The bikes took a left turn and drove through a village of wooden houses with corrugated iron roofs. They passed a large factory with smoke billowing out of two metal chimneys. There, the road branched into two and the bikes powered to the right, Shepherd behind them.
The compound was about half a mile after the factory. The bikes turned left off the road towards a high concrete wall topped by metal spikes and covered with CCTV cameras. Two well-built Thai men in their late twenties were standing at the entrance. One raised a red and white pole to allow the bikes through. Yates stopped and pointed at Shepherd’s Jeep. As Shepherd drove through, the guards saluted him.
The compound had been landscaped with rolling lawns, towering palms and spreading fruit trees. The road curved in front of a Thai-style building, with a sweeping red-tiled roof, and ended in a parking area with spaces for more than two dozen vehicles. There were two black Range Rovers, a red Porsche, a black Humvee, a Bentley convertible, an old MGB sports car and three Toyota saloons. Shepherd reckoned the latter belonged to the staff.
He parked his Jeep next to the Humvee. A flight of steps led to a massive antique carved wooden door that must have been at least twelve feet high. Over to the right, Shepherd glimpsed the roof of a villa, and there was another to the left, shielded by a line of banana trees.
Yates and Black walked over to him. ‘How big is this place?’ asked Shepherd.
‘It’s about twelve acres in all,’ said Yates. He gestured at the main building. ‘This is where we hang out most of the time, but we’ve got our own villas for privacy, all state-of-the-art.’
Shepherd heard the buzz of an electric drill and banging from the villa to their right. ‘What’s going on over there?’
‘We’re getting Tel’s place fitted for his wheelchair,’ said Black. ‘We’re putting in ramps, electric lifts in the bathrooms, lowering the kitchen surfaces, raising electric sockets. We had a disability expert in to tell us what he’ll need.’
‘He’s not going back to the UK?’ said Shepherd.
‘You’ve got to be joking,’ said Black. ‘Have you used the NHS lately? They’d send a home help around a couple of times a week if he was lucky. Here we can get him a couple of sexy nurses living in, pay for any drugs he needs, and if there’s anything that has to be done surgically we’ll pay for it here. Thai medical care is great, so long as you’ve got the money. Come on, I’ll give you the tour.’
Black and Yates took Shepherd up the steps and through the door into a double-height hallway with a vaulted teak ceiling and a seven-foot-tall golden standing Buddha wreathed in garlands of purple and white flowers. The hallway led to a huge room filled with sofas and teak planters’ chairs, a large LCD television on one wall and a library of paperbacks. ‘Chill-out area,’ said Yates. ‘We’ve got our own satellite dish out back so we can pick up pretty much every channel there is.’ He took Shepherd along to a dining room with a table long enough to seat twenty, then opened a door to reveal a private cinema with a dozen La-Z-Boy reclining seats. Shepherd was impressed. He’d thought his own villa was luxurious but it paled in comparison to this.
‘The guys are in the bar,’ said Black. He and Yates led Shepherd down corridor that opened into a double-height area, with vaulted teak ceilings and large wooden-bladed fans. It had been fitted out in the style of a hotel bar, with leather sofas and armchairs, a mahogany counter complete with beer taps, a popcorn machine and a full range of spirits. Glass-fronted fridges were filled with wine and soft drinks.
The five-star feel was spoiled somewhat by the three video-game machines, the Wurlitzer jukebox, a massive fruit machine and a pool table.
Mickey and Mark were at the bar, sitting on stools and drinking Singha. They raised their bottles. ‘It’s Bruce bloody Lee!’ Mark laughed.
Shepherd put up his hands. ‘Just don’t hit me again!’
‘Found him in the gym,’ said Yates, pouring himself a draught beer. ‘He was working on his muscles for a rematch.’
‘Bloody wasn’t,’ said Shepherd.
‘He’s only breaking your balls,’ said Black, as he sat on one of the leather sofas. ‘It’s what he does for fun.’
‘This is one hell of a place, guys,’ said Shepherd.
‘It’s taken a lot to get it this way,’ said Mickey. ‘We ended up flying in builders from England – the locals just weren’t up to it. We let them do the pool and it was a bloody disaster so we had to start again.’ He slid off his stool. ‘Come and have a look – it’s one hell of a pool.’
Mickey wasn’t exaggerating. It was Olympic size but designed in the shape of a tropical lagoon, with rocks big enough for sunbathing at one end, two diving-boards at the deep end, and two curved artificial beaches. At the shallow end there was a Jacuzzi big enough for a dozen people, and around the edge, half a dozen teak cabanas, their roofs fringed with palm leaves. A covered area, with a brick-built barbecue the size of a regular kitchen, was positioned to the right, with a circular teak table and a dozen chairs. ‘The pool’s just over a thousand square metres,’ said Mickey. ‘One of the biggest free-form pools in the world. We’ve got two poolboys and three full-time gardeners, plus half a dozen maids and a handyman. Plus two full-time chefs. Plus security. Plus a manager to keep them all in line. Plus an accountant to make sure no one’s ripping us off.’
‘It must cost you a fortune,’ said Shepherd.
Mickey took a swig of his beer. ‘It’s where we live,’ he said. ‘It’s our home.’
‘Even so … this is living it large.’
‘You only live once, mate. You’ve gotta seize the day – you’ve gotta go for it because no one’s going to hand it to you on a plate.’ He waved at the pool. ‘Come on, let’s get some use out of it, yeah?’
‘I’ll get my gear,’ said Shepherd. He went back through the bar and outside to his Jeep. When he returned with his gym bag, the rest of the men had joined Mickey at the poolside and were in their trunks.
‘Changing rooms over there,’ shouted Wilson, pointing at a stone building with a teak roof.
Inside Shepherd found a row of showers and toilets, and ten polished steel lockers. He changed into his shorts and wandered back to the pool. Mickey and Mark were in one of the cabanas, drinking Singha and leaning against triangular Thai pillows. Yates was already in the pool, doing a brisk breast-stroke, his head rising high out of the water each time he brought his hands back to his chest.
‘Help yourself to a beer, mate,’ said Mickey, jerking a thumb at a small fridge in the back of the cabana. Shepherd bent down and took out a bottle of Heineken. ‘Bloody hell, mate, what happened to you?’ He was staring at the scar on Shepherd’s shoulder. ‘That’s a gunshot wound, innit?’
Shepherd ran his finger across the scar tissue. ‘Yeah.’
‘Working?’
‘Sort of,’ said Shepherd. ‘Army.’
‘Can I have a look?’
‘Knock yourself out.’
Mickey stood up and came over to him. The scar was puckered in a tight circle, darker than the surrounding skin. ‘That was one big bullet,’ said Mickey.
‘Yeah, well, they don’t mess around with Kalashnikovs,’ said Shepherd.
‘No way,’ said Mickey.
‘In Afghanistan,’ said Shepherd. ‘Bastard took a potshot at me.’
‘Let me have a butcher’s,’ said Mark.
‘You were in the army?’ asked Mickey.
‘No, you soft bastard, I was with the Taliban. Of course I was in the bloody army.’
‘You don’t look like ex-army, that’s all.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’
‘Who were you with?’ asked Mickey.
‘The Paras,’ said Shepherd. It was the first lie he’d told. Everything else had been true, but his Ricky Knight legend didn’t include a spell with the SAS.
‘So you jumped out of planes and shit?’ asked Mark. He took a fresh bottle of Singha out of the fridge and used his teeth to prise off the cap. He spat
it over his head and took a swig of the beer.
‘That’s sort of what paratroopers do,’ said Shepherd.
‘All paras jump out of planes?’
Shepherd wondered if Mark was joking but it was clear from his earnest expression that he was serious. ‘That’s right.’
Mark looked at his brother. ‘I thought Tel was with the Paras but he never jumped out of a plane.’
‘Tel was a squaddie. He just talks big sometimes,’ said Mickey.
‘When’s he coming back?’ asked Shepherd.
‘Doctors say another week or two.’
‘What was the story with the truck?’ asked Shepherd.
‘The driver was out of his head on booze and amphetamines, hit Tel and went off like a bat out of hell,’ said Mickey. ‘Cops picked him up an hour or two later but he blamed Tel and they dropped the case.’
‘Bastards,’ said Shepherd.
‘Every time a farang and a Thai have a run-in, the cops always side with their own,’ said Mickey. ‘That’s the way it is. We’ll have him, though – we know where he lives. We’re just biding our time.’
‘So, have you fired big guns and shit?’ Mark asked Shepherd.
‘Again, that’s what paras do, Mark,’ said Shepherd. ‘They jump out of planes and they fire shit.’
‘And you did that in Afghanistan?’
‘I didn’t jump in Afghanistan, but I fired a lot of shit, yeah.’
‘Like what?’
‘Why the interest?’ asked Shepherd.
Mark grinned. ‘We fire a lot of shit ourselves,’ he said. ‘We go over to Cambodia – it’s real Wild West over there. There’s an army range where they let you fire pretty much anything you want. Machine-guns, mortars … You can even throw grenades.’
‘Sounds fun.’
‘It’s a bloody riot,’ said Mark. ‘They give you machine-guns and you can shoot at chickens. Shoot them to bits. And if you want they’ll let you shoot a cow. You’ve got to pay for it, and they keep the beef afterwards, but you can kill it.’
‘Not sure I’d want to shoot a defenceless cow,’ said Shepherd. He sipped his beer and sighed. ‘This really is the life, isn’t it? You’ve got yourselves well sorted.’
‘We’ve worked hard for this,’ said Mark. ‘Bloody hard.’ He went back to sit in the cabana. Mickey and Shepherd joined him on the Thai pillows.
‘Do you go back to England much?’ asked Shepherd.
‘Just for business,’ said Mickey. ‘It’s a shit-hole, these days.’
‘England’s finished,’ said Mark. He leaned towards Shepherd. ‘You know how many Brits pack up and leave England every year? Two hundred and fifty thousand. A quarter of a million. And when I say Brits, I mean English, the likes of you and me. Real English.’
‘Whites, you mean?’
Mark shook his head emphatically. ‘It’s nothing to do with colour, mate. Tel’s as black as the ace of spades but he’s as British as you and me. Even served in the army – did two tours in Afghanistan. His parents came over to England in the sixties and he was born in Brixton. He’s a West Ham supporter, but apart from that he’s a diamond. The point is, Tel’s black but he hates the way England’s gone down the toilet as much as I do. It’s not about colour, it’s about culture. I’m English, so are you. You know how many of my relatives died in the First and Second World Wars fighting for our country? Thirty-seven. Thirty-bloody-seven.’
‘I’m not sure I get your point,’ said Shepherd.
‘The point, mate, is that my family shed its blood for our country. Fought and died for it. But now it’s not my country any more … Our mum died five years ago. Stroke.’
‘Sorry to hear that,’ said Shepherd.
‘By the time she died, her and our dad were the only white people in their street. Every other house it was Asians or bloody Taliban refugees. Me and Mickey got him out, got him a villa in Spain. Happy as Larry he is now, playing poker and sitting by the pool. And you know what? The village he lives in, almost everyone’s English. That’s how crazy it is. In London he was surrounded by foreigners. He goes abroad and he’s with his own kind. The world’s gone mad.’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ said Mickey. He clinked his bottle against his brother’s, then Shepherd’s.
‘I wonder how the Spanish feel about it,’ said Shepherd.
‘What do you mean?’ said Mark, frowning.
‘It’s sort of the same, isn’t it? Brits are flooding into Spain and to the Spanish they’re foreigners.’
‘It’s not the same,’ said Mark. ‘Spain is EU. I’ve nothing against the Spanish wanting to live in England if that’s what floats their boat. The Spanish are okay. What I object to is the fact we give passports to Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese, Serbs, Romanian gypsies, the scum of the earth.’
‘Actually, Romania’s EU,’ said Shepherd. ‘They’re entitled.’
Mark’s eyes hardened. ‘What?’
‘I’m just saying, Romania’s in the EU. They can move to the UK if they want, same as you can live in Romania.’
‘Why the fuck would I want to live in Romania? It’s a shit-hole.’
Shepherd put up his hands in surrender. ‘I’m not arguing with you. Forget I said anything.’ He grinned. ‘Just don’t hit me again, yeah?’
Mark didn’t smile and Shepherd could see he wasn’t happy. Mark Moore had a short fuse and Shepherd knew it wouldn’t take much to ignite it.
‘I know what John means,’ Mickey said to his brother. ‘Guys like us go to live in Spain or Thailand, that makes us the foreigners. They probably don’t like it any better than we like Pakis and the rest moving into the UK.’
Shepherd knew he needed to change the subject. The last thing he wanted was a full-blown argument with Mark. Wilson was standing on the springboard over the swimming-pool, bouncing up and down, arms out to the side. He had a line of ornate Thai script running from his left shoulder to his elbow. ‘What does that Thai writing on Barry’s arm say?’ he asked Mickey.
‘It says, “I am a twat”, that’s what it says,’ said Mickey.
Shepherd laughed. ‘No, seriously, what does it say?’
‘It says, “I am a twat”, God’s honest truth,’ said Mickey. ‘He’s going to get it lasered off once he finds a doctor he can trust.’ Mickey took a long pull on his Singha, then wiped his mouth on his arm. ‘He had it done not long after we got to Thailand. We were in Bangkok before we came here and he pulled a dancer from the Long Gun Bar in Soi Cowboy. Fit as a butcher’s dog she was, hair down to her arse – could suck the chrome off an exhaust pipe. Anyway, Barry there bar fines her for a week and on the second day decides it’s a love job.’
‘Bar fine?’ repeated Shepherd.
‘You really are a newbie, aren’t you?’ said Mickey. ‘If you meet a bird in a bar and you want to shag her, you have to pay a fee to the bar. It’s usually about a tenner. Once you’ve paid the bar fine she can go with you.’
Wilson put his hands together and hurled himself inelegantly off the springboard. He hit the water hard, his stomach taking most of the impact. Droplets of water peppered the surface of the pool like rain.
‘Anyway, Barry tells this dancer he wants to get her name tattooed on his arm in Thai,’ Mickey continued. ‘A sign of his love, right? They both get well pissed before they go to see the tattooist and she tells the guy what to write. The next morning Barry wakes up to find she’s done a runner with his wallet, his Rolex, his jewellery, his credit cards and his passport. She’s cleaned him out. So he toddles along to the tourist police and tells them his tale of woe. They’re very sympathetic and ask him if he knows her name. “I can do better than that,” says Barry, and he peels off his shirt to show the tattoo to the cops. That’s when he finds out that he’s got the Thai for “I am a twat” on his arm.’
Wilson pulled himself out of the pool and ran his hands through his hair. He saw Shepherd and Mickey looking at him and scowled. ‘What?’ he said.
‘Just telling him ab
out the love of your life,’ said Mickey.
Wilson rubbed the tattoo. ‘If I ever catch her …’
‘What? You’ll have “wanker” tattooed on the other, will you?’ teased Mickey. ‘You soft bugger.’ He tapped his bottle against Shepherd’s shoulder. ‘Word to the wise, mate. Don’t ever let a bargirl get close to you. They look like butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths but they’ll rip your heart out, and your wallet.’
Shepherd raised his bottle in salute. ‘I’m not interested in paying for it,’ he said.
Mickey chuckled. ‘Everyone pays, mate, one way or another.’
Paul Bradshaw continued counting the fifty-pound notes. There were five hundred in all, amounting to twenty-five thousand pounds. The cashier picked up the notes and ran them through an electric counting machine that whirred for a few seconds, then digitally confirmed Bradshaw’s total. He took the Western Union form that Bradshaw had carefully filled out and ran it through his computer, then handed him a receipt.
Bradshaw walked out into Edgware Road, past a coffee shop where a dozen men in Arab dress were drinking coffee and smoking aromatic hookahs. He put his hand into his jeans pocket and took out the phone card he had bought from an Arab-run Internet café down the road. There were two phone boxes outside a branch of Woolworths, both covered with lurid postcards advertising the services of local prostitutes. He went into one, lifted the foul-smelling receiver and tapped out the Baghdad number. He knew how easily the authorities could download address books from mobile phones so the phone numbers he needed were committed to memory – he often used mnemonics as an aid.
The number was answered by a timid female voice. ‘It’s me, Farrah,’ said Bradshaw. ‘I’m calling from overseas. Please don’t say my name.’ He knew that the Americans monitored all phone traffic in and out of Iraq and he did not want even his first name to be used on an open line.
‘I understand,’ she said.
‘I’ve sent you money today.’ Her name meant ‘Joyful’ but he knew there had been no joy in Farrah’s life since the death of her husband and unborn child.
‘You do not have to do anything for me,’ she said.
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