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

  Pritchard wrinkled his nose as if he had just noticed a bad smell in the room. ‘I’m not disputing that,’ he said, sitting back in his chair. ‘But your presence there resulted in a riot that culminated in one of our officers being taken to ICU.’

  ‘His name’s Geraghty,’ said Shepherd. ‘Neil Geraghty.’

  Pritchard flashed Shepherd a withering look. ‘I’m well aware of his name, Daniel, so don’t try suggesting that I’m out of touch with the troops. And just so you know, I was on the phone to the doctor treating him just ten minutes ago. I’ve also phoned his wife to give her my sympathies and given her my mobile number in case she needs anything.’

  Shepherd held up his hands. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s been a tense day.’

  ‘Apology accepted,’ said the director. ‘But don’t forget, it was you calling Neil over that drew him to the attention of the mob. If you’d just stayed in the van, none of that would have happened.’

  Shepherd gritted his teeth and nodded. He knew from experience there was no point in arguing with the director.

  Pritchard watched Shepherd for a couple of seconds to see if Shepherd would respond, and when he didn’t the director smiled thinly and nodded. ‘Anyway, water under the bridge. I have a new job for you. One that will make use of your undercover talents.’ He paused, but again Shepherd didn’t say anything. ‘How much do you know about county lines drug gangs?’ Pritchard asked eventually.

  ‘I’ve not worked on any cases, but I know the drill,’ said Shepherd. ‘Drug gangs in big cities send kids to provincial towns to sell drugs. Usually the high-value ones like heroin and crack cocaine.’

  Pritchard nodded. ‘They tend to use young kids, generally fifteen and younger, to work as mules. If the kids get caught they don’t face major charges because of their age, and their youth makes them easy to manipulate. The gangs use the child mules to move large amounts of Class A drugs from the big cities. A single line can pull in more than two thousand pounds a day and a gang might have dozens of lines. The local cops in the small towns don’t have the expertise to cope, in fact it was only a spate of overdoses across the country that brought it to the attention of the authorities.’

  ‘But the National Crime Agency is on the case,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘It has been for a while,’ said Pritchard. ‘They now have more than two hundred active investigations, from Glasgow to London. They have estimated that there are more than a thousand lines up and running at any one time but I feel that’s lower than the reality of the situation.’ He sighed and sipped his water. ‘Recently the Home Office funded a county lines coordination centre, headquartered in Birmingham, bringing together detectives from the major cities around the UK with NCA analysts with representatives from other agencies that deal with youngsters, such as education, health and welfare.’

  Shepherd nodded as he waited for Pritchard to get to the point.

  ‘Violent crime – especially knife crime – has soared in the provinces as the various gangs start to fight over turf. In the early days they were moving into virgin territory so there was nothing to fight about, but now pretty much every village and small town has at least one line,’ said Pritchard. ‘Over the last few years the violence we are accustomed to in the big cities has been exported to the provinces. Anyway, as part of its ongoing fight against the county line gangs, the NCA has been using undercover agents. The problem is that many of the mules that are being recruited are underage. At least, they are under sixteen. And there are strict procedures that need to be followed when underage covert human intelligence subjects are used.’

  Shepherd’s jaw dropped. ‘They’re using children as undercover agents?’

  ‘No, undercover agent is the wrong term completely. They’re not pretending to be something they’re not. They’re not given legends, they’re not acting, they’re more like double agents.’

  ‘You mean they get caught and they’re told they’ll be let off if they work for the NCA?’

  The director shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘Well, basically, yes.’

  Shepherd held up his hands. ‘Who would think that was in any way a good idea?’ he said.

  ‘Daniel, this isn’t something I dreamed up. This is something being done by the centre in Birmingham with the cooperation of the NCA. But on the question of juvenile covert human intelligence subjects, we have used them here at MI5.’

  Shepherd frowned. ‘On what basis?’

  ‘Horses for courses,’ said Pritchard. ‘There was a case in Bradford, not that long ago. An imam in a mosque there was part of a child grooming ring. Two of the girls being abused were approached by officers here and they agreed to wear wires.’

  ‘While they were being abused?’

  ‘It didn’t come to that,’ said Pritchard. ‘But the evidence they gathered put a dozen men behind bars for a very long time.’

  ‘And what was Five’s interest?’

  ‘The imam was an ISIS recruiter and fundraiser. We couldn’t put a terrorism charge together but his predilection for young girls was his undoing.’

  ‘I get the feeling you’re going to tell me that the end justifies the means,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘There is a logic to that statement that is difficult to refute,’ said Pritchard.

  ‘Children?’ Shepherd shook his head. ‘It’s just wrong.’

  ‘You’ve got a son, right?’

  Shepherd nodded. ‘Liam. But he’s not a child any more. He’s flying choppers in the Army.’

  ‘You must be proud.’

  ‘I am,’ said Shepherd, smiling at the compliment but knowing that Pritchard was playing him. Or trying to play him.

  ‘The kids these days are different, Daniel. They’re more streetwise, they know stuff that we never did at their age. When I was a kid, the only way to get porn was to steal a top-shelf magazine from the local newsagent. These days, any sexual perversion you want is a few seconds away on your smartphone. And free at that. Were you ever offered drugs at school? Because I wasn’t. My drug was nicotine, a few puffs behind the bike shed between lessons. Cider maybe at night down the local graveyard. But drugs just weren’t on our radar.’

  ‘Sounds like you had quite a childhood,’ said Shepherd.

  Pritchard flashed him a tight smile. ‘But at least I had a childhood, Daniel. Most of these kids jump from being toddlers to adults. Sex, drugs, violence, it’s all in front of them the moment they learn how to touch a screen. So when we use a juvenile in a case, it’s not the same as using a child forty years ago, or even ten. The cops arrest a twelve-year-old these days and all the kid will say is “no comment” and demand to speak to a lawyer. We’ve got fifteen-year-olds slashing each other with machetes and schoolchildren dealing in Class A drugs.’ He shrugged. ‘Anyway, I don’t have to justify departmental procedure to you. Everything that’s done is approved by the Home Office. The reason I’ve called you in is that a juvenile being run by the county lines centre has cut across one of our investigations and I need you on board.’ He picked up his glass and took another sip of water. ‘A few years back you worked on a case involving right-wing groups, correct?’

  Shepherd tried not to show he was confused by the sudden change of subject. ‘I’ve come across them on several occasions, both for the Security Service and for SOCA before that,’ he said.

  ‘Ever come across a chap by the name of Gary Dexter?’

  Shepherd didn’t have to consider the question – with his near-faultless eidetic memory he knew immediately that it wasn’t a name he was familiar with. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘He was a BNP stormtrooper many years ago, kicking heads and breaking arms, then he moved to England First but fell out with them about two years ago. He left England First and set up his own group, British Crusaders. There are just over a hundred core members but many more sympathisers. The Crusaders hold demonstrations and disrupt Muslim events but the intelligence we have is that they are planning to become more proactive. We have had information from
Europol that Dexter and several of his people have been talking to various right-wing terror groups in Germany and France with a view to acquiring weapons.’

  ‘Firearms?’

  ‘RPGs. And grenades.’

  ‘So you think there’s a connection between Gary Dexter and what happened today?’

  ‘Actually, I suspect not,’ said Pritchard. ‘The devices used today appear to be home-made and Dexter has been trying to acquire commercial weaponry. But we’ll know better once Tony Hooper has been questioned.’

  ‘Apparently he’s not saying anything.’

  ‘We’ll see how he fares after a couple of nights in Paddington Green,’ said Pritchard. ‘But as I said, I don’t think there will be a connection with Gary Dexter and the British Crusaders. Now, here’s the thing. Gary Dexter has a brother, Micky Dexter. Former Paratrooper, like yourself, did ten years including a couple of tours in Afghanistan. Came back to work in a security firm in Reading. He’s an upstanding citizen, by all accounts. Now, Micky has a son, Harry. And sixteen-year-old Harry has fallen in with a bad crowd. He lives outside Reading and young Harry has been bringing in drugs for a Brixton gang. The NCA caught him and he has agreed to help them with their investigation in exchange for any charges being dropped. The drugs investigation is coming along nicely, but then we found out what was going on and realised that young Harry might be the key to putting Gary Dexter behind bars. Gary has had numerous death threats made against him and is the subject of an ongoing fatwa so he never goes anywhere without full security and his home in Bromley is a fortress. The chances of getting a listening device into his home are precisely nil, but every Sunday he visits his brother in Reading for a spot of lunch.’

  ‘So what’s the plan? To send the kid in wearing a wire?’

  Pritchard looked at Shepherd over the top of his glasses, his eyes narrowing, and Shepherd wondered if he had pushed it too far. But he didn’t like what he was being asked to do and was finding it difficult to keep the contempt out of his voice. ‘No, of course not,’ he said. ‘But we are giving him a phone that will do the eavesdropping for him. On or off, it transmits anything said within ten feet or so and is virtually undetectable.’

  ‘Virtually?’

  Pritchard sighed. ‘Daniel, I’m sure you’ve used the same equipment on many of your undercover operations,’ he said. ‘It looks and feels exactly like a regular phone. If you were to take it apart and if you knew what you were looking for, then maybe you might realise that it had been modified, but really that level of expertise is only found in government labs. Any regular person isn’t going to see anything, even if they look at it closely.’

  ‘And what about the information you want? Is Harry going to be told what questions to ask?’

  ‘Initially, no. I understand your reservations, a teenager can hardly start questioning his elders without sticking out like a sore thumb. No, we won’t even be telling him what the phone does. In fact, he won’t even know it’s our phone. We’ve prepared a duplicate of the one that he already has. One of the things you’ll have to do is swap it. He’s not being told that his uncle is of interest.’

  ‘And presumably he’s not to know that I’m with Five?’

  Pritchard nodded. ‘You’ll be another member of his police handling team.’

  Shepherd sat back and folded his arms, but realised immediately that he was looking defensive. He put his hands on his knees, but that looked too posed, so he put his hands down by his side and stretched out his legs. ‘What’s the legal position on using children as confidential informants?’ he asked.

  ‘If they are under sixteen, a parent or an appropriate adult has to be present at all meetings with their handler. Sixteen and over, they can be on their own. There are procedures in place to ensure the safety of the informant, and any operation can’t last longer than four months.’ Pritchard was looking at him with an amused smile on his face. ‘I know you’re not comfortable with the idea of working with teenagers,’ he said. ‘None of us are. This isn’t a matter of choice. There are just no alternatives.’

  ‘You could put me in,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’ve infiltrated right-wing groups before. We’ve even got a couple of legends that are still good to go.’

  ‘You’ll never be able to get close to Dexter. At least not close enough for you to get anything on the record. He’s careful. Very careful. The NCA has tried twice and both times the agents were discovered and beaten to within an inch of their lives.’

  Shepherd sighed in exasperation. ‘Which is why we shouldn’t be using a kid. What’s Dexter going to do if he finds out that his own nephew is out to betray him?’

  ‘First, he won’t find out,’ said Pritchard. ‘Second, you’ll be watching over him. You’ll be his guardian angel. If there’s any sign that he’s blown, you pull him out.’

  ‘And then what? You take a sixteen-year-old from his family and put him in witness protection for the rest of his life? What about his parents? Do they know what’s going on?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Pritchard. ‘If Micky finds out what we’re doing then obviously he’ll tell his brother.’

  ‘I’m really not comfortable with this,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Do you think any of us are? But like I said, we have no alternative.’

  ‘I’ve given you one,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’ll join this British Crusade group and get close to the Dexter brothers.’

  ‘That could take months, maybe years, and we don’t have the time. There was an arson attack on a mosque in Bradford last month and we’re certain the British Crusaders were behind it. And we’re sure there are going to be more. There’s a lot of chatter among the various right-wing groups that are into this sort of thing, and the word is that the next attack will be in London.’

  Shepherd folded his arms again and sat back in his chair. So much of what he was required to do in the fight against terrorism ended up with having to choose the lesser of two evils, and this was a perfect example. Use a child as an undercover agent, or have innocent worshippers murdered. Obviously, using the Dexter kid was the lesser evil, but that didn’t make it any more acceptable.

  ‘Your NCA point of contact will be an old colleague of yours,’ said Pritchard. ‘So at least you’ll be working with a familiar face.’

  Shepherd decided to walk to the Tattershall Castle. It was a bright, sunny day but as always a chill wind blew down the Thames. He’d arranged the meeting for two o’clock and the Tattershall Castle was the obvious choice as it was pretty much equidistant from Millbank and the NCA’s South Bank headquarters in Tinworth Street. The Tattershall Castle was a paddle steamer built in the 1930s that had been converted into bars and function rooms. In its glory days it had ferried passengers and goods across the Humber estuary before being retired in 1973 and towed to the Thames. Shepherd often used it as a meeting place as anyone arriving or leaving had to walk along a narrow gangplank so it was easy to spot a tail.

  Shepherd grinned when he saw Jimmy Sharpe sitting at a corner bench seat with a glass of lager in front of him, half full or half empty, depending on your point of view. ‘Razor, you old reprobate,’ said Shepherd. ‘Long time, no see.’

  ‘More than a year,’ said the Glaswegian, getting to his feet. He was wearing a black reefer jacket and blue Levi’s jeans with gleaming black Doc Martens on his feet. He hugged Shepherd and patted him on the back.

  ‘Closer to two,’ said Shepherd. ‘You’re looking fit and well.’

  ‘Aye, retirement agrees with me,’ said Sharpe, releasing his grip on Shepherd.

  ‘Retired? Are you serious?’

  Sharpe shrugged. ‘My pension wasn’t getting any bigger, so it made sense to take early retirement and then work for the NCA on short-term contracts. What are you drinking?’

  ‘I’ll get them,’ said Shepherd. Sharpe sat down as Shepherd went over to the bar and ordered a Jameson with soda and ice and another lager for his friend, along with a couple of packets of crisps.

  ‘So, how a
re you getting on with the new boss?’ asked Sharpe as Shepherd sat down and sipped his drink.

  ‘He’s not that new,’ said Shepherd. ‘It’s been a year.’

  ‘You are burning through bosses, though, aren’t you? The fragrant Charlotte Button leaves under a cloud, Jeremy Willoughby-Brown gets shot in his own back garden and Patsy Ellis – well, she took early retirement to spend more time with her family, they say.’

  ‘That’s what they say.’

  ‘But there are all sorts of rumours flying about.’

  ‘People do like to gossip, don’t they?’ said Shepherd. He raised his glass in salute. ‘Good to see you, Razor.’

  ‘And you,’ said Sharpe. They clinked glasses and drank.

  ‘So this case. You’re happy about using a kid?’

  ‘No one’s happy,’ said Sharpe. ‘But he’s sixteen going on twenty-six. His dad’s a hard nut and young Harry says that he gets more than his fair share of slappings from him. He’s been taking drugs since he was thirteen and got involved with the Brixton dealers a year ago. He’s not some namby-pamby kid in short trousers, Spider. He knows what he’s doing. He’s made some bad decisions and helping us is going to minimise the damage.’

  ‘But what happens when it’s over? How’s the father going to react when he finds out what his son has been up to?’

  ‘The feeling at the NCA is that it won’t come to that. We’ll use the lad to gather evidence and if we get an open and shut case then the drug dealers will plead guilty and there’ll be no need for Harry to appear in court.’

  ‘I was thinking more about the family connection,’ said Shepherd. ‘He’ll have to keep what he did a secret from his dad and his uncle for the rest of his life.’

  ‘He’ll never know, so there’s no secret to keep. He won’t know that his phone is bugged or that we’re targeting his uncle. All we’re doing is gathering intel on his uncle, Harry will never have to testify.’

  ‘And his parents don’t have to be told?’

  Sharpe shook his head. ‘If he was under sixteen then we could only talk to him with a parent or an appropriate adult present, but Harry’s sixteen so he can fly solo.’