Black Ops: The 12th Spider Shepherd Thriller

by Leather, Stephen

  ‘So at any one time there’s probably hundreds of kilos of drugs in there?’

  ‘Yeah, but it doesn’t hang around for long,’ said Justin. ‘The smaller vans move the chicken and fish around to the supermarkets and restaurants they supply, and they use the same vans to move the drugs.’

  Shepherd looked over at Sharpe. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘It’s a big operation,’ said Sharpe. ‘Plenty big enough, I’d say.’

  ‘Anything else you need?’ asked Justin.

  ‘Nah, you’ve done us proud,’ said Shepherd. ‘We’ll run you back home.’

  Jeremy Willoughby-Brown pressed the remote to open his garage door and drove his Volvo carefully inside. There were four bikes parked to the left and a large lawnmower to the right and there were only a few inches to spare if he wasn’t going to scratch the paintwork of his car. He held the door close as he climbed out, then reached inside for his briefcase. As he straightened up he gasped involuntarily as he saw the figure standing in the open doorway. He held the briefcase up to his chest even though he knew it wouldn’t even come close to stopping a bullet.

  The figure chuckled. ‘Don’t worry, Jeremy, I’m not here to shoot you,’ said the figure. ‘Not that I haven’t thought about it.’

  The voice was familiar but Willoughby-Brown couldn’t quite place it. He took a few hesitant steps forward and then realised who it was. ‘Shepherd? What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘Relax, Jeremy, that’s not a gun in my pocket, I’m just pleased to see you.’

  ‘What do you want, Shepherd?’

  ‘Oh, so now I’m Shepherd and not Danny boy. What’s happened, Jeremy? Are we not best friends any more?’

  Willoughby-Brown glanced anxiously across at the house.

  ‘Don’t worry, I won’t keep you long,’ said Shepherd. ‘Emily will never know I’ve been here. She’s probably helping Joshua and Jane with their homework.’ He smiled as Willoughby-Brown stiffened. ‘What, you think you’re the only one who can get intel on people? I have to say I never pegged you for a married man. Not that I thought you were gay, just sort of asexual, you know? I could never picture any woman wanting you to climb on top of her.’

  Willoughby-Brown glared at him but didn’t say anything.

  ‘But here you are, married to a former stockbroker, father of two lovely kids at private school. The perfect family. And I love the Jeremy, Joshua and Jane thing. Maybe if you have another son, you could call him Judas?’

  ‘What the fuck do you want, Shepherd?’

  ‘I want a chat.’

  ‘You could have come to my office for that.’

  Shepherd shook his head. ‘I’m not going anywhere near your office,’ he said. He was wearing a long black overcoat and had his hands thrust deep into the pockets. The collar was turned up against the cold wind that was blowing down the street.

  ‘So you just come to my home instead?’

  Shepherd shrugged. ‘How does it feel to know that someone has been digging into your personal life, Jeremy? It doesn’t feel good, does it? Bit like when you started talking about my two-bedroom flat and the view of the Thames. Just to let me know that you knew. But that didn’t intimidate me, it just made me angry.’

  ‘Fine, message received loud and clear. Now I’ll ask you again, what the fuck do you want?’

  ‘I’m not doing your dirty work any more,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘This is about Button?’

  ‘Of course it’s about her. If you want to bring her down, you can do it yourself. Lex Harper told me to fuck off and that’s what I’m saying to you.’

  ‘Because?’

  ‘Because I didn’t join MI5 to shaft my boss, a boss who I also count as a friend. If she’s broken the law then you can use someone else to put the case together because I’m not doing it. I take down villains and I take down terrorists, I don’t take down friends.’

  ‘Even friends who break the law?’

  ‘Like I said, if she’s broken the law then you go and put a case together, but I don’t want to be part of it.’

  ‘You don’t get to choose your cases,’ said Willoughby-Brown coldly.

  ‘Actually I do. I work undercover most of the time and I’m never asked to do anything that I don’t want to.’

  ‘This isn’t an undercover case.’

  ‘Yes, it is. You want me to screw over Charlie behind her back. You want me to look her in the eye and smile while at the same time I’m plotting with you to bring her down. And I’m here to tell you that’s not going to happen.’

  Willoughby-Brown glared at him. ‘You do this and your career is over,’ he said quietly.

  ‘No, it’s not,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’ll still have a career, it just might not be with MI5. I had a career before Five and I’ll sure as hell have a career afterwards. If you want to get me fired, fine. We’ll see how you get on at an employment tribunal. But you’re not using me to take down Charlie Button. I’m done.’ He turned his back on Willoughby-Brown and walked away into the night, his feet crunching on the gravel drive.

  Willoughby-Brown stood where he was, his heart pounding. He realised he was still holding his briefcase in front of his chest and he slowly lowered it. He took a deep breath, clicked the remote to shut the garage door and tried to smile as he headed towards his house.

  Harper and Maggie May took a taxi to the city’s nightclub area and it dropped them off outside a pretty rough bar that Harper was familiar with. The doormen greeted him with the traditional bouncers’ scowl and they both checked out Maggie May’s impressive legs and cleavage, which were very much on display, before waving them inside.

  They found a seat at the table in a chill-out area away from the pounding house music on the dance floor, and drank a couple of beers as they surveyed the crowd. Eventually Harper found what he was looking for – a group of bikers who were all wearing filthy chopped-down denim jackets emblazoned with a lightning bolt motorcycle club insignia that looked to be first cousin to a Nazi swastika. They were loud and obnoxious and had carved out their own area in the bar. Most of the club’s patrons gave them a wide berth except for the young girls in short skirts and cropped tops who allowed themselves to be groped and fondled in exchange for alcohol and the white tablets the bikers kept feeding them. Several of the bikers had shaved heads; they all had tattoos and were missing teeth and while they were all big and well muscled Harper knew that none of them would be a problem, one on one. They were pack animals. They lived in a pack and they fought in a pack, and that was always their weakness.

  Harper sipped his beer and chatted to Maggie May as he waited, like a cheetah surveying a pack of wildebeest, waiting for one to leave the safety of the herd. There were two false starts when two of the bikers went to the men’s toilets. The first time there were already two clubbers inside and the second the biker had been followed in by another man. It was third time lucky. The biker was just over six feet tall; his jacket sleeves had been hacked off to reveal his vivid full-length arm tattoos. His belt buckle was in the shape of a large razor blade and he had chunky metal rings on all his fingers, effectively giving him lethal, and legal, knuckledusters on each hand. He pushed a man in a black suit out of the way. The man turned and glared angrily but when he saw who had pushed him, he moved away quickly.

  ‘That’s the one,’ said Harper. ‘I’ll be in and out in thirty seconds. If anyone looks as if they’re going to follow us in, run interference.’

  Harper slipped on his gloves as he headed into the toilets. He would only have a few seconds to take the man out but he had rehearsed it in his mind and knew exactly what to do. He pushed open the door. There were two stalls to the left and a long stainless steel urinal to the right. The biker was standing in the middle of the urinal, playing a stream of urine in the general direction of the wall but not seeming to care how much sprayed over the floor. He took a quick look over his shoulder as the door opened but then turned back to the matter in hand.

  Harp
er walked quickly across the tiled floor, grabbed the back of the biker’s head and smashed it against the wall. The biker slumped to the floor and Harper helped him down, then stood over him and patted him down. He found a large folding knife in the back pocket of the man’s jeans and he slipped it into a Ziploc plastic bag which he shoved inside his jacket. Then he grabbed the biker’s hair and pulled out a clump, which went into a second Ziploc bag. Less than thirty seconds after entering the toilet Harper was heading out of the club with Maggie May and five minutes after that they were in a taxi heading back to the hotel.

  Shepherd and Sharpe were sitting at a table furthest from the bar when Drinkwater and Allen walked in. It had started raining outside and Drinkwater shook out a large golfing umbrella before slotting it into a stand by the door. Allen had already spotted Shepherd and strode across the pub to shake his hand.

  ‘Thanks for arranging this – I didn’t want to do it at your station,’ said Shepherd, keeping his voice low so that Drinkwater wouldn’t hear. ‘I owe you one.’

  ‘Paul’s more than happy to hear what you’ve got to say,’ said the detective. ‘I told him you could deliver him a big score and he’s been on tenterhooks ever since.’

  The detective sergeant walked over, his face impassive. Shepherd got the impression that he didn’t smile much, but then detectives rarely did when on duty. Drinkwater made no attempt to shake hands. He nodded curtly at Shepherd and then gestured at Sharpe.

  ‘And this is …?’

  ‘An old colleague,’ said Shepherd. ‘Jimmy Sharpe.’

  ‘Less of the old,’ growled Sharpe.

  ‘Jimmy’s attached to the National Crime Agency.’

  ‘Then he won’t mind showing me his warrant card.’

  Sharpe stood up, took out his warrant card and handed it over. Drinkwater studied it carefully, as if committing the details to memory, before passing it back.

  ‘Scottish?’ he confirmed.

  ‘Aye. I voted for independence but what can you do?’ said Sharpe. He sat down again. ‘Get the drinks in, Spider,’ he said, gesturing at his half-empty glass.

  ‘What can I get you guys?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘We’re on duty. So an orange juice will do me,’ said Drinkwater.

  From the look on his face it was clear that Allen would have preferred a beer but he asked for a coffee. They sat down as Shepherd went over to the bar but stayed silent until Shepherd returned with their drinks and a fresh pint for Sharpe.

  ‘So what have you got for us?’ asked Drinkwater, getting straight to the point.

  ‘It’s good news,’ said Shepherd. ‘The Yilmaz brothers aren’t as small time as you might have thought. They take a run over to Liverpool every two weeks to pick up their drugs from a firm there. Each trip it’s a couple of kilos of coke plus heroin, Ecstasy and amphetamines. They pay in cash too, on the spot.’

  ‘This Liverpool firm is where?’

  ‘The drugs are in a warehouse depot on the outskirts of the city. They bring them in from Amsterdam in refrigerated trucks full of chickens.’

  ‘Chickens?’ repeated the detective sergeant with a look of disbelief.

  Shepherd nodded. ‘It’s clever. They’ve been doing it for years. They bring in a dozen or so trucks a day and distribute the chickens right across the north-west. Fish, too. It’s a real business, the drugs side is the icing on the cake. The drugs are kept in the depot and they use the same delivery vans to move them as and when.’

  The detective sergeant frowned. ‘If you know this …’ He nodded at Sharpe. ‘And the NCA knows what’s going on, why haven’t they been shut down?’

  ‘Merseyside police have gone in a couple of times but both times the depot was clean. No drugs, no cash, no weapons. We think the gang has a man inside the drugs squad.’

  ‘A corrupt cop?’ said Drinkwater.

  ‘It wouldn’t be the first time,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Well, we have to do something about that, right?’

  ‘The problem with that is that a corrupt cop means Criminal Complaints. And if they’re informed then they’ll take over the investigation. With phone taps and bank records being checked, it could take years before they put a case together. And you’ll get none of the credit. Worse than that, you bringing down another officer probably won’t help your career prospects.’

  Drinkwater nodded slowly. ‘So what’s your plan?’

  ‘The way I see it there are two ways forward. We can bust the Liverpool operation but if we do that we’re going to need to bring in the NCA. We can’t use the Liverpool cops because they’re obviously leaking like a sieve. Or we can just bust the Yilmaz brothers when they get back to Leeds with a delivery. That way it can all be handled by the West Yorkshire cops. No need to involve Liverpool at all. It’ll be a smaller bust but still a few kilos, plus you’d get a decent proceeds of crime investigation going.’

  ‘That’s why you’re here?’ said Drinkwater, looking at Sharpe.

  ‘I can get the NCA moving, no problem,’ said Sharpe. ‘They’ll arrange surveillance at the ports, they’ll put the gang under the microscope, and they’ll go in without the Liverpool cops knowing what’s happening.’

  ‘And that would be an NCA case, not a West Yorkshire case?’

  ‘I’d make sure you got full credit,’ said Sharpe.

  ‘But it would be an NCA case?’ repeated the detective sergeant.

  ‘It would have to be,’ said Shepherd. ‘The geographic reach, for a start. Also, budget-wise. It’d be expensive. But it would be a great bust. This gang is bringing in hundreds of kilos at a time. Bringing them down would be a real victory. They’d be behind bars for decades and we’d be taking millions of pounds worth of drugs off the streets.’

  Drinkwater rubbed his chin. ‘Maybe we’re better going for the brothers when they bring back a delivery,’ he said. ‘We’d have more control, less chance of anything going wrong.’

  It sounded to Shepherd as if the detective sergeant was trying to talk himself into it, so he said nothing. Frankly he didn’t care which option the detective went for, all he was interested in was getting Liam off the hook.

  ‘Plus we’d be striking when the iron is hot,’ Drinkwater went on. ‘They go to Liverpool every two weeks, you say?’

  ‘Regular as clockwork,’ said Shepherd. ‘Every second Thursday.’

  ‘And when are they next due for a run?’

  ‘Next week,’ said Sharpe.

  ‘Let’s go for that, then. How do we proceed?’

  ‘You’re sure about this?’ said Sharpe. ‘You want to go for the small fry?’

  ‘Not that small,’ said Drinkwater. ‘By keeping it in-house, we can make sure that nothing goes wrong. And we’ve got a major drugs problem in Leeds at the moment, so this will show that we’re doing something about it. So what do we do?’

  ‘It’s simple enough,’ said Shepherd. ‘Jimmy and I can give you the intel and you just put a tail on the brothers next Thursday. If they visit the depot you’ll know they have the drugs. You follow them back to the minicab office and Robert’s your mother’s brother, as they say.’

  Drinkwater frowned, not getting the joke.

  ‘Bob’s your uncle,’ said Sharpe, filling in the blanks.

  ‘And how do I say we got the intel?’ asked Drinkwater.

  ‘Anonymous tip’s the best way,’ said Shepherd. ‘Just say you caught the call, you used your initiative, blah blah blah.’

  Drinkwater nodded thoughtfully. ‘So no NCA involvement?’

  ‘If that’s the way you want to go, sure. We’ll give you the intel and leave it at that. I just want to be sure that you won’t be taking the case against my son any further.’

  ‘If your intel is good then I’ll happily drop the case against him.’

  ‘No caution, nothing on his record?’

  ‘It’ll be as if it never happened,’ said Drinkwater.

  Shepherd held out his hand. Drinkwater frowned, but then offered his hand and the
two men shook on it.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Just make sure he doesn’t get into trouble again.’

  ‘Oh believe me, I’ve already read him the riot act and I’m watching him like a hawk.’

  Sharpe reached into his pocket and took out a thumbdrive. ‘That’s everything we have,’ he said, passing it to Drinkwater. He gave him a business card. ‘Anything else you need, my mobile number is on there.’

  Drinkwater stood up. He hadn’t touched his orange juice. ‘Okay, well thanks for what you’ve done. I’ll take it from here.’

  Allen nodded at Shepherd, forced a smile, then followed the detective sergeant out of the pub.

  ‘Well, that was interesting,’ said Sharpe.

  ‘In what way?’

  Sharpe gestured at the door. ‘Drinkwater. Graduate entrant, fast-track, won’t drink on duty, stickler for the rules, pole up his backside, and yet given the chance between personal glory and shutting down a major drug route, what does he do?’

  Shepherd knew the question was rhetorical so he didn’t answer. He shrugged and sipped his whiskey and soda.

  ‘I thought he would have gone for the big score,’ said Sharpe. ‘Caught me by surprise, that.’

  ‘There’s not many would choose the greater good over personal advancement,’ said Shepherd. ‘He sees himself on the front of the local paper taking credit for a big drugs bust. And getting a congratulatory email from the chief constable.’

  ‘He would have got that in spades in Liverpool.’

  ‘A bird in the hand, Razor,’ said Shepherd. ‘And he probably doesn’t trust us.’

  ‘I’m a policeman,’ said Sharpe with a grin. ‘I can be trusted.’

  ‘Yeah but he doesn’t know us. For all he knows we’re spinning him a line. This way he gets the local bust and the credit.’

  ‘And meanwhile tons of drugs keep coming into the country on those refrigerated trucks.’ Sharpe shrugged and sipped his pint. ‘Not everyone’s as altruistic as you, I suppose.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Sharpe raised his glass. ‘You know what I mean. If it was you, what would you have gone for?’