True Colours ss-10

by Stephen Leather

  The park was in North London, edged with trees and overlooked by a terrace of Edwardian brick mansion blocks. To the right was a line of tennis courts and to the far left, behind a building housing showers and changing rooms, was a running track and an outdoor gym. There was a children’s playground beyond the running track but most of the park was given over to a huge field where dogs could be exercised and where during the summer weekends pub teams played cricket. Around the field ran a tarmac path with wooden benches every fifty yards or so.

  A middle-aged man in a camouflage-pattern T-shirt and baggy khaki cargo pants was shouting at a group of eight women, who were all attempting to do push-ups with varying degrees of success. One of the women, rolls of fat outlined by a too-tight lilac jumpsuit, was merely lying face down and moaning. The man went over to stand by her and shouted for her to put some effort into it. The woman grunted in pain and managed one press-up before collapsing back into the grass. The man bent down, patted her on the shoulder and whispered what Shepherd assumed were words of encouragement before standing up and shouting again.

  As Shepherd watched the man put the women through a series of star jumps, sit-ups and jogging, all the time shouting at them like an ill-tempered sergeant major, he couldn’t help but smile. It had been several years since Shepherd had seen Jim ‘Jimbo’ Shortt, but the man had barely changed. Like most former SAS he was wiry and toned rather than muscle-bound, and had the sort of face that could easily be lost in a crowd. His only distinguishing feature was his sweeping Mexican-style moustache, now starting to show touches of grey. As Shortt shouted at the women to lie flat on their backs he looked over at Shepherd. The two men locked eyes and Shortt gave him a small nod of recognition. Shepherd grinned and went to sit down on a bench.

  Shortt spent the next half an hour putting the women through their paces, never pushing them so hard that they gave up, but never letting them off easily, and by the time the session had finished the women were all exhausted and drenched with sweat. The large woman in the lilac jumpsuit grabbed Shortt and gave him a hug and a kiss on both cheeks before heading over to the changing rooms.

  Shortt jogged over to where Shepherd was sitting and Shepherd stood up to greet him. ‘Fuck me, Spider Shepherd,’ said Shortt. ‘What brings you to my neck of the woods?’

  ‘Good to see you, Jimbo,’ said Shepherd. The two men hugged and slapped each other on the back. ‘When the hell did you get into shouting at women?’

  ‘They call it Boot Camp,’ said Shortt. He gestured at the camouflage T-shirt he was wearing. ‘You don’t think I’d wear this by choice? Mainly housewives who don’t get any other exercise. I tell them, sign up for my Boot Camp and you’ll drop a kilo a week, guaranteed. I’ll give them their money back if they don’t.’

  ‘A rucksack full of bricks, can’t beat it,’ said Shepherd.

  Shortt laughed. ‘These girls haven’t exercised for years, you have to break them in gently.’ He leaned towards Shepherd. ‘Do you have any idea what those housewives are paying me?’ Shepherd shook his head. ‘Thirty quid for a ninety-minute session,’ said Shortt. ‘And there are eight of them there. I’ve got another ten doing the evening session. That’s more than five hundred quid for three hours a day. There’s guys out in Iraq right now earning less than that a week. And no one’s shooting at me here.’ He grinned. ‘And I do one-on-one training for a hundred and twenty quid an hour, Spider. That’s serious money. For hanging out in a gym.’

  ‘Can’t argue with that,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘You should give it a go,’ said Shortt, patting him on the back. ‘I’ve just signed a deal with a model agency to put some of their models through their paces. I could put some very fit birds your way.’

  Shepherd laughed and held up his hands in surrender. ‘I’ve got a job, Jimbo,’ he said.

  ‘Where are you these days? Still with SOCA?’

  The two men sat down on the bench. ‘Nah, I moved on.’

  ‘Secret squirrel?’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘Just figured you’d end up with the spooks,’ said Shortt. ‘Anti-terrorism’s where it’s at these days and you’re a good fit — SAS background plus police experience. Is the pay good?’

  ‘I’m not getting nine hundred quid a day, that’s true,’ laughed Shepherd.

  ‘Then think about giving this a go,’ said Shortt. ‘The personal trainer business is booming, everyone’s health conscious these days.’

  ‘You’re the second person to suggest a career change this week,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Yeah? Who was the first?’

  ‘Remember Lex, that Para who was my spotter out in Afghanistan? Scottish lad. Keen as mustard?’

  Shortt nodded. ‘Yeah, thought he was putting in for selection?’

  ‘Change of plan. He’s self-employed these days.’ Shepherd reached into his jacket pocket and slipped the newspaper cutting to Shortt. ‘Recognise this guy?’

  ‘Ahmad fucking Khan,’ said Shortt as soon as he glanced at the photograph in the article. He looked at the name of the newspaper at the top of the cutting, and the date. ‘He’s in England? How the hell is he in England?’

  ‘We’re not sure.’

  ‘He’s a Taliban killer. He shot those three Paras in the back and he killed Captain Todd.’

  Shepherd forced a smile. ‘I was there, remember.’

  ‘Damn right you were there.’ He bent his head down and read the article. ‘It doesn’t mention him,’ he said when he’d finished.

  ‘He was just caught in the picture,’ said Shepherd. ‘Wrong place, wrong time. But I’ve tracked him down. I know what name he’s using and I know where he lives.’

  ‘And now you’re going to slot the bastard?’ Shepherd nodded. Shortt handed back the cutting. ‘Count me in,’ he said.

  ‘I thought you’d say that.’

  ‘And that’s why Lex is around, right? What about Jock?’

  ‘Jock’s on board,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘The four musketeers,’ said Shortt. ‘Pity we lost Geordie. Geordie would have loved a chance to take a crack at Khan.’

  Shepherd nodded. Geordie Mitchell had been the sixth man on the mission to destroy the al-Qaeda money house in Pakistan, the operation that had ended with the death of Captain Harry Todd and Shepherd taking a bullet in the shoulder. Mitchell had died a few years earlier in Iraq, killed by a sniper in the same way that Ahmad Khan had killed Harry Todd. ‘Do you have much in the way of souvenirs, Jimbo?’

  Shortt arched his eyebrows. ‘What are you suggesting, Spider? Don’t you know that it’s a criminal offence to own unlicensed weapons?’

  ‘I do indeed,’ said Shepherd. ‘But I also know that every time you flew back from Afghanistan you had a rucksack full of souvenirs.’

  ‘Yeah, those were the days,’ said Shortt. ‘I made a packet selling stuff back at Stirling Lines. They were queuing up to buy AK-47s and Makarovs.’

  ‘But you kept some for yourself, right?’

  ‘I couldn’t possibly comment,’ said Shortt, rubbing his moustache.

  ‘Here’s the thing. We want to use Afghan guns for this. That way if the guns are ever traced, it’ll look as if it was someone from Afghanistan who’d done the dirty deed.’

  ‘There’d be a certain justice in that, wouldn’t there? He comes over here to make a new life, and guns from his past take that life away.’ He grinned. ‘That’s practically poetic, Spider.’

  ‘So you’ll help?’

  ‘Bloody right I will.’

  Shepherd got to Thames House at 6.30. Amar Singh was still in his office, tapping on a computer terminal as he carried out a conversation via a Bluetooth headset. He waved Shepherd to a chair as he continued to talk about video feeds and IR cameras. Eventually he finished, took off his headset and shook hands with Shepherd. He reached down and pulled open a drawer. ‘OK, here it is, and I have to say it’s a nice bit of kit.’

  He handed Shepherd an iPad and Shepherd f
rowned. ‘It’s an iPad?’

  ‘Top of the range,’ said Singh. He gave Shepherd a small metal box, the size of a cigarette packet. ‘That’s magnetic so you put it under the wheel arch or on the chassis, anywhere that it’s out of sight. You can hide it inside the car but if you do it’s important that you put it against metal. It’s the attachment that activates it. As it is, you can keep it for a year or two and it won’t lose its charge. As soon as it’s put up against metal it activates and the battery is good for about a week.’

  Shepherd switched on the iPad. It had all the normal apps but there was one called Tracker. He held the iPad out and Singh nodded. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘It’ll give you a location on a map or Google Earth and it’s accurate to within six feet or so. The iPad needs a mobile phone connection but you should have that all the time, it’s done through a monthly account.’

  ‘You’re a star, Amar, thanks.’

  ‘No sweat. As far as I’m concerned it’s out on a test, just let me have it back when you’re done.’

  Shepherd’s phone rang. He apologised to Singh and took out his phone, but grimaced when he saw who was calling. Charlotte Button. He considered letting the call go through to voicemail but the fact that she was calling him suggested that she knew he was in the building. He tried to keep his voice as cheerful as he could when he answered.

  ‘A little bird tells me you’re in Thames House,’ she said.

  ‘I’m with Amar,’ he said.

  ‘Problem?’

  ‘Just picking up a bit of kit,’ he said.

  ‘Swing by my office on your way out, would you? There’s something I need to run by you.’

  She ended the call and Shepherd put his phone away. He picked up the iPad and the transmitter and put them into his backpack. ‘I should have them back in a couple of days,’ he said.

  ‘No rush, they’re as cheap as chips,’ said Singh. ‘It’s funny, ten years ago a device like that would have cost ten grand or more. Now the whole set-up is less than a grand and most of that is for the iPad. How’s the vest, by the way?’

  ‘Difficult to say, no one’s taken a shot at me yet.’

  Singh grinned. ‘I meant comfort-wise.’

  ‘Yeah, good. Most of the time I’m not even aware that it’s on.’

  ‘No itching, no discomfort?’

  ‘I’ve started wearing a regular cotton vest under it, and it’s fine.’

  Shepherd shook hands with Singh then walked to the lift and took it to Button’s floor. She was sitting at her desk studying a whiteboard on which were stuck a dozen surveillance photographs of Asian teenagers. She waved a hand as he looked at the pictures. ‘Nothing to do with you, Spider,’ she said. ‘This is up in Bradford. They’re planning a Mumbai-type massacre. They seem serious, too.’ She nodded at a chair and Shepherd sat down, placing the backpack on the floor and hoping that she wouldn’t ask about what he’d been doing with Amar Singh. ‘But that’s not what I needed to see you about. There’s a problem over Grechko.’

  ‘Problem?’

  ‘Well, let’s call it a complication,’ said Button.

  Shepherd used his satnav to find Shortt’s house, a neat three-bedroom semi-detached in Wembley, about half a mile from the stadium. There was a Jaguar parked in the driveway so Shepherd left his X5 in the street. It was just after ten o’clock in the morning. Shepherd had already checked in with Popov and Grechko wasn’t planning to leave the house until early evening, so he’d said that he would take the morning off. Shepherd had picked up Harper in Bayswater. As always he was wearing his parka with the hood up.

  Shortt opened the front door wearing a polo shirt and pale blue jeans. He grinned when he saw Harper and stepped forward to hug him. ‘Bloody hell, what’s it been? Twelve years?’

  ‘More,’ said Harper. ‘You’re looking good, Jimbo.’

  ‘Clean living,’ said Shortt. ‘What’s with the parka? The mod look coming back, is it?’

  Harper grinned and flipped the hood back as he walked into the hallway. Shepherd followed him. ‘Where’s the family?’ he asked.

  ‘The wife’s playing golf and the kids are at school,’ said Shortt, closing the front door.

  ‘Golf?’

  Shortt shrugged. ‘I know. Why ruin a perfectly good walk by walloping a little ball with a piece of metal on the end of a stick? But she’s bloody good at it. Her handicap’s two. Her instructor reckons she’ll be scratch within the year.’

  ‘Good for her,’ said Shepherd, following Shortt through to the kitchen. He was carrying a black nylon holdall.

  ‘Coffee?’ asked Shortt. ‘I’ve just made a pot.’

  Shepherd and Harper nodded and sat down at the kitchen table as Shortt prepared three mugs of coffee. Shepherd opened his holdall and took out the iPad and transmitter that Singh had given him. Harper looked at the transmitter with interest. ‘See, I knew you had a Q,’ he said.

  Shepherd laughed. ‘We don’t call him Q. His name’s Amar.’

  Shortt put the coffee on the table and sat down. ‘So what’s the story?’ he asked.

  ‘We need intel,’ said Shepherd. ‘Khan knows me so I have to keep well away. We need to get that transmitter on to his car, under a wheel arch, then follow him at a distance. Lex doesn’t have a car and neither does Jock, so it’s down to you with Lex’s help.’

  ‘I can do that,’ said Shortt.

  ‘The Jag’s a bit high profile,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘I’ll swap with the wife,’ said Jimbo. ‘She’s got a Vauxhall Astra.’

  ‘Best to attach it in the early hours of the morning,’ said Shepherd. ‘The range is limitless, pretty much. It tracks through the phone network so you can be anywhere in the world and pick up the location.’

  ‘Nice,’ said Harper. ‘Think you could get me one?’

  Shepherd laughed. ‘No, and I’ll need that one back when we’re done.’

  He reached into the holdall and took out a clipboard with a questionnaire and a laminated card clipped to it. He passed it across the table to Shortt. ‘We need to know what his personal situation is. It could be that he lives alone but, assuming he doesn’t, we need to know who he lives with, where he works, where he goes.’ He tapped the laminated card. ‘This is a council ID, no photograph but it looks like the real thing. Are you up for ringing the doorbell and seeing if you can get them to answer a few questions? You tell them that the council’s doing a residents’ survey to know what resources the area needs.’

  Shortt nodded. ‘I can do that.’ He grinned. ‘I was always good at the secret squirrel stuff.’ He looked over at Harper. ‘Did Spider ever tell you about my little adventure during Selection?’

  Harper shook his head.

  ‘I was told to go into a pub in the St Paul’s district of Bristol with a gun. I was the only white face in a pub full of Afro-Caribbean blokes. My sole task was to stay there for an hour without anyone detecting the weapon. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But the problem was that the pub was the headquarters for the local pimps and drug dealers, and any unfamiliar face was instantly suspect. As soon as I stepped through the door, one of the players whispered to this very good-looking woman who made straight for me. She said, “Hi, handsome, want to buy me a drink?” and was all over me, and her hands were everywhere — and I mean everywhere!’ He grinned. ‘Perks of the job, you might say. Of course, she didn’t really fancy me, she was just patting me down to check if I was carrying a weapon or wearing a wire.’

  ‘She didn’t find the gun?’

  ‘I’d tucked it between my legs. If she’d felt it I’d have just told her she was giving me a hard-on. But I tell you, by the time I walked out of that pub I had them eating out of my hands.’ He picked up the clipboard. ‘After that, this’ll be a piece of cake.’

  ‘Any chance of you doing this tomorrow?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ said Shortt. ‘I can rejig my schedule easy enough.’ He looked over at Harper. ‘Where are you staying?’

&
nbsp; ‘Bayswater,’ said Harper.

  ‘I’ll pick you up five-ish, so we can get there nice and early,’ said Shortt.

  Shepherd finished his coffee and put down his mug. ‘And the guns? Are they here?’

  Shortt stood up, opened a cupboard and took out a pole with a hook on the end. He saw the look of confusion on Shepherd and Harper’s faces. ‘Attic,’ he said.

  The three men went upstairs and Shortt used the hook to pull open a trapdoor and release a folding metal ladder. He propped the pole up against the wall, went up the ladder and flicked a switch. A fluorescent light flickered into life as Shepherd climbed up behind him. The attic had been lined with plywood and the floor was bare boards. There were half a dozen cardboard boxes and a metal trunk against one wall and a battered chest of drawers against another.

  ‘Give me a hand to move this,’ said Shortt, taking one end of the chest of drawers. Shepherd took the other and together they dragged it into the centre of the attic as Harper came up the ladder. Shortt pulled open one of the drawers and took out a screwdriver. The sheet of plywood behind the chest of drawers was held against the rafters by six screws and Shortt undid them one at a time. He passed them to Shepherd and pulled the sheet away and propped it against the wall.

  Shepherd whistled softly as he saw what had been concealed behind the panel. There was an AK-47 with a foldable stock and below it an AK-74. And beneath the two carbines were two pistols. Standing upright was a Lee Enfield bolt-action rifle that must have been more than sixty years old. Shepherd took it out and held it up to his shoulder. ‘How the hell did you get this?’

  ‘Took it off a dead muj,’ said Shortt. ‘He didn’t have any use for it, seeing how he was dead and all.’

  ‘I meant how did you get it back to the UK?’

  Shortt shrugged. ‘What can I say? They didn’t do much in the way of checks back then. I could probably have bought a tank back, bit by bit.’

  Harper took out the AK-47 and nodded admiringly at it. ‘Now this brings back memories,’ he said.

  ‘Have you got ammo?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘Not for the AKs or the Enfield. But I’ve kept a few rounds for the pistols. Used to take them to a quarry in Wales to fire off a few now and again. And I keep them clean and oiled.’