Dead Men: The Fifth Spider Shepherd Thriller

by Stephen Leather

  A couple in their early thirties were playing at the next table. Elaine introduced them as Kevin and Rosalyn Brimacombe. The man was also a policeman and he studied Shepherd carefully as they shook hands.

  Elaine pointed out another two couples at the third table, all friends of hers, and another couple sitting on a red and blue plastic-covered bench seat. Shepherd saw that all of the men and one woman were cops. They were friendly and polite, but he could feel them taking his measure.

  ‘Not working at Holywood, are you?’ asked Maplethorpe.

  Elaine wagged a finger at him.

  ‘Holywood?’ said Shepherd, playing the innocent.

  ‘It’s John’s little joke,’ said Elaine. ‘Holywood is where MI5 has its headquarters. Palace Barracks.’

  ‘You think I’m James Bond?’ said Shepherd. ‘I wish.’

  ‘Jamie’s a website designer,’ said Elaine. ‘He’s the neighbour I was telling you about.’

  ‘Sorry, Jamie, I’m only messing with you,’ said Maplethorpe. ‘But it’s fair to say there are a lot more English accents around here than there used to be.’

  ‘What is it you do?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘I’m a policeman for my sins,’ said Maplethorpe.

  ‘Interesting times, I suppose,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘If by interesting you mean the end of a great tradition of policing, I suppose so,’ said Maplethorpe.

  ‘Steady, John. He’s a civilian, remember.’

  Maplethorpe bent over the table and played his shot. He blinked several times as if he was having trouble focusing his eyes, but then he hit the white hard and a ball cannoned into a corner pocket. ‘You play, Jamie?’ he asked.

  ‘I used to, but I’m probably a bit rusty,’ said Shepherd.

  Maplethorpe potted the black and Elaine patted him on the back. ‘It’d be nice if you let me win from time to time,’ she said. ‘Go on, Jamie, give him a game.’

  Elaine watched as they played. Shepherd was a reasonable player, but Maplethorpe was much better and within three minutes he was potting the black again. ‘You’re good,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘A misspent youth,’ Maplethorpe told him. ‘Rack ’em up again and we’ll have another game.’

  They played pool until just after eleven. Then Elaine said she was going home and asked Shepherd if he was driving. ‘I knew I’d be drinking so I left the car at home,’ he said.

  She grinned. ‘I knew I wouldn’t so my car’s outside. Come on, I’ll give you a lift.’

  They left the bar, walking through a group of smokers huddled round the doorway. ‘How do you know so many policemen?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you? I was married to one.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘He died,’ said Elaine.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Shepherd. ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘Of course you didn’t,’ she said. ‘Anyway, it was a long time ago.’

  ‘John’s a good guy.’

  ‘He used to work with Robbie, my husband.’

  ‘What does he do with the police?’

  ‘He’s a detective superintendent.’

  ‘That’s high up, isn’t it?’

  ‘He’s an important guy, right enough, but he’s handed in his notice. He’s not happy with the way the job’s going.’

  ‘Bit young to retire, isn’t he?’

  ‘He’ll find something. There’s a lot of private security companies and the like setting up here now.’

  A figure stepped in front of them, a man in his late twenties, the hood of his sweatshirt pulled over his forehead. ‘Got a cigarette?’ he asked.

  Elaine stopped and reached into her bag. ‘Sure,’ she said.

  Two more men rushed up behind them, trainers slapping on the pavement, hoods up. The first man pulled a revolver from his pocket. ‘Give me your wallet,’ he hissed at Shepherd.

  Shepherd stepped in front of Elaine, putting himself between her and the gun. ‘Stay cool,’ he said quietly.

  Elaine screamed as another man pulled a flick-knife and pressed the chrome stud to eject the blade. He held it to her throat. ‘Yer feckin’ money,’ he shouted.

  Shepherd took out his wallet and gave it to the man with the gun. ‘Just stay cool,’ he said. ‘No one’s going to give you any hassle. Take the money and go.’

  ‘Your phone,’ said the man, putting the wallet into the pocket of his jeans.

  ‘You don’t want my phone,’ said Shepherd. ‘It’s a piece of shit and it’s password-protected.’

  Elaine was panting, her eyes wide with fear.

  ‘Yer fuckin’ phone,’ said the man with the gun. He pointed the revolver at Shepherd’s face but his hands were shaking.

  ‘Okay,’ said Shepherd. He took the phone slowly from his jacket pocket and handed it over.

  The man holding a knife to Elaine’s throat nodded at her bag. ‘Her money too. And her phone.’

  The third grabbed the bag and rooted through it until he found what he wanted. He threw the bag into the road, then jumped away, still brandishing the knife.

  ‘You say anything to the peelers and you’re dead!’ shouted the man with the gun. ‘We’re with the Provos.’ He ran, with the other two after him.

  Shepherd put his arms around Elaine. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked. ‘Did he hurt you?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Bastards.’

  Shepherd took a deep breath. ‘The important thing is that we’re okay.’

  ‘Scrotes like that make me sick,’ said Elaine. ‘They’ve all come out of the woodwork since the Troubles ended. In the bad old days the paramilitaries kept them under control. Muggers, housebreakers and joyriders got one warning and then a kneecapping.’

  ‘You sound like you think that was a good thing,’ said Shepherd. He retrieved her bag from the road, dusted it down and gave it to her.

  ‘We’ve just been robbed at gun and knifepoint. Damn right I think it was a good thing,’ she said. She pointed down the road. ‘My car’s there. At least we weren’t carjacked.’

  They walked together to the Golf and she drove them home. As she pulled up in her driveway, she offered Shepherd a nightcap. She unlocked the front door and the burglar alarm beeped. He stood behind her as she tapped in the four-digit code to deactivate it. He didn’t have to make a conscious effort to remember the number. His photographic memory worked effortlessly. Whatever he saw, whatever he heard, he never forgot. Shepherd had seen a television documentary once in which a psychologist had explained that the human brain recorded everything, but not everyone could recall what was stored in it. Most were only able to remember a fraction of the information in their brain, but Shepherd had had total recall since he was a toddler.

  ‘We should call the police,’ said Elaine. ‘They probably won’t catch them but at least we should make a report.’

  ‘There’s no point,’ said Shepherd. ‘They’ll have taken the money and ditched the wallet and purse by now. We should just count ourselves lucky we weren’t hurt.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Elaine. ‘But I’m going to block my phone and stop my credit cards right away.’

  Shepherd followed her into the kitchen and sat down at the table as she switched on the kettle.

  ‘I’ve got to use the loo,’ she said.

  ‘More information than I needed,’ said Shepherd.

  She laughed and went upstairs. Over by the fridge there was a metal box with a stencilled picture of a bunch of keys on the front. Shepherd went over to it and opened it. Half a dozen different keys hung on hooks inside. He ran his finger along them. There was a car key on a VW key fob and a rusting steel key that looked as if it belonged to the shed at the bottom of the garden. One was a brass key which looked as if it fitted the kitchen door. A ring with two keys looked like a spare set for the front door. He took them off the hook. One was a Yale, the other for a deadlock. Taking them was a gamble but, assuming they were a spare set, there was a good chance that Elaine wouldn’t notice
they were missing. He slipped them into his pocket, closed the box and sat down again.

  When Elaine came back he was smoking. He held up the cigarette. ‘Hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ said Elaine. ‘That’s one of the pains about going out these days – you can’t smoke anywhere.’

  ‘They’ll be fining you for smoking in your own home before long,’ said Shepherd. His stomach was turning somersaults. She had welcomed him as a neighbour, invited him into her social circle, brought him into her home, and the first thing he had done was steal her keys. There were times when he hated what he did for a living, and this was one of those times.

  As soon as he got home, Shepherd retrieved his personal mobile from the bedside table and phoned Charlotte Button. ‘Are you okay?’ asked Button. ‘We were listening in on your phone and we heard what happened. It was over so quickly we didn’t have time to do anything.’

  ‘It put the wind up Elaine but it was okay. Just muggers.’

  ‘With a gun?’

  ‘One had a gun, the other a knife. Said they were Provos but that was bollocks. Do you have a fix on the phone?’

  ‘A house in a street off the Falls Road,’ said Button. ‘Do you want us to send the local cops around and pick them up?’

  ‘I don’t want to raise red flags,’ said Shepherd. ‘The cops might wonder how you got the location, and then they might start looking at me. I’d rather sort it out myself.’

  ‘Spider, I don’t want you blowing an investigation just because you fancy a bit of rough-and-tumble.’

  ‘It’ll be fine. And I could do with the exercise.’

  ‘Do you need back-up?’

  ‘Charlie, if Elaine hadn’t been with me I’d have sorted it out then and there,’ said Shepherd. ‘I can handle it.’

  Button gave him the address.

  Shepherd went out and got into his Audi. He drove to West Belfast and parked in a quiet road about a hundred yards from the address Button had given him.

  The house was in a two-storey brick terrace with a slate roof. At the end of the street a gable wall had been painted with a hooded terrorist holding a Kalashnikov rifle in front of the Irish tricolour. Shepherd looked up and down the street, but there was no one around. He put his finger on the doorbell and kept it there.

  He heard a buzzing from inside the house and after a minute the lights went on upstairs. There were heavy footsteps on the stairs, then the light went on in the hallway and the door opened. ‘Who the feck is that?’ asked a man’s voice.

  Shepherd took his finger off the bell, stepped back and kicked the door. The wood splintered and it crashed open, slamming the man against the wall. Shepherd stepped inside. The man was standing with his back to the wall, holding his bleeding right hand. He was wearing boxer shorts with red hearts on then and a grubby T-shirt. Shepherd recognised him as the man who had pulled the knife on Elaine and hit him in the solar plexus, then chopped him on the back of the neck as he slumped forward, gasping for breath. The man fell to the ground and curled up into a foetal ball. Shepherd closed the front door, kicked him hard in the kidneys, then hurried up the stairs.

  A bedroom door was open and the light was on. The duvet had been thrown aside. The door to the front bedroom was closed. Shepherd flung it open. There was enough light coming in from the street for him to see a man in pyjama bottoms groping under his bed. A girl pulled the duvet around her as Shepherd walked purposefully into the room.

  The man cursed and his hand appeared from under the bed holding a gun. Shepherd hit the gun away with his right hand, grabbed the man’s throat with the left and smashed his head against the wall, then did it a second time and slapped him, left, right, and left again. Blood splattered across the wall. The woman whimpered but Shephered ignored her. ‘Where’s my wallet?’ he asked. ‘And where’s my phone?’ He grasped the man’s nose and twisted it until he heard the cartilage crack.

  ‘Kitchen,’ said the man, blood pouring from his nostrils.

  Shepherd hauled him off the bed by the hair and out on to the landing. He pointed at the crying girl. ‘Keep quiet and you’ll be fine.’ He shut the door.

  The man was scrabbling on his hands and knees but Shepherd kept a tight grip on his hair. He dragged him to the top of the stairs, then kicked him. The man thumped down like a dead weight, leaving smears of blood on the wall. Shepherd hurried after him, then shoved him in to the kitchen. The two mobile phones were on the kitchen table, with Shepherd’s wallet and Elaine’s purse. Shepherd threw the man against the fridge, punched him in the stomach, and opened his wallet. The credit cards were still there but the money had gone. He bent down, took a handful of hair and pulled the mugger to his feet. ‘Where’s the money?’ he growled.

  The man pointed to a drawer and Shepherd opened it. Inside, he found several hundred pounds and a plastic bag of little white tablets. Shepherd stuffed the cash into the pockets of his jeans, then kneed the man in the groin. ‘If I ever see you again, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?’ he hissed.

  The man nodded.

  Shepherd kicked him in the ribs. ‘I can’t hear you,’ he said.

  ‘I understand,’ said the man. The lower part of his face was covered with blood.

  Shepherd sneered at him. ‘You really with the Provos?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He coughed and moaned.

  ‘Haven’t you heard? You’re supposed to have laid down your arms,’ said Shepherd. He stamped on the man’s right hand with the heel of his shoe and heard the fingers crack.

  He went back into the hallway. The man who had opened the door was groaning. Shepherd stepped over him and walked out into the street.

  The Jamie Pierce mobile rang as he headed for his Audi. It was Button. ‘Winning friends and influencing people, Spider?’ she asked.

  ‘All sorted,’ said Shepherd.

  Salih’s mobile phone vibrated in his top pocket and he fished it out. It was Viktor Merkulov. The Russian wanted to meet so Salih arranged to see him in an hour at Porter’s restaurant in the heart of Covent Garden.

  Salih arrived on time but the Russian was already at a corner table and half-way through a bottle of red wine. Salih knew it was one of the Russian’s favourite restaurants. It served traditional English food, fish and chips, steak and kidney pudding, with tourists making up most of its clientele. The tables were far enough apart for privacy and a tail would be easy to spot, but the food was why Merkulov had wanted to meet there. He waved his glass at Salih. ‘I knew you wouldn’t want wine so I started without you,’ he said, as Salih sat down.

  Salih took a menu from a pretty Polish waitress and poured himself a glass of mineral water.

  ‘I’m having the steak and kidney – the pudding, not the pie,’ said Merkulov. ‘With mushy peas, of course.’

  ‘You are nothing if not predictable,’ said Salih.

  ‘If you find something you like, stick with it, my friend,’ said the Russian. He sipped his wine and dabbed his lips with a napkin. Salih ordered fishcakes and chips. ‘I have pictures for you,’ Merkulov went on, ‘of them both.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Salih.

  ‘The woman joined MI5 from university,’ said the Russian. ‘A double first from Cambridge. She was with the International Counterterrorism Branch. Two years in Belfast when the IRA was still active. Then she moved to the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre where she was regarded as a high-flyer. She was never involved with counter-espionage so she didn’t cross my path. As a serving MI5 officer she had the lowest of profiles. I have a birth certificate but little in the way of personal details, I’m afraid.’

  ‘No current address?’

  ‘She doesn’t appear on any electoral roll. It could be that she’s married, that Button is her maiden name and everything is in her husband’s. But even if that’s not so, MI5 would have sanitised everything. I did the check anyway. She is not registered with a general practitioner under her name and there are no credit cards for a woman of that name and general character
istics.’

  Salih sipped his water. He had hoped for more but the Russian was right. If she worked for the security service her masters would protect her as a matter of course.

  ‘Last year she left MI5 to join the newly formed Serious Organised Crime Agency.’

  ‘Interesting,’ said Salih. ‘Intelligence agents don’t change horse mid-career.’

  ‘SOCA needed staff, and the traditional police are too set in their ways,’ said Merkulov. ‘They recruited from MI5,MI6 and various private-sector agencies. Button had run undercover operatives for MI5 so they approached her to run SOCA’s undercover unit.’

  ‘SOCA works throughout the UK, right?’

  ‘Country-wide,’ said the Russian. ‘The undercover unit mounts its own investigations but also accepts assignments from individual forces.’

  ‘Tell me about SOCA,’ said Salih.

  ‘Just under four and a half thousand employees. It was set up in 2006 when the British Government merged the National Crime Squad, the National Criminal Intelligence Service, the investigative sections of Customs and Excise and the Immigration Service.’

  ‘Do we know where she’s working at the moment?’

  ‘No. The problem is that SOCA is so new I have few contacts within it. I hope to rectify that over the next few months. I can tell you that she isn’t based at SOCA headquarters. In fact, she doesn’t appear to operate out of a permanent base and seems to have no ancillary staff reporting directly to her. I’m sorry I can’t be of more help.’

  Salih sipped his water and carefully placed his glass on the table. ‘And the American?’

  ‘I have photographs, and the contents of his SVR file, which is substantial. Unfortunately, it’s also light on personal information. His details were cleansed during his time with the CIA so there’s nothing of his early life on file. No birth certificate, no education or service record. There is a good chance that Richard Yokely isn’t his real name. We know what he has done, and we know where he has been but, like all of the men who work for black operations, we have no real idea of who he is.’

  ‘Do you know his present location?’