Spider Shepherd 10 - True Colours

by Leather, Stephen

  ‘Before 1992, everybody worked for the government,’ said Grechko. ‘There was no private sector.’ He grinned. ‘Not officially, anyway.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Button. ‘I read somewhere that you made your money selling second-hand jeans.’

  Grechko laughed. ‘Not just second-hand,’ he said. He banged his hands down on to his knees. ‘You couldn’t buy Western jeans for love nor money. So when I wasn’t working I used to hang around the tourist hotels and look for Western teenagers. I’d offer them whatever I could for jeans, worn or otherwise. Sometimes I’d do a swap for vodka or some crap souvenirs, but if they wanted money I’d give them money because I could sell them for three times as much on the black market. The Russian kids, they couldn’t get enough Levi’s and Wrangler’s.’ He laughed and slapped his knees again. ‘Those were the days.’

  ‘The interesting thing about the four of you is that you have all been friends for a very long time,’ said Button. ‘And you have all become very, very rich. To be honest, you four are among the richest men on the planet.’

  ‘So? We all worked very hard to get where we are.’

  ‘I’m sure you did, Mr Grechko. But I do find it interesting that your businesses are all so different. Oil and gas, banking and property, steel and aluminium, trucking and shipping. You were never in competition.’

  Grechko laughed. ‘Perhaps that’s why we remained friends for so long.’

  Button smiled thinly and nodded. ‘Perhaps that’s it,’ she said. ‘But it is interesting that you all started from nothing, all moved into different businesses, and all became very wealthy, and now three of the four are dead. And it’s starting to look as if the same man killed the three of them and is trying to kill you.’

  Grechko’s eyes had hardened as she spoke. ‘The dogs in the Kremlin hate us all,’ he said quietly. ‘And they kill what they hate.’

  ‘That may be,’ said Button. ‘But the more we look at this, Mr Grechko, the more it seems to us that these killings are not political. They are personal.’

  Grechko said nothing, but both his hands clenched into tight fists and his knuckles whitened.

  ‘So I have to ask you, can you think of anyone who might want to murder you, Mr Zakharov, Mr Buryakov and Mr Czernik? Someone you crossed over the years, someone out for revenge?’

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Grechko.

  ‘What exactly do you think is ridiculous?’

  Grechko leaned towards her. ‘You know what Putin has been doing? You have seen what happens to people who cross him. Why do you want me to jump at shadows when I know who is trying to kill me?’

  ‘Because if this is personal then understanding the killer’s motive means we will stand a better chance of identifying him.’

  Grechko stared at her for several seconds, then he shrugged. ‘I can’t think of anyone.’

  ‘But you have enemies?’

  Grechko snorted contemptuously. ‘The world does not give you money, Miss Button. You have to take it. The strong get rich and the weak stay poor. That’s how natural selection works. If it did not work that way, the entire world would be communist.’

  ‘So I’ll take that as a yes.’

  Grechko waved away her comment with a flick of his hand. ‘You wouldn’t understand, you have spent your whole life under a capitalist system,’ he said. ‘You have a nice car, I have seen it. A BMW. You wear that nice Cartier watch and I am sure that you are treated by the very best private doctors. You have children?’

  ‘A daughter,’ said Button.

  ‘And I am sure that she is privately educated. You reap all the benefits of living in a capitalist country.’ He bared his teeth and tapped the front two with his finger. ‘Do you see my teeth, Miss Button? My wonderfully even, white teeth? They cost me fifty thousand dollars. Why? Because when I was a child I had state-supplied dental care and the drunken dentist they let loose on me was more concerned about his vodka than his patients. By the time I was twelve, half my teeth were rotten. I had a basic education, I had crap food, I wore cheap clothing and I lived with my parents in a flat close to a munitions factory that was exactly the same as the flat of every other family. We had the same furniture, the same cutlery, the same oven, the same refrigerator, everything was the same as our neighbours. The only difference was the colour of the sofa, which changed each year. My parents had the 1983 sofa. It was green.’

  Button opened her mouth to speak but Grechko held up his hand to silence her. ‘Every child got the same bicycle. Your parents put your name down for it when you were born and it was delivered on your fifth birthday. Every bike was the same. There was a black economy, of course there was, how else could I buy and sell my jeans. But it was small and it was illegal and, my God, did they punish you if they caught you. So eventually I got a job working in a shitty office for a man who thought his mission in life was to treat me like a serf. Then I got married and was given my own flat and my own sofa, which was blue, and yes, I bought and sold jeans on the black market because it was the only way I could lift myself out of the shit that is the communist system. I did what I had to do, Miss Button, and you would have done the same. Then in 1992, everything changed. The reins were loosened. Finally people were allowed to think for themselves, to act for themselves. But we still had nothing. So if you wanted something, you had to take it. You had to grab it with both hands before someone else took it and once you had it you had to make sure that no one took it from you. No one owned anything before 1992, can you understand that? Everything belonged to the state. And no one gave you anything, you had to take it. Those that took, got rich. Those that sat on their backsides stayed poor. So if you’re asking me if I trod on a few feet to get where I am today, then yes, of course I did. And I broke a few heads. So did Oleg, so did Yuri and so did Sasha. And so did all of the oligarchs that you are so quick to welcome to your shores. None of us are angels, Miss Button, but you overlook that fact in your rush to take our money.’ He could see that she was about to object but he silenced her with another curt wave of his hand. ‘Not you personally, I’m not saying that, but your political masters. Do you have any idea how much I have paid them over the years? Millions. Literally millions. And like pigs they stick their snouts in the trough and demand more. And not just to their parties. They come in person with their grasping hands out. Members of your House of Lords, the highest office in the land, sticking their tongues up my arse to get what they want. Former prime ministers asking me to hire them as consultants for a million dollars a year.’ He sneered dismissively. ‘Money is all that matters to them, so you insult me by suggesting that I have done anything wrong in trying to better myself. Would you rather that I was still working ten hours a day collating timesheets and checking milometers and going home to a flat with a blue plastic sofa and sandpaper sheets and looking forward, if I was lucky, to a week by the Black Sea once a year?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Button. ‘And please don’t take offence from what I’ve said. But with the greatest of respect, can I ask you to just consider that there might be someone from your past who is behind this, someone who might have a grudge against you.’ She didn’t wait for him to reply, she picked up her briefcase, stood up and extended her right hand. ‘Anyway, be assured we will do our absolute best to protect you,’ she said.

  Grechko stood up and shook her hand. He smiled, but it lacked any human warmth, it was more an animal-like baring of his fifty-thousand-dollar dental work. ‘I am grateful for all your help with this,’ he said. ‘I am sure you are a very busy woman.’

  ‘Trust me, Mr Grechko, you are right at the top of my list of priorities.’

  Grechko released his grip on her hand and walked with her to the door. ‘I’ll show Miss Button out,’ said Shepherd. ‘Then I’ll go and have a chat with Dmitry.’

  Grechko nodded and went over to a phone as Shepherd walked with Button along the hallway and out through the front door. Her black BMW was parked in the turning circle. ‘I thought you w
ere going to ask him if he’d killed anyone on his route to the top,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘The thought had crossed my mind,’ said Button. ‘He won’t listen, will he?’

  ‘He’s sure that it’s the Kremlin behind the killings. But if he has got some skeletons in his past, he’s hardly likely to tell you, is he?’

  ‘Well, it’s making our job a lot harder,’ said Button. She took her key fob out of her pocket. ‘We’re going to take a closer look at Zakharov, Buryakov and Czernik.’

  ‘He might have a point,’ said Shepherd. ‘About the lie detector.’

  Button wrinkled her nose. ‘I meant what I said. Anything out of the ordinary might spook the killer.’

  ‘I get that, but what if we made it look like the lie detector was for some other reason?’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  Shepherd chuckled. ‘That’s all I have, unfortunately. But we could handle it so that all the staff have to take a lie detector test. Obviously we’re just interested in the six new arrivals to the bodyguard team.’

  ‘And we ask them right out if they’re helping a potential assassin?’

  ‘We’d need a good operator, that’s for sure. But he could be looking for general signs of nervousness. I’m just saying, the background checks haven’t turned anything up yet, which means that we’re pinning a lot on phone records. But if this assassin is as good as we think he is, I don’t see him giving much away on the phone.’

  ‘That’s a fair point,’ said Button.

  ‘I don’t mean to sound negative. I just think we might need to be a bit more proactive.’

  Button unlocked the BMW. ‘On that front, you need to get closer to the six newcomers. See if your Spidery sense tingles.’

  Shepherd chuckled. ‘I’ve met all six of them. And they all seem kosher.’

  ‘But then they would, wouldn’t they? You need to have a closer look, and I’ll talk to our technical people, see if they have any suggestions. And be careful, Spider. If the killer does have his own person on board, he’ll probably move quickly.’ She got into her car, started the engine and waved before driving off. The electric gate was already rattling open. As Shepherd turned back to the house he saw Grechko at the window. Shepherd nodded but Grechko didn’t see him, he was staring at Button’s BMW as it drove through the gate and turned into The Bishops Avenue.

  The New Forest consists of more than two hundred square miles of pasture, heath and woodland and is the perfect place for dog-walking, horse-riding, exploring ancient monuments, and disposing of a body. Shepherd knew that the best way of getting away with murder was to make sure that the body was never found, which was why he and Harper were driving through the New Forest looking for a suitable place for a grave. They had driven there in a white Transit van that Harper had bought from a dealer in Croydon. It still had the details of a plumbing firm painted on the sides and a cartoon of a dog in a flat cap cleaning a drain across the rear doors. Harper had paid in cash and had swapped the plates for a set showing the number of a similar van he’d seen in central London.

  Harper had driven the van, leaving London on the M3 as it began to get dark, turning on to the M27 and then following the A31 for ten miles before, on Shepherd’s instructions, turning off on an unnamed road that twisted and turned through thick woodland. There were no street lights and no other vehicles around so Harper had the lights on full beam, carving tunnels of light out of the darkness. Shepherd pointed ahead. ‘OK, let’s see if we can turn off somewhere here, some place where the trees are far enough apart for us to drive in a ways.’ He’d spent an hour or so perusing a map of the New Forest so he knew exactly where they were.

  Harper slowed down and indicated he was going to turn, then laughed at his stupidity and switched off the indicator. ‘Force of habit,’ he said. He slowed the van to a crawl, then spotted a gap in the trees and turned off the road. The van bucked and rocked and the steering wheel twisted and turned as if it had a life of its own. He managed to get a hundred feet or so before the trees were so close together that he had to stop. He braked and switched off the engine. ‘What do you think?’ he asked.

  ‘Should be OK,’ said Shepherd. He opened the passenger door and stepped out. The only sound was the clicking of the engine as it cooled. He blinked slowly as his night vision slowly kicked in. There was no way of telling which way the road was, other than by the tracks in the mud.

  Harper climbed out of his side of the van. ‘What about poachers?’

  ‘Poachers?’

  ‘Yeah, poachers.’

  ‘You might as well worry about a UFO landing where we are,’ said Shepherd. ‘We’re in the middle of nowhere. And tonight we’re just digging a hole.’

  He walked around to the rear of the van and opened the doors. There were two brand-new spades there that Harper had bought from a garden centre before picking up Shepherd. Shepherd took them out, handed one to Harper, and shut the doors. ‘We need to walk a bit farther,’ he said, nodding at the vegetation. ‘Fifty feet or so should do it.’

  He walked through the trees, the spade on his shoulder. He was wearing a leather bomber jacket and had tied a scarf around his neck. Harper, as always, had on his parka, the hood up. Shepherd trod carefully – the ground was uneven and protruding tree roots threatened to trip him at every step. They reached a small clearing and Shepherd motioned for Harper to stop. The two men stood in silence, their breath feathering in the night air. A fox barked off in the distance and then went quiet. Shepherd tested the ground with his spade. ‘This’ll do it,’ he said.

  The two men began to dig and soon worked up a sweat. After ten minutes of hard digging Shepherd took off his jacket and scarf and put them at the base of a spreading beech tree. ‘The way you’ve organised this, it’s like you’ve done it before,’ said Harper, resting on his spade. He looked around. ‘You got any more bodies buried out here, Spider?’

  ‘I haven’t, but it’s the disposal area of choice for London’s underworld.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Shepherd. ‘Despite what you see on the TV, we’re not awash with serial killers and professional assassins. But they are out there, and the good ones never get caught. And the reason they never get caught is that the bodies are never found.’ He took a deep breath and flexed his shoulders. He was physically fit but the earth was hard and his arms and back were already aching. ‘There are anywhere between six hundred and seven hundred murders a year in the United Kingdom, an average of about two a day. The vast majority are committed by a friend or family member, or a neighbour, and are wrapped up by the cops in a couple of hours, a day at the most. More often than not, the murderer’s at the scene when the cops turn up, grief stricken and ready to confess.’

  ‘Yeah, well, we won’t be doing that, that’s for sure,’ said Harper. He took out his cigarettes, lit one and blew smoke up at the night sky. It was a cloudless night and away from the city all the stars were visible overhead, stretching off into infinity.

  ‘See, the key to solving any murder, assuming the killer doesn’t immediately confess, is to find the motive. If you know why someone has been killed you almost certainly know who by. And that’s why it’s almost impossible to catch a serial killer who kills at random, or a professional who does it for money.’

  ‘That’s why the cops profile, right?’

  ‘Yeah, all serial killers are white middle-aged men who wet their beds and set fire to their pets when they were kids,’ said Shepherd, his voice loaded with sarcasm. ‘It’s not as simple as that. You watch TV and you think that catching serial killers is easy, but in fact profiling is next to useless. Look at the Yorkshire Ripper. White middle-aged male killing hookers in Leeds. That’s as specific a profile as you could wish for. They spent millions trying to get him and they caught him by accident. Fred West? They only got him because he was so stupid he let one of his victims escape. And he buried his victims under his house.’ He pointed at the hole they were digging. ‘The real profe
ssionals – the ones that think about what they’re doing – they make sure their victims are never found. Because without a body it’s almost impossible to get a conviction.’

  ‘It happens, though.’

  ‘Only where there’s a clear motive. Which is why no one must ever know why Khan has been killed. With no motive and no body, the cops won’t get anywhere, even if they suspect foul play. But if we do this right, it won’t even get to that. People go missing every year. Any idea how many?’

  Harper shook his head.

  ‘Over two hundred thousand,’ said Shepherd. ‘That’s how many are reported missing. Now, all but two thousand or so turn up over the following year, but two thousand is still a hell of a lot, and unless there’s some sign of a crime the cops just don’t have the resources to follow them up. Unless they’re kids. Everything changes if kids are involved, obviously.’

  Harper took a long pull on his cigarette, blew smoke, then extinguished it on the sole of his trainers and slipped the butt into the pocket of his parka. He nodded at the hole. ‘Isn’t that deep enough?’ They had dug down just over two feet and shovelled the earth into a neat pile.

  ‘There’s a reason that gravediggers go down six feet,’ said Shepherd. ‘Any less than that and there isn’t enough weight to keep the coffin down. The earth really does give up the dead unless you plant them well deep.’ He dropped down into the hole and started to dig again.

  Harper watched him, grinning. ‘Sadly there’s only room for one of us in there.’

  ‘We’ll take it in turns,’ said Shepherd. He worked hard for another ten minutes and stepped out to let Harper took his place. The more they dug the harder it became. The earth was stonier and more tightly packed and once they got below four feet it was hard to move in the hole. It took them an hour to go down the last two feet but finally Shepherd was satisfied. He was in the hole and Harper had to offer him an arm to pull him out. It was six feet deep, just over six feet long and varied in width from three feet to four feet.