Live Fire

by Stephen Leather

  The officer grinned. ‘Thought you were a runner,’ he said.

  ‘I’m a runner, not a sprinter,’ Knight gasped. ‘There’s a difference.’

  ‘You okay?’ The officer’s concern was genuine.

  Knight put his hands on his hips and took deep breaths. ‘I’m all right,’ he said.

  ‘Let’s get this over with, then,’ said the officer. He raised his MP5 and fired a short burst over Knight’s head. Three bullets thudded into the ceiling and bits of polystyrene fluttered to the ground. ‘Oops,’ he said. He spoke into his radio mic. ‘Everything secure?’

  ‘All accounted for, sir,’ replied a tinny voice. ‘You okay in there?’

  ‘Mine got away. I’m on my way back,’ he said. ‘That’s it then,’ he added, to Knight. ‘Job well done.’

  Knight went to the emergency exit, kicked it open and gave the CO19 officer a thumbs-up. No alarm sounded: it had been disconnected by a SOCA technician the previous evening. ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  ‘All part of the service, Spider. You take care now.’

  Dan ‘Spider’ Shepherd, undercover agent with the Serious Organised Crime Agency, took his Ray-Ban sunglasses from his pocket, put them on and walked out into the sunshine.

  Three men were sitting on the bench, the morning’s newspapers spread out on the floor in front of them. Two were in their twenties, the third in his early thirties, and they all had dark brown skin, jet black hair and were casually dressed in sweatshirts, jeans and brand-name white trainers. The bench was in the Rose Garden, a quiet area of the Paddington Recreation Ground in Maida Vale, north-west London. The park had once been a place where elderly ladies walked their dogs and mothers watched their toddlers take unsteady steps, but now it was a meeting place for the various immigrant groups crammed into the damp flats of nearby Kilburn. On any one day there would be clusters of young men from Kosovo, from Bosnia, from Iraq, from Afghanistan, from West Africa, a veritable United Nations of refugees who had fled to Britain for a better life. They had quickly discovered they were not welcomed by the majority of the population. They were hated because they were a different colour, because they spoke a different language and wore different clothes, but mostly they were hated because they refused to integrate. They stayed in their tight groups and spoke English only when it was absolutely necessary. Several times a day the council security guards who prowled the park made a half-hearted attempt to move them on, but they simply returned a few minutes later. There was nowhere else for them to go.

  The three men on the bench weren’t refugees, or asylum-seekers, and they spoke with northern English accents. They were all British-born, they supported English football teams and they were studying at British colleges or universities. If they had been asked for their nationality they would have said unhesitatingly that they were British, because that was what it said on their passports. But the three men didn’t feel British. They felt as alien as the recently arrived refugees dotted around the park. They had no love for the country that had educated them, no empathy with its people. In fact, when there was no one to hear what they were saying, they would proclaim their hatred for the British and everything they stood for.

  A fourth man joined them. He had unkempt blond hair and blue eyes, and was wearing brown cargoes and a Levi’s T-shirt. ‘Greetings, brothers,’ he said. His name was Paul Bradshaw. It was two days after his twenty-fifth birthday, two years and three months since he had converted to Islam.

  ‘We did it,’ said the youngest of the group, punching the air with a clenched fist. Rafee Talwar had been born in Leeds but his parents were from Pakistani Kashmir. He wore a sweatshirt with the logo of the South Bank University, where he was studying economics. But it had been more than six months since Talwar had read anything other than the Koran. He was short-sighted and wore large, black-framed spectacles that gave him the look of an Asian Buddy Holly.

  ‘We did nothing,’ said Bradshaw, sitting next to him. He looked at his watch, a cheap plastic Casio. ‘Where is Kafele?’

  ‘He is coming,’ said Talwar, and gestured to the entrance to the Rose Garden. A young man wearing a Gap sweatshirt was approaching the gate.

  ‘He’s always late,’ said Bradshaw. ‘It shows disrespect to us all.’

  No one spoke until Kafele al-Sayed had walked over and sat down on the bench. Like Bradshaw, he wasn’t of Pakistani descent. His father was an Egyptian engineer, his mother a Scottish primary-school teacher. He had inherited his mother’s pale skin and curly brown hair, his father’s hooked nose and dark eyes.

  ‘I said ten o’clock,’ said Bradshaw.

  ‘The Tube was delayed,’ said al-Sayed. ‘Someone threw themselves under a train at Queen’s Park. We had to wait until the line was clear.’ He scratched a patch of red-raw skin on his neck, just above his collar.

  Bradshaw’s jaw clenched. Al-Sayed always had an excuse for his tardiness. It was a character flaw. It showed a lack of commitment, it showed a lack of planning, but above all it showed a lack of respect. Bradshaw’s three years in the army had taught him the value of self-discipline, but he knew there was nothing to be gained from criticising al-Sayed in front of the others, so he bit his tongue. The rash on the man’s neck was a sign of his nerves, and Bradshaw had no wish to stress the man even more than he already was.

  Talwar rubbed his hands together and grinned. ‘What next?’ he asked.

  ‘We wait,’ said Bradshaw. ‘We wait and we plan.’

  ‘We showed them what we can do,’ said the man on Bradshaw’s right. Jamal Kundi was the smallest of the group, though at thirty-three he was the oldest. He worked as a car mechanic. ‘We have to keep the momentum going,’ he said, and lit a cigarette.

  ‘We killed two people,’ said Bradshaw. ‘That’s all we did. Nine or ten people die every day in road accidents. So, what did we achieve?’

  ‘We struck terror into their hearts,’ said the fifth member of the group, popping a stick of chewing-gum into his mouth. Samil Chaudhry’s father ran a fast-food franchise in Leeds, and years of eating burgers, kebabs and fried fish had given him the build of a sumo wrestler by the time he was a teenager. He’d had a miserable childhood and had hated school, where he had been teased mercilessly over his weight and the spots that plagued his complexion.

  Everything had changed when Chaudhry turned twenty. He had met two older men in his local mosque and they had offered to help him with his Koran studies, but before long they were teaching him about politics and his responsibilities towards his Muslim brothers and sisters. They never once teased him about his weight but explained it was his duty to keep fit to be better able to carry out the wishes of Allah, that obesity was a sign of Western laziness and that no true Islamic warrior should allow himself to be anything other than in perfect condition. They encouraged him to run, and to join a local gym that they went to, and for the first time in his life he felt he had real friends, friends who cared about him. It was his new-found friends who encouraged him to revisit his roots in Pakistan, and from there it had taken only a little encouragement for him enrol at an al-Qaeda training camp, where he spent six months being groomed in warfare and fundamentalist politics.

  He had returned to Leeds a changed man, and shortly afterwards he had moved to London, signing up for a hotel-management course he never attended. The running and the training meant that the pounds had dropped off, and now that he had turned twenty-five he was lean and fit, with the stamina to run ten miles without breaking sweat. He was, Bradshaw knew, the most volatile of the group and the one who needed the most careful handling. Bradshaw needed Chaudhry’s abilities, honed in the al-Qaeda training camp, but he was constantly having to rein in Chaudhry’s enthusiasm. He would have made the perfect shahid, but Bradshaw had no intention of throwing away such a valuable resource on a suicide mission.

  ‘We should keep up the pressure. Plant more bombs. Kill more of the infidels. Strike while the iron is hot.’ Chaudhry chewed his gum noisily as he waited for Bradshaw to rep
ly.

  Bradshaw smiled. ‘We scared them, brother,’ he said. ‘We made their hearts beat a little faster, but that is all. Do you think the brothers who died on July the seventh achieved anything other than their own glorious deaths? Do the dogs stay off the Tube? No. It’s as if it never happened.’

  Kundi blew a plume of smoke, taking care to keep it away from the others. ‘So, what do you want to do, brother?’ he asked. ‘Do we join the ranks of the shahid? Do we give our lives for jihad and take our places in Heaven?’

  Bradshaw snorted. ‘We’re in this world to fight for Islam, not to die for it,’ he said. ‘A suicide-bomber makes his point just once, like a comet burning up in the night sky. A true fighter burns for years. That’s what we are, brothers. We’re true fighters for Islam.’

  ‘So I ask you again, brother, what is it you want us to do?’ said al-Sayed.

  Bradshaw stretched out his long legs and looked up at the cloudless blue sky. In the sky to the north three airliners were making their approach to Heathrow airport in the west. A fourth plane was just visible as a small dot. They were two miles apart, descending on the flight path to the airport, one of the world’s busiest. The nearest were close enough for Bradshaw to see the markings on their tails. The second was a Boeing 747, with the red, white and blue stripes of British Airways, the country’s flag-carrier. Bradshaw pointed up at the plane and his four companions followed his gaze. ‘That is what we do, my brothers. That is how we strike terror into their hearts.’

  Dan Shepherd caught a westbound Circle Line train at Paddington, got off at Bayswater, crossed to the eastbound platform and waited ten minutes before boarding another back to Paddington. He had no reason to think he was being followed but checking for tails had become second nature, especially when he was on his way to visit Charlotte Button. She was the head of SOCA’s undercover unit and had been his boss for two years.

  He bought a Starbucks coffee at the station and a cup of English Breakfast tea. The road leading to the station concourse was packed with commuters having a last cigarette before their journey home, and he threaded his way through them, trying not to breathe in their smoke. The address she had given him was a flat above a travel agent in Praed Street, not far away. There were eight buttons on a panel by the entrance and he pressed number five. He grinned up at the CCTV camera covering the door and the lock clicked open. There was a small hallway, a stack of junk mail and a notice stuck to the wall saying that Rentokil would be around to deal with a rodent infestation next week. As Shepherd climbed the stairs, he heard a door open above him. Button was on the landing, wearing a dark blue blazer over faded jeans. ‘You are a sweetie,’ she said, taking the cup from him and sniffing it.

  ‘Anything but Earl Grey. I know,’ he said.

  She led him into a small flat. There was a black vinyl sofa under the window, which overlooked the street, a circular table with three chairs, a small kitchen area, with a sink, a microwave and a fridge, and a door that led to a small bedroom. Shepherd saw a single bed with the duvet turned down as he went to the table. ‘This is a new one on me,’ he said, handing her the tea.

  ‘It’s a hop, skip and jump from Paddington Green, and I’ve got a briefing there later with Special Branch,’ she said. Paddington Green was the high-security police station on Edgware Road, possibly the most secure police station in the UK outside Northern Ireland. It was where most terrorist suspects were questioned before they were transferred to Belmarsh Prison.

  ‘Anything interesting?’

  Button sipped her tea. ‘It’s always interesting with Special Branch,’ she said. ‘They want to talk about penetrating some Muslim cells in the Midlands.’

  ‘Using SOCA? I didn’t think we had any Muslim agents.’

  ‘We’ve a couple,’ said Button, ‘but, frankly, I think they’re a bit delicate for what’s involved. My old colleagues tend to scoop up the best qualified for intelligence analysis and translating, and what’s left aren’t that interested in doing drugs and crime, which are our bread and butter, pretty much.’ Before joining SOCA, Button had been a high-flyer with MI5. ‘Anyway, congratulations are very much in order. We rounded them up and not a shot was fired.’ She smiled. ‘Other than the CO19 officer making a mess of the ceiling. Nice touch that. Edwards is telling everybody that it was you shooting at the cops and that you blasted your way out.’

  ‘Wasn’t quite like that,’ said Shepherd. ‘I didn’t have a gun for a start.’

  ‘It’s expanding with the telling,’ said Button, ‘which is no bad thing. It all adds to the legend.’

  ‘Crompton’s wife and son are okay?’

  ‘They were released an hour after you left the bank, just as they promised.’

  ‘I know we had to let it run its course, but I feel sorry for the boy and his mother.’

  ‘We couldn’t have warned them, Spider,’ said Button. ‘They weren’t in any danger – Edwards never hurts the family. He threatens to, but in the five robberies where he’s kidnapped family members they’ve never been hurt.’

  ‘Yeah, well, there’s a first time for everything.’ He drank some coffee. ‘You’ve told the cops that Crompton had nothing to do with it? I know the way they think, and the first thing they’ll do is put him in the frame. Edwards knew exactly which boxes to go for so he definitely had someone on the inside.’

  Button grinned. ‘Good news on that front,’ she said. ‘We’ve been listening in on his phones, and he made two calls to Sandra Ford, deputy manager at the branch. She’s being questioned as we speak.’

  ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘At least that puts Crompton in the clear. And you nailed Randall and Simpson?’ They were the two gang members who had pretended to be detectives at the branch.

  ‘All present and accounted for,’ said Button.

  Shepherd stretched out his arms. ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘So, I’m due for some R and R, aren’t I?’

  ‘Yes, I need to talk to you about that,’ said Button. ‘How comfortable are you with the Ricky Knight legend?’

  ‘He’s not my favourite but, yeah, I’m comfortable with him.’ Shepherd narrowed his eyes. ‘Have you got something in mind?’

  Button reached under the table and pulled out a Louis Vuitton briefcase. She clicked open the locks and slid a manila file across the table. Shepherd opened it. Inside he found a dozen surveillance photographs of five men, mostly taken with a long lens. They were sitting around a swimming-pool with several topless Asian girls.

  ‘Mickey Moore, East End boy made bad, and his crew.’ She tapped a photograph of a big-chested man with receding hair, a cigar in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other. ‘Old-school villain, loves his mother, loyal to his friends, never grasses, pays his debts. He’s been behind at least half a dozen robberies over the past five years, none of which has netted less than a million pounds.’

  She tapped another photograph, of a man lying on a sunlounger while a girl with waist-length hair appeared to be giving him a manicure. ‘This is Mark Moore, Mickey’s younger brother. He just turned thirty – Mickey’s thirty-eight. Mark followed his brother into the family business but he’s a bit of a loose cannon. Having said that, the Moore brothers have yet to fire their guns in anger.’

  ‘Armed robbery is all about front,’ said Shepherd. ‘You go in hard but the idea is not to shoot unless you really have to. For no other reason than that a fired gun leaves forensics.’

  One by one, Button identified the three other members of the gang – Barry Wilson, Davie Black and Andy Yates. ‘They’re a tight group. They’ve known each other since they were at school. And between them they’ve not spent a day behind bars.’

  ‘That’s unusual for armed robbers,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘They’re an unusual bunch,’ said Button. ‘The Flying Squad breathed a collective sigh of relief when they left our shores and set up shop in Thailand. But their relief turned out to be a bit premature. They’re funding their life in the sun with regular visits back to the UK.
Like I said, six robberies in five years with a total take of almost fifteen million. And that’s just the ones we’re sure they’re behind. There’s bound to be others.’

  ‘And never caught?’

  ‘They haven’t even come close,’ said Button. ‘Everything’s always planned to the last detail.’

  ‘And how do they manage that if they’re based in Thailand?’

  ‘Good question,’ said Button. She handed him a head-and-shoulders shot of a man in his sixties, totally bald, squinting at the camera through thick-lensed spectacles. ‘This is the brains behind the outfit. Stuart Townsend. They call him the Professor, though he left school at fifteen to work with his father who, back then, was one of London’s top safe-blowers.’

  ‘Safe-blower rather than-cracker?’

  Button nodded. ‘Townsend senior’s skill was in explosives and he taught his son everything he knew. He must have forgotten something, though, because in the late eighties Townsend Junior miscalculated the amount of explosive he was using on a safe in a Hatton Garden jeweller’s and ended up with two blown eardrums. He’s been deaf ever since. He did seven years for the botched jewellery job and his disability put paid to his safe-blowing career. That was when he moved into planning jobs for other criminals, and the Moore brothers are his best customers. They leave the planning to him, and when the ducks are in a row they fly over and do the job.’

  ‘Presumably you’ve got Townsend under surveillance?’

  ‘On and off,’ said Button. ‘The problem is his deafness. Eavesdropping and bugging don’t work because he never uses the phone. All communication is face to face or via email. And he’s a difficult guy to follow because he tends to be more aware of what’s going on around him than a hearing person.’

  Shepherd sipped his coffee. He knew what was coming next.

  ‘Have you ever been to Thailand?’ asked Button.

  ‘I had a spell in the Malaysian jungle with the SAS but I never made it to Thailand,’ said Shepherd. ‘That’s the plan, is it, to send me to Thailand to infiltrate the gang?’