Cold Kill

by Stephen Leather

  Artur gripped Shepherd’s left arm above the elbow. Shepherd shook him off. ‘Don’t you touch me!’ he hissed. ‘Don’t you fucking touch me!’

  Ervin stepped closer to Shepherd and drew back his leather jacket to reveal the butt of a gun.

  ‘What? I don’t come with you so you shoot me in front of a hundred witnesses?’ said Shepherd. ‘How stupid are you?’

  Ervin put his hand on the butt of the pistol. ‘You think anyone will stop me?’ he said.

  ‘Probably not, but those guys over there might just come after you.’ Shepherd nodded at four armed men in black overalls and gleaming black boots standing at the entrance to the station. They were Compagnie Républicaine de Sécurité, the hard men of French law enforcement. They had MAS PA 9mm pistols on their hips and were cradling FAMAS G2 assault rifles. The G2, nicknamed ‘the bugle’ because of its shape, was a fair to middling weapon, but not a patch on the SAS’s MP5. The French could easily have equipped their own men with the MP5, but took a chauvinistic pride in building their own, albeit inferior, weapon. But while the weaponry was nothing to write home about, the men of the CRS were as hard as they came.

  Ervin took his hand off his gun.

  Shepherd knew he had no choice other than to go with the two Albanians. If he refused, the deal would be off. And if they pulled out of the deal, everything he’d done so far would have been a waste of time. There wasn’t enough evidence to put the Uddin brothers behind bars. And it was the Albanians who had forced Rudi Pernaska to carry the cans containing the counterfeit cash. If Shepherd walked away now, the Albanians would remain free. The only way to make them pay was to go with them. Besides, he was Tony Corke, and Tony Corke had nothing to fear from the Albanians. ‘Okay, let’s calm down,’ said Shepherd. ‘There’s no need for artillery.’

  ‘We were told to take you to our boss.’

  ‘Yeah, I got that. Okay – but I’m on the afternoon train back to London.’

  ‘We understand that.’

  ‘So I’ll be back here in time for the train?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Ervin. He looked at the armed policemen, but they appeared to be more interested in a group of schoolgirls than a potential shoot-out on the station concourse.

  ‘Okay. Let’s go.’ Shepherd pointed a finger at Artur. ‘But don’t touch me.’

  Artur stared at Shepherd, eyes cold and hard. Shepherd stared back.

  ‘Come on,’ said Ervin. ‘We are wasting time here.’ He said something in Albanian to Artur, who grunted, then headed for the exit. Shepherd and Ervin followed.

  ‘No hard feelings,’ said Ervin.

  ‘Not so far,’ said Shepherd. He glanced around but didn’t see Hargrove or Sharpe, or anyone who looked as if they were paying them any attention. Either the French surveillance was top notch or it wasn’t there. ‘What about Salik? Did you put him through this before you did business with him?’

  ‘We have known him for a long time,’ said Ervin. ‘We have done business many times.’

  ‘But with me you’ll be able to do much bigger runs, and make a hell of a lot more money,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘That is why you are here,’ said Ervin.

  They walked out of the station and into the main street where passengers queued for taxis. They went past the taxi rank. Shepherd saw Jimmy Sharpe buying a copy of Le Monde from a newsagent and felt more at ease. At least one friendly face was close by. Sharpe flicked the paper under his arm and ran across the road towards a pavement café. There was no sign of Hargrove.

  ‘This way,’ said Ervin. ‘We have a car.’

  Shepherd fell into step next to him. Artur stood aside to let them go by, glaring at Shepherd with undisguised hatred, then followed. Shepherd knew he’d made a mistake in insulting Artur, but the alternative would have been to let the Albanian manhandle him and he hadn’t been prepared to allow that. Tony Corke wasn’t an SAS trooper turned undercover cop, but he was a former merchant seaman with a criminal record for violence and it would have been out of character for him to let Artur push him around.

  They hurried across the road and away from the café where Sharpe had seated himself at a table, then turned down a side-street where a large Mercedes was waiting, engine running.

  As they walked up to the rear of the car, the driver got out. He was a stocky man with a scarred left cheek and, like the other two, was wearing a leather jacket and jeans, but with a blue New York Yankees baseball cap.

  Ervin called to him in Albanian. The driver leaned into the car and popped open the boot.

  Shepherd stopped. ‘Now what?’ he asked.

  Ervin grinned – and Shepherd realised he’d made a big mistake in turning his back on Artur. He heard a swishing sound, then something hard thumped behind his left ear and everything went black.

  When Shepherd came to he was lying in the foetal position in pitch darkness. He could hear muffled street sounds and the floor was vibrating. He was still in the boot of the car and his head ached. He reached up with his right hand as a sharp pain lanced his skull. He cursed and groped around with his hands for something he could use to force his way out, but there was nothing. He was lying on thick carpet that smelt of chemicals. As it was a Mercedes, he was pretty sure there was a spare wheel and a tool-kit under the floor, but he didn’t know how he could get at it in the confined space. Mentally he went through the contents of his pockets. His wallet. The mobile phone. His keys. Loose change. His Peter Devereux passport. Hardly an arsenal, and certainly no match for three men with guns.

  He cursed himself for his stupidity. He should have agreed to go with them in the first place: then at least he’d have been travelling in comfort, not locked in the boot. The big question, Shepherd knew, was what they would do next. If it had been a set-up from the start he would be dead as soon as they opened the boot. If they had any sense they’d pump half a dozen bullets into him first chance they got, because if they didn’t he’d come out fighting and a man with nothing to lose could do a hell of a lot of damage. Was he in the boot because he’d been argumentative, or had that been the plan from the start? Shepherd squinted at the luminous dial of his Rolex Submariner. He had only been out for a few minutes, which was another good sign because Artur could probably have hit him a lot harder if he’d wanted to. They hadn’t tied him up either. So, all in all, everything was looking rosy.

  The car turned sharply to the left, slowed, then took another sharp left turn. It dipped down and the traffic noises died away. They were in an underground car park. Another good sign. If they’d been going to kill him they’d probably have driven out into the countryside.

  The Mercedes slowed to a crawl, turned, and the engine died. Shepherd tensed. He was ninety-five per cent sure that this was going to work out all right, but the adrenaline kicked in, his heart pounded and he started to breathe faster.

  The boot clicked. Shepherd grunted, kicked it open with his feet and sprang out, hands up, ready to lash out. Ervin was standing a dozen feet away, his gun aimed at Shepherd’s chest. Artur stood off to the side, even further away, clasping a Glock with both hands, one finger tensed on the trigger. Shepherd stood where he was, breathing heavily. Ervin smiled. ‘Relax, Tony,’ he said.

  ‘Relax? You fucking poleaxe me and you tell me to relax?’

  ‘What are you going to do? Kung fu? Karate? Even Bruce Lee couldn’t block a bullet.’

  Shepherd glanced over his shoulder. The driver was standing by the open door of the Mercedes, holding a sawn-off shotgun. He looked back at Ervin. ‘Now what?’ he asked.

  Ervin gestured with his gun. ‘We’re here,’ he said. ‘The boss is upstairs.’

  Shepherd put a hand to his head, and felt his hair wet with blood. ‘So let’s go.’ He wiped his fingers on his jeans.

  Ervin nodded, then spoke to the others in Albanian. Artur put away his gun and the driver slid the sawn-off under the front passenger seat. Ervin stuck his weapon into his trouser belt. ‘First, we must search you,’ said Ervin.

/>   ‘For what?’

  ‘For anything. Please raise your hands.’

  Shepherd did as he was told. Ervin moved forward cautiously and went through the pockets of the pea coat. He examined the Nokia mobile and put it into his own jacket pocket, along with Shepherd’s wallet, keys, return ticket and passport.

  ‘I’ll want those back later,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘You’ll have them.’ He patted down Shepherd’s jeans to his boots. ‘I’m going to lift your shirt,’ said Ervin.

  ‘Nice of you to warn me.’

  Ervin pulled Shepherd’s shirt out of his jeans and undid the buttons. He lifted the shirt, peered round Shepherd’s waist, then checked his chest.

  ‘Satisfied?’ asked Shepherd.

  Ervin nodded. Shepherd fastened his shirt and tucked it into his jeans. The driver climbed back into the Mercedes and drove off.

  ‘This way,’ said Ervin. He led Shepherd to a lift and tapped in an access code on a console set into the concrete. A few minutes later the doors opened and Shepherd stepped in, followed by Artur and Ervin. It was austere and functional, lined with stainless steel. The doors hissed shut.

  The lift was designed to stop at only two floors – the underground car park and the penthouse. There was no way of knowing how many floors it bypassed, but less than a minute later the doors opened and Shepherd walked out into a hallway with a red thick-pile carpet and gilded wallpaper, which featured rushes and long-legged birds pecking for fish. Ornate candelabra hung from the ceiling. At the far end of the hallway there was a pair of ornate Chinese doors. As Shepherd and the two Albanians walked towards them they opened. Shepherd wasn’t surprised to see that the man standing there to greet them was also wearing a leather jacket and jeans. It seemed to be the standard uniform: Albanian gangster chic.

  He grunted at Ervin and held the door open for them. The room they went into was huge with high ceilings, more candelabra, a massive marble fireplace that was almost as tall as Shepherd, and gilt furniture with overstuffed red cushions. There were ornate statues everywhere – dolphins, lions, African warriors holding spears – and a massive plasma-screen television on one wall with huge speakers. Shepherd stood at the window, which looked out over the Seine and the towers of Notre Dame Cathedral. They were right in the centre of Paris and the apartment must have been worth millions of euros.

  A door opened at the far end of the room and a small but powerfully built man came in. He had close-cropped grey hair and a square chin, which he thrust up like a boxer eager to get started. He was wearing a salmon-pink polo shirt, cream trousers and pale tan loafers, as if he’d just stepped off a golf course.

  ‘Nice view,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘You don’t notice it after a while,’ said the man. ‘I am Kreshnik. My men tell me you did not want to accompany them.’ He had a thick Central European accent but was obviously fluent in English. He waved for Shepherd to sit down on one of the sofas.

  Shepherd stayed where he was. ‘Salik said I was to meet you guys in Paris. He didn’t say I was going to be thrown into the boot of a car.’

  ‘That was because you didn’t go with them willingly,’ said Kreshnik. ‘Now, please, sit down. Can I offer you a drink?’

  ‘No, thanks,’ said Shepherd, and sat on a large sofa. It was nowhere near as comfortable as it looked.

  ‘I have a very nice white wine, perfectly chilled.’

  ‘Fine. Okay, whatever,’ said Shepherd.

  Kreshnik clicked his fingers and Artur left the room. He clicked his fingers again, this time at Ervin, who stepped forward and put the contents of Shepherd’s pockets on to the coffee table. Kreshnik flicked through the passport. ‘One of Salik’s?’ he asked.

  Shepherd nodded.

  Kreshnik put it down, then picked up the wallet and went through it, examining every card and banknote. He looked at both sides of the driving licence, then laid it on top of the wallet. He picked up the mobile and scrolled through the menu. He frowned. ‘There is only one number in the memory?’

  ‘Yes. Salik’s.’

  ‘No friends? No family?’

  ‘I only use it to talk to him.’

  Kreshnik’s eyes narrowed as if he was squinting into a bright light. ‘You have no other friends?’

  ‘It’s a pay-as-you-go mobile. I have another phone I use to call friends. That one’s a business phone. If there’s a problem I can throw it away and there’s no comeback.’

  ‘You are suspicious of Salik?’

  Shepherd laughed. ‘I’m suspicious of everyone,’ he said. ‘Especially thugs who whack me on the back of the head and dump me in a car boot. I don’t know, maybe I’m paranoid.’

  Kreshnik scrolled through the menu again. ‘No calls made, none received,’ he said.

  ‘I clear the logs,’ said Shepherd. ‘You never know when some nosy bastard’s going to start searching through it.’

  Kreshnik’s face hardened. ‘That would be your British sense of humour, would it?’ he said. ‘I’d be careful with that. Not everyone understands the joke.’

  ‘I’m just saying that in this business you have to be careful. The cops can trace every call you make. You must know that. You watch every word you say and you keep switching Sim cards. And whenever you can, you use public phones. That’s basic – everyone knows it.’

  Kreshnik removed the back of the phone and peered inside, took out the battery, examined it, then reassembled the phone and switched it back on.

  He put it down on the coffee table and picked up Shepherd’s keys. ‘These are for your car?’ he said.

  Shepherd nodded.

  ‘What sort?’

  ‘A Land Rover.’

  ‘I have a Range Rover,’ said Kreshnik.

  ‘Nice car,’ said Shepherd. ‘Bit pricy for me.’

  Kreshnik weighed the keys in the palm of his right hand. ‘No house keys?’ he said. He had a gold half-sovereign ring on his third finger.

  ‘I left them in the car.’

  ‘And the car is where?’

  ‘In a car park not far from where I met Salik today.’

  ‘You always do that? Leave your house keys in the car?’

  Shepherd shrugged. ‘Habit, when you’re at sea. You don’t clutter your pockets with non-essentials,’ he said. ‘You carry what you need.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Kreshnik. ‘You are a sailor.’ He laid the keys on the table and watched Shepherd with unsmiling eyes.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My father was a sailor. Were you in the navy?’

  ‘Merchant navy. Six years. Five on the cross-Channel ferries.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘I go where the money is.’

  ‘Why did you leave the ferries?’

  ‘They were cutting back. Competition from the Eurostar.’

  Kreshnik held Shepherd’s look. His smile hardened. ‘I do not believe you,’ he said.

  Shepherd held his gaze steady. His mind raced. Had he slipped up? ‘I had a bit of legal trouble,’ he said calmly. ‘A fight. I did six months in prison.’

  Kreshnik smiled cruelly. ‘I knew it,’ he said. ‘I can always spot someone who has been in prison. There is a smell about them. An odour.’

  ‘I showered this morning,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘It’s a smell that never leaves,’ said Kreshnik. ‘All the soap in the world won’t get rid of it.’ He grinned. ‘I have never been to prison,’ he said.

  ‘I’m pleased for you.’

  ‘Why is it, do you think, that I have never been behind bars?’ asked Kreshnik.

  ‘You pay off the cops?’ said Shepherd.

  The Albanian wagged a finger at Shepherd, but he was smiling. ‘That sense of humour will get you into trouble. We don’t laugh much in Albania, unless we are drunk.’

  Arthur returned with two large glasses of white wine on a silver tray. He gave one to Kreshnik, the other to Shepherd. Kreshnik clinked his glass against Shepherd’s, sipped his wine and rolled it round his pala
te with pursed lips. For a moment Shepherd thought the Albanian was going to spit it out, but he swallowed, smiled and nodded approvingly.

  Shepherd drank from his glass then put it on the table.

  ‘The answer to that question, why I have never been to prison, is that I never do business with people I don’t know,’ said Kreshnik. He picked up the driving licence and waved it in front of Shepherd’s face. ‘Now I know you, Tony Corke, and I know where you live. Your date of birth. I have all the information I need to track you down.’ He slid the driving licence into the back pocket of his golfing trousers.

  ‘I’ll need that,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘You can get a replacement,’ said Kreshnik. ‘It’s one of the great things about your country. They issue copies of official documents so quickly.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re so worried about,’ said Shepherd. ‘If it wasn’t for me, you’d have lost the consignment you gave that asylum-seeker. I’ve already done you a big favour.’

  ‘Salik told me you demanded thirty thousand pounds.’

  ‘It was more of a commission than a demand,’ said Shepherd. ‘Can I ask you a question?’

  ‘You can ask,’ said the Albanian. ‘Whether I choose to answer or not is up to me.’

  ‘I get the feeling you’re bigger than Salik. This apartment. The crew you’ve got around you. You’re in the Premier League. Salik, he’s Second Division. Hoping for promotion but still a long way behind you.’

  Kreshnik smiled. ‘That is a reasonable assessment.’ His smile widened. ‘You know what my dream is, Tony? To buy a football team in your country one day. Like Roman Abramovich. He bought Chelsea. And that American – he bought Manchester United. I want to do the same. Liverpool is for sale, right?’

  ‘In England everything is for sale,’ said Shepherd. He leaned forward, fingers interlinked. ‘Look, I might be in a position to do some work for you. Salik told you about my boat, right?’

  Kreshnik nodded.

  ‘Okay, then. I’m running cash for Salik, but I can carry a thousand kilos of anything over the Channel with next to no chance of being caught. I was working with Pepper on his trawler to learn the ropes, but I could see that his boat was a pile of shit. I can put ten men on mine and have them in the UK in under an hour. I can run them from France to Scotland if you wanted.’