‘Don’t worry, Ricky. It’s cash.’
Shepherd took out his remote control and opened the gates. ‘You want to come in for a beer?’
‘Rain check,’ said Mickey. ‘We’ll be out on the town tomorrow.’
Shepherd grabbed his holdall and climbed out of the Range Rover. He waved as Mickey drove off, then walked along the path to the front door. He let himself in, deactivated his burglar alarm, then showered and changed before he phoned Charlotte Button. ‘How was Cambodia?’ she asked.
‘Like the Wild West,’ he said. ‘You will not believe what they’re planning. RPGs. Rocket-propelled grenades. Whatever the job is, they plan to blow their way in.’
‘Any idea when or where?’
‘They won’t tell me,’ said Shepherd. ‘But they wanted to check I was familiar with RPGs.’
‘Which, of course, you are.’
‘Which, of course, I am. So, now it’s a question of getting the gear into the country.’
‘Any thoughts on how they’re going to do that?’
‘I get the impression that Townsend has given them a contact somewhere in Europe.’
‘We’ll have a look at his Internet traffic, see if there’s a clue there,’ said Button. ‘Any hints you can get would be much appreciated, Spider. I don’t need to tell you that RPGs are serious weaponry.’
‘It’s a step up from sawn-off shotguns, that’s for sure. They won’t tell me what the score’s going to be, other than that it’s big. And they’re going for cash.’
‘I’ll get our analysts on the case right away, pulling up lists of possible targets,’ said Button.
‘You might see if they’ve any Indian contacts, too,’ said Shepherd. ‘Mickey says they use an Indian guy to do their laundry. That’s all I have. I didn’t want to press.’
‘How much access do you have to their place?’
‘I come and go. Why? What are you thinking?’
‘If there’s any way you could have a look around, check their computers, see if Townsend left anything with them …’
‘It’d be pushing my luck, Charlie,’ he said. ‘They’re in and out of each other’s villas and there’s a big staff that always wandering around.’
‘What about getting a bug in there?’
Shepherd exhaled through his teeth. ‘I don’t want to sound negative, but if they found it and suspected me, it would be thank you and goodnight.’
‘Give it some thought,’ said Button. ‘The more intel we have, the better.’
‘What’s the story about the judge who was killed?’ asked Shepherd.
‘Nasty business,’ said Button. ‘Whoever did it was below MI5’s radar, but that’s par for the course, these days. The video was on the Internet within hours of his body being found. Now we’re on a high alert for copycats. But what do you do? Issue police protection for every possible fundamentalist target? There aren’t enough police in the country for that.’
‘And the plane that crashed leaving New York? Are they still saying mechanical failure?’
‘Early days, but Homeland Security says there’s no suggestion of terrorism and no flights have been grounded.’
‘I guess accidents happen. It’s just that now every time something goes wrong you think the worst.’
‘The way of the world, I’m afraid,’ agreed Button.
‘There’s something I want to run by you,’ said Shepherd. ‘I met a Russian in Cambodia, a nasty piece of work. He’s into human trafficking and drugs and I don’t know what else.’
‘Any UK involvement?’
‘Not that I know of,’ he said. ‘But I was wondering if we could get Europol on to it.’
‘He’s Russian, you said?’
‘Yeah, but the Thais aren’t going to do anything about him and he’s using trafficked girls as drugs mules. Like I said, a nasty piece of work.’
‘The world’s full of his sort. We can’t get them all,’ said Button. ‘You know our brief – drugs, organised crime and trafficking in the UK.’
‘Serious and organised,’ said Shepherd.
‘What?’
Shepherd smiled. ‘Just something Razor was talking about.’
‘And how is the lovely Mr Sharpe?’
‘He’s fine. Watching my back.’
‘Not offending the Thais too much, I hope.’
‘Actually, he seems to like the locals.’
‘And you’re okay with just him as your back-up? Now things are moving along, I could send reinforcements.’
‘There’d be nothing to do,’ said Shepherd. ‘It’s just a matter of waiting for the off. What about you?’
‘Me?’
‘The time we met at the safe-house, it looked as if you were sleeping there.’
Button didn’t say anything for a few seconds. ‘Why, Spider, are you concerned about my welfare?’
‘I just thought …’ He tailed off. He wasn’t sure exactly what he thought.
‘I had a late-night meeting and a morning meeting and I couldn’t face the drive home,’ she said. ‘But thank you for worrying.’
‘I wasn’t worried …’ began Shepherd, but again words failed him.
‘Everything’s fine,’ she said. ‘But even if it wasn’t, it’s not a conversation to have over the phone.’
‘Got it,’ said Shepherd.
‘But thank you,’ she said. ‘Seriously.’
‘No problem.’ Shepherd cut the connection. He could feel his cheeks reddening and felt embarrassed at the way the conversation had ended. Button was right: her sleeping arrangements were none of his business. He glanced out of the window. The sky was darkening. Another night in paradise.
Bradshaw, Kundi and Talwar sat in their van, watching Calvert climb out of a Renault Mégane limousine and walk to the front door of his house. They waited until he had gone inside before they drove off.
‘Are you sure you want to do this, brother?’ asked Kundi.
‘He insulted Allah,’ said Bradshaw. ‘The Koran is clear, he must die.’
‘Then we’ll all do it,’ said Talwar. ‘We’ll do it together.’
‘I’ll do it alone,’ Bradshaw said. ‘It was me he was talking to when he insulted Allah. It’s up to me to right the wrong.’
‘You’re putting what we’re doing at risk,’ said Kundi, quietly.
Bradshaw faced him, his eyes burning. ‘If we do not stand up for Allah when He is defamed and abused, then what are we fighting for? Why bother with jihad if we stand by and allow the infidel to defile our God?’ He took a deep breath and forced himself to be calm. He smiled slowly. ‘This has to be done, brother,’ he said. ‘It is the will of Allah.’
‘Then you should kill the infidel,’ said Kundi softly. ‘Allahu akbar.’
‘Allahu akbar,’ echoed Bradshaw and Talwar.
Bradshaw got out of the van and walked to the wall around Calvert’s house. They were in an upmarket area of the city, well away from the tourist areas by the sea. The houses were expensive, built within the last ten years, each with a high wall and a metal gate to maintain privacy. No CCTV cameras covered the wall, and there was no razor wire to deter intruders, but Bradshaw assumed that, as an arms dealer, Calvert must have security measures in place so he put on a baseball cap and pulled the brim low over his face as he walked over to the gate. There was a bellpush and a brass grille. He pulled on a pair of tight-fitting leather gloves and pressed the bell. After a few seconds Calvert asked in French who it was.
‘It’s me. There’s a problem with the consignment,’ said Bradshaw.
There was a few seconds’ silence. When Calvert spoke again his voice was clipped and impatient. ‘You shouldn’t have come here,’ he said. The gate buzzed and opened. Bradshaw strode towards the house, head down in case there were cameras he hadn’t seen. Calvert had the front door open for him. ‘Come in, come in,’ he said. ‘How did you know where I live?’
‘I followed you,’ said Bradshaw.
Calvert frowned as he shu
t the door behind them. ‘What do you mean?’ he said.
Bradshaw slapped him across the face, and Calvert staggered backwards into a side table. ‘When you insult all Muslims, you insult me. But, worse, you insult Allah.’
‘Fuck you,’ said Calvert, wiping his bloody mouth with his sleeve.
‘So I’ve come back to show you that all Muslims are not cowards.’
‘By ambushing me? By sneaking up on me in the dark? That proves that you’re a man, does it?’
‘By fighting you.’
‘Bullshit,’ said the Frenchman. ‘If you’d wanted to fight me you’d have done it in the warehouse. But you didn’t because my men were with me. So you sneak back at night like a coward.’
‘I’m no coward,’ said Bradshaw. He slid a carving knife, its blade wrapped in newspaper, from his pocket.
Calvert held up his steel claw. ‘You want to fight a man with one hand,’ he said. ‘You call this a fair fight?’ He spat on the floor in front of Bradshaw. ‘You Muslim pig.’
‘You will burn in Hell for all eternity,’ said Bradshaw, tightening his grip on the handle of the knife.
Calvert lurched to the left and, with his hand, he groped for a drawer in the table behind him. Bradshaw glimpsed a semi-automatic pistol. He stepped forward and thrust the knife into the Frenchman’s chest. He drove it between the two bottom ribs, twisted it up and in, ripping through the right lung and puncturing the heart. Blood trickled from between Calvert’s lips as he stared fixedly at Bradshaw.
‘You can beg Allah the Most Merciful for His forgiveness,’ said Bradshaw. ‘Tell Him that you were killed by a true warrior of the jihad. Tell Him that.’ He gave the knife a final push and Calvert’s eyes clouded. He slumped to the marble floor.
Bradshaw rewrapped the blade and slid it back inside his jacket. He listened but the only sound in the house was the ticking of an ornate grandfather clock at the far end of the hallway. Blood was pooling around Calvert’s chest and Bradshaw stepped carefully over the body. There was an intercom unit to the left of the door. One button bore the insignia of a key and Bradshaw pressed it, then let himself out of the front door. The gate was opening and he jogged towards the waiting van. Kundi already had the engine running.
Shepherd walked into the Penthouse Hotel and went up to Sharpe’s floor. He knocked on the door and, after a few seconds, heard footsteps. ‘Who is it?’
‘Immigration police,’ said Shepherd. ‘Open the door, you daft sod, I come bearing gifts.’
He heard the lock click and Jimmy Sharpe was blinking at him. He had a towel wrapped around his waist and was holding an icepack against his forehead.
‘Don’t you wear pyjamas?’ asked Shepherd.
‘Not when I’m sleeping alone,’ said Sharpe. ‘It’s two o’clock in the morning, what do you want?’
Shepherd held out the carrier-bag he was holding. ‘A drink,’ he said. Sharpe took it and pulled out a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label and six bottles of soda water. ‘They’d never heard of Jameson’s,’ Shepherd added.
‘I’ve no ice left,’ said Sharpe, opening the bottle and retrieving two glasses from the bathroom. ‘Used the last of it in the icepack.’
For the first time Shepherd noticed the bruising around Sharpe’s left eye. ‘That’s not from where I slammed you into the wall, is it?’ he asked.
‘Nah, I had a bit of an incident,’ said Sharpe.
‘Razor …’
‘Wasn’t my fault,’ said Sharpe, opening the whisky. ‘I ran into Jason Reece, the burglar I helped put away. The one we saw at the Scotland Yard briefing.’
‘He recognised you?’
‘Yeah. I was leaving a massage place off Walking Street just as he was going in. He started giving me all sorts of abuse. I had to shut him up.’
‘How exactly?’
Sharpe pulled a face. ‘I didn’t have time for anything fancy,’ he said.
‘You head-butted him?’
‘It was a spur-of-the-moment thing,’ said Sharpe. ‘I just hit him and legged it. Spider, he was effing and blinding and causing a right scene. I just wanted out of there but he grabbed me. It wasn’t my fault.’ He poured whisky into the glasses and added soda water.
‘Anyone see you?’
‘The girls in the massage place and a couple of tourists in the street, but I wasn’t followed. I’m in the clear.’
‘Yeah, but you’re confined to barracks for the duration, you know that? Hell’s bells, Razor, what were you thinking?’
‘It was instinctive. He grabbed me, I gave him the Glasgow kiss.’
‘I meant what were you thinking about, going to a massage parlour?’
‘I was bored,’ said Sharpe. He handed Shepherd a whisky and soda. ‘So, what’s up?’ he asked, sitting down on the bed.
Shepherd sipped his whisky. ‘You ever wonder why we do what we do?’
‘A shade under forty grand a year,’ said Sharpe. ‘But you’re on a higher pay scale than me and will be for the foreseeable future.’
‘That’s the answer? Money?’
‘We do a job, Spider. We catch bad guys and the state pays us to do that. What’s eating you?’ He held the icepack against his forehead and winced.
Shepherd took a gulp of his whisky and soda and sighed. ‘When I was in Cambodia I met this Russian. He’s based here in Pattaya. Right son-of-a-bitch. Traffics hookers and uses them to take drugs back to Russia. Former army and all his guys are former army, too.’
‘And?’
‘And I told Charlie about him and she doesn’t want to know.’
‘Because he’s Russian?’
‘Because he’s Russian and because he’s not committing crimes in England.’
‘She’s got a point,’ said Sharpe.
‘He’s a far worse criminal than the Moore brothers, Razor. Drugs and prostitution, and I bet there’s a fair bit of other stuff too. Mickey was telling me that the Russians are behind protection rackets out here and they’ve started house robberies where they go in and beat the shit out of everyone there.’
‘Yeah, they’ve been doing that in Spain for years,’ said Sharpe. ‘Not just the Russians, the Serbs, the Bosnians, most of the Central European mobs.’
‘Right, so I have this guy almost on a plate, right? If Europol or whoever were to target him, they’d have him in weeks. Surveillance would link him to the girls with the drugs and it’d be conspiracy to export class A drugs and that’d be that.’
‘Except he’s Russian.’
‘Right. Which means it’s none of our business.’
‘And, like I said, Button’s got a point. Even if we were to make a case against him, what then? Last I heard neither the Thai courts nor the Russian judicial system pay any attention to the Crown Prosecution Service.’
‘But SOCA is prepared to spend a small fortune to put the Moore brothers away. They had Oswald taking snaps for weeks, they’ve had Townsend under surveillance in the UK for months, they’ve got you and me out here – my villa alone is costing more than eight grand a month.’
Sharpe’s jaw dropped. ‘You didn’t tell me that before,’ he said.
‘It’s none of your business.’
‘Eight grand a month? This place costs about twenty quid a night.’
‘It’s part of my cover, Razor. Neither of us is here on holiday.’ He drained his glass and held it out for a refill. Sharpe obliged, and topped up his own glass. ‘The thing is, Mark and Mickey Moore are villains, no question of that. But they don’t traffic women and they don’t deal in drugs. They rob banks. They steal money that, in most cases, is insured.’
‘Don’t tell me they’re victimless crimes,’ said Sharpe, wagging a warning finger at Shepherd. ‘They wave shotguns around and they kick the shit out of anyone who gets in their way.’
‘They’re villains, sure, and we’ll put them away for their villainy. But, Razor, they’re not evil. They’re not trafficking in human misery, be it prostitution or hard drugs. I’m not sayi
ng they’re Robin Hoods because they’re not, but they’re not bad people. Not in the grand scheme of things.’
‘They’re breaking the law, and we’re paid to uphold it.’
‘Well, maybe we could be doing better things, that’s all I’m saying.’ He sighed. ‘I’m starting to think maybe Moira was right.’
‘Moira?’
‘My mother-in-law. She wanted to know why I was being sent to Thailand when there was so much shit going on in England.’
‘She said “shit” did she?’ Sharpe guffawed.
‘No, but that’s what she meant. And, let’s face it, she’s right. We’ve got disaffected Muslims planning God knows what, we’ve got kids being knifed on our streets, a murder rate in London higher than New York, and drugs everywhere. And what are we doing? We’re on the trail of a group of guys who steal from financial institutions. The City is full of guys with fewer morals than the Moore brothers, but because they wear suits and have the right accents, they get away with murder.’ He smiled. ‘I don’t mean that literally.’
‘You’re forgetting the guns, Spider. Merchant bankers only wave shotguns around if they’re shooting pheasants.’
‘Right, and when they get caught taking chances with other people’s cash, the Government bails them out with taxpayers’ money.’
Sharpe sipped his drink. ‘When was the last time you saw Caroline Stockmann?’ he asked quietly.
‘Why do I need to see the office shrink?’ asked Shepherd, quickly. Too quickly, he realised. He took a deep breath and held the glass to his forehead. ‘Why’s it so hot in here?’ he asked.
‘Because the aircon’s seized up, and don’t change the subject.’ He raised his glass and grinned mischievously. ‘Don’t forget I’ve been on the same interrogation courses as you.’
‘How is a chinwag with a psychiatrist going to help me?’ asked Shepherd.
‘Because what you’re going through is textbook Stockholm syndrome.’
‘Bullshit,’ said Shepherd.
‘You’re a long way from home, Spider. Away from your friends and family in an unfamiliar environment. The people you’re closest to right now are the Moore brothers, and you’ve always been good at empathising. That’s why you’re such a good undercover agent. But, if you ask me, this time you’ve gone a bit too far.’
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