Cold Kill

by Stephen Leather

  ‘How much are you prepared to pay?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘Five thousand pounds.’

  Shepherd laughed. ‘I’m not Federal Express,’ he said. ‘If that’s the best you can do, I’m going to get a can-opener.’

  ‘Twenty,’ said the man, hurriedly. ‘Twenty thousand pounds. That’s my final offer.’

  ‘That’s more like it.’

  ‘Now, at least I should know the name of the man I’m giving twenty thousand pounds to.’

  ‘No names,’ said Shepherd. ‘I don’t need to know who you are, you don’t need to know who I am.’

  ‘But at least you can tell me why you’re in possession of the cans.’

  ‘I was on the ship. Part of the crew.’

  ‘Okay,’ said the man, thoughtfully. ‘And what happened? Why do the police have Pernaska?’

  ‘Not the police. Immigration. We were caught crossing the North Sea, on the way to the Northumberland coast. The cops took the crew but all the cargo claimed asylum. Pernaska managed to talk to me before Immigration took him away. I got back on the boat and picked up his bags.’

  ‘When can I have my property?’

  ‘Where are you?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘Because I’ve called a mobile so you could be anywhere in the country. Overseas, even. And I’m not keen to travel hundreds of miles.’

  ‘Where are you?’ The voice repeated Shepherd’s question.

  ‘London.’

  ‘So are we.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘You have my property. I want it back.’

  ‘Let me think about it,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’ll call you.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When I’ve thought about it,’ said Shepherd. ‘Have the twenty grand ready for when I call.’ Shepherd cut the connection. He made a verbal note of the time and date, then switched off the recorder. He grinned at his reflection in the mirror above the dressing-table. ‘That went well,’ he said.

  He picked up his personal mobile and phoned Hargrove. He relayed the conversation he’d had with the man on the throwaway mobile.

  ‘What do you want to do? Let him sweat until tomorrow?’ asked Hargrove.

  ‘I think so,’ said Shepherd. ‘He’s got to believe I’m a little nervous, right? I’ll phone tomorrow and ask if he’s got the money. Assuming he has, we could do the handover on Sunday. Would the tracker be ready by then?’

  ‘Should be,’ said Hargrove. ‘They’re working on it now. They’ve already resealed two of the cans and they’ve done a good job.’

  ‘Day or night?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘Afternoon,’ said Hargrove. ‘Gives the technical boys the morning and us the chance to run with it while it’s still light.’

  ‘Any thoughts on location?’

  ‘For your safety, a public place is best – it’ll give us more surveillance possibilities. But not near a motorway. The tracking device we’ll be using is good, but we don’t want to be belting down the fast lane after them. Ideally, close to where they’re based. You didn’t get a sense of who they are?’

  ‘Asian, I’d guess.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll run a check through NCIS but let’s not hold our breath. Maybe let them suggest a place. But no going up dark alleys. A million euros is worth killing for.’

  ‘Yeah, but twenty thousand quid isn’t.’

  ‘Just be careful.’

  ‘Careful is my middle name,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘I mean it. They won’t be happy about an outsider knowing what they’re up to. They might want to make sure there are no witnesses. We’ll be watching your back, but I want you out in the open with lots of people around.’

  ‘Message received,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘And what about the twenty grand? You don’t think you pitched it too low?’

  ‘All Corke knows is that the cans have to be delivered, not what’s inside. Could just be a few kilos of dope.’

  ‘True. But they agreed the twenty grand straight away. Corke might well figure he could up the ante.’

  The superintendent was right. ‘I’ll make the call tomorrow,’ said Shepherd.

  He cut the connection and went downstairs, got a bottle of Corona beer from the fridge, sat down in front of the television and began to flick through the channels with the remote control.

  The little boy picked up the boomerang with a puzzled frown. ‘How does it work?’ he asked his father.

  Derek Jewell took it from his six-year-old son. It was of reddish wood, thickly varnished, with koala bears painted on it. ‘You throw it, and it comes back to you,’ he said.

  ‘Like remote control?’ said the boy.

  ‘No, it comes back because …’ Jewell scratched his head. ‘Honey, help me out here, will you?’ he said to his wife.

  Sally Jewell raised her eyebrows. ‘You’re the physicist.’ She laughed. ‘Didn’t you do aerodynamics?’ She was holding their two-year-old daughter, who was asleep.

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t think the laws of physics have changed much over the last ten years, have they?’

  ‘Thanks, honey,’ said Jewell. ‘I knew I could rely on your support.’

  ‘Actually, not all boomerangs come back,’ said the teenager who was looking after the stall. ‘The killing ones don’t.’

  ‘Can we have a killing one, Dad?’ said the little boy. ‘Can we?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Jewell. ‘Anyway, they might not let you take it on the plane. It’s probably classed as an offensive weapon.’

  ‘What’s offensive mean?’

  Jewell gave the boomerang back to his son. ‘It means dangerous.’

  ‘It doesn’t look dangerous.’

  ‘We can see it tomorrow,’ said Sally, shifting the little girl from one shoulder to the other. ‘We don’t have to buy everything today. Anyway, we’ll be back in Sydney next week after we’ve been to Brisbane.’

  The Jewells lived in Portland, Maine, and had flown to Australia for the wedding of Derek’s brother. He’d been living in Australia for the past three years and was marrying a local girl. Sally hadn’t been keen on the idea of a twenty-eight-hour flight with two young children, but Derek had talked her into it. It had been a nightmare and neither of them was looking forward to the flight home. But it was still two weeks away. Before then they had the wedding and a list of things to do, culled from the Lonely Planet guide to Australia.

  ‘Can I buy it now, Dad? Can I?’

  The flash of light and the blast hit almost simultaneously. Jewell was slammed sideways by the force of the explosion. He hit the boomerang stall hard and felt his arm snap like dry wood, then slumped to the ground, ears ringing. The left side of his body was burning, his ears were running and something wet was pouring down his cheek. His mouth and nose were filled with a bitter, burned taste and his eyes stung.

  His throat filled with something wet and treacly and he tried to spit it out, which made him choke. He got up on to his hands and knees. His son was lying on the road, chest ripped open by chunks of shrapnel, still clutching the boomerang. Jewel tried to scream but he couldn’t breathe. Then he looked down and saw ribs sticking out through his shirt and the bloody pulpy mess that had once been his lungs.

  Katra was watching the news on the portable television in the kitchen when Shepherd walked in. ‘Have you heard what happened in Australia?’ she said.

  ‘No?’ he said.

  ‘Bombs,’ she said. ‘Three bombs.’ She stood up and poured him a mug of coffee. ‘More than a hundred people have died.’

  Shepherd grabbed the remote and turned up the volume. The images on the screen were jerky, as if they had been filmed on a holidaymaker’s video camera. Bloodstained bodies on the ground, men and women staggering around in shock, fires burning. A news reporter was explaining that, as Katra had said, three bombs had exploded within minutes of each other, two in a weekend market. The picture on the screen
changed to a hotel, black smoke pluming from the central section, the arch of the Sydney Harbour Bridge behind it. The voiceover explained that the bomb in the restaurant at the Hyatt Hotel had killed or injured at least fifty people. No one had claimed responsibility but local law-enforcement officials were assuming it was the work of an al-Qaeda terrorist cell.

  ‘All those people,’ said Katra. ‘It’s terrible.’

  ‘What’s terrible?’ said Liam, who had walked in and was bouncing a football.

  ‘Not inside,’ said Shepherd, pointing at the ball, ‘I’ve told you before.’

  Liam picked it up and hugged it to his chest. ‘What are you watching?’

  ‘The news,’ said Shepherd. ‘What do you want for breakfast?’

  ‘Cheesy scrambled eggs,’ said Liam.

  ‘Is that all you ever eat?’

  ‘I like it.’

  ‘I’m not sure it’s good for you. Too much cholesterol.’

  ‘What’s cholesterol?’

  ‘Fat. And too much is bad for you.’

  ‘There’s fat in bacon and you eat bacon sandwiches all the time. And coffee’s bad for you, too. That’s what Mummy used to say.’

  ‘She was probably right,’ agreed Shepherd. ‘What about some fruit? Or muesli?’

  ‘Muesli’s rabbit food,’ said Liam.

  ‘Cheesy scrambled eggs on toast,’ said Katra. ‘And I’ll use wholemeal bread.’ She smiled. ‘Once in a blue moon won’t hurt him.’

  Shepherd grinned back. ‘Yeah, but he has it every day. I’m surprised he’s not bored with it.’

  Liam sat down at the kitchen table and put the ball under his feet. ‘Are we going to the park, Dad?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Shepherd, ‘but let me watch this now.’ He leaned against the counter and sipped his coffee. On the screen, paramedics with stretchers were rushing towards the wrecked hotel.

  ‘Why do they blow things up, Dad?’

  ‘It’s a tough question, Liam.’

  ‘What do they want, though, the men who did it?’

  Another tough question, thought Shepherd. It had always been so much easier with the IRA. Their aims were clear. They wanted the British out, and a united Ireland. But the aims of Muslim terrorist groups, like al-Qaeda, were a lot harder to pin down. ‘They want to frighten people,’ he said.

  ‘But why?’

  Katra slotted slices of bread into the toaster and cracked eggs into a bowl.

  ‘It’s difficult to explain,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘But why would they blow up a hotel?’

  ‘Because they think if they scare people enough they’ll get what they want.’

  ‘But what do they want?’

  Shepherd sat down at the kitchen table opposite Liam. ‘Okay, part of it is about Iraq. You know we went to war against Iraq?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And our soldiers are still there, with American and Australian soldiers – soldiers from all over the world.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, some people don’t want the soldiers to be in Iraq. They want them to leave. And they think that if they scare people enough, the governments will tell their soldiers to leave.’

  ‘But the people they killed aren’t soldiers.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘It’s not fair.’

  Liam was right. But much of what went on in the world had nothing to do with fairness. Shepherd had seen that at first hand as an SAS trooper in Afghanistan and every day on the streets as a police officer. ‘It’s easier to kill members of the public than it is to kill soldiers,’ he said.

  ‘Because they don’t have guns?’

  ‘Partly. And partly because ordinary people don’t expect to be attacked. Soldiers and policemen do.’

  ‘Are we okay in London?’ asked Liam. ‘They won’t do anything here again, will they?’

  Shepherd had always tried to be truthful with his son. He’d never been the sort of parent who perpetuated the myths of the Tooth Fairy and Father Christmas. He was happy to go along with Sue when she’d slipped a pound coin under Liam’s pillow in exchange for a milk tooth, but he’d always felt uncomfortable when she’d pretended that the Christmas presents had come from a man in a red suit who’d crawled down the chimney. When Liam was seven, he’d come home from school one day and said he’d been told by a classmate that Father Christmas wasn’t real. Sue had said that Santa Claus was hard at work with the elves at the North Pole. She’d turned to Shepherd for support, but he had pulled a face and walked away. A lie was a lie, and he’d promised himself that he would never lie to his family. His entire undercover life was spent lying, and he didn’t want to bring it home with him, even if it meant bursting the occasional bubble. ‘They might try,’ he said. ‘They’re bad men and they do bad things. But there’s a lot of people working to stop them. And the chance of you or me or anyone we know being hurt is so small that you mustn’t worry about it.’

  There were two solemn newsreaders on screen, a pretty blonde girl and a man in his late forties, hair greying at the temples. Both had perfect teeth and a movie-star tan. The man was recapping earlier terrorist incidents – Madrid, Bali, New York.

  ‘But if they did do something, people would die, wouldn’t they?’

  Katra stirred Liam’s eggs and cheese. The toaster pinged, and she pulled out the toast.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Shepherd, ‘but we can’t let that worry us. If we’re scared all the time the terrorists have won. That’s what they want, to scare us. So if we aren’t scared, they can’t win.’

  ‘But you’re going to help catch them, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m going to try.’

  ‘And they’ll go to prison, right?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘And you’ll get a medal?’

  Shepherd laughed. ‘Maybe.’

  There were more images on the screen. A Sydney hospital with ambulances unloading the injured. A voiceover saying that at least a hundred people had been killed but that the final death toll was likely to be much higher. Shepherd wondered what sort of men would set off a bomb to kill civilians. He could understand combat: man against man, weapon against weapon. Terrible things happened in wars, but it was always soldier against soldier. He’d killed in combat, but the men who had died might just as easily have killed him. He’d been shot, too, taken a sniper’s bullet in the shoulder in Afghanistan and only survived because of the skill of an SAS medic and the fact that a chopper had been nearby. Shepherd felt no hatred for the guy who’d shot him: Shepherd had been doing his job and so had the sniper. Shepherd had been trained in the use of explosives, but only in military situations. He knew how to place a shaped charge to destroy a bridge or bring down a building, and he knew how to handle grenades. But if he had ever been ordered to plant a bomb that served no purpose other than to kill civilians, he would have refused, no matter what the circumstances.

  Katra put down a plate of scrambled eggs and cheese on toast in front of Liam and he attacked it enthusiastically. ‘Chew it properly,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘It’s scrambled eggs,’ said Liam. ‘You can’t chew scrambled eggs.’

  ‘And don’t talk with your mouth full.’

  ‘What would you like, Dan?’ asked Katra.

  ‘Just toast, please,’ said Shepherd. The newsreaders were back on screen. The woman was talking via a video link to a so-called terrorism expert, a balding, bespectacled academic in a turtleneck sweater who was trying to explain the aims and objectives of the various Muslim extremist groups around the world. To Shepherd, it was obvious: they wanted to kill as many Westerners as possible. They wanted to provoke a backlash against Muslims so that they could point the finger at the West and say, ‘See? We told you they hated us.’ The West was in an impossible situation. If it did nothing, the deaths would continue. But in invading Iraq, in locking people up without trial, it was playing into the hands of the enemy. It was a no-win situation for which Shepherd had no solution. That was for the politicians to
work out. Shepherd was a policeman: his job was to uphold law and order. It was for politicians to solve the insoluble, but most of those he saw on television didn’t have the intellectual skills necessary to programme a video recorder, never mind broker a peace with Islamic fundamentalists.

  Shepherd scowled at the academic’s woolly language and even woollier thinking. He seemed to have no clearer understanding of the aims of al-Qaeda than Shepherd did. What did al-Qaeda want? The dismantling of Israel? Death to all infidels? A world of Muslims? All women covered from head to foot in black and walking ten steps behind their men? If that was their aim, there would be no negotiating with them. And if negotiations were pointless, what then?

  Katra put a plate of buttered toast in front of him. ‘You look very serious,’ she said.

  Shepherd smiled up at her. ‘Busy week,’ he said.

  ‘Can we watch cartoons?’ asked Liam.

  Shepherd pushed the remote control across the table to him. ‘Watch whatever you want,’ he said.

  Liam flicked through the channels and stopped at a cartoon. Roadrunner was doing what he did best, running through the desert. A gleeful Wile E. Coyote was unwrapping an Acme bomb, a black sphere with a long fuse and ‘BOMB’ written on the side. Shepherd drank some coffee and wondered when bombs had stopped being funny. ‘I’ve got to make a phone call,’ he said and picked up a piece of toast. ‘I’ll be upstairs. You two stay down here, okay? I don’t want to be disturbed.’

  Liam nodded, his eyes on the television.

  ‘It’s a work call,’ Shepherd said to Katra. ‘I’ll only be a few minutes.’

  Shepherd went upstairs to his bedroom and took the Tony Corke mobile out of his bedside cabinet. He checked the call register. They hadn’t rung back and there were no texts.

  Shepherd pressed ‘redial’. The call was answered on the third ring. ‘Who are you?’ said an Asian voice. Shepherd was fairly sure it was the second man he’d spoken to the last time he’d called. ‘I can’t deal with someone I don’t know. You could be the police.’

  ‘If you really thought I was a cop, you wouldn’t be talking to me at all. Now, do you want these cans or not?’

  ‘They are my property.’

  ‘So, let me ask you a question,’ said Shepherd. ‘Who am I talking to?’