Cold Kill

by Stephen Leather

  ‘I don’t run asylum-seekers,’ said Kreshnik. ‘I use them to courier cash, that’s all.’

  ‘Right. So I’m doing this run for Salik. You must have other customers in the UK. You could use me more often. A thousand kilos a run. That’s a lot of currency.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Or anything else you wanted to take over.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Drugs. Guns. I’m like Federal Express. Door-to-door, guaranteed delivery.’

  Kreshnik took another sip of wine, his dark brown eyes fixed on Shepherd. He licked his lips. ‘Let’s see how we get on with this, shall we? Then maybe we’ll talk again.’

  The Mercedes stopped in front of the Gare du Nord, close to the taxi rank. Ervin twisted round in the front passenger seat. ‘No hard feelings?’ he asked.

  Shepherd grunted. ‘Guess not.’ He nodded at Artur, who was sitting next to him. ‘I’m not so sure about him. I might need stitches in my head.’ He climbed out of the car and slammed the door.

  As the Mercedes drove away, Artur made a gun with his fingers and mimed shooting at Shepherd. In return Shepherd gave him a friendly wave.

  He walked slowly through the station concourse. He had forty-five minutes before the Eurostar left for London. It was only as he passed through Immigration that he remembered he hadn’t eaten since the sandwich he’d had on his outward journey.

  The train was packed, with every seat in standard class taken. Shepherd’s was in a group of four again, the rear-facing window-seat. The three other passengers at the table were Japanese women, chattering in their own language and exchanging their digital cameras with lots of pointing and giggling.

  Shepherd folded his arms. He was angry, but couldn’t afford to show it. He was angry with the Albanians, for hitting him over the head and dumping him in the car boot. He was angry with Salik, for forcing him to travel to Paris. He was angry with Kreshnik, for the arrogant way he’d treated him. And angry with the French for not having been anywhere near him when he’d been kidnapped at gunpoint.

  He saw Hargrove walking along the aisle. They made eye-contact and Hargrove nodded for Shepherd to follow him. Shepherd stood up and gestured to the Japanese woman sitting next to him that he needed to get out. She stood, bowing, and Shepherd followed Hargrove down the carriage.

  The superintendent was waiting for him beside an unmarked door. He pushed it open and Shepherd followed him inside. The room was two paces square, with two first-class-sized seats at either side of a small table. Next to one a padded bench seat, with four thick metal hasps, was set into the wall.

  ‘What’s this?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘One of the little secrets of Eurostar,’ said Hargrove. ‘They’re used to transport criminals to and from the Continent. There are two on every train. Immigration use them for deportations to France. Saves all those nasty scenes we used to see with failed asylum-seekers trying to kill themselves on planes or throwing themselves off ferries.’ He nodded at a metal cupboard on the wall next to the ceiling. ‘Guns have to be locked away in transit.’

  ‘The French cops, right?’

  ‘They can carry their guns until they’re at the halfway point of the tunnel. Then they have to put them away. Occasionally the UK cops are armed, Special Branch or SO19, but it’s mainly for the French.’

  Shepherd sat on the bench and stretched his legs. ‘That could have turned to shit so easily,’ he said.

  ‘There was nothing we could do without blowing the whole operation.’

  ‘It wasn’t an operation, it was a disaster. I was unprepared, there was no back-up and no rescue signal.’

  ‘If there had been an opt-out, would you have given it?’ asked Hargrove.

  That was a good question. If he’d not gone with the Albanians, the whole operation would have been blown. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said, ‘but it would have been nice to have the option.’

  ‘And would you have had time?’ said Hargrove. ‘The way Sharpe tells it, they hit you from behind and it was all over before he could do anything.’

  ‘That’s not the point,’ said Shepherd. ‘The point is that I was unprepared and with no back-up. I was on my own with them for more than two hours and if they’d decided to top me it would have been over anyway.’

  ‘The French were at the station. They just weren’t geared up for the car.’

  ‘They should have been.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Hargrove. ‘But they were there, Spider. And they got everything on CCTV. Do you want to hear the good news?’

  ‘There is some?’

  ‘Lots. Sharpe got the registration number of the Mercedes, and the French got an address and we were outside all the time you were in the apartment. The guy who owns it is a big fish, and Europol are very excited. Kreshnik Zagreda is Albanian but he’s had French citizenship for the last ten years. Brings cannabis in from Morocco, runs weapons into Algeria, prostitution, extortion.’

  ‘And untouchable. He told me he’d never been inside.’

  ‘So far. Obeys all the rules. Doesn’t go near the illegal stuff, doesn’t go near the money, only deals with people he knows.’

  ‘So we’re not going to get him on the currency.’

  ‘On his track record, probably not. But it’s the first that Europol has heard about him being involved in counterfeiting. It’s another piece of the puzzle. The guys who took you in are two of his lieutenants, Ervin Ristani and Artur Veseli. They’re working on the driver now. Ristani and Veseli will be under round-the-clock surveillance until you do your run. There’s a good chance they’ll get their hands dirty and the hope is that they’ll roll over on Kreshnik.’

  ‘They didn’t seem the type that would roll over,’ said Shepherd. ‘And Kreshnik didn’t seem the type who’d let them.’ He rubbed the back of his neck. The tendons were as taut as steel cables. ‘I tried luring him on a drugs run, but he was noncommittal. Wanted to wait and see.’

  ‘We might get him on conspiracy down the line,’ said Hargrove. ‘Send you back with a wire. Or get his place bugged.’

  ‘No wires,’ said Shepherd, emphatically. ‘They gave me a full going-over and I got the feeling it was standard practice.’

  ‘I’ll talk to Europol and see what they say,’ said Hargrove. ‘The important thing is that you’re back in one piece and the operation’s still on. The Uddin brothers will organise the currency run and, hopefully, we’ll tie up both ends.’

  Shepherd took out the passport and offered it to the superintendent. ‘It looks genuine to me,’ he said.

  Hargrove flicked through the pages. ‘If it isn’t, it’s a first-class forgery,’ he said.

  ‘Ten grand’s expensive for a fake,’ said Shepherd. ‘I think it’s the real deal.’

  Hargrove handed it back. ‘We’ll have it checked. When you get to Waterloo, slip it to Sharpe.’

  ‘The toilets again?’

  ‘You can change phones at the same time.’

  ‘Lucky we did that,’ said Shepherd. ‘Kreshnik took the phone apart. Checked the Sim card, too.’

  ‘Luck doesn’t come into it,’ said Hargrove. ‘Hopefully the brothers will call you tomorrow. We need to know date and time, pick-up and delivery points.’

  ‘Are you going to bust them, or wait?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘The French will let their end run, I’m sure of that,’ said Hargrove. ‘I think they want Kreshnik on a drugs charge, if they can get him. And they want to nail the counterfeit euros. It really is starting to become a Europol investigation so that means they’re going to be setting the rules. If we bust the Uddins, Kreshnik might go to ground.’

  ‘That’s fine by me,’ said Shepherd. ‘It always gets messy when I get hauled in.’

  ‘But the passport is our investigation, and definitely worth pursuing,’ said the superintendent. ‘We want to know who their man is, and who else he’s fixed up passports for.’

  ‘You think they’ll tell me?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘Make them your new best friends,
’ said Hargrove. ‘That’s what you’re good at.’

  After he’d exchanged phones with Sharpe and given him the Peter Devereux passport, Shepherd caught a black cab from Waterloo and had it drop him close to the multi-storey car park where he’d left the Land Rover. It was close to eleven o’clock and he wanted to get home, but there was something he had to check first and that meant driving to Dover. Salik knew where Tony Corke lived. He’d seen the address on the driving licence and Shepherd figured that he would have viewed Corke’s trip to Paris as too good an opportunity to miss.

  He stuck to the speed limit on the motorway, although there was little traffic. He parked in front of the two-up, two-down terraced house in a quiet street on the outskirts of the town. The door keys were in the glove compartment. Shepherd let himself in and switched on the hall light. The burglar-alarm system began to beep and Shepherd tapped in the four-digit code on a keyboard by the light switch. He looked around slowly. Half a dozen envelopes lay on the threadbare carpet, all bills and all in the name of Tony Corke. On a side table there was a phone and a telephone directory, and on the wall above it a framed photograph of the Titanic leaving port on its appointment with destiny. The house had been dressed by experts who worked for Hargrove’s unit, two gay men who could furnish a house or apartment to fit any legend. Everything from the food in the refrigerator to the clothes hanging in the cheap, teak-effect MFI wardrobes had been selected to accommodate Tony Corke’s personality.

  Shepherd walked slowly down the hall. The door to the sitting room was open. A black plastic leather-effect sofa, a wooden coffee table pockmarked with cigarette burns and beer-can rings, an old television set. A handful of letters was scattered across the coffee table, court papers and correspondence from Corke’s solicitor, including a bill for legal fees of more than twenty thousand pounds. Shepherd stood looking down at them and flashed back in his memory to the last time he’d been in the room. The bill had been further to the right. Six inches, maybe a bit more. It had been moved.

  He walked round the room, looking for other signs that he had been visited in his absence. There was an old gas fire in a cast-iron fireplace, covered with decades of paint. On the mantelpiece, a wedge of rejection letters from various shipping lines, all dated within the previous year, and credit-card statements, all showing substantial debts, was pushed behind a brass ornament of three monkeys – hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. A statement from a building society detailed the amount outstanding on Tony Corke’s mortgage. They had been moved, too. Someone had rifled through them.

  Shepherd went upstairs and opened the wardrobe in the main bedroom. Cheap, well-worn clothes. A lot of thick wool pullovers and denim shirts, work socks in a drawer, a pile of towels, several of which had the logos of ferry companies. It was little touches, like the stolen towels, that added authenticity to any cover story. Shepherd ran his hand along the clothes on the hangers. They’d been moved, too, since the last time he’d been in the house. Now, at least, he knew where he stood. On the surface Salik Uddin might appear to be an easy-going family man but he was shrewd enough to take advantage of Shepherd’s absence to check out the house. It had been a professional job: there was no sign of a forced entry, which meant that the lock had been professionally picked and the alarm system dealt with. It wasn’t difficult – Hargrove had several operatives on his team who could have got past the lock and the alarm in less than thirty seconds – but whoever Salik had used was an expert. Shepherd doubted that Salik was a locksmith but he clearly had access to someone with the necessary skills.

  Shepherd reset the alarm and locked the door. On the drive back to Ealing he phoned Hargrove and briefed him on what had happened.

  The Saudi walked up to the three-storey house and glanced at the top floor. A figure was silhouetted at the window, looking down, so the Saudi didn’t press the bell. He stood with his back to the door, swinging his briefcase from side to side. He had taken a taxi to the residential street and had it drop him round the corner, then spent the best part of an hour reassuring himself that the area was not under surveillance.

  The man who opened the door had light brown hair, a long face and a dimple in his chin. He smiled, showing even white teeth, the result of good genes and a healthy diet. Joe Hagerman was American, a relatively recent convert to Islam.

  He’d been in Afghanistan in 2001 where he’d been trained in weapons and explosives at Khalden Camp, close to Kandahar. After the Americans had invaded, he had moved to Bajaur, a mountainous tribal land near the Afghan border, then on to Rawalpindi in Pakistan, which was where the Saudi had met him. Back then, Hagerman had had a long beard and an untidy mop of hair. His skin had been nut brown from the fierce desert sun, his hands ingrained with dirt and oil. The face that smiled back at him now was clean-shaven and considerably paler; the hands were well manicured. ‘How’s it going?’ asked Hagerman, his voice Midwestern American.

  ‘Everything is on schedule,’ said the Saudi.

  Hagerman led him up a wide staircase to the second floor, then stepped aside to allow the Saudi across the threshold first. The flat was almost monastically bare, with no pictures on the walls. There was no carpet, just gleaming oak floorboards, and only cushions to sit on. A prayer mat lay in one corner, and a copy of the Koran on the window-sill. Hagerman was an American by birth but a devout Muslim by choice, and had nothing but contempt for the ways of the West. He was a vegetarian, drank no alcohol, prayed far more frequently than the five times a day laid down by the Koran, and could quote the Holy Book by heart in its original Arabic.

  ‘Can I offer you a beverage? I have water and fruit juice.’

  ‘Water, please,’ said the Saudi. He sat down on one of the cushions as Hagerman went into the kitchen. Other than the Koran there was nothing to read and no source of entertainment. No television, no radio, no stereo.

  It had taken the American more than five years to convince al-Qaeda that he wasn’t a CIA plant and another two before they were satisfied that he was indeed suitable to join the ranks of the shahid. The Saudi had felt from his first meeting that Hagerman was almost too committed to the jihad, too willing to die for Islam. His commitment bordered on a mental illness, but he would be a tool that the Saudi was happy to use.

  Hagerman returned with a glass of water, chilled, from the fridge. The Saudi knew that he drank only bottled water, never from the tap.

  ‘I was robbed yesterday,’ said Hagerman, as he sat down on a cushion.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Someone got in through the bathroom window. Climbed a drainpipe. Kids, probably.’

  ‘The case?’

  ‘It’s fine. But they took some money and my passport.’

  ‘That’s not good news,’ said the Saudi. He knew he was stating the obvious, but there was no point in showing his anger. He could not have been told earlier: Hagerman had no way of getting in touch with him. Communication was one-way, once an operation was running.

  ‘I can’t travel without my passport,’ said Hagerman, also stating the obvious.

  ‘It wasn’t your American passport?’

  Hagerman shook his head. ‘Of course not. I ditched that years ago. I’d be red-flagged at every airport in the world under that name. It was the Bosnian one.’

  ‘And difficult to replace in London?’

  ‘It would take time. And even then it wouldn’t have my UK visa in it so I couldn’t travel.’

  The Saudi grimaced. ‘Okay,’ he said. He didn’t want to criticise the American, but it had been a stupid mistake to leave his passport in the flat.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Hagerman.

  ‘It is a problem, but it can be solved,’ said the Saudi. ‘I know people in London who can get you a passport.’

  ‘A counterfeit?’

  ‘A real passport. A British passport. You’ll be able to travel without any problems.’

  ‘And they’ll do it quickly?’

  ‘Providing you have the money,’ said the Saud
i. He opened his briefcase, flicked through the document folders built into the lid and pulled out a manilla envelope. The Saudi never travelled without large amounts of cash. He rarely used credit cards as they left an electronic trail that could be followed. He opened the envelope and removed a wad of fifty-pound notes. He counted out two hundred – ten thousand pounds. ‘This will get you the passport,’ he said. He counted out another thousand pounds. ‘And this is for any other expenses.’

  The American took the money, stood up and went into the kitchen where he put it into the freezer compartment of the fridge.

  The Saudi scribbled a name and a phone number on a piece of paper and stood up. As Hagerman came out of the kitchen, the Saudi gave it to him. ‘Call this number. Tell him what you want and that you have the money.’

  Hagerman took it and put it into his wallet.

  ‘Where’s the case?’ asked the Saudi.

  ‘In the bedroom,’ said Hagerman. ‘Under the bed.’

  ‘Show me,’ said the Saudi.

  The bedroom was as bare as the outer room. There was a built-in wardrobe along one wall and a metal-framed bed with a mattress, a single thin pillow and two sheets.

  Hagerman knelt down and pulled out a small hard-shell suitcase. He placed it on the bed and clicked open the locks.

  The Saudi nodded, satisfied. It had been perfectly constructed and there was no way to tell from looking at it that the shell contained fifteen pounds of Semtex. The case would pass through any X-ray scanner without showing anything out of the ordinary. All that was needed to turn it into a devastating weapon of destruction was a detonator. And the Saudi had plenty of those.

  Shepherd was finishing his breakfast when he heard a phone ringing upstairs. He knew from the tone that Salik was calling. ‘Work?’ said Liam, reading his mind. He was sitting at the kitchen table, eating his favourite scrambled eggs with cheese on toast and reading a comic, in which aliens were being blown apart by wisecracking space cowboys.