

  Shepherd arrived at Chris Thatcher’s house at nine o’clock the next morning. Thatcher was already wearing a suit, this time a dark blue pinstripe, with a starched pale blue shirt with a white collar and a dark blue tie. He took Shepherd through to a country cottage-style kitchen where he had prepared a large cafetière of strong coffee and laid out four croissants. Shepherd didn’t feel like eating but he gratefully accepted a mug of coffee and followed Thatcher along the corridor to the sitting room.

  The armchair was where Shepherd had left it the previous evening, next to the desk. Thatcher sat down. ‘David will want to know where his money is. I’ll tell him that you are talking to the bank but I will make sure he realises that he has to lower his expectations.’

  ‘We also need to know where he plans to do the exchange,’ said Shepherd. ‘I want to fly over this afternoon.’

  Thatcher nodded. ‘Let’s do it,’ he said, picking up his good pen and flicking open his notebook.

  Shepherd picked up the headphones and put them on.

  Thatcher dialled the number. It started to ring and Shepherd felt the tension build in his stomach. The phone continued to ring but there was no answer and eventually the call went through to voicemail. Thatcher hung up and saw the look of concern on Shepherd’s face. ‘He’s making us sweat,’ said the negotiator. ‘He’s just trying to assert his dominance. Don’t worry.’

  Shepherd smiled thinly and nodded. Thatcher had a lot of experience at this, he knew what he was doing. But that didn’t make him feel any less apprehensive.

  Thatcher phoned again. The call went through to voicemail. Thatcher shook his head and smiled. This time he left a short message, identifying himself and saying that they needed to talk. Then he ended the call and began to eat his croissant.

  ‘Now what?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘If I was wanting to play games, I’d wait for him to call us back,’ he said. ‘He wants the money, so at some point we have to talk. But there’s no point in trying to upset him.’ He took another bite of his croissant, washed it down with coffee, and called again. This time David answered. ‘Is that Chris?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, David. This is Chris. Nobody else will be calling you on this number. I am your point of contact. How are you this morning?’ He sounded amiable, as if it was a chat between friends.

  David was considerably less friendly. ‘Do you have the money?’

  ‘Mr Shepherd is talking to the bank now,’ said Thatcher. ‘The banks have only just opened and because of the size of the withdrawal he will have to speak with a manager. It is Monday morning so I don’t know how quickly that will happen.’

  ‘I gave you twenty-four hours,’ snapped David. ‘If I do not have the money by then, the hostages will be killed.’

  ‘David, we obviously don’t want anything to happen to Katra and Liam. That’s why we are cooperating with you. And I understand your desire to bring this matter to a conclusion quickly, but you have to understand that these things take time. Mr Shepherd is not a wealthy man which means he will have to borrow the money. That takes time.’

  ‘Do you want me to cut off the woman’s ear?’ asked David. ‘Or the young man’s finger? Would that speed things up?’

  Shepherd’s stomach lurched and he looked anxiously at Thatcher.

  ‘David, how will hurting Liam and Katra help you in any way? You want your money and we are doing what we can to get that to you. Please, just bear with us. As soon as we have the money we will tell you.’

  ‘Twenty-four hours,’ said David.

  ‘As quickly as we can, David. But there is something else we need to discuss. Where will we do the handover? The exchange? Where do we give you the money? Because it is difficult to move large amounts of cash out of the United Kingdom. There are laws to prevent money laundering.’

  ‘You are to hand the money over in London,’ said David. ‘I told you that already.’

  Shepherd leaned forward, frowning. ‘Does that mean that Katra and Liam are in London?’ he mouthed. Thatcher made a patting motion in the air and Shepherd leaned back and folded his arms. There was no point in trying to second guess the negotiator.

  ‘We can certainly give you the money in London if that is what you want,’ said Thatcher. ‘But what about Liam and Katra? How do we get them back?’

  ‘We will release them in Slovenia once you have paid the money.’

  ‘David, that isn’t how things are done and I am sure you know that. The exchange has to happen at one place. We check that Katra and Liam are alive and well and we hand over the money.’

  ‘You can check they are okay. Then you can hand over the money. The hostages do not ha
ve to be in the same place as the money.’

  ‘David, if that is what you want to happen, we will do it that way,’ he said. ‘But it will take us time to arrange to have someone in Slovenia. Where exactly will you be releasing Liam and Katra?’

  ‘I will tell you that when you have the money ready.’

  ‘But will it be in Ljubljana? We have to make arrangements.’

  ‘I will tell you once you have the money ready. And my deadline of twenty-four hours still stands.’

  ‘Twenty-four hours from now?’ said Thatcher.

  ‘From when we spoke yesterday,’ said David. ‘Twelve hours from now.’

  ‘David, you have to help us, you have to give …’

  ‘No!’ said David. ‘You need to stop talking and start listening. I am in charge, I have the hostages, all you have to do is give me my money. And if you don’t pay me today, I will kill the hostages.’

  The call ended.

  Thatcher sighed, put down his pen and removed his glasses. ‘He’s just talking, he doesn’t mean it,’ he said.

  Shepherd took off his headphones and put them on the desk. ‘He sounded angry.’

  ‘He was faking it,’ said Thatcher. ‘Did you hear how he kept saying “me” and “my” all the time? It’s his money. He’s not a middleman or a hired hand. This is his money and he knows that he won’t be getting it if anything happens to Liam or Katra.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ said Shepherd. He picked up his coffee mug and took a sip. ‘And what about paying him in London? That sounds like a set-up.’

  ‘No, it does happen,’ said Thatcher. ‘When the Somalian pirates first started seizing ships in the Gulf of Aden we used to have to drop the money onto the ships. They’d take the money and leave. But after a while their demands got so big that air drops became too unwieldy so we started delivering cash onshore, usually in and around Mogadishu. But by the end a lot of the Somalian warlords had moved their families to the UK and we were paying ransoms in London. Sometimes by bank transfer, I kid you not.’

  ‘That’s madness,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘It’s business,’ said Thatcher. ‘And you should be grateful that it is about the money. If it was Islamic fundamentalists holding Liam and Katra, it would be a whole different dynamic and one that we would have a lot less control over. You can negotiate with businessmen; religious terrorists are a whole different ball game.’ He put his glasses back on. ‘He’s not serious about that deadline, trust me. He wants to put us under pressure and he’s doing that by threatening us. If he really wanted to hurt them he would have done it already. And the fact that he wants the money paid in London is also a good thing. It gives you two areas of enquiry.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Shepherd. He had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach but he knew that Thatcher was a professional and had brought dozens of kidnappings to a successful conclusion.

  Shepherd’s mobile phone rang. It was the office. Pritchard’s secretary. ‘Sorry, I have to take this,’ said Shepherd, getting to his feet.

  Thatcher waved away his apology and Shepherd accepted the call. ‘Mr Pritchard would like you to be his guest at White’s for lunch,’ said the secretary.

  ‘I’m really sorry, I’m in the middle of something,’ said Shepherd. ‘Can you tell him I’ll get back to him ASAP?’

  ‘This wasn’t a request, Mr Shepherd,’ said the secretary. ‘He will see you at twelve-thirty prompt. I assume you have the address.’

  Before Shepherd could reply, the phone went dead.

  The taxi dropped Shepherd outside 37–38 St James’s Street. It was a three-storey building of grey Portland stone with a slate roof. There were black railings either side of stone steps that led between two large ornate lamps to a black door. Shepherd went up the stairs feeling like a naughty schoolboy who had been summoned to see the headmaster. He knocked on the door and it was opened immediately by a liveried doorman. ‘Can I help you, sir?’ he said, suggesting that perhaps Shepherd was at the wrong building.

  ‘I’m here to see Mr Pritchard,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Ah yes, Mr Pritchard has gone through to the dining room already, sir. Follow me, if you would.’

  The doorman closed the door and strode across the hallway, taking Shepherd through a set of double doors to a wood-panelled dining room with a dozen circular tables, most of them set for two.

  Pritchard was sitting at a corner table, away from the window and with his back to the wall. Shepherd wondered if it was tradecraft or luck of the draw, but it was the table he would have chosen if given the chance. Though, given the chance, he wouldn’t have chosen the chair with its back to the door, but that was the one that Pritchard waved him to.

  There was an open bottle of wine on the table, and a bottle of water. Pritchard nodded at Shepherd. ‘Your guest, sir,’ said the doorman.

  ‘Thank you, Duncan,’ said Pritchard. Shepherd had no way of knowing if it was the man’s first name or his family name.

  As the doorman walked back across the room, an elderly waiter in a black suit took his place and handed Shepherd a leather-bound menu. ‘I’m going to have the potted shrimps to start, and then the partridge,’ said Pritchard. ‘I’ve ordered a bottle of the house white, it’s very drinkable.’ He waved a languid hand at the bottle in a stainless steel bucket.

  Shepherd gave the menu back to the waiter, unopened. ‘I’ll have the same,’ he said. Food was the last thing on his mind. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten.

  ‘Was that mirroring?’ asked Pritchard as the waiter walked away. ‘Eating what I eat so that I’ll feel closer to you?’

  Shepherd smiled. ‘I just couldn’t be bothered trying to work out what I wanted. And I’ve had partridge before and liked it.’

  ‘The kitchen here does marvellous things with game,’ said Pritchard. He picked up the wine bottle and poured some into Shepherd’s glass.

  ‘I bet,’ said Shepherd. He looked around the room. He could almost smell the history. Or maybe it was mildew. He wrinkled his nose.

  ‘I can see that you’re not a fan of clubs,’ said Pritchard.

  ‘Not especially,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’ve been to the Special Forces Club a few times, but I’m not a member.’

  ‘Behind Harrods?’ said Pritchard. ‘I’ve never been. I’m told they use trays to have toboggan races down the stairs.’

  ‘I’ve heard that, too.’

  ‘The thing about places like White’s is that you’re surrounded by insiders. I hesitate to use the word friends because there has been many a feud within these walls, but everyone knows everyone else. There are no strangers. Anyone who isn’t known, who isn’t trusted, isn’t allowed in.’

  ‘Kim Philby was a member, wasn’t he?’ said Shepherd. ‘He met Maclean here, right?’

  Pritchard smiled thinly. ‘I do like your sense of humour, Daniel,’ he said. ‘Yes, indeed, two of the most notorious British traitors did grace these premises. As did Oswald Mosley, back in the day. But those days are long gone. And my premise still stands, that whatever is said within these walls is as secure as if it were said in Thames House.’

  ‘But we’re not meeting in Thames House, are we?’

  ‘Indeed we are not, Daniel. Because the conversation we are going to have has no place there.’

  ‘Do you think we can cut to the chase?’ said Shepherd, folding his arms. ‘If I’m to be sacked, a letter or an email or even a text would have done the job.’

  Pritchard seemed genuinely surprised by what Shepherd had said. He sat back in his chair and scratched his chin. ‘Why would you think that we would let you go?’

  Shepherd shrugged. ‘Maybe my face doesn’t fit any more.’

  ‘And that would be reason to terminate your employment? A man of your experience and talents? I think it far more likely that I would be shown the door than you, Daniel. You have talents and skills that MI5 needs. I’m an administrator. Any half-decent civil servant could do what I do.’

 
‘I doubt that,’ said Shepherd.

  The waiter returned with their potted shrimps and small triangles of brown bread with the crusts cut off. It reminded Shepherd of the way Sue had always taken the crusts off for Liam when he was a toddler.

  Pritchard tasted his potted shrimps and nodded. ‘Excellent.’

  He looked at Shepherd expectantly. Shepherd had no appetite but he picked up his fork and popped a prawn into his mouth and chewed. It had no taste and he had difficulty swallowing.

  ‘I know we are in a business where dishonesty is a currency, but I’m going to need complete honesty from you, Daniel,’ said Pritchard.

  Shepherd looked up from his potted shrimps, frowning.

  ‘The reason I asked you here isn’t just because of confidentiality, it’s because the conversation we are having is very much off the record. No one other than my secretary knows that we are having lunch, and as far as I know I am the only member of Five who is a member here so there’s no danger of anyone walking in on us. It’s just you and me.’ He took a sip of white wine and gently replaced the glass on the crisp white linen tablecloth. ‘We both know that one never starts an interrogation without knowing the answers to the questions one is asking. So take a moment or two to gather your thoughts, then tell me about the shit you’ve found yourself in.’ He smiled and smeared butter over a triangle of bread and bit into it.

  Shepherd picked up his wine glass and took a sip, his eyes never leaving the director’s. He didn’t need or want the alcohol, he just wanted time to think. There was no point in lying, he knew that. Lies always came back to haunt you. But when it came to telling the truth, there were degrees of honesty and it was a spectrum, all the way from saying nothing to leaving nothing unsaid. And he knew exactly what Pritchard was talking about. This wasn’t about the job or the cases he was on, this was personal, which is why they were in White’s and not in Pritchard’s office in Thames House.

  He put down his glass. ‘My son and my girlfriend have been kidnapped in Slovenia,’ he said. ‘I still don’t know for sure what’s happened, but they’ve been kidnapped and whoever has them is asking for a ransom payment.’