Tall Order: The 15th Spider Shepherd Thriller

by Stephen Leather

  ‘I don’t think we’ve got time to fuck around,’ said Harper. ‘I’ve got a couple of fluorescent jackets in the boot; we’ll say we’re with British Gas and that there’s been a leak. As soon as he opens the door, we slot him.’

  ‘That works,’ said O’Hara.

  ‘Are you okay to do the dirty if necessary?’ asked Harper. O’Hara had a Glock with a silencer and it made more sense to use a silenced weapon, though Harper hoped not to have to use a gun.

  ‘Happy to do the honours,’ said O’Hara. Harper held out the iPod Touch so that O’Hara could see what Zaghba looked like. O’Hara nodded. ‘What about collateral damage?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s a bad ’un so we can assume anyone unlucky enough to be with him is also a bad ’un and I don’t want to be leaving any witnesses behind.’

  O’Hara nodded. ‘Let’s do it then.’

  Harper pressed the button to open the boot and the two men climbed out of the car. There was a box of disposable latex gloves in the boot and they both put them on, then Harper handed O’Hara a fluorescent jacket and a hard hat. O’Hara grinned and put them on.

  Harper followed suit and then slammed the boot shut. ‘Good to go?’ he asked.

  O’Hara nodded. ‘Locked and loaded, as the Yanks say.’

  The two men walked across the road, scanning for any potential witnesses, but the road and pavements were deserted. It was a cloudy night and the street lights were few and far between. They walked up the path to the front door. The house had been divided into flats and there were six bells to the left of the door. Zaghba lived in Flat 5. Harper pressed the bell and waited. There was no response and he had to press it another two times before the intercom crackled into life.

  ‘Yeah?’ said a voice, thick with sleep.

  ‘Mr Zaghba, this is Peter Wilkinson from British Gas. We’ve had reports of a gas leak in the building – could you buzz me in so that we can check the gas levels in your flat.’

  There was a few seconds’ silence and then the door lock buzzed. Harper pushed the door open. The hallway was in darkness but there was a light switch on the wall and when he pressed it a single bulb came on. There were two doors on the ground floor so Harper assumed that Zaghba’s flat was on the floor above. He headed up the stairs, his shoes squeaking on the bare boards.

  Zaghba had opened his front door and was peering down. He was wearing boxer shorts and a Manchester United replica shirt. ‘I can’t smell anything,’ he said.

  ‘Our sensors are a thousand times more sensitive than the human nose,’ said Harper. ‘Do you mind if we come in? We just need to check your kitchen.’

  ‘It’s a bedsit,’ said Zaghba, ‘and like I said there’s no smell of gas.’

  ‘It’ll only take a minute,’ said Harper, reaching the top of the stairs. He flashed Zaghba a reassuring smile.

  ‘Sure, whatever,’ said Zaghba.

  He opened the door and Harper walked past him into what appeared to be the only room – there was a double bed, a wardrobe and a small kitchen area. A doorway led into a small bathroom that smelt of bleach.

  Zaghba followed Harper. ‘See. Nothing.’

  O’Hara stepped into the room and kicked the door shut behind him. As Zaghba turned, O’Hara pulled out his Glock.

  ‘What the fuck, bruv?’ said Zaghba. ‘Waste of time trying to rob me.’

  There was a small table by the side of the bed with an alarm clock on it. In one smooth movement Harper picked up the table, tossed the clock on to the bed and brought the edge of the table crashing down on to the back of Zaghba’s head. Blood splattered across the floor and he went down without making a sound. Harper raised the table again and smashed it against the man’s head. The skull cracked and blood pooled across the carpet.

  ‘Fuck me, Lex, you don’t mess around, do you?’ whispered O’Hara.

  Harper put the table on the ground and pulled a Ziploc plastic bag from his pocket. Inside were half a dozen pieces of streaky bacon and he placed them across the dead man’s back and legs. Then he pulled a can of black spray paint from the pocket of his jacket and wrote ‘FUCK ISLAM’ and ‘DEATH TO MUSLIM PIGS’ across the wall.

  O’Hara chuckled as he watched Harper work.

  ‘Make yourself useful and see if there’s a laptop around,’ said Harper. ‘And grab his phone.’

  O’Hara did as he was told as Harper continued to spray racial epitaphs on the walls. When he’d finished he put the can in his pocket.

  ‘No computer, by the look of it,’ said O’Hara. He picked up Zaghba’s phone and pocketed it.

  Harper gestured for O’Hara to open the door. They slipped out, pulling the door closed behind them, and went down the stairs, listening carefully to check that there was no one moving around. The house was still and they opened the front door and headed for the car.

  ‘So the bacon and the graffiti are to make it look racial?’ said O’Hara, as they took off their fluorescent jackets and got back into the Toyota.

  ‘That’s the plan,’ said Harper.

  ‘Nice,’ said O’Hara. He unscrewed the silencer from his Glock and slipped it into his pocket. ‘I tell you, Lex, I’d like to do more jobs for the Pool.’

  ‘Strictly speaking, this isn’t a Pool job.’

  ‘I know, but you know what I mean.’ He put the gun in its underarm holster. ‘The jobs are, you know, cleaner. Simpler. A lot of the contracts I get these days are disputes, one side against the other, so they can get messy. And there’s always the possibility of someone taking offence at what you’ve done and going for revenge.’ He handed Harper Zaghba’s phone.

  Harper slid the phone into his pocket and nodded. ‘I’ll keep in touch after this is over,’ he said. ‘You never know.’

  Chapter 28

  Present Day, London

  S hepherd took off his coat as he rushed over to George Hurry. He dropped down on to a chair next to the sergeant. ‘What have you got, George?’

  Hurry tapped on his keyboard. ‘Naveed went into a storage room half an hour before he detonated. We didn’t see it earlier because there’s only one camera covering that area and even then it’s only a partial view.’

  A frozen CCTV filled one of the big screens on the wall. There were more than a dozen United fans in view. ‘There, on the right, you can see the door?’ said Hurry.

  Shepherd nodded,

  ‘It’s used for storing cleaning supplies and accessed with a keycard.’ Hurry pressed a key and the figures on the screen started to move. ‘Naveed appears from the right,’ said Hurry. Ten seconds into the footage, Shepherd saw the distinctive puffa jacket and Nikes of the target. Naveed walked straight to the door, reaching into his pocket. He took out a keycard, swiped it through the reader and pushed open the door. He disappeared inside and the door closed behind him. ‘He was inside for just shy of ten minutes,’ said Hurry. He pressed a key to fast-forward the footage and after nine minutes had passed he returned to real time. The door opened and Naveed reappeared. He walked out and the door closed behind him. Hurry froze the picture. ‘You wouldn’t notice it unless you were looking for it, but the jacket is just a bit larger now. As if he had put on something underneath it.’ His fingers played across the keyboard and the image split into two – on the left a shot of Naveed using the keycard and on the right, him emerging from the storage room. Shepherd studied the two images and nodded. Hurry was right. The coat was slightly bulkier. Naveed had gone into the room and put the vest on.

  Shepherd sighed and sat back. ‘Okay, so now we know where Naveed got the vest. Two things. We need to know whose card he used to access the room.’ He looked at his watch. It was one-thirty in the morning and he figured the stadium staff wouldn’t be in until eight at the earliest. ‘I’ll make the call on that first thing. And we need to find out who put the vest in the storage room. Can you assign someone to monitor that feed in reverse, see who else went in?’

  Hurry grinned. ‘Already on it,’ he said. He gestured over to Eric Fitzpatrick, who
was sipping a coffee as he stared at his screen. Figures were moving backwards at several times normal speed.

  ‘I thought you had to take care of your girl?’ Shepherd asked him.

  ‘I did the school run but the wife’s on duty now,’ he said, his eyes not leaving the screen. ‘I’m here for the duration.’

  Chapter 29

  Present Day, Birmingham

  O ’Hara clicked the seat backwards and stretched out his legs. ‘This is the best car you could get? It’s a piece of shit.’

  Harper grinned over at him. They were on the M40 heading towards Birmingham, in the middle lane and driving at just below the speed limit. ‘It’s perfect for flying below the radar,’ he said.

  ‘I’m a Range Rover man,’ said O’Hara. ‘Now that’s a vehicle.’

  ‘Yeah, I bet. Black with tinted windows. Mate, you stick out like a sore thumb. A car like this, no one remembers.’

  O’Hara folded his arms and sighed. A sign flashed by. They were ten miles from Birmingham. ‘What’s the plan?’ he asked.

  ‘We’ve got one target in Brum, then another in Bolton. Both ragheads.’

  ‘Jihadists?’

  ‘Don’t know, don’t care. They’re jobs, that’s all that interests me. We’ll do the Birmingham one first. Israr Farooqi. Young guy who snuck in as a refugee. We need to off him but we’re looking for intel, too. I’ve got a lock-up we can use to interrogate him.’

  O’Hara nodded. ‘What sort of intel?’

  ‘The guy that bombed the stadium phoned Farooqi before the attack. Be nice to know why, and also what this Farooqi is planning. But we’re under time pressure. The bomber has an uncle in Bolton, which is about two hours from Birmingham. Be handy to do both tonight.’

  O’Hara looked at his watch. ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘I know, it’ll be tight.’

  ‘I need to eat, too.’

  ‘To be fair, Mick, you could do with losing a few pounds. Just saying.’

  ‘Fuck you very much.’

  ‘If you’re really hungry I’ve a couple of sandwiches in the bag on the back seat.’

  ‘Why the fuck didn’t you say?’ O’Hara twisted around in his seat. He opened the bag and took out two plastic-wrapped sandwiches. He read the labels out loud. ‘Ham and cheese, prawn salad. Which do you want?’

  ‘Have them both, mate, I’m good.’

  O’Hara grinned and wolfed down both sandwiches.

  Farooqi lived in a terraced house in the south of the city. Harper parked close by and used his smartphone to locate the lock-up that Hasan had given him. It was about three miles away. He plotted a route from the house to the lock-up, then put the car in gear.

  ‘Now what?’ asked O’Hara.

  ‘Just want to make sure there are no surprises,’ said Harper. He drove to the lock-up. It was at the end of a quiet street close to a railway line. ‘Mick, do me a favour and get the key, it’s in the drainpipe next to the door. Have a quick look around, yeah?’

  O’Hara nodded. He climbed out of the car, looking left and right as he headed to the lock-up. He bent down by the drainpipe and groped inside. He took so long that Harper began to worry that the key wasn’t there but eventually O’Hara straightened up and flashed him a thumbs-up. He looked around, then walked over to the door and unlocked it. He disappeared inside.

  Harper scanned the street and pavements but there was no one else around. After three minutes O’Hara reappeared, locked the door and jogged over to the car. He climbed in. ‘Hasn’t been used for a while,’ he said. ‘Seems secure enough.’

  Harper drove back to the house where Farooqi lived and parked again. He switched off the engine and studied the building. If they had time to spare they could just wait outside and catch Farooqi as he entered or left, but the clock was ticking. According to the message Button had sent, Farooqi lived in Flat 3 but that wasn’t much help as he had no way of knowing how many flats there were on each floor.

  ‘Are we going to pull the gas trick again?’ asked O’Hara.

  ‘I think we just say we’re immigration officers,’ said Harper. ‘It’s not unusual for them to run checks at all hours. I just worry about getting him into the car without being seen.’

  ‘We walk him out,’ said O’Hara. ‘People tend to cooperate if you stick a gun in their ribs.’

  Harper looked up and down the street. There didn’t seem to be any obvious CCTV cameras. But two men escorting an Asian man to a car was the sort of thing a passer-by might notice and remember. It would cut down the walking time if he parked closer to the house. ‘Okay, we ring the bell and identify ourselves as Border Force. Assuming he buzzes us in we gain access to his flat and do a quick search. Then we march him out. You get into the back of the car and as soon as he’s in you put him to sleep. Nothing too drastic, we need to talk to him.’

  ‘No need to teach this grandmother to suck eggs,’ said O’Hara.

  Harper started the car again and drove over to the house. There was a garage to the right and a parking space in front of it. Using the parking space increased the chance of the car being noticed but even if it was, it couldn’t be traced to him so he decided it was a risk worth taking. He switched off the lights and killed the engine.

  The two men got out of the Toyota and walked to the front door. There were six buttons on the intercom unit, numbered one to six. Harper pressed number three, long and hard. After a few seconds they heard a hesitant ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Is that Mr Israr Farooqi?’ asked Harper, putting as much authority into his voice as he could.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We are from the Home Office, Mr Farooqi. It’s nothing to be concerned about but we need to check your residential status pursuant to your asylum application.’

  ‘What? I don’t understand.’

  ‘We need to check your living arrangements.’

  ‘It’s late.’

  ‘Yes, I realise that, but the Home Office has the authority to check your residential status at any time of the day or night. Failure to confirm your status could jeopardise your asylum application.’

  Harper waited. After a few seconds the lock buzzed and O’Hara pushed open the door. They went inside. The light clicked on immediately, presumably a motion detector switch. Harper nodded up the stairs. O’Hara went first. Farooqi’s flat was at the rear of the building. There was a brass number ‘3’ in the middle of the door, and no security viewer. Harper knocked and the door opened almost immediately. It was on a security chain. Farooqi peered through the gap. ‘Can I see your identification?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course you can, sir,’ said Harper, stepping away from the door and reaching inside his jacket. He caught a glimpse of Farooqi’s sweatshirt and jeans.

  O’Hara shouldered the door hard and the screws holding the chain in place ripped out with the sound of tearing wood. O’Hara kept the momentum going and the door hit Farooqi and knocked him back. O’Hara pushed the door wide and grabbed Farooqi around the throat. The man’s eyes bulged as O’Hara forced him back against the wall.

  Harper slipped inside and closed the door. ‘Easy, Mick,’ hissed Harper, but Farooqi’s eyes had already glazed over. O’Hara loosened his grip on the man’s throat but it was too late – Farooqi was out for the count and he slid down the wall like a puppet whose strings had been cut. ‘For fuck’s Mick, don’t tell me you’ve killed him.’

  ‘He’s okay,’ said O’Hara. ‘Just a bit too much pressure on the carotid. He’ll be awake in a minute or so.’

  ‘He better had be or I’m cutting your fee in half,’ snapped Harper. ‘Nothing too drastic, I said. They were my exact words.’

  ‘Okay, okay, what do you want me to do, open a fucking vein?’

  ‘Forget it,’ said Harper. ‘Just make sure he’s on his feet in the next couple of minutes, I don’t want to hang about.’ He looked around. The flat was tiny. The room they were in had a plastic sofa and a low coffee table, and by the window a small wooden table with two matching chairs. Ther
e was a Sony laptop on the coffee table. It was open but the computer was off.

  There was a copy of the Koran on the table by the window. It was an Arabic version and there were two Arabic books next to it. Harper picked up the Koran and flicked through it. Hundreds of passages had been highlighted in yellow but there were no scribbled notes.

  Harper went through to a small bedroom with a single bed and a cheap teak-effect wardrobe. There was an Islamic prayer mat on the floor by the window. On the bedside table was a Samsung phone. He picked it up. It was password-protected. He slipped it into his pocket. The cramped shower room was dirty and the ceiling dotted with black mould; water was dripping from the plastic shower head.

  Harper went back into the main room, where O’Hara was slapping the unconscious man’s face.

  There was a laptop case on the floor next to the coffee table. Harper picked it up and slid the laptop into it. O’Hara looked over his shoulder. ‘Sorry about this, Lex. Bastard won’t wake up.’

  ‘You can carry him,’ said Harper. ‘But gag him and tie him in case he comes around in the boot.’

  O’Hara nodded. He stood up and went over to the kitchen area. He ripped the cord out of an electric kettle and used it to tie Farooqi’s hands behind his back, then he stuffed a pan cleaner into the man’s mouth and held it in place with a roughly tied dishcloth.

  ‘Okay, out we go,’ said Harper. ‘Stay behind me and don’t move until I say we’re clear.’ He took out his car keys and eased open the door. The hallway was in darkness but the light came on as soon as he stepped out. He held up his hand to tell O’Hara to stay where he was and he listened intently. There was a television on somewhere in the house and muffled voices from the floor above. But they were alone in the hallway. He padded down the stairs. O’Hara followed with Farooqi slung over his shoulder.

  Harper reached the front door and slowly opened it. A car drove by and disappeared down the road. He looked left and right. On the other side of the road an old woman in a heavy coat was walking a black and white spaniel. The dog crouched and the woman pulled a plastic bag from her pocket. When the dog had finished its business, the woman picked it up with the bag and walked off. Another car drove by. Then a motorcycle. Harper gritted his teeth and waited.