‘Did I say thugs?’ said Yokely, regaining his composure. ‘I’m sorry, I gave you the wrong impression. They’re doctors. Or at least they’ve been medically trained. They’ve got a host of chemical cocktails they’re keen to try on you. None has been FDA approved, of course, and the chances are that you’ll end up a vegetable, but you’ll tell them everything you know. Every single thing.’ Yokely pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘This will be the last time we meet, Mr Ahmed. I’ll be getting full reports from the Ukrainians, so I’ll have everything I need. You might as well enjoy the chicken. I gather the food over there is every bit as bad as it is here.’
Yokely picked up his mug and walked out of the room, down a corridor past two armed marines, and through a door. There were two plasma flat-screen TVs on the wall, relaying images from the two CCTV cameras in the interrogation room. A tall man with receding grey hair was sipping a can of Sprite as he watched the Saudi stare at the plate of fried chicken. ‘Ten bucks says he takes a piece,’ he said. Carl Bulmer was the type to bet on which of two raindrops would be first to reach the bottom of a windowpane.
‘You’re throwing your money away,’ said Yokely. ‘He knows we’re watching him.’
Bulmer was with the CIA, a twenty-year veteran of South America, Afghanistan and Iraq. Not that his CIA credentials were ever referred to in the Guantánamo Bay camp. The CIA operatives were described as OGA personnel, working for Other Government Agencies. It was, as Yokely knew, a rose by any other name. Bulmer wore the standard OGA attire of long-sleeved black shirt, black trousers and impenetrable sunglasses. It was as much a uniform as the orange jumpsuits they forced the inmates to wear.
‘If you don’t want to bet, fine,’ said Bulmer. He stretched out his legs and balanced his can of Sprite on his lap as he watched the Saudi.
Yokely raised his eyebrows. ‘Want to bet a hundred?’
Bulmer hesitated, then nodded acceptance. ‘A hundred it is.’ He kept his eyes on the screen. ‘I heard you were in The Hague a while back,’ he said.
‘My itinerary is classified these days,’ said Yokely. ‘You know how it is.’
‘Day you flew out, Slobodan Milosõevicë had a heart-attack.’
‘An unhappy coincidence.’ Yokely laughed. ‘No great loss to the world.’
‘Word is that the two events were not unconnected.’
Yokely chuckled. ‘A butterfly flaps its wings in China and there’s a hurricane in Florida?’
‘I think the word is that the connection is a bit closer than that.’
Yokely continued to chuckle but said nothing.
Bulmer levelled a finger at the monitor. ‘You know, he said more to you in there in five minutes than he’s said to us in six months,’ said Bulmer.
‘I’m not sure that death threats count as conversation,’ said Yokely, helping himself to a bottle of water from a small fridge beside one of the desks.
‘You got him angry. That’s a start.’
‘I killed his brother and cousin,’ said Yokely, ‘but if he hates me enough, he might open up to you.’
‘Anything specific?’
‘The Holy Martyrs of Islam,’ said Yokely. ‘They’re new boys on the block but they’ve started killing hostages in Iraq.’
‘Yeah, the Lake boy. Just goes to show, all the money in the world won’t help if these bastards get you. What’s your interest?’
‘Nothing special,’ said Yokely. ‘Just want to do a favour for a friend.’ He nodded at the screen. ‘Are we putting a time limit on this, by the way?’
Bulmer glanced at a digital clock up on the wall. ‘Half an hour?’
‘Up to you,’ said Yokely. ‘He’s never going to eat it. He seems to think he can get information out – what do you think?’
‘He’s in solitary most of the time.’ Bulmer drank the last of his Sprite, crumpled the can with one hand and tossed it into a wastepaper basket on the far side of the room. He pumped his fist in the air. ‘I think he was bluffing.’
‘Yeah, me too. He’s got an ego and we can use that. He’s not seen anyone from the embassy, has he?’
‘Which? He’s got dual, right? Saudi and British?’
‘I don’t think the British Embassy staff would pass on messages to al-Qaeda, do you?’
‘Two-faced lot, the Brits,’ said Bulmer.
‘That’s the French, Carl. Anyone from the Saudi lot been to see him?’
Bulmer leaned forward and tapped on his computer keyboard. A spreadsheet filled the screen and he stared at it, brow furrowed. ‘No visitors,’ he said. ‘No requests for visits, either.’
‘Okay, so just check that he doesn’t come into contact with any other inmates.’
‘Richard, please, don’t teach me how to suck eggs,’ said Bulmer. ‘I know what solitary means.’
‘There’s solitary and there’s solitary,’ said Yokely. ‘I don’t want anyone even to hear him fart.’ He headed for the door.
‘Aren’t you going to wait and see if he eats the chicken?’ asked Bulmer.
‘I trust you,’ said Yokely. ‘Send me a cheque.’
Shepherd opened one of the three metal cases and looked at the handguns inside. Two Ingrams. Four magazines. He ran a hand over them and remembered the old cliché: guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Like most clichés, it was true. But when it came to killing people, guns made the job a whole lot easier. Knives were too personal: it was hard to look a man in the eye and shove one into his chest. Guns could kill at a distance: you just pointed and pulled the trigger. Technology did the rest. And the Ingram was one of the best, just pray and spray. It wasn’t even necessary to aim it because its rapid rate of fire meant that anything within range would be ripped apart. Killing with a gun was a relatively simple matter. But coping with the emotional burden afterwards . . . That was different. He closed the case with a dull thud. The other two contained spare magazines and a hundred rounds. Button had decided they shouldn’t come up with all the weapons and ammunition up front but make the guys work for it. It would give the Branch detectives a chance to follow the weapons back to Birmingham. If they knew that more weapons and ammunition were on the way, Ali and Fazal would probably wait to launch their attack.
‘The world is going to hell in a handbasket,’ said Sharpe, pacing up and down by the entrance to the warehouse.
‘What does that mean?’ asked Shepherd.
‘It means the world’s going crazy,’ said Sharpe scornfully.
‘I know what it means, but what’s the story with the handbasket? What the hell’s a handbasket?’
‘A basket that you hold in your hand,’ said Sharpe, patiently.
‘Right. So how does the world fit into it? And who’s taking it to hell?’
‘It’s an expression,’ said Sharpe.
‘I know it’s an expression, Razor. I’m just saying, it’s an expression that doesn’t make the least bit of sense.’
‘You’re missing the point.’
‘No, Razor, you’re not getting to the point. What’s got you all riled up this time?’
‘Did you see the racial-identity memo that came round?’
‘I don’t read memos,’ said Shepherd. ‘I figured if it was important someone would talk to me about it.’
‘You write reports, don’t you?’
‘Sure.’
‘So you need to know how to describe the bad guys. And the PC brigade have gone and moved the goalposts again. We used to know where we were, right? You and I are IC One males. Anyone from the Mediterranean is IC Two, blacks are IC Three, Asians are IC Four, Chinks are IC Five and Ragheads are IC Six.’
‘You did go on the course, didn’t you?’ asked Shepherd.
‘What course?’
‘The course about not offending ethnic minorities,’ said Shepherd.
‘I’m not saying it to their faces,’ said Sharpe.
‘But you would, wouldn’t you?’
‘The point I’m trying to make is that the six classif
ications were all you needed. You’re on the trail of two Yardies and you hit the radio to say that they’re IC Three males. Do you know what the Yardies are now?’
‘B Ones,’ said Shepherd. ‘M One if they’re mixed race.’
Sharpe’s eyes narrowed. ‘I thought you hadn’t read the memo?’
‘The classifications were changed a while back.’
‘And you know how many there are now?’
‘Sixteen,’ said Shepherd. ‘Plus one.’
‘The one is if the bad guy doesn’t want to say where he’s from. How stupid is that?’
‘If they don’t say, we get to guess. That’s all the plus one means.’
‘Spider, you can see what a crock of shit this is, can’t you? It’s political correctness gone mad. In the old days, a white guy was an IC One, end of story. Now a white guy can be W One, white British, W Two, white Irish, or W Nine, White Other. Now, I’m on the trail of a white guy. Is he British, Irish or a bloody Kiwi? How do I know? I don’t, right? He’s just a white guy. So how do I call it in? W One, W Two or W Nine? And what happened to W Three, W Four, W Five and all the rest of the Ws?’
‘Fair point,’ said Shepherd, who was already bored with the conversation.
‘Am I supposed to ask him?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Shepherd.
‘And they’ve subdivided the Asians into A One Indian, A Two Pakistani, A Three Bangladeshi, and A Nine Asian Other. Now, I ask you, can you tell the difference between a Paki and a Bangladeshi?’
‘Razor, “Paki” is offensive,’ said Shepherd.
‘Screw that,’ snarled Sharpe. ‘Brit is short for British, Scot is short for Scottish, and Paki is short for Pakistani. The point is, how the hell are we meant to tell them apart? And what about the Ragheads? They’ve done away with the IC Six Arab classification but under the new codes there are no Arabs. They fall under O Nine, Any Other Ethnic Group. How stupid is that? The Ragheads are the biggest threat to the free world, and we don’t even have a classification for them. What are we going to say over the radio next time we’re on the trail of a Raghead suicide-bomber? That we’re following someone from Any Other Ethnic Group wearing an explosive vest?’
Shepherd had no answer for that because what Sharpe had said was absolutely correct. In their bid to be politically correct, the powers-that-be had done away with the Arab classification. Oriental had gone too, with the new definitions having room only for Chinese. Thais, Vietnamese and Koreans were lumped together under A Nine, Any Other Asian. It made no sense. The original classifications could be criticised as not specific enough, but at least the guys on surveillance knew who they were looking for. But the new classifications veered from being too specific to too vague. They were worse than useless.
‘Like I said, the world’s gone mad,’ said Sharpe, his voice loaded with bitterness.
‘You don’t have to use the new classifications on surveillance, you know that,’ said Shepherd. ‘They’re an admin thing, that’s all.’
‘It’s nonsense,’ said Sharpe. ‘What does it matter if a villain is Irish or Welsh? If he’s a Bangladeshi or an Indian?’
‘It helps the collation of statistics,’ said Shepherd.
‘Yeah, well, where’s the classification for Turks? They’re behind most of the drugs being brought into London. Where’s the classification for Jamaicans? They’re responsible for most of the gun crime. What about the Bosnians and their ATM frauds?’
‘You should write a memo,’ said Shepherd.
‘I’m a dinosaur,’ said Sharpe. ‘They’re not going to pay me any attention.’
‘You’re a cop with almost thirty years’ experience,’ said Shepherd.
‘Which counts for nothing,’ said Sharpe. ‘They don’t care what we think. We’re just pawns in a bigger game.’
‘It’s not a game, Razor. None of this is.’ Shepherd’s mobile phone vibrated and he took it out. Charlotte Button. He pressed the green button. ‘Yeah?’ he said. He wasn’t being rude: it was standard procedure not to identify himself over the phone unless he was in character.
‘Would you be so kind as to tell your prehistoric colleague that we’re recording everything that’s being said.’
‘Ah, right,’ said Shepherd, and gave Sharpe a warning look. ‘I’ll do that.’
‘And tell him that we have more than enough already to put an end to his career. We’ll reset the recording as of now, but it’s my last warning.’
‘I’ll tell him,’ said Shepherd.
Button ended the call.
‘Tell me what?’ said Sharpe.
‘Enough of the racist stuff,’ said Shepherd, putting away his phone.
‘Me? Racist?’ said Sharpe, genuinely offended. ‘I had a Chinese last night and an Indian on Monday.’
‘I hope you’re talking food,’ said Shepherd. ‘Just remember we’re on tape.’
‘Message received and understood,’ said Sharpe, saluting Shepherd. He waved up at one of the hidden cameras in the roof. ‘Testing, testing, one, two, three.’
Sometimes Razor’s sense of humour could be infuriating, Shepherd thought. He heard a car engine outside. ‘Here they are,’ he said, and went to the metal door that led out to the car park. Ali was at the wheel of a five-year-old Ford Mondeo. Fazal had just climbed out of the front passenger seat. Hassan sat in the back, glaring. Shepherd stood in the doorway, arms folded, the hard man.
Ali climbed out of the car and waved at him. Shepherd looked pointedly at his watch. ‘Are you going to stand there all day, or are we going to get on with this?’ he said.
Ali hurried over with Fazal. Hassan stayed in the back of the car. Shepherd gestured at him. ‘Still mad about his camera, is he?’
‘It’s ruined,’ said Ali. ‘They said it would cost at least two hundred pounds to repair.’
‘Yeah, well, maybe next time he’ll be more careful where he points it. Is he staying in the car?’
‘If that’s okay.’
‘He can turn cartwheels round the car park so long as he doesn’t try to take my picture again.’ Shepherd held the door open for them, and they walked into the building. They stopped short when they saw that Sharpe was holding a metal detector.
‘What’s that?’ said Fazal.
‘It’s a thermostat,’ said Sharpe. ‘It stops things overheating. We know you’re not going to do anything silly but just hold up your arms and let me check you out.’
‘You don’t trust us,’ said Ali.
‘We don’t trust anybody,’ said Sharpe.
‘What about you?’ said Fazal. ‘How do we know you don’t have guns?’
Shepherd grinned. ‘Of course we’ve got guns,’ he said. ‘You’re here to buy guns, remember? Now, hold out your arms or piss off.’
Ali and Fazal glanced at each other nervously. Ali was sweating and wiped his brow with his sleeve.
‘Is there a problem, ladies?’ asked Sharpe.
Fazal reached into his jacket and took out a machete, the blade wrapped in newspaper. Sharpe took a step back, transferred the metal detector to his left hand, then pulled out an automatic with the right.
‘It’s okay – it’s okay!’ shouted Ali.
‘Put the knife down!’ shouted Sharpe, pointing the gun at Fazal’s chest.
Fazal bent down slowly and placed the machete on the floor. He reached into his trouser pocket, pulled out a flick knife and put it next to the machete, then straightened up.
‘Knives?’ said Sharpe. He sneered at Fazal. ‘You bring knives to a gun deal? What was going through your tiny little mind? You were going to pull a knife and we hand over the guns ’cos we’re pissing ourselves?’
‘They’re for protection,’ said Ali. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a hunting knife in a nylon sheath. He dropped it on to the floor, then pulled a carving knife with a wooden handle from the back of his trousers, the blade in a cardboard sleeve. It clattered on to the concrete.
‘Against what? You think a knife
is gonna stop me putting a bullet in your leg?’
‘Not against you,’ said Ali.
‘Against who, then?’ asked Shepherd.
‘You don’t know what it’s like for Muslims after seven/seven,’ said Ali. ‘It was rough before but we’re all marked men now. You can’t walk down the street without getting abuse and worse.’
‘And a knife stops the name-calling, does it?’ said Shepherd.
Ali pulled up his sweatshirt to reveal a half-inch-thick scar that ran from his left side to his navel. ‘Maybe not, but it’ll stop this happening again.’
Shepherd stared at the scar. It was a full ten inches long and, from the way it had healed, it had been a deep wound. ‘You were lucky,’ he said.
‘Lucky?’
‘Lucky you didn’t die.’
‘Yeah, well, it wasn’t for want of them trying. That was two weeks after the London bombings. I was in Birmingham, for fuck’s sake, on the way to collect my winnings from the bookie.’
‘I thought Muslims didn’t gamble,’ said Shepherd.
Ali frowned. ‘What’s being a Muslim got to do with anything? I’m British, mate, as British as you. If I want to bet on the horses, I will.’
Sharpe put away his gun and transferred the metal detector to his right hand. Ali held out his arms to the side and Sharpe ran the detector over him. Then he did the same with Fazal. It beeped when it went over the man’s trouser pocket but it was only his keys and loose change.
‘They kicked the shit out of me and slashed me because to them I was the wrong colour,’ said Ali. ‘And do you know what the police did? Nothing. They couldn’t care less. Sent a white cop who was younger than me. He took a few notes and I never saw him again. Hospital was great but you want to know why? Because hardly anyone working there was white, that’s why.’
‘Sounds like a racial thing, rather than a religious one,’ said Shepherd.
‘It’s the same,’ said Ali. ‘You think the guys who did this to me knew I was Muslim? Or cared? They didn’t ask – they didn’t need to. The guys who blew up the Tube were Asian so all Asians are the enemy.’
‘And what do you want the guns for? To even the score?’
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