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

by Stephen Leather

  Payne’s grey eyes burned into hers. ‘Listen, you stupid bitch, your life is over, the trick you’ve tried to pull. All we’re trying to do now is minimise the damage you’ve done. If you don’t help Charlie you’re going to bring more grief on your family than you can believe.’

  Angie felt as if she’d been slapped across the face.

  ‘What did they offer you?’ he snapped.

  ‘They said they’ll forget what I did if I help them put Charlie away.’

  ‘Specifically?’

  ‘Deals he’s done. People he’s met. Where his money is.’

  ‘You know the guy you paid was a cop?’

  Angie’s jaw dropped.

  ‘You paid off an undercover cop.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He killed someone else. There were photographs.’

  ‘It was a set-up, Angie.’

  She slumped in her chair.

  ‘The cops set you up because they needed you to help them put Charlie away. You were never going to get what you wanted. The game was rigged from the start.’

  ‘Oh, God.’

  ‘He can’t help you now. No one can. Do I have to spell it out for you, Angie? There’s your mother, your sister, your nephews. Do you want them hurt because of your stupidity? It’s over for you. Charlie won’t let you take him down. You know that. The cops will end up putting you on trial for trying to have him killed. If you get sent down, Charlie will have you done in jail. And if you don’t go down, you know what he’ll do to you. Heads or tails, Angie, it’s over for you. You paid a guy to kill Charlie. He can’t let that lie.’

  Angie nodded.

  ‘You know what you’ve got to do, don’t you?’

  Tears rolled down her cheeks and she blew her nose.

  ‘Look at me, Angie.’ Her eyes locked with Payne’s. ‘You do know what you have to do, don’t you?’ he repeated. ‘You have no choice.’

  She nodded again.

  ‘Better to get this sorted now, rather than dragging it out. Because if you do drag it out, others are going to get hurt.’

  ‘Okay,’ she whispered.

  Payne reached into his pocket and took out a small polythene bag, containing two dozen capsules. He slid the bag across the table. ‘These are barbiturates, Angie. Sleeping tablets. When you get back to your cell, take them with that cup of tea. Flush the bag down the toilet. Then lie down, go to sleep and everything will be okay.’

  Angie reached for the bag. She picked it up and slipped it into her pocket.

  ‘You know it’s for the best, don’t you, Angie?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, her voice barely a whisper.

  ‘Good girl,’ said Payne. He stood up, picked up his briefcase and patted her shoulder. ‘Your will’s all sorted. Your mum will want for nothing, there’s money for your nephews, your sister gets your jewellery. Everything will be neat and tidy. Don’t worry about a thing.’

  Payne opened the door. The WPC was waiting there, her back to the wall. ‘Everything okay?’ she said.

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ said Payne, cheerfully. ‘Mrs Kerr might need a few seconds to get herself together. She’s had an emotional time.’

  ‘Superintendent Hargrove would like a word with you on your way out, sir,’ said the WPC. ‘Third door on the left.’

  Payne walked down the corridor, knocked on the door and opened it without waiting for a response. There were three men in the room. Payne knew one, Christopher Thornton, a portly lawyer who worked for the Crown Prosecution Service. ‘Christopher, hi, I’m looking for Superintendent Hargrove.’

  ‘That would be me,’ said the tallest of the three. He was in his mid-forties, his hair greying at the temples, a professional smile on his lips. He was wearing a dark blue pinstripe suit with a pale blue shirt and gold cufflinks in the shape of cricket bats. His grip was firm when he shook Payne’s hand. ‘Christopher Thornton you know, and this is Chief Inspector Wainer of the Drugs Squad.’

  ‘I’ve heard of the chief inspector, of course,’ said Payne.

  Wainer nodded curtly, but didn’t offer his hand.

  ‘May I assume that your client will be co-operating fully?’ said Hargrove.

  ‘She wants to sleep on it.’

  ‘I was hoping for something a bit more concrete,’ said the superintendent. ‘We’d like to put things in motion as quickly as possible.’

  ‘I have a question, actually,’ said Thornton. ‘You are acting for Mrs Kerr and solely for Mrs Kerr?’

  ‘What are you suggesting?’ said Payne.

  ‘Because any deal we make with Mrs Kerr depends on us proceeding in secrecy,’ said Thornton. ‘We’ll need her to help collate evidence.’

  ‘You want her to wear a wire?’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Wainer. ‘It’s one of our options.’

  ‘You know what her husband will do if he finds her with one?’

  ‘It might not come to that,’ said Hargrove. ‘She could give us the numbers of any mobiles he uses and we could access them through GCHQ.’

  ‘But back to the point I was making,’ said Thornton. ‘Anything you’ve heard today has to stay within these four walls. Angie Kerr’s life is on the line.’

  Payne gave Thornton a withering look. ‘I’m well aware of the danger my client is in,’ he said, ‘and I don’t need to remind you that it was the police who put her in the firing line. What you’ve done was perilously close to entrapment.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Hargrove.

  ‘Please don’t insult my intelligence, Superintendent,’ said Payne. ‘You have my client and the hitman on tape, which means you knew about the meeting in advance. That suggests either very long-term surveillance of the man in question, or that he was co-operating with you. Either way, you were clearly giving my client enough rope to hang herself.’

  ‘She paid fifteen grand up front to have her husband killed,’ said Wainer.

  ‘Which begs the question, why didn’t you arrest her then?’ said Payne.

  ‘This isn’t getting us anywhere,’ said Hargrove, impatiently. ‘Your client is on tape commissioning a murder. If she co-operates with us, she can walk away from that. But she has to help us nail her husband. The ball’s in your court and,frankly, I’m losing my patience.’

  ‘And, as I’ve already told you, my client will sleep on it. We’ll talk again in the morning.’ Payne smiled. ‘Maybe things will be a little clearer then. Now, I’ve got another meeting so I’ll bid you farewell.’ He left the room. Things would definitely be clearer in the morning.

  The two teenage girls blasted away at the Zombies, cheering as skulls exploded and green slime splattered across the screen. ‘Die, you bastard!’ yelled one. She was a blonde in khaki cargo pants and a tight black top, clearly braless. Her friend was a brunette, hair cropped. Shepherd watched. The girls were skilled at the game, chatting to each other as they fired. Flying monsters swooped down and the girls blew them away, giggling as they exploded into bloody segments.

  ‘You want something, Granddad?’ said the blonde, looking over her shoulder at Shepherd. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen but even so he thought it was an unfair thing to say.

  ‘Enjoy yourselves, girls,’ he said.

  ‘Wanker,’ said the brunette.

  Shepherd walked away, his hands in his pockets. At the far end of the amusement arcade there was a line of football video games. Shepherd walked slowly along them, scanning the faces of the teenagers playing them. None matched those on the CCTV pictures. One scowled at him, and he headed for the exit. He knew that a man in his thirties prowling around an amusement arcade could easily have people drawing the wrong conclusions.

  He popped in his radio earpiece, then walked out to a mezzanine area where he could look down at the ground floor. A mother and father were buying ice creams for their three children, the whole family wearing backpacks decorated with the Stars and Stripes.

  His earpiece crackled. ‘I have a visual on Snow
White,’ said a voice. It was Nick Wright. ‘She’s with two IC Three males on the second floor.’

  There was another huge amusement arcade up there. Shepherd headed for the escalator, slipping out the earpiece. He found Wright at the entrance to the arcade. He looked as out of place as Shepherd felt. The Trocadero was a known haunt of paedophiles and rent-boys, and several teenage boys had smiled invitingly at Shepherd as he’d been wandering around.

  Shepherd took a ten-pound note out of his wallet and went to a change machine. As he fed in the note he looked around casually. Snow White was watching two black teenagers dancing to a rap tune on a dance machine, matching their movements to instructions on two video screens. She was wearing the same camouflage top she’d had on in one of the CCTV pictures and her phone was on a strap round her neck.

  Shepherd scooped up his pound coins and walked round the arcade, looking at the games machines. He strolled out and saw Brian Ramshaw at the far side of the mall, eating an ice cream.

  Shepherd took the escalator to the first floor. According to Wright, the gang waited until they were at critical mass before they headed into the tube station. He found a spot where he could watch the escalators and propped himself against a guardrail. His Glock was in a nylon shoulder holster, pressed against his left side. A BTP radio that would operate throughout the Underground system was clipped to his belt; it was connected to his earpiece and a microphone in his cuff.

  Another BTP plain-clothes officer was on the ground floor. Tommy Reid was a detective sergeant, the same rank as Wright, but a good ten years older. He’d dressed down for the operation and was wearing a shabby coat tied at the waist with a piece of string, scuffed workboots and a shapeless Burberry-pattern hat with a red fishing fly stuck into the side. He was carrying a brown-paper bag that looked as if it held a bottle. A uniformed security guard had twice asked him to move away from shop fronts and now he was standing just inside the main entrance.

  He made brief eye-contact with Shepherd and raised his bag in salute, then sat down with his back against the wall. Reid’s disguise was faultless, and the broken red veins on his nose suggested he was no stranger to strong drink.

  Then Shepherd stiffened. He had recognised two boys on the escalator. One was an IC Three male in an Arsenal T-shirt. The other was the mixed-race thirteen-year-old. The youngster was wearing a light blue top with the hood up but Shepherd had glimpsed his face. He raised his cuff to his mouth. ‘First floor, two suspects on the escalator heading for the second floor,’ he whispered.

  ‘I have them,’ said Wright.

  At the bottom of the escalator, also going up, was a young woman in tight jeans and a black leather motorcycle jacket. She was one of the BTP’s undercover officers.

  Shepherd stayed where he was for five minutes, then wandered around checking reflections in shop windows. He saw another female undercover officer walking out of an amusement arcade.

  ‘They’re on the way down,’ said Wright’s voice in Shepherd’s ear.

  A few seconds later Shepherd saw Snow White and half a dozen young men standing in a group on the down escalator, blocking it so that no one could walk past them. They were laughing and Snow White was smoking a cigarette.

  Down below, Reid got to his feet and walked out of the mall.

  As the group reached the ground floor they were joined by two white teenagers in casual sports gear, Nike sweatshirts, tracksuit bottoms and gleaming white trainers. They both had thick gold chains round their necks and wrists. They gave Snow White high fives, then the group moved towards the exit.

  Shepherd walked towards the escalator. Wright was already on his way down and Shepherd saw another plain-clothes BTP officer walk out of a mobile-phone shop, pretending to read a brochure.

  The group left the Trocadero and walked through Piccadilly Circus, threading their way through crowds of tourists having their photographs taken in front of Eros.

  ‘They’re heading for Piccadilly Circus station,’ said Reid, over the radio.

  ‘This is Control. We’re ready for them,’ said a Scottish voice in Shepherd’s ear. The BTP chief inspector in the Management Information and Communications Centre was a Glaswegian. He was sitting at a work station that allowed him immediate access to any of the six thousand CCTV cameras on the London Underground system.

  Shepherd walked out of the Trocadero. Nick Wright followed him into the street without acknowledging him. The two female BTP officers fanned out to either side and worked their way purposefully towards the station.

  ‘They’re at the entrance now,’ said Reid.

  Shepherd started to jog. He put the microphone close to his mouth. ‘Brian, where are you?’

  ‘Twenty metres behind you,’ said Ramshaw, in his earpiece.

  Shepherd upped the pace. It was vital that at least one armed officer was close to the group in case a firearm was produced on the tube.

  ‘They’re inside the booking hall now,’ said the chief inspector over the radio, ‘passing through the barriers.’

  Shepherd reached the tunnel entrance at the same time as Wright, who already had his tube pass in his hand. Shepherd cursed under his breath. He didn’t have a ticket. He stuck his hand in his pocket and grabbed a handful of change, but Wright pointed at a blue-uniformed member of staff to let him through.

  ‘Down escalator heading for the Piccadilly Line,’ said the chief inspector.

  ‘I’m on the Piccadilly platform, southbound,’ said Reid, over the radio.

  Shepherd was impressed. Either the DS was lucky and had played a hunch, or he’d assumed that the Piccadilly Line was the most likely place for the gang to go. Either way, he was ahead of the game.

  Shepherd walked down the escalator behind Wright. Below he could see Snow White talking to the kid in the light blue top. Shepherd took out the earpiece. Now that he had them in sight he didn’t need the chief inspector’s commentary.

  Shepherd and Wright reached the foot of the escalator. Snow White and her gang were standing in the hallway as if they weren’t sure whether to go north or south. Shepherd headed north. So did Wright.

  Shepherd glanced over his shoulder. Ramshaw was on the escalator, trapped behind a slow-moving student with a massive rucksack. He nodded almost imperceptibly. He could see that Shepherd was going north, so he’d go south.

  Shepherd waited halfway down the platform, close to the tunnel that led to where Snow White and the gang were waiting, laughing and pushing each other around. He looked up at the electronic sign that announced the train arrivals. There was one minute to go before the next train arrived. Wright was pacing up and down, arms folded, head down, as if he was deep in thought. Surreptitiously Shepherd slid the earpiece back in. ‘Suspects are in the hallway,’ said the chief inspector. ‘No way of knowing which way they’ll move.’

  ‘Ramshaw, I’m on the south platform,’ said Ramshaw.

  Shepherd raised his cuff to his mouth. ‘Marsden, I’m on the northbound platform.’

  He felt the breeze of an approaching train. One of the female undercover officers walked on to the platform. She was in a long coat, holding a Marks & Spencer carrier-bag.

  The rails rattled and the train burst out of the tunnel into the station. Shepherd caught a glimpse of the driver, then the carriages flashed by. The brakes shrieked and the train juddered to a halt. The doors slid open and several dozen passengers got off. Shepherd caught Wright’s eye.

  ‘North, north, they’re heading north,’ said the chief inspector.

  Shepherd walked to the train, and as he stepped on board Snow White and her gang ran on to the platform and jumped on. Wright got into the adjoining carriage and took a seat close to the connecting door. The female officer got in and sat down, her carrier-bag on her lap. The doors clunked shut and the train lurched along the platform.

  Shepherd was at the far end of the carriage. Snow White and her gang were standing at the mid-point, swinging from the handles set into the roof. They were looking around and laughing
, and even from where he was sitting Shepherd could detect the predatory look in their eyes. He sat with his arms folded. He could feel the gun pressing against his side. Could he draw it against children? He took a deep breath and said a silent prayer that it wouldn’t come to that. The plan was to stop the train as soon as the gang struck and to get Ken Swift and his team into position at the next station.

  The train rushed into the tunnel. Shepherd counted the passengers in the carriage. Most were sitting, but three businessmen in dark suits were standing to his left, discussing a sales conference. A West Indian woman sat opposite, with a wicker shopping basket on her lap. Next to her a teenage girl was listening to a Walkman as she ate a Sainsbury’s salad with a plastic fork. On the other side of the West Indian woman a workman in paint-stained overalls and a floppy hat was reading the Sun.

  Shepherd glanced at the gang. The youngster in the light blue top was bending over a middle-aged woman, his face only inches away from hers. ‘Give me a kiss, darling,’ he said. She was sitting next to a little girl of seven or eight. Same age as Liam.

  The woman looked embarrassed.

  ‘Come on, darling, slip me the tongue,’ said the teenager. He opened his mouth and waggled his at her.

  The little girl laughed, but the teenager glared at her. The woman put her arm round her daughter and drew her close.

  Two black teenagers moved to stand behind the young thug. ‘Go on, give him a kiss,’ said one. ‘He don’t have Aids or nuffink.’

  ‘Please, leave me alone,’ said the woman. The little girl looked scared now.

  The teenager reached out to stroke her cheek. The woman flinched, and glanced round the carriage, but no one met her gaze. No one wanted to get involved. Shepherd knew that was why the gang had been so successful in their attacks. They picked on one victim and focused all their attention on them; the rest of the passengers were relieved that they weren’t under attack and did nothing.

  Snow White and one of the white teenagers moved to join the group who were intimidating the woman.

  Shepherd saw Wright stand up and move towards the connecting door.