Live Fire

by Stephen Leather

  ‘Just be glad you’re in SOCA,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘SOCA’s worse, and you know it,’ said Sharpe. ‘SOCA’s full of civil servants and pencil-pushers. Guys like you and me, we’re the exceptions. You think Charlotte Button could go up against a guy with a knife?’

  Shepherd ran his finger around the rim of his coffee mug. ‘Actually, Razor, I do. And she runs marathons. She’s fit.’ He glanced around the canteen and had to admit that none of the men and women there seemed to be tucking into salads and most were overweight. A uniformed sergeant walked in who was barely five and a half feet tall. Shepherd knew that height alone was no guide to fitness, but when it came to controlling unruly crowds or subduing violent criminals, every inch helped.

  Sharpe sat back in his chair and stretched out his legs. ‘You know what I don’t understand about SOCA?’

  Shepherd sighed. ‘No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me,’ he said.

  ‘Where’s the other A? There should be another A in there.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about, Razor?’

  ‘We work for SOCA, right? The Serious Organised Crime Agency. Shouldn’t it be the Serious And Organised Crime Agency? So it should be SAOCA.’

  Shepherd frowned, not understanding what Sharpe was talking about. ‘It’s SOCA,’ he said. ‘The agency was created by the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. Went through the House of Commons in November 2004 and given Royal Assent in April the following year.’

  ‘I wish I had your trick memory,’ said Razor.

  ‘It’s not a trick. I just remember pretty much everything I see and hear.’

  ‘I can’t even remember my wedding anniversary,’ said Sharpe. ‘But here’s my point. There’s no “and” in there, right? It really is the Serious Organised Crime Agency.’

  ‘I already said that. You really do have a problem with your memory, don’t you?’

  Sharpe ignored the question and continued his train of thought. ‘Organised crime by definition has to be serious, doesn’t it? Or do they mean that there’s serious organised crime and pretend organised crime? The way I see it, crime can be serious and it can be organised so it should be the Serious And Organised Crime Agency. SAOCA.’

  Shepherd closed his eyes. He was getting a headache. ‘Whatever you say, Razor.’

  ‘So, here’s my point. Did someone screw up? Do you think someone just forgot to put the “and” in there? Some idiot civil servant made a mistake, and by the time they realised it was too late?’

  ‘I don’t know, Razor. And, truth be told, I don’t care.’

  ‘We should raise it with Charlie next time she gives us a case that doesn’t involve a serious organised crime. Say a crime that’s serious but not organised. Or organised but not very serious. See if she thinks the missing “and” is important.’

  ‘I can pretty much guarantee that she won’t,’ said Shepherd, ‘but you can mention it if you want.’

  Kenny Mansfield reappeared, cutting short any further discussion. He took them upstairs to his office, a windowless box piled high with papers and files. ‘Sorry about the mess,’ he said, clearing a stack of magazines off a chair.

  There was another chair by the door and Shepherd pulled it over to Mansfield’s untidy desk. He and Sharpe sat down while Mansfield turned his computer’s flat-screen monitor so that they could all see it. ‘Do you know anything about Pattaya?’ he asked.

  They shook their heads. Mansfield dropped down into his high-backed chair and clicked on his computer mouse to start a PowerPoint presentation. A series of photographs flashed up on the screen, views of a beach resort. ‘Pattaya is a town about two hours’ drive from Bangkok on the eastern seaboard. It’s probably the biggest single prostitution centre in the world with estimates of the number of working girls varying from ten thousand to fifty thousand, depending on whether or not the American fleet is in. They get upwards of five million visitors a year and they’re not there for the sun or the sand.’

  In most of the photographs, overweight Western tourists were walking with scantily dressed Asian girls or sitting on bar stools in sweat-stained Tshirts.

  A map filled the screen, showing the location of the town. ‘In the last ten years or so, criminal elements from all over the world have moved in,’ said Mansfield. ‘We’ve got your run-of-the-mill Brit crims rubbing shoulders with the Russian Mafia. The Nigerians are there, you’ve got Serbian conmen, Albanian Mafia, motorcycle gangs, Burmese drug-dealers – pretty much any criminal gang you can think of is represented. If you want drugs, fake passports, guns, counterfeit money, someone in Pattaya will sell them to you. There are murders nearly every week.’

  ‘Nice,’ said Sharpe.

  Photographs of apartment blocks and luxury villas flashed up. ‘Brits are moving in big-time,’ said Mansfield, ‘buying up villas and apartments, investing in bars and nightclubs. There’s a lot of dirty money washing around and generally no questions are asked. We reckon there are now more faces in Pattaya than there are in Spain.’

  ‘What about extradition?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘It happens, but it takes time and, frankly, Pattaya is so far from the UK that, providing they stay there, we’re taking the view that out of sight is out of mind. It’s not like Spain where they’re only a couple of hours away. Thailand’s on the other side of the world. We’d probably pursue a paedophile or a murderer, but with a small-time drug-dealer we’d probably just say good riddance.’

  ‘Do you have undercover guys over there?’ asked Sharpe.

  ‘Not that I know of,’ Mansfield said. ‘Could be that they’d fly guys over on specific investigations but there’s no watching brief. We do send people over every few weeks to take photographs, run them through facial-recognition programs so we have a good idea who’s there.’

  ‘And the Thais aren’t doing anything?’

  ‘Providing they don’t break any Thai laws, the Thais don’t care,’ he said. ‘But we can access their immigration databases so we know which British citizens are in the country, but that doesn’t tell us where in Thailand they are. Long-term residents are supposed to register with the local police every ninety days but most don’t. Plus the serious crims are all on fake passports anyway.’ He clicked to end the PowerPoint presentation. ‘What they don’t tell you in the glossy brochures is that more Brits die in Thailand than anywhere else outside the UK.’ He grinned. ‘They’re not all murdered,’ he added, ‘but every year more than two hundred and fifty Brits die there. To put that into perspective, that’s about ten times as many Brits as died in Iraq. Most are accidents or straightforward deaths, or old guys taking too much Viagra and over-exerting themselves. But there are half a dozen murders and a couple of dozen suicides every year. And a fair number of the suicides are disguised murders – a fall from a balcony or a plastic bag over the head or an overdose of drugs.’

  ‘Sounds like a regular Glasgow weekend,’ said Sharpe.

  ‘Pattaya’s a tough town,’ said Mansfield. ‘It’s an easy place to get a gun, but it’s even easier to hire someone to pull the trigger. You can get a hitman for less than a thousand pounds, sometimes much less.’

  ‘What about Brits doing the killing?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘You only hear about the ones who get caught, and they’re usually guys who throttle their girlfriends,’ said Mansfield. ‘If you’re a bad guy and want to get rid of the competition, you’d probably pay someone else to do the dirty deed. Who exactly are you interested in?’

  ‘Can’t tell you that, I’m afraid,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Well, we can,’ said Sharpe. ‘But then we’d have to kill you.’

  ‘Ignore my colleague’s attempt at humour,’ said Shepherd. ‘It’s an undercover operation so everything is classified. What we need is a briefing on every villain you know who is either in Pattaya or is a regular visitor.’

  ‘That would be well over a thousand faces,’ said Mansfield.

  ‘That’s okay,’ said Shepherd. �
��We just need to know if anyone there might be in a position to identify us.’

  ‘Got you,’ said Mansfield. He tapped on his computer keyboard. ‘Alphabetical order work for you?’

  ‘That’s fine,’ said Shepherd.

  Mansfield tapped on the keyboard again. A face flashed up on the screen: a grey-haired man in his fifties, with worry lines etched around his eyes and the haunted expression that comes from years spent behind bars. ‘Eric Anderson,’ said Mansfield. The man’s details had appeared down the right-hand side of the screen – date of birth, last known address, and a comprehensive list of the criminal offences he’d committed, which varied from being drunk and disorderly as a teenager to three counts of grievous bodily harm.

  Shepherd peered at the screen. ‘Where is he in Pattaya?’ he said.

  ‘We don’t get that sort of info unless he’s been targeted,’ said Mansfield. ‘You just get the basic CRO data and that he’s known to be in Pattaya.’

  Mansfield clicked on his mouse. Another face popped up. Derek Armitage. Younger, with only two convictions, both drug-related. ‘And so on, and so on,’ said Mansfield.

  ‘Can’t you dump the files on a thumb-drive for us?’ asked Sharpe.

  Mansfield shook his head. ‘A couple of years ago that wouldn’t have been a problem but the Government’s lost so much data recently there’s been a clampdown. You can only access the files on an online terminal.’

  ‘It’s not a problem,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’ve got a pretty good memory. How long do you think it’ll take to go through them all?’

  ‘If you just want to look at names and faces, then five to ten seconds a file. You should be done in about three hours.’

  ‘We’ve got the time,’ said Shepherd. ‘Are you okay if Razor and I do it here?’

  ‘Whatever you want,’ said Mansfield. ‘I’ve got a briefing with Vice and Clubs in half an hour. I’ll go grab a ciggie first. You need anything?’

  ‘We’re fine,’ said Shepherd.

  Sharpe loosened his tie and kicked off his shoes as Mansfield headed out of his office. He grinned at Shepherd’s expression. ‘My shoes are killing me,’ he said. ‘Now, do you want to click the rat thing, or shall I?’

  ‘It’s a mouse, Razor, and you’d better do it because you’re a slow reader.’

  Sharpe clicked onto the next file and Shepherd settled back in his chair to watch the monitor. He had no idea how his trick memory worked, but all he had to do was to see a picture, read or hear something and he remembered it for ever. He recognised some of the faces, high-profile villains who had appeared in the tabloids, and there were several major drug-dealers he’d heard discussed in Europol intelligence briefings. The vast majority, though, were strictly small-time. Wife-beaters, car thieves, petty criminals. The faces clicked by, the pictures and details filed away for future reference.

  ‘Shit,’ said Sharpe, staring at a photograph of a middle-aged man with a shaved head and a wicked scar across his left cheek that had probably been done with a pint glass. ‘I know him.’

  ‘Yeah, but does he know you?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘He thinks I’m an alarms specialist from Bishopbriggs and reckons it was my incompetence that led to him doing a seven stretch in Barlinnie,’ said Sharpe. ‘He doesn’t know I’m a cop, but he’ll still take a swing at me if he sees me.’

  ‘Neither of us are cops any more, Razor, remember?’ said Shepherd. ‘We’re civil servants now that we work for SOCA.’

  ‘Roses by any other name,’ said Sharpe. He peered at the screen. ‘He’s only been out for six months. Must have headed straight out to Thailand. Can’t say I blame him – if I’d been banged up for seven years I’d want some sea, sand and sex.’

  Jason Reece was a burglar who had graduated from breaking into homes to banks, though he was more inclined to go in through the roof at night rather than the front door with guns during business hours. He had three convictions for violence – a stabbing during a burglary and two punch-ups in pubs.

  ‘Does he think you went down?’ Shepherd asked.

  ‘The story was that I got probation after helping the police with their enquiries.’

  ‘So he thinks you’re a grass?’

  ‘It’ll be okay. I can take care of myself.’

  ‘I’m more worried about Ricky Knight being seen in the company of a police informer,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘So we won’t drink together,’ said Sharpe. ‘It’ll be fine.’ He leaned down and pulled open the bottom drawer of the desk.

  Shepherd frowned at his colleague. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘He’s bound to have a bottle of Scotch somewhere. Smokers drink – that’s a rule.’

  ‘Stop pissing about,’ said Shepherd, and he wasn’t joking. ‘It’s been a decade at least since they allowed alcohol in New Scotland Yard. Just keep clicking that mouse and we can get the hell out of here.’

  ‘Then we can have a drink?’

  ‘Yes, Razor,’ said Shepherd, patiently. ‘Then we can have a drink.’

  Bradshaw walked through the prayer room, careful not to touch any of the prostrate men. It was large enough to hold five thousand worshippers, but it was still crowded. His bare feet whispered along the red carpet into which were woven the patterns of hundreds of individual prayer mats. High above his head, a painted dome was decorated with brightly coloured mosaics, a massive crystal chandelier hung from the middle. Inscriptions from the Koran, the most holy of books, had been painted around the edge. Several faces turned to look at him, registering surprise to see a Caucasian in their midst, but Bradshaw simply smiled blandly. He was used to being stared at in mosques and knew that he was watched out of curiosity, not hostility. He found a space close to the front and began to pray, eyes closed, the better to appreciate the power of the words he chanted.

  When he finished he opened his eyes. He felt cleansed, as he always did after prayer. Some of the men standing and kneeling around him were wearing traditional Muslim dress, long flowing shirts that almost reached the ankles and skullcaps, and several were carrying well-worn copies of the Koran. Bradshaw was dressed casually but smartly in a linen jacket and trousers, and a shirt he had ironed that morning. Clothing was important, he knew. It was camouflage. Many of the men had long beards but he was always clean-shaven. That was also part of his camouflage, as was the slight smile that always played on his lips. He had taught himself to smile even when he was unhappy or worried. People trusted smiling, clean-shaven men in smart clothes. They didn’t trust angry-looking men with beards, wearing long shirts.

  The man he had come to see was over to his right. Bradshaw knew he was a regular worshipper at the Regent’s Park Mosque. He was almost fifty years old and had a ragged beard that almost reached his chest. He was barrel-chested and wore baggy cotton trousers that flapped above his ankles, a long-sleeved pinstripe shirt buttoned up to the neck, and a beaded skullcap. In his right hand he held a string of amber beads and ran them through his fingers as he prayed. His name was Hakeem and he was Palestinian. As Hakeem stood up and adjusted his shirtsleeves, Bradshaw walked over to him. ‘Brother Hakeem,’ he said quietly. ‘It is an honour to meet you.’

  Hakeem eyed him coldly. ‘You have not met me yet, brother,’ he said, his voice a guttural rasp.

  Bradshaw did not avert his eyes. He stared back at Hakeem, even though his stomach was churning. There was no human warmth in Hakeem’s eyes: it was as if they had been carved from black marble. They bored into Bradshaw as if they could see into his very soul. ‘I was told you would be expecting me,’ said Bradshaw, fighting to keep his voice steady.

  ‘You are Bradshaw?’ The question was almost certainly rhetorical because Bradshaw doubted that Hakeem was regularly approached by Caucasians in the mosque.

  ‘I am,’ he said.

  ‘You are younger than I expected.’ He continued to finger the amber beads as he studied Bradshaw’s face. ‘I shall see you outside in the park,’ he said. ‘Wait for me there.’<
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  Bradshaw finished and turned away hurriedly to hide his embarrassment. He was not used to being treated like a fool and his first instinct had been to curse the man and his rudeness, but Hakeem had what he wanted so he forced himself to conceal his anger and walked away, still smiling. He retrieved his shoes from the racks outside the prayer hall and left the mosque.

  He walked across the grass, watching a group of middle-aged women exercise their dogs as they gossiped in upper-class voices about house prices and the difficulty of getting decent cleaners. Two Goths, dressed from head to foot in black, sauntered hand in hand towards Baker Street. They wore tight black jeans, black boots, leather jackets, and white makeup with black mascara. It was only the swelling breasts that marked them out as female. A businessman in a pinstripe suit with a briefcase in one hand and a mobile phone clamped to his ear walked purposefully across the grass, barking at his assistant on the other end of the line. Bradshaw hated them all – hated them so much he could almost taste it.

  He turned to look at the mosque, its gleaming gold dome glinting in the sunlight. Hakeem was coming towards him, still holding his string of beads. He did not break his stride when he reached Bradshaw. ‘Walk with me,’ he said.

  He kept up a brisk pace and Bradshaw, who was several inches shorter, struggled to match it. ‘I was told you can help us with funding,’ he said, but Hakeem silenced him with a curt wave.

  ‘I shall be deciding the flow of this conversation,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Bradshaw. ‘I didn’t mean—’

  ‘And I don’t need your apologies,’ said Hakeem.

  Bradshaw opened his mouth to apologise again but just as quickly closed it. He waited for Hakeem to continue. His legs were burning and he could feel a stitch growing in his side.

  ‘Which mosque do you use, brother?’ asked Hakeem.

  ‘I used to go to Finsbury Park, but not any more,’ said Bradshaw. ‘There are too many spies there now. The Government has spies in all the mosques.’ He was panting, and his forehead was bathed in sweat.