Soft Target: The Second Spider Shepherd Thriller (A Dan Shepherd Mystery)

by Stephen Leather

  Angie took out her phone and tapped out his number. His phone rang and he took it out of his pocket. Her number was on the screen. ‘Got it?’ she asked. Shepherd nodded, and she cancelled the call. ‘You’re better texting me than calling,’ she said. ‘Every time my phone rings he wants to know who it is.’

  Shepherd put away his phone. ‘Worst possible scenario and he wants to know whose number it is, tell him you clipped my car and it’s an insurance job. No damage to yours but I lost a tail-light. Use the name I gave you. Tony Nelson.’

  ‘That’s your real name?’

  ‘It’s the name I’m using. That’s what you’ll call me. And when this is over, Tony Nelson will no longer exist.’

  ‘And I’ll never see you again?’

  ‘Why would you want to? The reason I can get away with what I do is because no one knows who I am. Even if you decide to go to the police, what can you tell them? That you paid a man called Tony Nelson to kill your husband. A man who doesn’t exist.’

  ‘Why would I go to the police?’

  ‘Guilt. Remorse.’

  ‘There’ll be no guilt,’ she said vehemently. ‘He’s made my life a misery.’

  ‘No kids?’

  ‘He can’t.’ She smiled coldly. ‘Low sperm count, the doctors said, but he won’t accept it. Blames me. That’s probably why he screws around as much as he does.’ She wrapped her arms round herself. ‘More information than you need, right?’ she said.

  ‘Anything you tell me helps,’said Shepherd.‘When can you get the money?’

  ‘I’ll have to withdraw it from one of my accounts. That’s a problem, isn’t it?’

  ‘Because?’

  ‘The cops might check for withdrawals in the days up to . . .’ She hesitated, then finished the sentence. ‘ . . . up to the day it happens.’

  ‘You just need a cover story,’ said Shepherd. She was right, of course, Shepherd knew, but he didn’t want her dragging things out while she withdrew the cash in dribs and drabs. He already had enough on tape to charge her with conspiracy, but the cash would be proof positive. ‘Say you were going gambling. Are you a member of any casinos?’

  ‘A couple in Manchester. Charlie likes to play blackjack.’

  ‘Perfect,’said Shepherd.‘Worst comes to the worst, you say you went gambling.’

  ‘The casinos keep records,’ she said.

  ‘So make sure you go a few times before I do the job. In fact, as alibis go, you could do a lot worse than be in a casino – lots of witnesses, and you have a story for where the cash went.’

  ‘Do you think the police will suspect me?’

  ‘I’ll make it look like a gangland hit,’ said Shepherd. ‘The police will put it down to a drugs war and do the bare minimum.’

  ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish?’

  ‘Something like that,’ said Shepherd.

  She shivered again. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it? It’s just another day, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, people are living their lives, and we’re talking about murder.’

  ‘We have to talk about it. It has to be planned down to the last detail because if we make one mistake they catch us. Can you get the fifteen grand by Monday morning?’

  She nodded.

  ‘And pictures. The more the merrier. We’ll talk about his schedule once you’ve paid me the deposit.’

  They stood in silence for a while. ‘That’s it?’ Angie said eventually.

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘I feel like I’ve just made a deal with the devil.’

  ‘In a way you have.’

  She forced a smile, then walked away. Shepherd saw two of Hargrove’s men, both dressed casually, moving parallel to her as she left the square. They’d follow her back to her car and would be in radio contact with two motorcyclists who had parked close by. By nightfall they would know all there was to know about Angie Kerr and her gangster husband.

  Shepherd headed back to the multi-storey car park, checking reflections in office windows and car wing mirrors to make sure he wasn’t being followed. Angie Kerr was the suspicious type and he wouldn’t put it past her to have someone tail him. Just as he had satisfied himself that no one was behind him, his mobile rang. ‘Looking good, Spider,’ said the superintendent.

  ‘You heard everything?’

  ‘We lost you a few times but we got the gist,’ said Hargrove. ‘That plus the fifteen grand will nail it for us. Our guys are on her tail as we speak.’

  ‘I’m on my way back now,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Don’t bother. We’re in a side-street overlooking the square – we’ll pick you up. Where are you?’

  Shepherd gave him directions, and five minutes later the Transit pulled up. Shepherd climbed into the back. Singh pulled the attaché case out of his hands. The superintendent took a swig of Evian water. ‘We didn’t get much from the directional microphones but the case worked a treat.’

  ‘Of course it did,’ said Singh, caressing it as if it were a favourite cat.

  Shepherd grinned at his enthusiasm and patted him on the back. ‘We’re done?’ he asked.

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Hargrove.

  Shepherd climbed out of the van. He took a circuitous route to the warehouse conversion and used his swipe card to open the outer door. His flat was on the second floor. He kept nothing of himself in it. If anyone should become suspicious of Tony Nelson, they could search it for hours and never find a clue as to his real identity. The utility bills were in Nelson’s name, paid for by direct debit from a bank account that would stand up to any scrutiny. The flat had been decorated and furnished by the landlord: white walls, light oak floors, pine furniture ordered from the Habitat catalogue. Shepherd took a bottle of lager from the stainless-steel fridge in the kitchen and sat down on the white canvas square-armed sofa in front of the television.

  He looked at the clock on top of the empty bookcase. Six thirty. He’d finish the beer, have a shower, then phone Liam. He took the three mobiles from his jacket pocket and put them on the glass-topped coffee-table. He sipped his lager. If all went to plan he’d be back in London on Monday afternoon. Hargrove hadn’t mentioned a new assignment so there was a chance that he could take a few days off. It would give him time to fix up an au pair and get the house ready for Liam’s return. He took a drink from the bottle. He might even make a start on clearing out Sue’s things. It was about time.

  He lay back on the sofa and rested the bottle on his stomach. It had been a hell of a day. Driving from Manchester to Hereford and back, then straight into the Angie Kerr sting. One hell of a day.

  Keith Rose couldn’t help smiling as he drove west on the M25. Here he was, fifteen years into a career with the Metropolitan Police, two awards for bravery on the living-room wall, and he had ten kilos of heroin in the boot of his car on the way to his very own drugs deal. ‘Funny old world,’ he whispered.

  He’d thought long and hard about what he should do with the heroin they’d taken from the crack house in Harlesden. In a perfect world he’d have dumped the polythene-wrapped packages in the nearest landfill or lake, but the world wasn’t perfect and ten kilos of grade-four heroin was worth more than three-quarters of a million pounds on the street. Not that he would get anywhere near that amount. Three-quarters of a million was what the drug was worth when it was cut with whatever the dealers had to hand and sold on to addicts in single-dose wraps. The Yardies had probably paid about three hundred grand for it. The only way Rose could get that sort of money for the heroin was if he were to sell it on to street dealers and that was too much of a risk. The only way to sell it safely was to pass it on to an importer at a price below the cost of bringing it into the country. It was a simple matter of economics. A street dealer had to pay between twenty and thirty thousand pounds a kilo. An importer bringing it in from the Continent would pay half that. So, to an importer in the UK, the heroin in Rose’s boot was worth a maximum of fifteen thousand pounds a kilo. And it would have to be even cheaper than that for
them to risk doing business with someone they didn’t know.

  The problem for Rose was that most of the major drugs importers were under surveillance by the Drugs Squad or MI5. And the smart ones were so cagey that they would only do business with people they knew. Which meant that Rose would be putting his career, if not his life, on the line for a hundred and fifty grand at best. And he had to split that two ways. Seventy-five grand wasn’t much in the grand scheme of things. Two years’ salary, give or take. Which meant plan B: take the drugs to Ireland. Irish prices were generally twenty or thirty per cent higher than in Britain – a reflection of the Celtic Tiger’s healthy economy and the fact that most of the drugs sold on there were brought from England – and the Garda Siochana, the Irish police force, was about as efficient as the Keystone Cops on a bad day. Also there was no real equivalent of MI5. The Irish Defence Forces Military Intelligence G2 Branch and the Garda’s Special Branch C3 Section concentrated on terrorism and counterintelligence, so drugs were left to the boys in blue.

  Half an hour on the Police National Computer was all it had taken for Rose to compile a list of the top three drug barons in the Irish Republic with their addresses. All had done business at one time or another with an Irish crime family in North London and were known to the Drugs Squad. All were put under surveillance whenever they set foot on British soil, but they weren’t stupid: they rarely visited the UK and even avoided stopovers at Heathrow en route to their villas in Spain.

  They were ex-directory, but Rose’s method of contacting them had been simplicity itself. He had sent a one-ounce package of his heroin by regular mail to each man, with a laser-printed note saying he had ten kilos for sale at twenty thousand euros a kilo, delivery in Ireland, and the number of a pay-as-you-go mobile that he’d bought in a shop on the Edgware Road. Two had replied. One had sent a text message in two words, one of which was an obscenity. The other had phoned late at night and started by telling Rose of all the terrible things that would happen to him if he was messing them around. Then he said they wanted to see the gear. He promised to call when he was in Dublin and the man had given him a mobile number. Game on. You didn’t have to be especially clever to be a drugs dealer, just careful. And, as gamekeeper-turned-poacher, Keith Rose knew how careful to be.

  The heroin they’d taken from the Harlesden flat was double-wrapped in thick polythene so a drugs dog wouldn’t so much as wag its tail if it stumbled across it, but Rose knew that the chances of him being checked when he drove his car off the ferry from Holyhead to Dublin were next to zero. And, in the unlikely event that he was stopped, he’d produce his warrant card before they even thought about giving his car the once-over. If plan B went as well as he expected, he’d be back in London with two hundred thousand euros within twenty-four hours. Having taken the opportunity to down a couple of pints of the genuine black stuff.

  A band was playing, far off in the distance. Shepherd groaned and opened his eyes. There was a bitter taste in his mouth. One of his mobiles was ringing. He groped for it. Hargrove’s phone. He swung his feet off the sofa and took the call. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing, but we need to meet tomorrow,’ said the superintendent. ‘Charlie Kerr’s a bit out of the ordinary. I have to run some things by you before Monday.’

  Shepherd rubbed a hand over his face. The lager bottle lay on its side by one of the sofa legs. He must have fallen asleep with it in his hand. ‘Fine. Where and when?’

  ‘I’ll let you have a lie-in,’ said Hargrove. ‘Let’s say three o’clock. There’s a rugby field in Trafford by a pub called the Golden Fleece.’

  ‘I’ll be there. Everything’s okay, right?’ He looked out of the floor-to-ceiling window that took up most of the left-hand side of the apartment. It was dark outside. A full moon hung in the pitch black sky, the night so clear that he could see the craters that pockmarked its surface.

  ‘Everything’s fine. I’ll brief you tomorrow.’

  Shepherd cut the connection and stared at the phone. It was half past eleven. He cursed. He dialled Moira’s number and groaned inwardly when Tom answered the phone. He apologised for phoning so late.

  ‘It’s almost midnight.’ Tom groaned.

  ‘I promised to call Liam before he went to sleep.’

  ‘He’s been in bed for hours.’

  Shepherd apologised again, but before he’d finished Moira had taken the phone from her husband. ‘Daniel, this isn’t good enough, it really isn’t.’

  ‘I fell asleep,’ said Shepherd, lamely.

  ‘And your son cried himself to sleep,’ said Moira. ‘I let him stay up until ten and that’s an hour past his weekend bedtime. You promised, Daniel, and you shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep.’

  ‘It wasn’t a question of not keeping a promise,’ said Shepherd. ‘I fell asleep, that’s all. It wasn’t deliberate.’

  ‘Whatever, he’s asleep now. Call again tomorrow. And think of how much your thoughtlessness has hurt him.’

  She cut the connection. Shepherd lay back on the sofa and stared up at the ceiling. His mother-in-law was right. He’d let his son down yet again. His stomach churned and he felt like throwing up. He’d cut short his promised visit, he’d fallen asleep when he’d promised to phone and he’d left his son in storage, like unwanted furniture. If there had been a prize for worst father of the year, he’d win it. He made a silent promise to himself: as soon as the Angie Kerr job was tucked away, he’d make it up to Liam. He’d show his son just how good a father he could be.

  Rose spent two hours driving around the north of Dublin looking for a suitable place to hand over the drugs, then spent the night in a cheap bed-andbreakfast. Before he went to sleep he phoned his wife and told her he was on a surveillance operation at Gatwick Airport and that he loved her. He spent five minutes talking to his daughter, then he phoned the Irish mobile number and told the man who answered that he would show him the heroin at eleven o’clock in the morning. He had the venue already planned and the Irishman didn’t argue. After making the second call he slept a dreamless sleep.

  Breakfast was a full Irish – eggs, bacon, sausage, white pudding, black pudding, potato scone, fried bread – and Rose cleared his plate before he drove to the airport. He left his car in the short-term car park and walked to the arrivals terminal where he picked up the keys to a rental. He drove it to the short-term car park, and when he was sure he wasn’t being watched he switched the drugs and a cloth-wrapped bundle to the new car, then drove out of the airport whistling to himself.

  The place he’d chosen for the handover was the car park of a pub on the edge of a rough housing scheme – blocks of flats with broken windows and graffiti, shopfronts protected by roll-down metal shutters. It didn’t look the sort of place that was regularly visited by the Garda, and he doubted that any of the locals would be members of a Neighbourhood Watch scheme. There were no CCTV cameras and the nearest police station was five miles away. According to the Police National Computer, it was slap in the middle of the area controlled by the gang that was going to buy the heroin. Rose had thought they’d be more relaxed on their home turf, less likely to be trigger happy.

  He arrived half an hour before the time he’d told the Irishman. He parked with the front of his car facing the road and slid the cloth-wrapped bundle between his legs. He was wearing sunglasses and leather gloves, with a baseball cap pulled down over his face. A ten-year-old Mercedes pulled into the car park at a quarter to eleven. There were four men in it and Rose recognised two of the faces from the computer files. They were enforcers. The man who ran the gang was keeping his distance, but Rose had expected as much. He flashed his headlights and the Mercedes rolled slowly across the car park.

  Rose stayed in his car. The rear doors of the Mercedes opened and two men walked towards him. They wore long coats that flapped in the wind, and had their hands in the pockets. Rose wound down the window. ‘Can you guys do me a favour and stop where you are?’ he called.

  The two men h
alted, a dozen paces from the car. ‘Have youse got the gear?’ said the taller of the two. Six feet two, maybe, with wide shoulders hunched against the wind that blew between the blocks of flats. His nose was almost flattened against his face. A boxer’s nose.

  ‘Have you got the money?’

  ‘We’re gonna have to see the gear before youse gets to see the cash.’

  ‘I’ve no problem with that, but just so we know where we stand, what are you carrying?’

  The boxer frowned. ‘What?’

  Rose smiled patiently.‘What sort of weaponry have you got under your coats? I’m guessing handguns or a sawn-off at most.’ He raised the gun he was holding, just enough so that they could see what it was. ‘I’ve got an Ingram MAC 10, which fires eleven hundred rounds per minute and holds thirty in the magazine so I don’t want you making me nervous– if my trigger finger gets jumpy I could accidentally empty the whole clip in less time than you could say . . . well, before you could open your mouth, actually.’ He glanced at the weapon in his hand. ‘Recoil-operated, select-fire submachine-gun, fires from an open bolt. Nice, but not especially accurate beyond twenty-five metres. And in case you’re wondering, yes, it would shoot right through the panel of this door. And with the silencer, not too many people would hear it. Not that they’d give a shit around here anyway.’

  The two men looked at each other, then back at Rose, whose smile widened. ‘I’m not trying to pull a fast one on you,’ he added. ‘I just want us to know where we all stand. Let’s see what you’ve got.’

  The boxer slid his right hand out of his pocket. An automatic, probably a Colt. The other pulled back his coat: a Kalashnikov assault rifle with a folding stock hung from a nylon sling.

  ‘Nice,’ said Rose. The file had mentioned the gang’s links to former paramilitaries so the Kalashnikov wasn’t a surprise. ‘So, if the shit does hit the proverbial, it’s going to get very noisy and very messy. I’m just here to sell the gear and get back over the water. It’s good stuff, and it’s pure as the driven, so you’re getting a hell of a good deal.’