Shepherd parked the BMW in the driveway and let himself into the house. It was just before three o’clock so Katra had probably gone to pick up Liam. He stripped off his clothes, showered and had just slipped on his bathrobe when the phone rang. He picked up the extension in the bedroom. It was Linda Howe, the solicitor who was handling the sale of his house: ‘It’s bad news, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘Has your estate agent been in touch?’
‘No,’ said Shepherd. ‘What’s up?’
‘The buyer’s having trouble meeting his commitments and has asked if you’d be prepared to drop your asking price.’
Shepherd cursed under his breath and sat down on the bed. ‘So I’ve been gazumped?’ he said.
‘Well, strictly speaking, it’s gazumping when the vendor increases his price at the last minute,’ said the solicitor.
‘So I’ve been reverse gazumped,’ said Shepherd. ‘Either way he’s taking a liberty, Linda. We agreed a price.’
‘Absolutely we did,’ she said, ‘but until the contracts are exchanged and they’ve paid their ten per cent deposit, either party is free to renegotiate or even to pull out altogether.’
Shepherd had thought the couple who had offered for the house pleasant enough. He was a financial adviser in his late twenties, working in the City, and she was a couple of years younger, a personal assistant at a public-relations company near Oxford Circus. They had said they were planning to start a family and wanted a house they could grow into. They owned a small flat in Bayswater and had already accepted an offer on it; the husband had arranged a mortgage through his company. They had seemed the perfect buyers. ‘What exactly did they say?’ asked Shepherd.
‘That their buyer has dropped his offer by fifteen thousand pounds. They can’t proceed unless you agree to the same.’
‘So I have to suffer because their buyer’s playing hardball?’ asked Shepherd.
‘We can tell them we’re not prepared to accept a lower offer. The ball’s in your court, Dan.’
‘And if I agree to take the hit, everything goes through?’
‘We amend the contract accordingly and as all the searches have been done we’ll probably be able to exchange the day after tomorrow, with another two weeks to completion. I could probably do it quicker if the other side co-operates.’
‘Their timing’s impeccable, isn’t it?’ mused Shepherd.
‘What do you mean?’ asked the solicitor.
‘From their point of view, it’s perfect timing. They presumably know that I’ve made the offer on the place in Hereford, and I told them about Liam, that he was moving schools. I even told them about Liam’s grandparents. They know I want to move as quickly as possible. And then, right at the last minute, they throw a spanner into the works. No doubt they think I’ll knock off the fifteen grand for the sake of a quiet life.’
‘It wouldn’t be the first time someone tried that,’ admitted the solicitor. ‘But what do you want to do about it?’
‘I’m on a tight budget with this,’ said Shepherd. ‘If he leaves me fifteen grand short, that’s fifteen grand I don’t have. I’m not sure that the bank will increase my mortgage.’
‘It’s a difficult situation, I know,’ said the solicitor.
Shepherd tried to clear his thoughts. If he’d been Graham May he’d have gone round with a gun and threatened to put a bullet into the man’s leg, maybe threaten to rape his wife as well. But he wasn’t Graham May, he was Dan Shepherd, SAS trooper turned undercover cop, and as angry as he was at what the couple had done, they had still acted completely within the law.
‘What do you want to do?’ asked the solicitor.
‘I don’t know,’ said Shepherd. ‘If we pull out now, will I still have to pay your fee?’
‘The bulk of the work has already been done,’ said the solicitor. ‘I could probably knock ten per cent off our agreed fee, but that would be as far as I could go.’
‘So either way I lose out,’ said Shepherd. ‘I stump up the fifteen grand or I start from scratch – and lose the house I’m buying.’
‘That’s the problem with a chain,’ said the solicitor. ‘If one link breaks, the whole thing collapses. There is another option. We could tell the seller of the Hereford house that we want to drop our offer by fifteen thousand.’
‘Do you think she’d agree?’
‘We could try.’
The woman selling the house in Hereford was a widow in her seventies. Her husband had died two years earlier and she was planning to move closer to her married daughter in Essex. She was buying a small bungalow so she would have money to spare, but Shepherd had felt that he was getting a good deal on the house and didn’t like the idea of trying to snatch back fifteen thousand pounds at this late stage. ‘No, I don’t want to do that. It’s not . . .’ He hesitated. The word he wanted to use was ‘fair’ but he’d sound so naïve. As a serving police officer, he knew that life wasn’t fair – in fact, it was a long way from it. More often than not the bad guys got away with villainy and the good ones got hurt. The richer and more successful the villain, the more likely he was to stay free. The poorer the victim, the less likely he or she was to see justice done. So, life wasn’t fair and only the naïve or stupid thought it was. ‘Necessary,’ finished Shepherd. ‘Let me think about my options.’
‘The buyer says he’ll give us three days,’ said the solicitor. ‘Seventy-two hours.’
‘Now he’s setting deadlines?’ said Shepherd, exasperated. ‘This is extortion. He’s deliberately putting me under pressure hoping I’ll crack.’
‘I dare say that the buyer of his property has set the same deadline,’ said the solicitor.
‘I know, I know,’ said Shepherd. He ran his hand through his hair. ‘Let me think about it. I’ll get back to you.’
He ended the call and tapped in his mother-in-law’s number. She answered in her usually crisp manner, but when she realised it was him she was immediately chatting away: ‘Daniel, I’m so glad you called. The headmistress wants to confirm Liam’s start date, and I said he’d be with them next Monday. I’ve already bought his uniform but he’ll need white plimsolls and I wasn’t sure what size to get.’
‘Moira, there’s been a hitch . . .’ He explained what had happened.
‘Oh, Daniel,’ she said. She was the only person who used Shepherd’s full name and had never called him anything else, even though he’d asked her to call him Dan. To his friends and colleagues, Shepherd was either Spider or Dan. His wife had called him Dan. Or ‘lover’. Even Moira’s husband, Tom, called him Dan. But to Moira he had always been Daniel and always would be, just as trainers would always be plimsolls. ‘Look, if it’s a problem with the financing, Tom and I can tide you over. Tom would talk to his bank. I’m sure they’d agree a bridging loan.’
‘Really, it’s okay,’ said Shepherd.
‘Whatever happened to honesty and decency?’ asked his mother-in-law. ‘A man’s word used to be his bond.’
‘It’s every man for himself, these days,’ said Shepherd.
‘Well, it shouldn’t be. They agreed to buy your house for a price and now they’re going back on it. You should be able to sue them.’
‘Sadly, the law’s on their side,’ said Shepherd.
‘Then the law’s wrong,’ said Moira.
‘No argument there,’ said Shepherd. ‘Look, it’s not the end of the world.’
‘You’re still moving, aren’t you?’ said his mother-in-law. Shepherd could hear the apprehension in her voice. He knew how much she wanted Liam close by. Since Sue had died, Moira and Tom had seen their grandson mainly during school holidays and for the occasional weekend. Shepherd knew that they deserved more. Sue had been their only child and Liam was their only grandchild. He was all they had left of her, and Shepherd was determined that Liam would be a bigger part of their life in future.
‘Of course we are,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’ll talk to my bank about a bridging loan, but if they won’t play ball I might have to pull out of the house I’m bu
ying in Hereford.’
‘Oh, Daniel . . .’
‘It’s okay, really. Worst possible scenario, Liam can come and stay with you again.’
‘I hope you don’t mean that’s the worst possible scenario,’ said Moira.
‘I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant,’ said Shepherd. ‘I meant if I can’t sort it out, it would be great if he could stay with you for a while.’
‘Of course,’ said Moira. ‘His room is here whenever he needs it.’
‘Thanks,’ said Shepherd.
‘What about Katra?’
‘If the house sale falls through, she can stay in Ealing. I’ll stay there too. It might work out, Moira, but if it doesn’t I want Liam settled in his new school as soon as possible. I know the headmistress moved heaven and earth to get him in mid-term.’
‘Is everything else okay, Daniel?’ she asked.
‘Everything’s fine,’ he said.
‘You sound a bit stressed, that’s all.’
‘It’s been a stressful week.’
Richard Yokely was watching the flat-screen computer monitor with Marion Cooke, one of the CIA’s top video analysts, whom he had known for almost a decade. This video was a little less than two minutes long and only one man spoke; he wore a ski mask and brandished a Kalashnikov. It was the seventh time they had viewed it. Now Cooke sat back and exhaled through pursed lips. ‘Not much of a plot,’ she said. ‘I’ll give it both thumbs down.’
‘Anything on the ringleader?’
She looked pained. ‘My Arabic’s good but I’m not a linguistics expert so I can’t even tell you his nationality. But I’ll run it past our guys and we’ll get it nailed down. I can cross-check it with voices on file and I’ll let you know if we get a match.’
‘The banner?’
‘“The Holy Martyrs of Islam. Death to the Infidels.” The sort of rhetoric we usually see in this sort of thing.’
‘Can you cross-check it with previous videos? Use of language, handwriting – I need to know if they have links to other fundamentalist groups.’
‘Yeah. I’d never heard of the Holy Martyrs of Islam before now.’
‘No one has,’ said Yokely, ‘but this is their second kidnapping and they haven’t made any mistakes so I’m assuming they’ve got experience.’
Cooke tapped the keyboard and zoomed in on the face of the man in the orange jumpsuit. ‘He’s a Brit, right?’
‘Yeah. Civilian contractor.’
Cooke pressed another button and the video began to play again, but this time the man’s face filled the screen. ‘You know what’s interesting?’ she mused.
‘Tell me,’ said Yokely.
‘He’s not afraid,’ said Cooke. ‘I’ve seen a few hostage videos and you can see the fear on their faces. Wide eyes, hyperventilating, shaking. This guy’s like a rock. And look at his eyes – he’s watching everything. He’s not at all scared.’
‘Ah,’ said Yokely. ‘Perhaps I understated his background. He was in special forces for a while.’
‘The SAS?’ She grinned. ‘Then, from what I’ve heard, his captors are the ones who should be worried.’
‘They don’t know what he was before,’ said Yokely. ‘So far as they’re concerned, he’s just a hired hand.’
‘Probably best,’ said Cooke.
‘What about the other men in the video?’
‘Can I see through the masks, you mean? Sadly, the technology isn’t there yet, Richard.’
‘You know what I mean, Marion.’
Cooke grinned. She started the video again and waited until the masked men standing in front of the banner were in view, then froze the picture. She pointed at the man on the left cradling one of the weapons. ‘Kalashnikov AK-47,’ she said. ‘Barrel length sixteen point three inches, overall length thirty-four point two five inches.’ Then she pointed at the second Kalashnikov. ‘This is the newer variant, the AK-74,’ she said. ‘See the bigger muzzle? Cuts down on the recoil. It’s a bit longer at thirty-seven inches overall but the barrel is around half an inch shorter. Using those numbers as a reference, I can get the height and body measurements of all the men in the video, plus a pretty close approximation of their weight.’
Yokely patted her shoulder. ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘What else?’
‘You don’t ask much, do you?’ she said. She tapped on the keyboard again. The screen showed the full view of the video’s first frame: the five masked figures standing in front of the banner. ‘Do you know much about RPGs?’ she asked.
‘Just that they go bang and do a lot of damage,’ said Yokely.
Cooke froze the picture and zoomed in now on the man holding the RPG. ‘Funny things, RPGs,’ she said. ‘Most people think that it stands for rocket-propelled grenade but it actually stands for ruchnoy protivotankovy granatomyot. That translates as hand-held anti-tank grenade-launcher. But our military and most of our allies don’t use the word “grenade” to describe an anti-tank weapon. So RPG, strictly speaking, is only used to describe the Russian variant.’
‘So what do we call them?’
Cooke smiled. ‘Shoulder-launched missile weapon systems,’ she said. ‘Or shoulder-launched rockets. You see, under our definition, grenades can’t be self-propelled.’
‘Marion, you never cease to amaze me,’ said Yokely.
‘Sweet-talker,’ said Marion. She nodded at the screen. ‘This one is the guerrilla’s favourite,’ she said. ‘The RPG-7. It was RPG-7s that brought down the Blackhawk helicopters in Somalia. The Mujahideen used them in Afghanistan and Unita rebels had them in Angola. Now they’re all over Iraq.’
‘Any way of identifying it?’ asked Yokely.
Cooke went in close on the RPG. ‘I don’t see a serial number,’ she said. She frowned thoughtfully. ‘I’ve seen an RPG in another Iraqi video,’ she said. She rubbed the back of her neck. ‘When the hell was it? Not recently, that’s for sure.’ Her voice had dropped to a whisper and she closed her eyes. ‘Come on, Marion. Come on, come on.’
‘In my experience, you relax and you remember,’ said Yokely.
‘Please, Richard, don’t even think of offering me a massage.’
Yokely laughed. ‘I was thinking of getting you a coffee.’
‘Sure – caffeine. That’ll relax me.’
Mitchell dropped to the ground and did twenty rapid press-ups, then ten slow ones. He rolled on to his back and started doing brisk sit-ups. Fitness was crucial if he stood any chance of surviving the next few days. He would only get one opportunity and when it presented itself he would have to be ready to seize it with both hands.
He had loosened the screws and removed the socket from the wall. Two wires led to it, a red live one and a blue neutral. There was quite a bit of slack in them and he had been able to pull out almost two feet. The question was where he went from there. He lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling and taking deep breaths, feeling the burn in his abdomen.
He had no way of knowing if the socket was live. Even if it was it would almost certainly be on a different circuit from the lights. If he touched the two wires together there was a good chance he’d blow a fuse or throw a circuit breaker but that probably wouldn’t knock out the lights and even if it did he’d still be locked in the basement.
He started doing sit-ups again, this time slowly with his right leg crossed over the left. The wire was a weapon. He had at least two feet to play with, maybe more if he pulled it hard. He could use it as a garrotte, which would be a killing weapon. He could grab Kamil, wrap the wire round his neck and threaten to kill him unless he was released. Kamil was the leader but Mitchell didn’t know how committed the other men were to him. Threatening to kill Kamil might be his ticket out, but it might also be his death warrant.
He crossed his left leg over the right and started a new set of sit-ups.
If the socket was live he might be able to use the electricity in some way. If he had more wire he could run it over to the door and use the power to disable the men when they came
into the room. But he didn’t have extra wire and even if he had he wasn’t sure there’d be enough current to electrocute his captors. There were so many uncertainties that it was laughable, but Mitchell was sure of one thing: he wouldn’t go down without a fight.
Yokely’s mobile phone rang and he took the call.
‘Tell me I’m a genius, Richard,’ said Marion Cooke.
‘You’re a genius,’ said Yokely.
‘The most wonderful analyst you’ve ever met.’
‘The most wonderful analyst I’ve ever met,’ he repeated.
‘And smarter than the average bear.’
‘Way smarter,’ said Yokely. ‘Is there something you want to tell me, Marion, or do you just need your ego stroked?’
‘I have a match on the RPG in the Mitchell video.’
‘No way,’ said Yokely.
‘Total way,’ said Cooke. ‘The same RPG was in a video that went online six months ago, but from a totally different group. They called themselves Islamic Followers of Truth. They kidnapped three Egyptian electricians and later released them. Word is that a ransom was paid but the Egyptian authorities denied it. The three men are back with their families and the Islamic Followers of Truth were never heard from again.’
‘So it’s good news, bad news?’ asked Yokely.
‘O ye of little faith,’ laughed Cooke. ‘It’s great news. The organisation, or whatever it was, vanished, but we have one of its members in custody. One Umar al-Tikriti.’
‘An illustrious name, indeed,’ said Yokely. Tikriti was Saddam Hussein’s family name, taken from Tikrit, the name of his home town.
‘No relation,’ said Cooke. ‘At least not a close one. Umar was pulled in after a mortar attack on the Green Zone three months ago. He was in the vicinity and chemical tests showed traces of explosives residue on his clothes. He is presently a guest at your old stamping ground, the Baghdad Central Detention Centre. Intel we have says he was a member of the Islamic Followers of Truth, though that came from an informant and Umar has denied it.’
‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he?’ said Yokely.
‘Exactly,’ said Cooke. ‘Seems to me, if you want to know who’s holding that RPG in the video, Umar is the man to talk to.’
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