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

by Stephen Leather

  ‘Not this one. We need someone with your specialist knowledge.’

  ‘Specifically?’

  ‘Your ability to handle automatic weapons. No one in the Internal Investigation Command has your military background, and while most of my people are proficient with handguns, I need someone familiar with carbines. Especially the MP5, which is what the SO19 guys use.’

  The Heckler & Koch was the weapon of choice in the SAS, and Hargrove was right. Even four years after leaving the regiment, Shepherd knew he could take apart and reassemble the weapon blindfold, and it wouldn’t take him more than a few hours on the range to be as accurate as he ever was. The MP5 was a simple enough weapon, but few police officers were trained in its use. The Diplomatic Protection Group used them. So did the Met’s armed-response units.

  ‘We think the Met might have a rogue armed-response unit,’ said Hargrove. ‘Rogue as in they’ve either gone vigilante or they’re ripping off drugs-dealers at gunpoint.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Yeah, tell me about it,’ said Hargrove. ‘The commissioner’s one unhappy bunny.’

  ‘If it’s cut and dried, why do they need us?’

  ‘Because it isn’t. All the Met has is circumstantial.’

  ‘No smoking gun?’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Just a roomful of dead drugs-dealers and a cop who’s disappeared.’

  ‘So you want me to do what? Infiltrate the gang and get them to take me on their next heist?’

  ‘Your intuition never ceases to amaze me, Spider.’

  Shepherd’s eyebrows headed skywards. ‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m afraid I am.’

  Shepherd put his hands into his jacket pockets. ‘Investigating cops is always messy.’

  ‘It doesn’t come messier.’

  ‘Plus, they can spot undercover cops. They know the signs.’

  ‘You’ll be in as a cop. We can stick close to your true background.’

  ‘Not my name, though. Shit hits the fan, I want to disappear.’

  ‘I’ll get a legend sorted by tomorrow evening. We can use the SAS background but say you left because you couldn’t hack it, then seven years up in Scotland. Strathclyde, maybe. The three men we’re looking at are all London boys, never been north of the border.’

  ‘They can pick up a phone,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘I’ll have it covered,’ said Hargrove. ‘You don’t go in unless your legend’s watertight.’

  ‘I’d rather we didn’t use the SAS. I don’t want them asking for war stories. Let’s say I was in the Paras.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Hargrove. ‘I’ll get our background boys to draw something up and run it by you at the end of the week. I’ll get a car sorted. We’ll play you having money problems and looking to make a fast buck.’

  ‘So they ask me to take part in the robberies? How likely is that?’

  ‘I want you looking corruptible. It might get them talking.’

  Shepherd wasn’t convinced it would be that easy to get maverick cops to open up to him. ‘So, what’s the story?’ he asked.

  ‘Last week two drugs-dealers were shot dead in a Harlesden crack house. It took the police the best part of an hour to force their way in and by then the shooters had gone out the back way. There was a witness alive in the house and another in a lock-up. All they can tell us is that the robbers were white and that there were three, two in the house and one who was outside most of the time. They wore dark clothing and rubber masks. When the shooting started two of the witnesses were bound, gagged and face down, so they don’t know what happened. But one of the dead Yardies had a .22 that had been fired five times. Only two of the bullets have been accounted for.’

  ‘So one or more of them was hit?’

  ‘The witnesses say that one of the Yardies who died screamed something about a vest. Then one of the robbers yelled that he was hit.’

  ‘Why do you think it was cops?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘The forensics boys got hold of a decent slug from one of the dead Yardies, ran it through the Scotland Yard database, and that’s when it all got interesting.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘The bullet came from a .45 Python that was used in a robbery in South London last year. They got the guy, a Clapham blagger by the name of Joey Davies. He’s doing a fifteen stretch in Parkhurst. They never found the gun.’

  ‘Guns are bought and sold.’

  ‘Of course they are. But Davies always claimed that the Python was in his flat when he was busted. The police found two other guns, but not the Python. First guys into the flat were an SO19 Trojan unit, which included one of the guys we think has gone bad. Keith Rose.’

  ‘So this Rose picks up a gun last year and saves it for a rainy day?’

  ‘Looks that way.’

  ‘So why don’t the rubber-heels boys pick him up and sweat him?’

  ‘Because he’s been a cop for fifteen years so he’s not going to sweat, and because all we’ve got is circumstantial and hypothesis. We have a bullet, we don’t have a gun. And we have witnesses who can only remember Frankenstein and alien masks and dark clothing.’

  ‘It’s possible that the gun was stolen but sold on to a gang with a grudge against the Yardies.’

  ‘It’s possible, but this doesn’t feel like a gang fight to me. If it was, they’d have killed everyone. It’s more like a robbery that went wrong. The way we see it, the robbers got in and overpowered the two Yardies, then waited for the rest of the guys to come back. One of the Yardies pulled a gun and all hell broke loose. Then the robbers bailed out.’

  ‘Presumably the Yardies won’t say what was taken?’

  ‘They deny there were drugs in the flat. There was crack-processing equipment in the attic and a safe with twenty grand in it. Twenty grand doesn’t seem much, so I think it’s safe to assume that the robbers got away with drugs or cash. Maybe both.’

  A narrow boat put-putted past them. A big man wearing a brown-leather jerkin and a floppy felt hat waved a can of Carlsberg in salute, his other hand on the tiller. Hargrove smiled back.

  ‘I’m missing the obvious, aren’t I?’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Maybe,’ said the superintendent.

  Shepherd ran through everything Hargrove had told him. ‘One of the robbers was hit,’ he said eventually.

  The superintendent smiled. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Do any of the SO19 guys have any unexplained injuries?’

  ‘One has disappeared. Andy Ormsby had only been with them six months. Didn’t turn up for work the day after the robbery. After three days the police broke into his flat and it looked as if he’d just packed a suitcase and left.’

  ‘No note?’

  ‘Nothing. And no one’s heard from him since.’

  ‘So the Yardies killed him, then?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Hargrove. ‘Maybe not.’

  Shepherd’s brow furrowed as he realised what the superintendent had suggested. ‘His mates killed him? He was wounded but they couldn’t take him to a hospital so they topped him?’

  ‘Or waited for him to die. Only they know what happened. But there wasn’t any blood in the flat, not from the robber. If there was we’d have done a match with Ormsby’s DNA and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.’

  ‘That’s my way in, then? I replace Ormsby?’

  ‘It’s the way I see it,’ said Hargrove.

  ‘Isn’t it a bit obvious?’

  ‘They probably won’t realise we traced the bullet. There’s no reason for them to think they’re suspects. People do have nervous breakdowns and disappear, and jobs don’t get more stressful than serving with an armed-response unit.’

  ‘How about an undercover cop pretending to be a member of an ARV? I’d be trying to set up cops with guns. How stressful is that?’

  ‘Are you saying you don’t want the assignment?’

  Shepherd flashed Hargrove a tight smile. It was always up to an undercover operativ
e to decide whether or not they would accept a job. It had to be that way. But Shepherd had never turned down an assignment and he had no intention of starting now. ‘I’ll need a couple of days on the range. If I’m rusty, they’ll spot it.’

  ‘We can fix you up on a police range here. Or in Scotland.’

  ‘I’ll get it sorted.’

  ‘Hereford?’

  Shepherd nodded. ‘It’ll give me a chance to see Liam, too.’

  ‘Can you be ready to go in on Monday?’

  That gave Shepherd six days to prepare. Six days in which to wipe away the persona of Tony Nelson and step into his new character. ‘If you can have the legend ready by then,’ he said. He took a deep breath. ‘No rest for the wicked.’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘It never ends, does it?’ said Shepherd. ‘At first you think you’re making a difference, but for every villain we put away, there’s another two waiting to take his place.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean we stop trying, Spider. You’ve put some dangerous men behind bars. You can be proud of what you’ve achieved.’

  ‘Yeah, but in the grand scheme of things, what difference do we really make?’

  ‘Ah, now you’re getting all metaphysical. The meaning of life.’

  ‘I know what life’s about,’said Shepherd.‘It’s about raising children. First time I held Liam in my arms I knew that. Nothing else matters. But how do babies grow up to be rapists, drugs-dealers and murderers? I look at Liam and I just know he’s going to turn out okay. He’s only eight but you can already see he’s a good kid. He’s polite, he’s considerate, he doesn’t get into fights. Everybody likes him.’

  ‘He’s got you as a role model, Spider. And he couldn’t have asked for a better mother than Sue.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s down to that. I don’t remember teaching him the difference between right and wrong,’ said Shepherd, ‘but there isn’t an ounce of badness in him. Then you look at the kids prowling in packs doing drugs and mugging other kids for their mobiles and you wonder why they went bad. It’s not too big a step from playing truant to dealing drugs, and the next thing you know they’re shooting each other with automatic weapons.’

  ‘Kids go bad,’ said Hargrove, ‘and bad kids grow into bad adults, and our job is to put away as many of the bad guys as possible.’

  ‘Treat the symptoms, not the disease?’

  ‘Hell’s bells, Spider, are you having a crisis of confidence?’

  Shepherd didn’t reply.

  ‘Do you want to see our psychologist?’ said Hargrove quietly. ‘Talk things through?’

  ‘I’m not crazy.’

  ‘It’s not about being crazy,’ said the superintendent. ‘It’s about stress and how you deal with it. That’s why we have a psychologist as part of the team, to nip problems in the bud. The last twelve months you’ve been through a lot.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Knowing it and dealing with it are two different things. You never really grieved for Sue.’

  Shepherd stopped walking and glared at Hargrove. ‘Bullshit,’ he said. ‘Bull-fucking-shit.’

  Hargrove put up his hands defensively. ‘I’m just saying, when it happened you were in prison undercover. You didn’t have time to deal with it. When you got out you had Liam to take care of. Then you wanted to get back into harness. You needed to work, you said. I thought maybe you were right, but you’ve gone from one job to the next and maybe you need time to grieve.’

  ‘I’m not the crying sort.’

  ‘Again, crying and grieving aren’t the same thing.’

  ‘I’m not seeing a shrink. End of story.’

  ‘Right. I’m just saying it’s an option.’

  ‘This isn’t about Sue. Or Liam. Or my stress levels. It’s about pissing on a forest fire.’

  ‘If we don’t try, if we let them get away with it, how does that make the world a better place? You were in Afghanistan with the SAS and we were supposed to have won that one, but did it really solve anything? That doesn’t stop us fighting for what we think is right.’

  ‘And now I’m going up against other cops?’

  ‘Cops who’ve gone bad, Spider. And in my book they’re worse than dyed-in-the-wool villains. Is that what this is about? Going after cops?’

  Shepherd started walking again. ‘I’ll be fine. Trust me.’

  Shepherd drove his CRV towards London at a steady seventy miles an hour, resisting the urge to join the stream of executive cars whizzing by in the outside lane. He used his hands-free to phone an au pair agency in Ealing and arranged an appointment for the following morning at ten o’clock. He’d already filled in their questionnaire, but they required a personal interview before they would send a woman to his house. From the sound of it, it was easier to get into the SAS than on to the agency’s books.

  His second phone call was to Major Allan Gannon, who answered on the third ring.

  ‘Not caught you at a bad time, have I?’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Spider! Business, social, or are your nuts in the fire again?’

  It was a fair enough question. Usually when Shepherd phoned the major he needed a favour. He explained that he was about to join a police armed-response unit and that he needed a refresher course in the equipment and tactics he’d be using.

  Gannon chuckled. ‘Guess you’re a little rusty,’ he said. ‘When?’

  ‘Soon as possible,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘What are you doing over the next couple of days?’

  ‘I’m on my way to London and I’ve a few things to do in the morning, but then I’m yours.’

  ‘Come to the Duke of York barracks at noon,’ said Gannon. ‘Bring an overnight bag.’ He cut the connection, leaving Shepherd to wonder what he had planned. One thing he was certain of: he was putting himself in good hands. He’d served with the major in Ireland, the former Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan, and trained with him everywhere from the jungles of Brunei to the Arctic wastelands of northern Norway. There wasn’t a man he trusted more.

  There was a double-knock on the hotel-room door. Sewell was staring at a spreadsheet on his laptop. ‘Go away,’ he said. ‘I don’t need the bed turning down.’

  ‘It’s not Housekeeping, Mr Sewell,’ said a man’s voice. It was the superintendent.

  Sewell got up and walked to the door. He was naked except for a hotel towel wrapped round his waist.

  Superintendent Hargrove was wearing an immaculate pinstripe suit, a crisp white shirt and a blue tie with red cricket balls on it. He was holding two bottles of Bollinger. ‘I gather this is your tipple.’

  ‘Does this mean we’re celebrating that shit Hendrickson being arrested?’ asked Sewell.

  Hargrove looked pained. ‘Not exactly.’ He closed the door.

  ‘We said Monday. Today’s Tuesday. Forty-eight hours has become four days.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Hargrove, ‘I really am. It’s just that this is bigger than we first thought.’

  ‘Bigger than attempted murder?’

  Hargrove looked around for somewhere to sit. Sewell had the only chair, facing his computer. ‘Do you mind if I sit on the bed?’ he asked.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ said Sewell. He popped the cork out of one of the bottles of champagne, went to the cramped bathroom and took two plastic cups off the glass shelf by the basin. He poured champagne into them and gave one to the superintendent. That Hargrove knew Bollinger was his favourite champagne suggested that he had done more than get the laptop from his car when he visited Sewell’s house, but Sewell wasn’t up to picking a fight. ‘You realise you’re running out of any goodwill you might have had?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ said Hargrove.

  Sewell doubted that was true. The superintendent had obviously come to the hotel with something on his mind, and he’d never been lost for words during their previous conversations. ‘Enough is enough,’ he said. ‘I’ve given you four days, which is twice as long as you said it would take
. You said you had all you needed to arrest Hendrickson.’

  ‘We do,’ said Hargrove.

  ‘So arrest him. Throw the shit into a cell and let me get back to running my company.’

  ‘I wish it was as simple as that,’ said Hargrove. He sipped his champagne. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any whiskey in the minibar is there?’ he asked.

  ‘There isn’t a minibar. Hendrickson will have better facilities in prison than I’ve got here,’ Sewell said.

  ‘But you’ve got your computer. And I’ve given the sergeant cash for any food you want bringing in.’

  ‘I want to go home,’ said Sewell flatly.

  ‘We need more time,’ said Hargrove.

  Sewell swore.

  ‘Possibly the rest of this week.’

  ‘I told you already, Hendrickson could be bleeding my company dry. By the time I get back into my office there might be nothing left. What then, Superintendent? The police will come up with three million quid, will they? Out of petty cash?’

  ‘Actually . . .’ Hargrove took an envelope out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Sewell, who put down his beaker and opened it. It was from the chief constable of Greater Manchester, agreeing to reimburse him for any money he lost as a result of his co-operation with the ongoing investigation. He would also guarantee a consultancy fee of twenty-five thousand pounds, whatever the outcome of either case.

  ‘He can do that?’ asked Sewell.

  ‘He can do whatever he wants with police funds,’ said Hargrove.

  ‘This guy you’re after, the second investigation, he’s big, yeah?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Hargrove. ‘He’s big.’

  ‘Big kudos for you if you get him, commendations all round, the chief constable looks good?’

  ‘If it wasn’t important, we wouldn’t have put your case on hold,’ said Hargrove.

  ‘So he’s bigger than me, is that what you mean?’ Sewell bristled. ‘I sit here in this pokey hell-hole while you find bigger fish to fry?’

  ‘No one’s saying your case isn’t important, Mr Sewell. Larry Hendrickson will go to prison for a long time, and rightly so. But what we’re working on now is a different sort of case. I wish I could go into details, but I can’t. What I can tell you is that the guy we’re going after is a nasty son-of-a-bitch and the police here have had all sorts of problems with him. You’ll win all sorts of Brownie points if you help take him out.’