Short Range (The Spider Shepherd Thrillers Book 16) Read online

  ‘I understand,’ said Shepherd. He really didn’t want to get into an argument with the superintendent but he had been involved in many cases where police investigations had cut across investigations he was involved with and more often than not it was the cops that caused problems.

  ‘I’m okay for you to sit in on the briefing, but I’d be grateful if you didn’t draw any attention to yourself. If you have any queries can you ask them afterwards, either with me personally or through Jimmy here.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’ll be as quiet as a mouse.’

  The superintendent nodded but didn’t say anything. Sharpe tilted his chin and gestured at the door. The two men left as the superintendent got back behind his desk.

  ‘As a mouse?’ laughed Sharpe as they walked back to the MIR. ‘Where did that come from?’

  ‘He doesn’t like spooks, does he?’

  ‘He’s had a few bad experiences,’ said Sharpe. ‘We all have. You know what your mob are like. They’re totally unaccountable but everything we do is put under the microscope and God help us if we put a foot wrong.’

  ‘We’re not totally unaccountable,’ said Shepherd. ‘We have rules to follow, same as you.’

  ‘They’re not the same and you know it.’ He patted Shepherd on the back. ‘But I’m not defending the super. He should have been nicer to you.’

  ‘I’m a big boy, Razor. I’ll get over it.’

  ‘Let’s grab a coffee, we’ve got a few minutes before the briefing starts.’ They took the lift down to the canteen, bought coffee and bacon sandwiches, and took them back to the MIR. When the lift opened, Inspector Cave had just stepped out of another lift, dressed exactly as she had been at the flat above the kebab shop, minus the shoe covers and gloves. She looked at the sandwiches in Sharpe’s hand and raised an eyebrow. ‘Don’t suppose one of those is going spare?’ she asked.

  ‘Knock yourself out,’ said Sharpe, holding out the plate.

  Cave thanked him and took one of the sandwiches. ‘The kitchen door lock was definitely picked,’ said the inspector. ‘Gunshot wounds seem to have been caused by two weapons but we won’t know that for sure until they dig the bullets out. And all their phones had gone. Presumably the killers took them.’

  ‘No witnesses saw them leave?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘That part of the city, we tend not to get witnesses to anything,’ said Cave. ‘How about we grab a drink after this is over?’

  ‘Sounds like a plan,’ said Shepherd. He and Sharpe found a spare desk and sat down.

  They were halfway through their sandwiches when Superintendent Sherwood walked in and went to stand at the top of the office. He looked around the room, nodding at a few familiar faces, then raised a hand. Everyone immediately fell silent. ‘Right, thank you for coming at such short notice, ladies and gentlemen, but something has happened regarding the investigations you are involved in and we need to move quickly. Over the last six days there have been a number of attacks against established drugs gangs across London. This culminated last night in the deaths of several members of the Jason Morris gang. Other gangs that have been targeted include Christy ‘Vicious’ Miller and his Southall posse, an Asian drugs gang in Tower Hamlets and a Somalian gang in Ealing.’

  The superintendent gestured at a screen on the wall and a head and shoulders shot of a man with a sullen stare flashed up. There was an old scar in the middle of his left cheek that looked as if it had been the result of being stabbed with a broken bottle.

  ‘We have intel that suggests that one man is behind all four of these attacks,’ Sherwood continued, ‘and probably more that we don’t know about. Allow me to introduce you to Frenk Kriezis. Sounds like crisis but you spell it K-R-I-E-Z-I-S. Kriezis is an Albanian but he has managed to acquire a Belgian passport. There isn’t much known about him, though that is about to change, obviously.’

  The picture of Kriezis was replaced by a line of half a dozen head and shoulder shots of grim-faced men. ‘You might recall these guys, an Albanian gang that received a total of one hundred and twenty-seven years in jail on drugs and human trafficking charges after a year-long investigation by the Central Task Force. These guys were one of the first to set up county lines, running their drugs out of the capital and across the south-east of England. One of the ringleaders of the gang was Frenk Kriezis’s elder brother. We’re not sure where he has been because he’s not in our system and Europol haven’t been able to come up with anything on him. The arrest of the gang closed down its county lines, but it looks as if Kriezis is fast-tracking his way back into the industry. The intel we have received from the Drugs Squad is that Kriezis killed Christy Miller and Miller’s gang is now working for Kriezis. He brought about a similar change of heart with the Somalian Hot Boyz gang in Ealing. The Hot Boyz have been running drugs from Ealing into towns and villages as far north as Milton Keynes and across to Oxford. Three of the Hot Boyz gang leaders were killed last week. Burnt to death. Covered in petrol and set on fire.’

  Someone off to Shepherd’s left laughed, obviously appreciating the irony of the Hot Boyz being burned alive, but the laughter was cut short by a withering look from Sherwood before he continued. ‘The word on the street is that the new leaders of the gang report to Kriezis. A similar scenario was played out in Tower Hamlets with the Mahmud Brothers. Mohammed and Faisal Mahmud were found last week, castrated and gutted and covered with streaky bacon. The full details of what was done to them haven’t been made public, but obviously the gang knows and they have all switched allegiance to Kriezis. So from a standing start, Frenk Kriezis has burst onto the London drugs scene and now controls at least four gangs and several dozen county lines. We don’t know what he is doing in terms of bringing drugs into the country but there have been no signs of a price increase or supply shortage so it looks as if it’s business as usual.’

  The screen went blank, then Frenk Kriezis’s picture was back up.

  ‘Those of you working on the cases involving Christy Miller, the Hot Boyz, the Mahmud Brothers and Jason Morris’s posse will have already realised the position this puts us in. All four gangs are under active investigation and we were almost ready to move in on two of them – Jason Morris and the Hot Boyz. The other two were well under way and we were confident of putting a lot of people away for a very long time, as well as shutting down dozens of active county lines, and the investigations would hopefully have led to the arrests of the people bringing the drugs into the country.’ He grimaced. ‘The problem we have is that several of our prime targets are now dead. And without those prime targets, even if our prosecutions of the survivors were to be successful, we’d only be getting the small fish. And the plan was always to get at least some of those we arrested to give evidence against the overseas suppliers, not the least being the McAllen brothers, who have been a thorn in our side for years. All of that is now up in the air, obviously.’

  There were several loud groans from around the room. Sharpe looked over at Shepherd and raised his eyebrows. Shepherd knew what he was thinking. This was a major setback, throwing into doubt investigations that had taken up thousands of hours of work. They would all effectively have to start again from scratch.

  ‘I know this is the last thing we wanted to hear, but we have to deal with the world the way it is, not the way we want it to be,’ said the superintendent. ‘We will continue the investigations that we already have, but I will be setting up a new team investigating the current crop of murders, with Frenk Kriezis as the prime suspect. That team will be headed by Detective Chief Inspector Ron McKee.’

  A middle-aged detective with his shirt sleeves rolled up raised his hand to identify himself

  ‘Obviously Ron will have access to all the HOLMES databases but he needs to be notified of any major breaks immediately,’ said the superintendent. ‘I need him to be aware of where we stand in real time and not playing catch up.’ HOLMES was the computer system used in all major crime investigations – the Home Office Large Major Enqui
ry System. Every witness statement, every crime report, every interview, pretty much any action the detectives took, would be entered into HOLMES. The idea was that the computer might spot any links that the detectives had missed, but it also meant that the top brass could watch over everything from the comfort of their padded executive chairs.

  Shepherd understood the need for someone to be coordinating the disparate investigations, but he knew that adding the extra layer of administration would just increase the bureaucracy and paperwork. It was the same on the battlefield. The more top brass were involved the slower things moved. That was why the SAS were so successful – generally there would be only one officer involved and he would usually let his men get on with it. It was all about trust. The SAS trusted its soldiers but the Met tended to strictly control their people, binding them with rigid regulations and protocols and making them account for everything they did.

  The superintendent asked if there were any questions and when there weren’t he called the meeting to an end.

  Inspector Cave came over to Shepherd and Sharpe. ‘It’s all getting very complicated, isn’t it?’ she said.

  ‘Or simpler, depending on how you look at it,’ said Shepherd. ‘Before you were looking at several different gangs, now they’re all being brought under one banner. And this Frenk Kriezis will be one hell of a scalp.’

  Cave nodded. ‘No question of that,’ she said. ‘But we all know that nature abhors a vacuum. If we put Frenk Kriezis behind bars, someone else will take his place. They always do.’ She looked at her watch, a cheap Casio. ‘How about that drink?’

  ‘Music to my ears,’ said Sharpe. ‘The Moon Under Water?’

  The Moon Under Water was a few minutes’ drive from Peel House and they all went in Sharpe’s Jaguar. It was a Wetherspoons pub and despite the early hour it was busy with patrons taking advantage of the cheap beer and food.

  ‘I’ve never understood the name of this place,’ said Sharpe as they headed to the bar.

  ‘It’s from an essay written by George Orwell,’ said Shepherd. ‘Back in 1946. It was published in the Evening Standard and in it he described his perfect pub and made up the name for it.’

  ‘And what makes the perfect pub?’ asked Cave. ‘Other than beer and a busty barmaid.’

  ‘He came up with ten criteria,’ said Shepherd. ‘They included that the architecture had to be Victorian, the barmaids had to know everyone’s name, it should sell tobacco, cigarettes, aspirin and stamps and beer should never be served in a glass without a handle.’

  ‘How can you remember all that?’ asked Cave.

  ‘Spider here has one of those trick memories,’ said Sharpe, waving a twenty-pound note to attract the attention of a barman. ‘Everything he sees, hears or reads, he remembers.’

  Cave’s forehead creased into a frown. ‘Spider?’

  ‘That’s what they call him.’

  ‘How would you get a nickname like that?’ asked Cave. ‘Are you good at climbing?’

  Shepherd flashed Sharpe a look of annoyance. He didn’t like talking about his SAS days to relative strangers. In fact he didn’t like talking about it to anyone outside the Regiment. It was the second time Sharpe had done it, and if nothing else it was unprofessional.

  ‘I ate one once, for a bet,’ he said. ‘Come on, let’s grab a seat while Jimmy does the honours.’

  They went over to a table by the window and sat down. ‘So I’m a bit confused,’ said Shepherd. ‘I had assumed the NCA was investigating the Jason Morris gang and the county lines. But it’s a Met investigation, right?’

  Cave nodded. ‘It’s always been done out of Peel House. Initially there were a couple of black-on-black stabbings that were looked at by the Trident team, but once the extent of the county lines became evident the Sheriff decided to set up an MIR team with yours truly as SIO.’

  ‘So why did you bring in the NCA?’

  ‘Mainly for their undercover expertise,’ said Cave. ‘But also because the kids running the drugs were so young. It was Teflon’s idea to bring them in.’

  Shepherd frowned. ‘Teflon?’

  Cave laughed. ‘That’s McKee’s nickname. Nothing sticks to him, and it never has. He’s got a knack of never being involved in anything controversial. And whenever something goes wrong he always manages to come out of it smelling of roses. I think he spotted that using underage agents might blow up in our faces so by bringing in the NCA he can shift the blame if there’s a problem. If it works then he’ll take the credit but if it backfires he’ll just say it was their fault. Having said that, Jimmy and his team are real pros and if anyone can make it work, it’s them.’

  Sharpe came over to their table with two pints and Shepherd’s Jameson and soda. He sat down and took several gulps of his beer.

  ‘So what does all this mean to the Morris investigation?’ asked Shepherd.

  Sharpe reached into his pocket and pulled out three packets of peanuts and dropped them in the middle of the table. He ripped one open and picked at them.

  ‘First things first, it’s no longer the Morris investigation,’ said Cave. ‘With Morris and his posse dead, there’s nothing to investigate,’ she said. ‘The big question will be who takes over, and that’ll take time.’

  ‘From what the super was saying, this Albanian guy has been moving in, cutting off the head of the snake and taking over the body,’ said Shepherd. ‘But something must have gone wrong when he moved in on Morris and they all got killed. How many were in the gang?’

  ‘Hardcore, fifteen that we knew about. Then there’s other guys on the periphery. But in terms of being able to take over the running of the gang, I don’t see who else could move in. Do you, Jimmy?’

  Sharpe shook his head. ‘No one comes to mind,’ he said. ‘Dancer was the leader. Swifty was his number two and they were as thick as thieves. Dancer and Swifty were the only ones to deal with the McAllens, I don’t think anyone else knew where they were getting their drugs from. Beamer was their main enforcer and Mario was their jack of all trades and at a push one of them might have been able to take the reins, but other than that?’ He shrugged.

  ‘Those lines were producing thousands a week, someone is going to take them over,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘We’ll be watching and waiting,’ said Cave.

  ‘What do we know about this Frenk Kriezis?’

  ‘Nothing more than the Sheriff said at the briefing. He’s a fucking invisible man. Plenty of gossip on the streets but little in the way of hard facts. I was surprised they had a picture of him.’

  ‘It was a passport photograph,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’m assuming they just had the one.’

  ‘They’re fucking rough bastards, the Albanians,’ said Sharpe. ‘Most of them come from nothing so they’ve got nothing to lose. And British prisons are a joke to them. I’ve put away Albanian gangsters and within weeks they’re posting on Facebook and Instagram showing off their drugs and PlayStations.’

  Cave nodded. ‘Gangsters from all over the world see London as a soft touch these days,’ he said. ‘All our crime stats are going through the roof. Homicides up twenty-seven per cent, robbery up thirty-three per cent, rape up eighteen per cent. We’ve had a fifty per cent rise in acid attacks and a seventy per cent increase in youth homicide. And a mayor who is more interested in his own political career than in solving the law and order problem.’ She gulped down some of her beer. Cops the world over liked nothing more than to complain about their lives, but in recent years Shepherd had found that British cops complained more than most. He understood their frustrations. Their resources were being cut to the bone while more was being expected of them. It wasn’t a problem that MI5 faced – there was always money available to fight terrorism.

  Shepherd tried to steer the conversation back to the matter in hand. ‘Is it worth holding onto Harry?’ he asked.

  Cave narrowed her eyes. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well you know where the Morris gang keep their drugs. Just keep an eye on
the stash and arrest whoever goes to pick them up. You already have the evidence against the dealers in Reading. Okay, you won’t be able to get anyone to turn on the McAllen brothers, but that opportunity has probably gone anyway.’

  Cave shook her head. ‘We’d rather bust the Reading dealers knowing that there are drugs on the premises,’ she said.

  ‘I get that, I just worry that if the Albanians do take over we’re going to be putting Harry in harm’s way.’

  ‘He was in harm’s way the moment he began delivering drugs for Jason Morris,’ said Cave. ‘And let’s not forget that Harry was selling drugs to his schoolmates. He’s not some innocent who got caught up in all this. He was a drug dealer who started transferring large amounts of drugs across country who helped us because he didn’t want to go to prison.’

  ‘He’s sixteen,’ said Shepherd. ‘Prison was never an option.’

  ‘A youth offenders institution, then. But bars are bars. This kid isn’t helping us out of the goodness of his heart.’

  ‘He’s in no more danger now than he was yesterday,’ said Sharpe. ‘Nothing has really changed.’

  ‘Frenk Kriezis kills to get what he wants,’ said Shepherd. ‘Think what he’ll do to protect what he has?’

  ‘Dancer was no angel,’ said Sharpe. ‘He killed people when it suited him.’

  ‘I understand your concern,’ said Cave. ‘But Jimmy and Julie Bacon have done a bang up job protecting Harry so far and I’m assuming that will continue.’

  Sharpe nodded in agreement.

  ‘I’m also worried that the longer this goes on, the more chance his parents will find out what he’s doing,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘We want to tie this up as quickly as possible,’ said Cave. ‘But at the moment the ball isn’t in our court. And it’s even less my call now that Teflon is running the show.’

  Shepherd nodded and sipped his drink. He could only push it so far and at the end of the day it was never going to be his decision to make.