[Spider Shepherd #13] - Dark Forces

by Stephen Leather

  Kolarac nodded again. ‘Yeah. We’re good.’

  Shepherd held out his hand. ‘Always a pleasure dealing with a professional,’ he said.

  Kolarac shook it. ‘Likewise.’

  Omar took off his helmet and pulled a printed sheet out from inside his green leather racing jacket. ‘We’re looking for number thirty-eight,’ he said to Faisal.

  They were in a suburban street in Birmingham, about four miles north of the city centre. It had taken Omar two hours to drive down from Salford, resisting the urge to let the bike rip on the M6. He had kept to the speed limit the whole way, only moving into the outside lane when overtaking.

  ‘There it is,’ said Faisal. He pointed at a house to their left. It was semi-detached with a path that led to a garage at the rear.

  The vehicle they had come to see was parked at the side of the house. It was white, but that wasn’t a problem, and as Omar walked along the pavement, he could see the bodywork was in good condition. He knocked on the front door. It was answered by a man in his thirties, wearing a baggy green pullover and brown corduroy trousers. Omar thought of a walking tree. ‘I phoned you this morning,’ he said.

  ‘Ah, right, yes,’ said the man. He stepped out of the house.

  Faisal was already peering in through the passenger window. ‘It’s not locked!’ called the man. Faisal opened the door and climbed in.

  ‘Mind if I have a quick look?’ asked Omar.

  ‘Sure, help yourself,’ said the man. ‘It runs fine – my uncle lived twenty miles away and I drove it over last week. The battery had gone flat but after I charged it she started first time. They run for ever, those things.’

  The man stood by the house while Faisal and Omar checked out the vehicle. The engine was sound, the bodywork was pretty much perfect, though the interior had been stripped, presumably in preparation for the conversion to a camper van. ‘Looks good to me,’ Omar said to Faisal.

  Faisal nodded in agreement.

  Omar got out and walked back to the front door. ‘I’m definitely interested,’ he said to the man, who was now smoking a cigarette. ‘Where did you get it from?’

  ‘It was my uncle’s. He was always planning to turn it into a camper van but he never got around to it. He passed away last year and my aunt asked me to get rid of it.’

  Omar nodded. ‘That’s cool,’ he said. ‘I mean, sorry about your loss and all, but I can definitely take it off your hands. The advert says six. Would you take five for cash?’

  ‘The advert says six. That’s pretty much what he paid for it.’

  ‘I know, but cash is king, right?’ said Omar. He pulled an envelope from his pocket and showed the man the hundred fifty-pound notes inside.

  The man licked his lips. ‘Let’s say five and a half.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Omar, handing the man the envelope and pulling out his wallet. ‘But I’ll need a receipt.’ He smiled. ‘Not for tax. I’m buying it for someone else and he’ll want to see how much I paid.’

  ‘No problem,’ said the man. Omar gave him another five hundred pounds. The man disappeared into the house and reappeared a few minutes later with a handwritten receipt and the keys. Omar took the receipt and tossed the keys to Faisal.

  The man gave him the V5C log book. ‘Now, it doesn’t have an MOT,’ he said. ‘And it’s not insured. I took a risk and it was fine, but it’s yours now so it’s up to you. Oh, and I’ll need your details for the DVLA.’

  ‘No problem,’ said Omar. He gave the man a piece of paper with a fake name, address and telephone number on it. ‘Pleasure doing business with you.’ He put his helmet back on. Five minutes later he was following Faisal on the M6, heading north.

  Shepherd’s mobile phone buzzed as he was getting into his car outside the hospital. It was a text message from Amar Singh. Just one word – Done – and half a dozen screenshots.

  Shepherd flicked through them. Stefan Bazarov was twenty-six years old and had a criminal record going back to his teens, mainly arrests for assault, drug use or motoring offences. None of the cases had ever gone to court, presumably because of the influence of his father, Viktor.

  Unlike the son, Viktor Bazarov had served several prison sentences, including twelve years for murder when he was in his twenties. That had been his last conviction, and since his release in the late nineties, he had never returned to prison. It wasn’t because he had turned over a new leaf – a Europol file detailed the rapid growth of Bazarov’s criminal empire and suggested that it had been made possible by the Russian’s paying off high-ranking police officers and judges. Shepherd smiled to himself as he read the Europol report – it seemed that Bazarov had a lot in common with the O’Neill brothers. He was thought to have been behind several dozen murders in Moscow, and his criminal activities spanned extortion, drugs, prostitution and fraud. According to the report, there was little or no chance of him being brought to justice, not without a comprehensive clear-out of the corrupt officials currently running the city.

  There was a report in Russian from the Moscow police accompanied by a translation. It detailed a fight in a Moscow nightclub three months earlier in which a young man had been shot. Witnesses had identified Stefan Bazarov as the killer but Bazarov was believed to have left Moscow and his whereabouts were unknown. The victim was named as twenty-three-year-old Timofei Ivakin. He had been shot twice and was dead when he arrived at the Botkin Hospital, close to the Dinamo Metro station. There was more detail in a report filed by an MI6 officer working out of the British Embassy. The intelligence report was a weekly summary written five days after the murder. It identified the victim as the son of another Russian gangster, a former KGB officer, who had turned to crime when the Soviet Union imploded. His name was Leonid Ivakin and, according to the MI6 report, he was in the process of legitimising his empire, moving away from his criminal activities and concentrating on his property and business interests. The death of his son had brought him back into the public eye for all the wrong reasons, and the fact that Ivakin was trying to downplay his criminal connections was the only reason there hadn’t been instant retribution against the Bazarov family. The MI6 officer’s assessment was that at some point Ivakin would be seeking revenge for the death of his son, and if that were to happen it would bring him into conflict with Stefan Bazarov’s father.

  Shepherd put the phone away. Now Stefan Bazarov’s presence in Marbella made perfect sense. Presumably his father had exiled him to Spain until he had sorted out the situation in Moscow.

  García had given him Bazarov’s address and he tapped it into the sat-nav. It was a villa on the outskirts of the town on a hill overlooking the bay, a twenty-minute drive from the hospital, and was surrounded by a high wall. There seemed to be just one entrance, with a wrought-iron gate and next to it a small stone guardhouse.

  Shepherd drove up to the gate and wound down his window. A small brass grille was set into the wall with a button below it. Shepherd pressed it twice.

  ‘Who are you?’ growled a voice.

  ‘I’m here to see Stefan,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Who are you?’

  Shepherd decided he, too, could play the repetition game. ‘I’m here to see Stefan.’

  ‘He doesn’t see visitors,’ said the man. ‘Move your car away from the gates.’

  ‘Why don’t you move it?’ Shepherd wound up the window and climbed out of the Honda as a large man in a black leather jacket stepped out of the guardhouse. He was a couple of inches taller than Shepherd, but several kilos heavier, with bulging forearms and a shaved head that was criss-crossed with rope-like scars.

  ‘Move the fucking car,’ growled the man. He had a heavy Russian accent and spoke slowly, as if he was reading from a script.

  ‘Like I said, you move it.’

  ‘What is your fucking problem?’

  ‘No problem,’ said Shepherd. ‘I just want to see Stefan.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘I’m a friend of a friend.’

  ‘He do
esn’t see friends of friends,’ snarled the man. ‘Now move the fucking car.’

  ‘You’re very brave on the other side of this gate,’ said Shepherd.

  The man sneered. ‘Are you fucking serious?’

  Shepherd shrugged. ‘It is what it is.’

  The man went back inside the guardhouse. A few seconds later a metal door set into the wall opened and he stepped onto the pavement. He seemed bigger closer up. He had a strong jaw and a heavy brow that suggested he wouldn’t be too fazed by a punch to the head. ‘I’m not going to tell you again,’ he said.

  ‘I need to talk to Stefan about some guys he had shot.’

  The bodyguard reached into the pocket of his jacket and took out a small black automatic. ‘Yeah? Well, if you don’t fuck off, you’ll be the one who gets shot.’

  ‘Where is he? Is he home?’

  The man pointed the gun at Shepherd’s face and his finger tightened on the trigger. ‘You don’t listen, do you?’

  The gun was small. A Glock 42 with a standard six-shot single-stack magazine. It was easily concealable and close up would do the job. It wasn’t a gun that Shepherd would use unless he had to. The man looked like a professional but he hadn’t pulled back the slide, which meant he was carrying the weapon in his pocket with a round already chambered. Even with the Glock’s safety trigger that was never a good idea. There was no safety switch on the Glock: instead it had a trigger safety, a lever next to the trigger, which, when it was in the forward position, blocked the trigger from moving backwards. The trigger safety and the trigger itself had to be pressed simultaneously for the gun to fire, and that required a pull of between eight and nine pounds. It could be that the man was bluffing and didn’t have a round chambered but Shepherd wasn’t willing to gamble his life on it. The nearest villa was a hundred yards or so away: if the gun did go off, noise wouldn’t be a problem.

  A car came down the road, its headlights on main beam. It slowed as it approached the villa, then came to a halt fifty feet away from the gate. It was a red Ferrari and its engine roared as the driver gunned the accelerator.

  ‘Get back in your car and fuck off,’ said the man with the gun.

  Shepherd jerked his thumb at the Ferrari. ‘That’s Stefan?’ He turned and waved at the car. ‘Hey, Stefan!’ he shouted. ‘I need a word!’

  The man shoved him with his free hand. ‘Get back in your car.’

  Shepherd ignored him. ‘Come on, Stefan! We need to talk.’

  The driver’s side door opened and a man in his late twenties climbed out. High cheekbones, glossy slicked-back hair and a carefully cultivated five o’clock shadow. With his tie-less buttoned-up grey shirt and black Hugo Boss suit he looked as if he’d stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine. He shouted in Russian and the man with the gun shouted back.

  ‘Stefan, I just need a conversation with you. Can we go inside?’

  As Bazarov walked towards the gate, the man shoved the gun into the small of Shepherd’s back. Shepherd held up his hands.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ asked Bazarov.

  ‘The name’s Terry. I work for Jake’s bosses.’

  Bazarov frowned but didn’t say anything.

  ‘Jake Rosenfeld. You shot him in Gibraltar.’

  ‘I don’t shoot people.’

  Shepherd smiled easily. ‘I know people in Moscow who say different.’

  ‘What the fuck does that mean?’ snarled the Russian.

  ‘I should just shoot the fucker, boss,’ said the man with the gun.

  Shepherd kept his hands up but looked over his shoulder. ‘You really don’t do threats very well,’ he said.

  The man looked confused, not understanding.

  ‘Here’s how it works,’ said Shepherd. ‘You threaten once, then you act. Otherwise it looks like you’re not serious.’ He turned back to Bazarov. ‘Stefan, I don’t have all night. This idiot with the gun. Is he a friend?’

  Bazarov shook his head impatiently. ‘What the fuck’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Is he a friend? Do you want me to kill him or hurt him?’

  The man prodded the gun into Shepherd’s back again. ‘Kill me? You think you can fucking kill me?’

  ‘Your call, Stefan,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’m easy either way.’

  Bazarov stared at Shepherd and the two men locked eyes. Bazarov was a couple of inches taller than Shepherd, and wider, and the Russian wasn’t used to being stared down. On the surface Shepherd was relaxed but his heart was pounding as adrenalin coursed through his system. The Russian recognised the confidence of a man who was no stranger to violence and eventually he nodded slowly. ‘Don’t kill him,’ he said quietly.

  Shepherd had decided that the man behind him wasn’t a professional. No true professional would prod someone in the back with a gun. Shepherd was breathing tidally, waiting for the gun to prod again. He was just about to take a second breath when the gun pressed into his back and he turned quickly to his left. His left hand came down as he moved, pushing the gun away. In less than a second the gun was no longer a threat. In fact, it was working against the man holding it because now the weapon was useless and the hand was occupied.

  The Glock didn’t have a hammer so there was no point in grabbing it. Instead his fingers clamped around the man’s wrist. Shepherd continued to turn, his right hand forming a fist. The left hand continued to force the gun away as he punched the inside of the man’s elbow and felt it crack. As the Glock slipped from the man’s grasp Shepherd grabbed it. He was right up against the man, close enough to smell the garlic on his breath, and brought his left elbow up to hit the man’s jaw, hard. As the man staggered back, Shepherd transferred the gun from his left hand to his right and slammed it against the side of the man’s head, then kicked him in the stomach. The man fell to the ground with a loud thump. Shepherd aimed the gun casually at the man’s chest. ‘Bang, bang,’ he said. ‘You’re dead.’

  Bazarov clapped sarcastically. ‘Krav Maga?’

  Shepherd shrugged. ‘It’s a move I came up with myself,’ he said. ‘It only works when the guy with the gun gets too close.’

  The bodyguard lay on the ground, holding his injured arm and gasping.

  Shepherd held out the gun to Bazarov. ‘I’m not here to fight, Stefan. I’m here to talk.’

  Bazarov took the gun, looked disdainfully at the injured bodyguard, then waved at the villa. ‘Over a drink,’ he said.

  ‘My thoughts exactly,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘You’re going to have to move your car.’

  ‘I can do that.’

  Two more heavies in leather jackets and jeans walked out of the villa and started jogging towards the gate. One was reaching inside his jacket, presumably for a weapon. Bazarov shouted at them in Russian and they stopped. He waved them back inside and they obeyed immediately. Shepherd climbed into the Honda while the Russian went to the Ferrari. A few seconds later the gate rattled open and Shepherd drove up to the villa. The two bodyguards watched him with hard eyes, their hands inside their jackets. Shepherd winked at them as he drove by.

  ‘What do you drink?’ asked Bazarov, standing by a marble cabinet. He took two crystal tumblers down from a shelf.

  ‘Whatever you’re having is fine by me.’

  ‘I drink Scotch.’

  ‘Scotch is fine.’

  Bazarov pulled the cork from a bottle of twenty-five-year-old malt. He half filled the tumblers and handed one to Shepherd. ‘Straight is the only way to drink malt whisky,’ he said, raising his glass.

  ‘Couldn’t agree more.’ Shepherd clinked his glass against the Russian’s and the two men drank. They were standing in a large room on the second floor of the villa with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the sea. Two bodyguards stood either side of the door. The one Shepherd had hit had disappeared, presumably to get medical treatment. The Glock Shepherd had taken off him was lying on a square marble coffee-table.

  There were two large white leather sofas. Bazarov took one and waved with his
glass for Shepherd to sit on the other.

  ‘You former military?’ asked Bazarov.

  ‘In a previous life,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘The man you hit was Russian Special Forces,’ said Bazarov. ‘Spetsnaz. You’ve heard of Spetsnaz?’

  ‘Sure. But with a thousand or so men in a Spetsnaz brigade and dozens of brigades, I’m not sure how special they’d be. Your guy didn’t seem that special.’

  Bazarov laughed. ‘Good point,’ he said. There was no disguising his Russian accent but it had a smooth edge, probably the result of an international education. ‘You could have killed him, right, with his own gun?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have needed the gun,’ said Shepherd. He sipped his whisky.

  ‘So you’re what? Former SAS?’

  ‘I’m not applying for a job, Stefan,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’m here to talk about the men you had shot.’

  Bazarov shrugged carelessly. ‘It can be a dangerous place, Marbella,’ he said.

  ‘No question of that,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’m here to see if we can make it a little less dangerous. You had Jake Rosenfeld shot. His bosses aren’t happy about that.’

  ‘They were cheating,’ said Bazarov. ‘Then the American had the cheek to send Serbs to threaten me.’

  ‘What did they do, exactly?’

  ‘I was in a nightclub, down at the marina. They came into the VIP section and pushed me around. In front of everyone. Shouted that if I didn’t pay up they’d break my legs. Do you think I could let something like that pass?’

  Shepherd sipped his whisky.

  ‘Of course not,’ continued Bazarov. ‘So I gave them a taste of their own medicine. They have only themselves to blame.’

  ‘They don’t see it that way, of course,’ said Shepherd. ‘The Serbs were just doing the job they’d been hired to do. And you did owe the company money.’

  ‘They were cheating,’ said Bazarov again.

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘I don’t think. I know. Things were happening that shouldn’t have been, not in a legit game. I’d have a pair of aces and go all in. Some newbie would match my bet, then fill an inside straight. Nobody does that.’