Live Fire

by Stephen Leather

  ‘He’s a good boy,’ said Katra. ‘I’ll miss him.’

  Shepherd leaned forward. ‘You are coming back, right?’

  ‘I think so,’ she said.

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘He’s very sick but he pretends everything is okay. I won’t know how sick he is until I’ve talked to the doctors.’

  ‘If there’s anything I can do, you just have to ask,’ said Shepherd.

  She nodded earnestly. ‘I know.’

  ‘Your brothers, how old are they now?’

  ‘The oldest is twenty-two, the youngest sixteen. But they are men and in Slovenia …’ She shrugged. ‘He needs me. He needs his daughter.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘That’s not what I meant. I meant that at least they’re old enough to take care of themselves.’

  She smiled. ‘They’ve had to since I left,’ she said. ‘All the time I was in the house they never cooked a single meal or ironed a shirt.’ The smile faded. ‘I will miss you, Dan.’

  ‘I’ll miss you too,’ he said. ‘You do a great job looking after us.’

  Her lower lip was trembling and Shepherd could see she was close to tears. ‘I mean I’ll really miss you,’ she said. She put her head down so that her cheek was resting on her hands. ‘I don’t want to go. I want to stay here with you and Liam, but he’s my father so I have to go.’

  Shepherd felt suddenly awkward. ‘I’ll make you some cocoa,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ she said. She got up, rushed to the fridge, took out a carton of milk and poured some into a pan. She stood with her back to him and wiped her eyes with a tea-towel. Shepherd didn’t know what to say. He empathised, but couldn’t think of any words that would make her feel better. Katra sniffed. ‘Are your parents alive, Dan?’ she asked, still with her back to him.

  ‘My father is. My mother died a long time ago,’ he said.

  ‘You never talk about your father.’

  ‘We don’t get on. Haven’t for a long time.’

  She busied herself stirring the milk with a wooden spoon even though it was nowhere near boiling. ‘What happened between you?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s complicated,’ he said.

  ‘Liam says you always say that when it’s something you don’t want to talk about.’

  Shepherd chuckled. ‘He’s probably right,’ he said.

  ‘You only have one father, Dan,’ she said. ‘One day he won’t be around.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Shepherd. ‘But, like I said, it’s complicated.’

  Shepherd dropped Liam at school on Friday morning, making a point to use the BMW X3. He grinned when he saw some of Liam’s friends gazing admiringly at it and decided his son wouldn’t be asking for an electric car again anytime soon. He drove to the house of his in-laws, just ten minutes from the school. He parked in the empty driveway of the neat semi, the lovingly tended garden putting his own to shame.

  Moira had the front door open for him as soon as he was walking towards the house. ‘Daniel, so lovely to see you,’ she said. ‘Until you phoned I didn’t even know you were back.’

  Only his mother-in-law could pay him a compliment and make him feel guilty at the same time. And only his mother-in-law called him by his full name. ‘Is Tom at work?’ he asked.

  ‘He makes it a point always to be first in at the bank,’ said Moira. ‘He has done for the past twenty-three years and I don’t see him changing now. Tea?’ She air-kissed both his cheeks and he caught the scent of the perfume she had worn ever since the first time he’d met her, sixteen years ago. Tom and Moira were creatures of habit. ‘Go through to the sitting room, Daniel,’ she said, closing the front door.

  Shepherd went in and sat down on one of the overstuffed sofas. In the days when their daughter had been alive, there had been dozens of photographs of Sue on the mantelpiece and on the bookcase next to it. Now there were just two, at opposite ends of the mantelpiece, one of her aged twelve in her school uniform, and another of her holding Liam, a few hours after she’d given birth. There were no photographs of Shepherd, but he wasn’t offended that the wedding photographs had been moved. Sue was their child, Liam was their grandchild, and Shepherd wasn’t a blood relation. And now that she was dead, there was no point in making the room a mausoleum to her. They were the two best pictures they had of her – it was just the luck of the draw that Shepherd wasn’t in either. He smiled at the photograph of Sue and Liam. Tom was a keen amateur photographer and he’d fussed like an old lady as he’d taken the pictures, but his pickiness had paid off. Sue’s maternal pride poured out of the image, and he’d managed to catch the newborn with his eyes open, an expression of wonder on his face as he stared up at his mother. Shepherd felt tears well in his eyes and he blinked them away. It was almost five years since Sue had died in a senseless car accident but there hadn’t been a day when he hadn’t missed her.

  He heard Moira walking down the hallway and brushed his eyes with the back of his hand. He was wearing a broad smile when she appeared at the door with a tray of tea. She placed it on the ornate coffee-table, and he poured a little milk into the delicate china cups. Moira always insisted on the milk going in first as she’d once read that that was the way the Royal Family took theirs.

  ‘You said Katra was going back to Slovenia?’ she said.

  ‘She only told me yesterday,’ said Shepherd. ‘Her father’s sick so she’s flying back as soon as she can get a ticket and I’m off to Thailand tomorrow. I’m sorry to spring this on you, Moira, but can Liam stay with you and Tom until I get back?’

  ‘Of course he can,’ said Moira. ‘You don’t have to ask, you know that. We’d love to have him. We haven’t changed his room since he was last here. In fact, there’s still some of his PlayStation games up there.’

  ‘It’s Xbox now,’ said Shepherd. ‘He’s moved on.’

  ‘How long will you be away?’ she asked. She sipped her tea, her little finger crooked.

  ‘It’s open-ended,’ said Shepherd. ‘A few weeks. Maybe more.’

  ‘You’re spending too much time away from the boy,’ admonished Moira. ‘It was bad enough when Sue was here but, if anything, you’re spending even less time with Liam than you were before …’ She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence and covered her discomfort by taking another sip of tea.

  ‘I’ll make more time for him,’ said Shepherd. ‘It’s been a busy few months.’

  ‘I hate sounding like a broken record, Daniel, I really do. I thought things would improve once you moved back to Hereford but you’re hardly ever here.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s true,’ protested Shepherd.

  ‘Daniel, you’ve just been away for three weeks, and from what Liam said, you hardly ever phoned him.’

  ‘I was under cover, Moira. And when I did get the chance to call it was usually late at night and I didn’t want to wake him. He isn’t allowed to use his mobile at school …’ He tailed off. He was just making excuses. She was right, and so was Liam. Shepherd had been away for three weeks and had probably spoken to his son fewer than half a dozen times.

  ‘Last year you were in Belfast for weeks. You were out in the Middle East before that. You missed Christmas last year and since then you’ve been away – what? Three times? Four? To be honest, half the time we don’t know where you are.’ She put her cup down. ‘I know it’s not my place to nag you but as Liam’s grandmother I do think I have the right to speak up on his behalf. He misses you, Daniel. Justifiably so.’

  ‘I know, Moira, but it’s my job.’

  ‘Then maybe you should think about changing it, taking something that allows you to see more of your son. It’s not just for his sake. You only get one chance to watch them grow, then they’re gone for good. These years you’re missing, you’ll regret them one day.’

  Again, Shepherd knew she was right. But he also knew how much his work meant to him, and that he would never be satisfied with a nine-to-five desk job. It was Sue who had persuaded him to leave t
he SAS, once she had fallen pregnant. She, too, had insisted that he took a less dangerous job, one that would allow him to spend more time with his family. He’d agreed and opted for the police, but within months of applying he’d been plucked from basic training and put into an elite undercover unit where the work had proven to be every bit as dangerous as his time with Special Forces. Recently he’d moved to the SOCA undercover unit, and because it investigated criminals right across the UK he was away from home for even longer periods than he had been when he was in the army.

  ‘Why on earth are they sending you to Thailand?’ asked Moira.

  ‘Bank robbers,’ he said. ‘They live there but come to the UK to carry out robberies.’

  Moira tutted. ‘With all that’s going wrong in this country, haven’t they got better things to do than send you to Thailand?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The car bombs. The bombings on the Tube. These Islamic terrorists. Why aren’t you tracking them down? I really don’t know what the world’s coming to.’

  ‘They rob banks, Moira. They terrorise people.’

  ‘They steal money, that’s what they do. And it seems to me that as a society we worry more about our financial institutions than we do about the people who live here. I heard on the radio last week that MI5 is watching more than a thousand potential terrorists in this country, and that they’re almost all British-born. Is that true?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘And they said that all they can do is watch them, but they can’t even do that properly because they don’t have enough manpower.’

  ‘That’s probably true, too,’ admitted Shepherd.

  ‘They should just put them in prison and have done with it.’

  ‘Moira, you can’t put people in prison until the case against them has been proved in court. And that’s easier said than done.’

  ‘It’d be a lot easier if you weren’t wasting your time in Thailand, that’s for sure.’ Moira added some tea to her cup. ‘Weren’t you going to ask the Regiment if you could rejoin as a member of the training staff?’

  ‘The directing staff, they call it,’ said Shepherd. ‘I could, I suppose, but it wouldn’t be as challenging as what I’m doing now.’

  ‘There are times, Daniel,’ she said frostily, ‘when you have to put your family above yourself, and that’s all there is to it.’ She forced a smile. ‘I sound like a nagging old woman, but I do know what I’m talking about,’ she said, her eyes on the photographs. ‘Tom and I have lost Sue, but nothing can ever take away the memories we have. And, Daniel, I have a lifetime of memories.’ She turned to Shepherd again. ‘Tom and I were with her for every important event in her life when she was a child. I saw her take her first steps, heard her say her first words. I saw Tom teach her to ride her bike. I was there the first time she took her horse over a jump.’

  ‘I get it, Moira.’

  ‘Do you, Daniel? Are you sure? Because I want you to think about the memories you have of your son. It seems to me that at the moment most of them consist of you saying goodbye to Liam or apologising for being away.’

  Shepherd didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything he could say because, for the third time, he knew that his mother-in-law was right.

  Paul Bradshaw was not a fan of sports but he enjoyed squash. It required fitness, but playing well depended as much on intellect as it did on the ability to run around the court. It was all about angles and strategy, about putting the ball in a place where your opponent couldn’t reach it. It was like chess, and the really great players were the ones who could look several strokes ahead. Bradshaw wasn’t a great player but he was the best at his university where he was captain of the team. Thursday night was practice night and as usual he played for a full three hours and never lost a game.

  Bradshaw showered and changed, then went with his team to the student bar and drank pints of orange juice with lemonade as they downed lager. Bradshaw was a good Muslim and he never touched alcohol. It hadn’t always been like that. As a teenager he had spent his evenings in the pubs of Bradford, drinking with his friends, talking about football, girls and television. As a soldier he’d been part of an even harder drinking culture, where a night on the town meant half a dozen pints of lager at least. But as a Muslim he allowed no alcohol to touch his lips.

  He felt no great affection for his teammates but it was important to be seen as sociable. Loners attracted attention. So he laughed at their inane jokes and listened to their boring stories, and at just before ten o’clock he headed home. His bedsitter was a short walk from the student bar but he used several routes and varied them at random. As he walked he checked reflections in windows and car mirrors and memorised the numberplates of vehicles that passed him. He used counter-surveillance as a matter of course, even though he had no reason to expect that anyone was following him. From the moment he had decided to embrace jihad, Bradshaw had acted as if he was on the Government’s most-wanted list. He assumed he was under surveillance and that his every move was being watched, his every phone conversation listened to.

  He saw the white Transit van heading down the road towards him and his eyes flicked to the numberplate. He heard a rapid footfall behind him and glanced over his shoulder. It was a jogger in a university sweatshirt, an iPod clipped to the waistband of his shorts. Bradshaw turned back. The van had stopped and a man was getting out of the passenger side, a baseball cap pulled low over his face. Bradshaw frowned. There were no shops in the street, no reason for the van to be unloading. The man pulled open its side door then something hit Bradshaw hard on the back of his head. He stumbled forward and the man grabbed his arm. The jogger pushed him in the small of the back, a canvas bag was forced over his head and he was dragged into the van. The last thing he heard was the door being slammed and someone shouting, ‘Drive, drive, drive!’ He was punched on the chin and slid into unconsciousness.

  When he came to, the vehicle had stopped and he was being pulled upright. His shoulder hit the side of the van. He tried to steady himself but his hands had been bound behind his back. The door rattled open and Bradshaw was dragged out and over a concrete floor, then forced down onto a hard chair. He heard a tearing sound and felt his legs being taped to the chair. His heart raced and he fought to stay calm. If they’d wanted to kill him, there was no point in binding him to a chair. They wanted to talk to him, which meant they had an agenda.

  He heard the click-clack of a round being chambered. ‘Your name is Paul Bradshaw,’ said a voice. It was a question, not a statement.

  ‘So you know my name.’

  ‘We know a lot about you, Paul. More than you can imagine.’

  Bradshaw couldn’t place the accent. It was from the north of England, but not Yorkshire. Not Manchester, either, but possibly from the Lancashire side of the Pennines. ‘I’m an engineering student,’ he said.

  ‘We know who you are,’ said the man. ‘And we know what you are planning to do.’

  ‘I am nobody,’ said Bradshaw. ‘You have me confused with someone else.’

  ‘You’re no Brazilian electrician,’ said the man. ‘You’re a terrorist and no one’s going to shed a tear if we put a bullet in your head. Now, who are you working with?’

  ‘I’m an engineering student,’ said Bradshaw, fighting to keep his voice steady. ‘Is this because I’m a Muslim? Is that it? Who are you? The BNP?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter who we are. What matters is that you’re a traitor to your own people. You’re British but you’re helping the bloody Arabs destroy our way of life.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Bradshaw. ‘I’m a Muslim, sure, but that doesn’t mean I’m a suicide-bomber. I read the Koran, I pray to Allah, I try to live like a good Muslim.’

  The man pushed the barrel of his gun to Bradshaw’s forehead. ‘We know it was you behind the Soho car bombs,’ he hissed.

  ‘So put me on trial,’ said Bradshaw.

  ‘We’re not in the business
of making martyrs,’ said the man. ‘You either co-operate or we end this now.’

  ‘Then end it now,’ said Bradshaw.

  ‘Tell us who helped you with the car bomb.’

  Bradshaw said nothing.

  ‘Tell us who got you the Mercedes.’

  ‘You have the wrong man. I’m an engineering student.’

  ‘You met recently with a man called Hakeem.’

  ‘I don’t know anyone called Hakeem.’

  ‘He’s an al-Qaeda paymaster. He’s funding you.’

  ‘I don’t know anyone called Hakeem,’ Bradshaw repeated.

  ‘You asked him for half a million pounds,’ said the man. ‘We know what you’re planning to do. We know everything. All we need now are the names of your co-conspirators. Give us their names and we will give you a new identity, a new life. Tell us what you know and you will live. Stay silent and you will die. The choice is yours.’

  ‘There is no choice,’ said Bradshaw. ‘Do what you have to do.’

  Bradshaw felt a thump on the top of his head and the hood was ripped off. He blinked. Four figures were standing in front of him, all wearing ski masks, gloves and dark clothing. Only one was carrying a gun. The other three stood with their arms folded.

  The man with the gun pointed it at Bradshaw’s face. ‘Last chance,’ he said quietly.

  Bradshaw glared at him defiantly. ‘If it is the will of Allah that I die, then so be it,’ he said.

  The man’s finger tightened on the trigger. ‘After you’re dead, we’re going to cover you with pig’s blood and bury you in the grounds of a synagogue,’ he said. ‘There’ll be no place in Heaven for you.’

  ‘I’m ready to die,’ said Bradshaw. ‘And no matter what you do to my body, my place in Heaven is secure. I die for jihad and there’s no better way for a Muslim to die.’

  ‘Tell us who you’re working with,’ said the man.

  ‘Allahu akbar,’ said Bradshaw. ‘God is great.’

  ‘I will shoot you.’

  ‘Allahu akbar,’ said Bradshaw, louder this time.

  ‘I mean it.’