Hot Blood ss-4

by Stephen Leather

  Basharat nodded sullenly. The Major handed him the phone. Armstrong aimed the gun squarely at the Arab’s face, his finger on the trigger.

  Basharat scrolled through the phone’s address book, then hit the green button. He put the phone to his ear, then spoke rapidly in Arabic. It was clear from his tone that he was apologising for waking his brother. Then he was talking in a more measured tone, trying to avoid looking at the gun.

  Shortt was listening intently. The Major hadn’t been bluffing: Shortt did speak some Arabic but Shepherd was aware that his knowledge of the language was basic, to say the least.

  Basharat’s voice was trembling and he kept taking deep breaths, trying to steady himself. He closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose as he spoke. Eventually he ended the call.

  ‘Well done,’ said the Major, taking the phone from him. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘The video came attached to an email,’ said Basharat. ‘A Yahoo account. It was about four minutes long. My brother says there was nothing special on the bits they didn’t broadcast.’

  ‘Who sent it?’

  ‘The group holding him. The Holy Martyrs of Islam.’

  The Major held out the phone. ‘Call him back. Get him to forward the email to you.’

  ‘He’s mad enough at me as it is,’ said Basharat.

  ‘Well, you’ll have to decide which is the least dangerous option,’ said the Major. ‘Your brother being angry with you, or me and these guys. I doubt your brother’ll put a bullet in your head.’

  Armstrong tapped the gun barrel against Basharat’s head to emphasise the point.

  ‘He’s at home. The email will be on his office computer.’

  ‘Tell him it’s important, that you need it now – tell him what the hell you like but we want that email and we want it now. Do you have a personal email account? Yahoo or Hotmail?’

  Basharat nodded. ‘I’ve got a g-mail account.’

  ‘Tell him you’re working at home so he should send it to your personal account.’

  Basharat took the phone and called his brother again. Shepherd could hear the tension in his voice, and sweat was pouring down his face. He spoke earnestly, his brow furrowed, then fell silent for a while. When he spoke again, he was clearly imploring his brother to do as he asked. Eventually he sighed with relief and switched off the phone. ‘He’ll do it,’ he said. ‘It’ll take him about half an hour.’

  ‘Good,’ said the Major. He opened Basharat’s mobile phone, stripped out the battery and tossed the phone back to the Arab.

  ‘What happens to me now?’ asked Basharat, looking fearfully at the gun in Armstrong’s hand.

  ‘We pick up your email and then you’re free to go,’ said the Major. He gestured at Shortt, who pulled the hood back over the Arab’s head.

  ‘We need a computer,’ said the Major.

  ‘Let’s run by my house,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’ve got broadband.’

  Shortt rolled Basharat over and bound his wrists with insulation tape. Then he and Armstrong helped the man to his feet.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ asked Basharat, his voice muffled by the hood.

  ‘You don’t want to know,’ said Shortt. He put his face close to the Arab’s ear. ‘If we told you, we’d have to kill you,’ he whispered.

  As Shortt and Armstrong bundled Basharat outside, the Major put his arm around Shepherd’s shoulders. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m not happy about it,’ said Shepherd, ‘but it had to be done.’

  ‘We didn’t hurt him, not really.’

  ‘We scared him shitless and maybe cracked a couple of ribs.’ They walked together towards the door. ‘How far would we have gone, boss,’ asked Shepherd, ‘if push had come to shove?’

  ‘Hypothetical question. No point going there.’

  ‘The guy’s done nothing wrong,’ Shepherd said. ‘He’s just a journalist doing his job.’

  ‘And Geordie was doing his,’ said the Major. ‘We did what we had to do, Spider. Now, let’s get that email and Basharat can go home.’

  Geordie Mitchell paced up and down, swinging his arms. He always thought better when he was on the move, preferably on a run. The bigger the problem, the longer the run. Most of his former colleagues in the SAS were the same. Running was always the first step on the road to fitness. It built stamina and anyone preparing for the SAS selection course spent six months or more running three or four times a week. At first it was a chore, then it became a habit and eventually it was as natural as breathing.

  As he paced around the room, he gazed at the floor. It was bare concrete. It didn’t matter how thick it was because he had nothing to dig with. They’d taken his belt and emptied his pockets, and there was nothing in the basement he could use.

  Mitchell dropped to the floor and started to do press-ups, keeping his breathing steady and even. He did a slow twenty, then a brisk ten, then another slow twenty, enjoying the burn in his arms. When he’d finished the second set of twenty, he rolled over, linked his fingers behind his head and did fifty sit-ups, lay on the floor for a minute to recover, then did a second set. It was the middle of the night but the light was still on. It hadn’t been switched off all the time he’d been in the basement. He’d told Kamil that it was hard to sleep with the light on and Kamil had apologised but said that they had to be able to see him at all times. Every half-hour or so Mitchell would hear a soft footfall outside the door, then a brief silence as one of his captors looked through the peephole. The footfall was a good sign. It meant that there was no covert CCTV coverage of the basement.

  Mitchell sat up, breathing heavily. He frowned as he stared at the wall in front of him. There was a small three-pin power socket about six inches above the ground. Mitchell got to his feet and walked over to it. He sat down and stared at it. Two small screws fixed the socket into the wall. The fact that the lights were on meant that there was power to the basement, which meant that the socket was probably live. A live power line could be used as a weapon. And there’d be wires running to the socket behind the wall. Wires could also be used as a weapon. He prodded the screws with his finger. They were in tight. He needed something to loosen them. A coin, or a flat piece of metal. He stood up and walked slowly round the room, even though he knew he was wasting his time: he had already searched every square inch.

  The Transit van pulled up outside Shepherd’s house. ‘You’ve sold it already, have you?’ asked the Major, gesturing at the estate agent’s sign in the front garden.

  ‘Under offer,’ said Shepherd. ‘Should be exchanging contracts later this week.’ He opened the van’s side door and stood on the pavement looking at the house. The lights were off. It was just before eleven o’clock so Katra had almost certainly gone to bed.

  The Major climbed out and walked with him to the house. Shepherd let them in and they went through to the sitting room. ‘Drink?’ he asked, as he sat down at his computer. There was a stack of paper in the printer’s tray: Liam had been downloading information on the space-shuttle programme.

  ‘I’m okay,’ said the Major. He pulled up a chair and sat down. He had written down Basharat’s email address and password on a piece of paper and he handed it to Shepherd, who launched his Internet browser, tapped in the address of the g-mail home page, then logged on to Basharat’s account.

  There were half a dozen unread emails, all but one in English, the most recent from Basharat’s brother in Qatar. The four-minute video was tagged on to the email as an attachment and Shepherd clicked on it.

  ‘When are you moving to Hereford?’ asked the Major, as they waited for the file to download.

  ‘Should be about a month,’ said Shepherd. ‘We’ve already got a place fixed up. It’s just a question of handling the legal stuff.’

  ‘And the job’s okay with you being based out of London?’

  ‘The unit works all over the country so it doesn’t matter where my house is,’ said Shepherd. ‘The important thing is that Liam will get to spe
nd more time with his grandparents. It’s important for him and it’s important for them. He’s all they have left of Sue.’

  Shepherd’s wife had died two and a half years earlier in a road accident, driving Liam to school. She’d jumped a red light and her VW Golf had slammed into a truck. Since then Shepherd had juggled being an undercover cop with his responsibilities as a single parent. Even with Katra’s help it hadn’t been easy.

  ‘How are you getting on with Liam?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Shepherd. ‘He’s a great boy.’

  ‘He’s got over what happened?’

  ‘I don’t think either of us will ever get over it entirely, but he seems okay.’

  ‘What about you? Not seeing anyone?’

  Shepherd chuckled. ‘Since when have you been all touchy-feely, boss?’

  ‘Three years is long enough, Spider. No one expects you to stay in mourning for ever.’

  ‘It’s two and a half. And I’m not in mourning.’ Shepherd grimaced – he had sounded defensive.

  ‘How long has it been since you went on a date?’

  Shepherd laughed. ‘Do people still go on dates?’

  ‘I was trying to ask you subtly how long it’d been since you got laid.’

  ‘I don’t have much opportunity,’ said Shepherd. ‘Most of the women I’ve met recently have been either planning to have their husbands killed or blowing themselves to kingdom come. And I’m so busy that speed-dating is probably the only dating I’d have time for.’

  The video finished its download and Shepherd opened the Windows Media Player so that they could watch it. The video had evidently been edited before it had been sent to the television station as it started in mid-sentence as a masked man with a Kalashnikov paced up and down in front of the camera.

  The first thirty seconds hadn’t been shown on television, and there was no station logo as there had been on the transmitted version. ‘It’s clearer than the version we taped off Sky News,’ said the Major. ‘If there’s anything in it that’ll help us find Geordie we’ll stand a better chance of seeing it on this.’

  They heard footsteps padding down the stairs and looked around to see Katra walk into the room, wrapped in a pink towelling robe. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said.

  ‘What were you expecting, burglars?’ asked Shepherd.

  Katra looked confused. ‘No, I locked the doors,’ she said. Since she had arrived from Slovenia her English had improved by leaps and bounds, but she still hadn’t grasped Shepherd’s sense of humour.

  Shepherd introduced Major Gannon.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ she asked. ‘I could make sandwiches.’

  ‘We’re fine,’ said Shepherd. ‘We’re doing a bit of work, so you can go back to bed. Sorry we woke you.’

  ‘I was waiting for you to come back,’ said Katra. ‘Would you like some coffee?’

  ‘Really, we’re fine,’ said Shepherd. ‘Now scoot.’ Katra giggled and went back upstairs. When Shepherd turned back to the Major, the boss was grinning at him. ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ said the Major.

  ‘She’s a kid,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘She’s, what – mid-twenties?’

  ‘Twenty-four. And I’m thirty-six.’

  ‘So when you’re ninety, she’ll be seventy-eight.’

  ‘And she’s an employee.’

  ‘I didn’t say anything, Spider.’

  Shepherd burned the video on to a CD, then copied the original email on to the same disk.

  ‘Anything interesting in his in-box?’ asked the Major.

  Shepherd clicked through Basharat’s emails. There was nothing out of the ordinary, mainly gossip to friends in Qatar and his brother in Riyadh. ‘Just chit-chat,’ he said. He ejected the CD and gave it to the Major. ‘What’s the plan now?’

  ‘We’ll give the video a full working over, and I’ll run a check on the email,’ said Gannon. ‘We should be able to track it back to its source. Let’s just hope it’s in Iraq.’

  Shepherd walked the Major out to the van. Overhead the moon was full, so clear that they could see the craters on its surface. ‘Geordie’s boss is in town tomorrow,’ said the Major. ‘Can you come to Portland Place in the afternoon?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Shepherd. ‘We’re on a loose rein at the moment.’

  The Major climbed back into the Transit van and drove off. As Shepherd walked to the front door he switched on his mobile. He had one voicemail message and he listened to it as he locked the front door. It was Caroline Stockmann, the unit’s new psychologist.

  Shepherd walked into the King’s Head and looked around. Brown coat, brown hair and glasses, was how she’d described herself. Arranging to meet in the pub down the road from his house was a smart move, he thought, as he walked through the bar. If he didn’t turn up she didn’t have far to walk to his house. That had been one of Kathy Gift’s tricks, turning up on his doorstep unannounced.

  Caroline Stockmann was sitting in a quiet corner with a pint of beer in front of her. Chestnut hair rather than brown, a bit shorter than shoulder-length, glasses with rectangular frames. She was reading a copy of the Economist and looked up from it as he walked over. ‘Dan?’ He frowned at the pint glass and she smiled. ‘You expected me to be sipping orange juice?’ she asked.

  Shepherd was lost for words. That was exactly what he’d thought. It was late afternoon but, even so, their meeting was business rather than social. And a pint of beer was the last thing he’d have expected a female psychologist to be drinking. ‘Sorry. Yes. Dan – Dan Shepherd.’

  ‘You can have orange juice if you want, but I’m off home after this and I’ve had a rough day,’ she said.

  ‘No, I could do with a drink, too,’ said Shepherd. Stockmann extended her hand and he shook it. She had a firm grip. He noticed the engagement and wedding rings on her left hand. ‘Do I call you Dr Stockmann, Mrs Stockmann or Caroline?’

  ‘Caroline is fine.’

  Shepherd went over to the bar and returned with a Jameson’s, soda and ice. He sat down opposite her. ‘Do you do a lot of interviews in pubs?’

  ‘I pretty much go where I have to,’ said Stockmann. ‘You guys don’t work office hours, and it’s not as if you can pop into the local police station, is it? Where did Kathy see you?’

  Shepherd grinned. ‘She used to turn up at my house, but that was because I kept missing appointments.’

  ‘Deliberately?’

  ‘As you said, we work odd hours. It’s hard to plan ahead.’

  ‘Which is why pubs are a good idea,’ she said. ‘And they pull a good pint here.’

  ‘I’m not really a beer drinker,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Watching your weight?’

  ‘It’s an undercover thing. If I drink beer, everyone knows how much I’ve had. If I’m on whiskey and soda, I can add more soda and ice and no one’s any the wiser. I can stay sober while everyone else drinks themselves stupid.’

  ‘Vodka and tonic would make more sense. There’s no colour to show how weak it is.’

  ‘Okay, but I like the taste of Jameson’s,’ admitted Shepherd. ‘You’ll find most of the undercover guys stick to spirits and mixers.’

  ‘You like undercover work?’

  ‘You couldn’t do it if you didn’t,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘What do you like? The challenge?’

  ‘Sure. You’re putting yourself up against some very heavy guys. One false move and it’s all over.’

  ‘That must be scary at times.’

  ‘Challenging.’

  Stockmann smiled but said nothing.

  ‘You don’t take notes,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘I’ve got a good memory,’ she said. ‘Something we have in common.’

  ‘Photographic?’

  ‘I wish,’ she said. ‘But I can remember conversations almost verbatim. And I’m good with facts. And vocabulary. I speak five languages almost fluently.’

  ‘I envy you that. I’m bad at languages. My memory’s infallib
le with facts, faces and events, but I can’t process information the way you have to if you want to speak a foreign language.’

  ‘We’ve something else in common. I have a son called Liam, too.’

  Shepherd raised his glass to her. ‘Great name,’ he said.

  ‘My husband thought so,’ said Stockmann. ‘And we’ve a daughter. Rebecca.’

  ‘Kids are what it’s all about,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Your boy must make your life complicated.’

  ‘That’s one way of putting it.’ Shepherd laughed. ‘He’s ten so most of the time he still does as he’s told, but I’m dreading his teens.’

  ‘Being a one-parent family can’t be easy at the best of times, but the pressures of your job must make it even more difficult.’

  Shepherd shrugged. ‘I have an au pair, and we’re moving closer to my in-laws, Liam’s grandparents.’

  ‘You’re leaving Ealing?’

  ‘The house is under offer,’ said Shepherd, ‘and there’s a place in Hereford we’re interested in.’

  ‘Bereavement, divorce and moving house are the three most stressful events in anyone’s life. That’s what they say.’

  ‘Yeah, well, only someone who’s never been shot would say that,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘You’ve been shot?’

  ‘Isn’t it in my file?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘I didn’t see it,’ said Stockmann. ‘What happened?’

  ‘It was when I was in the SAS,’ said Shepherd. ‘Afghanistan. A sniper got me in the shoulder.’

  ‘Ouch,’ said Stockmann.

  ‘It was a bit more than ouch,’ said Shepherd. ‘If I hadn’t been helicoptered out, I might not have made it.’

  ‘That’s not why you left the SAS, though, is it?’

  ‘Nah. I was back on duty two months later. I left the Regiment when my wife fell pregnant. She thought I should spend more time at home.’ He snorted. ‘That’s not how it worked out, though. I was probably away more as a cop than I was when I was with the Regiment.’

  ‘Out of the frying-pan into the fire?’

  ‘Exactly how she put it,’ said Shepherd. ‘Though Sue was a bit more expressive.’

  ‘More adjectives?’

  ‘A lot more.’