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

  Shepherd sipped his drink and opened one of the packs of crisps. ‘This is messy, Razor.’

  ‘Look, I wouldn’t worry about young Harry,’ said Sharpe. ‘Some of the kids involved in these county lines are bullied or threatened, but Harry has always been a willing party.’

  ‘How did he get dragged into it?’

  ‘He was taking the train into London at weekends to buy small amounts of marijuana for himself and his few friends. His supplier linked up with the gang in Brixton.’

  ‘Yardies?’

  Sharpe wagged a finger at him. ‘See now, that’s a racist assumption. You hear Brixton and drugs and you automatically think West Indians.’

  ‘My apologies. So what sort of gang is it?’

  Sharpe grinned mischievously. ‘Yardies, of course.’ He sipped his lager. ‘Anyway, the Yardies convinced young Harry to start selling to his schoolmates and he did. He got up to half a kilo a week and then they encouraged him to start dealing in ecstasy and speed and eventually crack and heroin.’

  ‘Crack and heroin to schoolkids?’

  Sharpe shook his head. ‘Once they got him up to sizeable amounts they told him to stop dealing himself. Now he’s a middleman. Some of the gear ends up in the schools but the Yardies are using him to transport drugs to some heavier guys in the Reading area. It’s a clever system. One of the Yardies takes the drugs on the Tube and meets up with Harry at one of the busier stations, usually at the weekend. They give Harry a backpack and Harry heads back to Reading. No one’s going to be worrying about a young kid, and even if he did ever get caught, there’s not much he can tell the cops. He doesn’t know the person who gives him the drugs and he doesn’t know where the Yardies are based.’

  ‘But the NCA does?’

  ‘We’ve had our eye on them for two months. They operate out of a flat above a kebab shop, a clever move because the smell from the takeaway covers up the smell of the drugs. We were getting close to wrapping the case up when your mob started to get busy.’

  ‘And Harry’s dad – he’s not involved in the British Crusaders?’

  ‘Not that we know of. You’d know more than me. The NCA doesn’t tend to investigate the right-wing groups unless they do something drastic. Public order is the remit of the Met and you lot look after the terrorism side. There’s nothing on the PNC about Micky and he had a good record with the Paras.’

  ‘And the mother?’

  ‘Housewife. Harry has two siblings, a brother and a sister, both younger.’

  Shepherd sipped his drink. The more he learned about the operation the less he liked it. Getting a teenager to lie to his parents was morally wrong, no matter what the legal position was. Sure, the teenager had already been lying to them about his involvement with drugs, but that didn’t make what they were doing any less reprehensible.

  ‘How bad an egg is this Gary Dexter?’ asked Sharpe.

  Shepherd put down his glass. ‘What have you been told?’

  ‘Not much. Just what’s on the PNC really. A few breach-of-the-peace fines, vandalism, drunk and disorderly, but that was all when he was younger. Nothing on file for the last ten years. I Googled him and there’s a Facebook page and a Twitter feed where he posts a lot of anti-Islam stuff that could in theory get him into trouble, but no one seems to have taken an interest so far. You know what the cops are like with that sort of thing, they let sleeping dogs lie until somebody makes an official complaint or the media gets hold of it.’

  ‘Well, between you and me it looks as if he’s gearing up for something more dramatic than a few Facebook posts. He’s been making contact with various European terror groups trying to get some heavy weaponry.’

  ‘I don’t know why they bother,’ said Sharpe.

  ‘You don’t know why who bother to do what?’

  ‘You know what I mean. The Muslims are pissing everybody off and pretty much everyone is turning against them. Why attack them? They’re doing a bang up job of hurting themselves as it is, why turn them into victims?’

  ‘You’ve given this some thought, obviously.’

  Sharpe laughed. ‘You can see the way it’s going, Spider. Every time there’s a jihadist attack, successful or not, the general public doesn’t react with fear, they react with anger and hatred. Now, I get that that’s what the likes of Islamic State want, because they benefit from the backlash. The more Muslims feel threatened and isolated, the more they’ll turn to groups like IS. But at the end of the day they’ll lose. Once the majority of the population loses sympathy with Muslims, there’ll be a backlash. We’re already seeing that across Europe and it’ll happen here before long. Groups like British Crusaders just have to bide their time and wait for the pendulum to swing back. If they start blowing up mosques, all they’ll do is drum up sympathy for Muslims.’

  ‘Maybe you should tell them that.’

  Sharpe laughed again. ‘Somebody should.’

  ‘Well until you manage to persuade the country’s far-right groups to park their hostility, we need to make sure Gary Dexter doesn’t get his hands on any heavy artillery. So when can I meet Harry?’

  Sharpe looked at his watch. ‘I figured we go do it this afternoon, after school. We’ve arranged a safe house not far from where he lives so it’s easy for him to drop by.’

  ‘Fine by me,’ said Shepherd. He nodded at Sharpe’s lager. ‘Are you okay to drive?’

  ‘Not a problem,’ he said. ‘I’m good to go.’

  Sharpe’s car was an almost-new red Jaguar XE. ‘Bloody hell, Razor, the NCA’s treating you well,’ said Shepherd when he saw the vehicle parked at the side of the road.

  Sharpe laughed as he climbed into the driving seat. ‘This is mine,’ he said. ‘Because I’m a consultant I get to use my own vehicle and they pay me a mileage allowance. The way it’s going, the mileage allowance alone is going to pay for three weeks in Spain next year.’

  Shepherd settled into the passenger seat and fastened his seatbelt. ‘Good to see you doing so well.’ The Jaguar still had its new car smell.

  ‘They get their money’s worth,’ said Sharpe. ‘You should think about moving over, plenty of undercover work on offer, and they’re short of good surveillance guys.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’d want to move back to police work,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘It’s all the same these days,’ said Sharpe. ‘Good guys and bad guys.’

  ‘I can’t argue with that,’ said Shepherd.

  It took Sharpe just over an hour and a half to drive to the safe house in Reading. It was a neat semi-detached with a green door and a blue Vauxhall Vectra parked outside. Sharpe made a hands-free call when they were five minutes away so they were expected, and the front door opened as Sharpe parked behind the Vectra. They were ushered inside by a woman in her late twenties with short blonde hair and a small gold heart on a chain around her neck. She was wearing blue Wrangler jeans and a pink sweater.

  ‘This is Julie Bacon,’ said Sharpe. ‘She’s been with Harry since day one.’

  Bacon closed the door. ‘Detective Constable Bacon,’ she said, offering her hand. She had a firm grip as they shook.

  ‘Dan,’ he said. ‘Good to meet you.’

  ‘The spook,’ she said. ‘You guys never seem to have family names.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘I have to say up front I’m not happy about this.’

  ‘About what specifically?”

  She released her grip on his hand and folded her arms. ‘About MI5 moving in like this. Harry needs very careful handling.’

  ‘My understanding is that you and Razor will continue to run him. Our investigation is to be in tandem.’

  ‘There’s a world of difference between using a sixteen-year-old to get information on a south London drugs gang and using him to get intelligence on a terrorist group,’ said Bacon. ‘Plus there’s the whole family thing. If this works out the way you hope it does, Harry’s uncle will be behind bars for a long time. What’s that going to do to his family?’

  ‘They won’t kno
w Harry was involved in the case against his uncle,’ said Shepherd.

  Bacon sighed. ‘Even so.’

  Shepherd held up his hands in surrender. ‘Julie, you’re preaching to the converted,’ he said. ‘I raised the exact same concerns with my boss. But as always we run into the old “the end justifies the means” argument.’

  Bacon opened her mouth to say something, but then had second thoughts and forced a smile. ‘Coffee? Tea? I’ve just put the kettle on.’

  ‘What time’s Harry getting here?’ asked Sharpe.

  ‘Just after four-thirty,’ she said.

  Shepherd looked at his watch. It was just before four. ‘Coffee sounds good,’ he said. ‘No sugar and a splash of milk, please.’

  Shepherd and Sharpe followed Bacon through to a well-equipped kitchen with a marble-topped island. They sat down on stools while Bacon made instant coffee.

  ‘How long have you had this place?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘Since we started running Harry,’ said Sharpe. ‘Just over three weeks ago. We figured it would be easier to debrief him here.’

  ‘How’s the investigation going?’

  ‘All good,’ said Sharpe. ‘We’ve identified half a dozen members of the Yardie gang and that in turn led us to nine county lines in addition to Harry’s. Harry has given us four of his contacts here. They’re small-time dealers but growing fast. Harry’s now bringing in a kilo a week and recently they’ve been asking him to make midweek deliveries, too.’

  ‘A kilo a week isn’t much in the grand scheme of things, so I guess it’s the supplier to the Yardies that NCA is after,’ said Shepherd.

  Sharpe shrugged. ‘To be honest, the powers that be are all fired up about the county lines end of it. When inner-city black kids knife each other, overdose or fight over turf, there’s a tendency to let them get on with it. But when nice middle-class white kids in the suburbs get involved …’ He shrugged again.

  Bacon put down mugs of coffee and pulled up a stool. ‘The problem is that it’s not just drugs that get exported from the inner cities,’ she said. ‘The gang culture that goes with drugs comes with it. We’ve already seen a rise in stabbings here and it won’t be long before we get shootings and the rest of it.’ She sipped her coffee. ‘It might already be too late. We’ve already heard that there are two more lines coming into Reading, so even when we shut down Harry’s line the drugs will still be brought in.’

  ‘You’re almost done with your investigation here?’ asked Shepherd.

  Bacon nodded. ‘We caught Harry three weeks ago and he agreed to cooperate almost immediately. He’s scared to death that his dad will find out and we promised him that if he helped us he wouldn’t be charged.’

  ‘And you’re allowed to agree something like that with him without the parents knowing?’

  Bacon nodded. ‘It has to be signed off at a senior level, but yes.’

  ‘Does he have access to legal advice?’

  ‘He hasn’t asked for a solicitor,’ said Sharpe.

  ‘That’s not what I was asking,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking, Spider, but he’s not being railroaded, I promise.’

  ‘Spider?’ said Bacon, frowning.

  Sharpe gestured with his mug. ‘He ate a tarantula many years ago, as a bet.’

  ‘Seriously?’ said Bacon.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ said Shepherd. ‘It was a one-off.’

  Bacon laughed. ‘Now I’ve heard everything,’ she said.

  ‘What was Harry told, time-wise?’ asked Shepherd. ‘Does he know how long he’ll be doing this for?’

  ‘As long as it takes, that’s what he was told. He would let us know where he was doing his pickups and drop-offs, and we had our people there to witness and record. We had real-time access to his phone, calls and texts, and we had him wear a wire on a couple of occasions.’

  ‘And he was okay with that?’

  ‘He thinks he’s James Bond,’ said Sharpe. ‘He seems to be enjoying it now.’

  ‘That’s dangerous,’ said Shepherd. ‘Cockiness leads to mistakes.’

  ‘I know, I know, I’ve tried to calm him down but he’s full of piss and vinegar.’

  Shepherd sighed. The more he learned about the operation, the more uncomfortable he felt.

  ‘I really hoped we’d be done by now,’ said Bacon.

  ‘We would have been, if we hadn’t spotted the link between Micky Dexter and his brother,’ said Sharpe. ‘Once we had Harry’s name we did a PNC check on his parents and they came up clean. Micky Dexter is a manager with a security company that has council contracts so he has been vetted a few times. Someone at MI5 must have picked up that Micky was Gary Dexter’s brother and they started to get busy.’

  ‘I think it’s a mistake using Harry to gather evidence against his uncle,’ said Bacon. ‘That wasn’t what he agreed to.’

  ‘I hear you,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Do you?’ said Bacon, her eyes hardening. ‘Because it seems to me that you’re here to do exactly that. You’re not interested in the drugs investigation at all.’

  ‘Julie …’ said Sharpe.

  ‘It’s okay, Jimmy,’ said Shepherd. ‘Julie’s entitled to feel protective about Harry. I get it, I’m a father myself.’

  ‘And would you want the authorities talking to your child behind your back?’

  ‘Of course not, but then I don’t have relatives planning terrorist attacks.’

  ‘That’s the point, though. Relatives. It’s Gary Dexter who is the problem, not Harry’s father.’

  ‘I agree, it’s messy,’ said Shepherd. ‘And in a perfect world, MI5 would be pursuing other avenues, but Gary Dexter runs a tight ship and there is no other option.’

  ‘These possible terrorist attacks,’ said Bacon. ‘What are we talking about?’

  Shepherd smiled awkwardly. MI5 and the NCA were working together but that didn’t mean that he was in a position to tell her too much about an ongoing case.

  She smiled at his hesitation. ‘I know, I know – you can’t tell me and if you did you’d have to kill me.’

  Shepherd laughed. ‘You know full well I don’t have a licence to kill,’ he said.

  ‘Let me tell you what I think is going on,’ she said. Sharpe grinned and winked at Shepherd before sipping his coffee. ‘We all know what terrorism means. Terrorism is acts of terror, usually ending in the death of innocents. The bombs on the Tube were terrorism. Flying planes into buildings is terrorism. Suicide bombers are terrorism. And we all know who the terrorists are these days.’ She looked at Shepherd expectantly but he refused to be drawn and simply smiled and waited for her to continue. ‘It’s Muslims. We all know that. And not just Muslims, it’s Muslims of Pakistani heritage and more often than not they’re called Mohammed. That’s just a fact. We know that and the powers that be know that, but in today’s PC world they’re not allowed to say it because that’s racial profiling and we can’t have that, can we?’

  She looked at Sharpe and he raised his mug in salute. She turned back to Shepherd and tilted up her chin. ‘The bosses have to appear even-handed, which is why a few months ago they were telling the media that they had thwarted four right-wing terrorism plots so far this year. Well done them, right? Pats on the back all round. But they didn’t say what those plots were, did they? Well I was involved with one of those cases and I can tell you it was two skinheads who were planning to nail a pig’s head to the door of a mosque. It was never terrorism, it was vandalism. But the commissioner wants it labelled as a potential terrorist attack because it shows how even-handed the Met is. It doesn’t matter who or what the terrorists are, the Met will pursue them. Which is fine and dandy, but it’s a lie, Dan, and we all know it’s a lie.’ She leaned towards him. ‘So this is what’s bothering me. We got Harry to supply us with intel to help us bring down a south London drugs gang and their suppliers. I wasn’t happy about using a kid as a confidential informant but we followed the rules and it worked out okay. But what w
e’re doing now is something completely different. We’re lying to him and putting him in harm’s way for what seems to me to be a public relations exercise.’

  She sat back and folded her arms and Sharpe looked at Shepherd expectantly, clearly enjoying his discomfort.

  ‘I hear you,’ Shepherd said, and immediately put his hands up when he saw the look of contempt flash across her face. ‘I know, I already said that. But it’s true. I do hear what you’re saying and I understand and even empathise. I had a very similar conversation with my boss before I was sent over here. Using children as confidential informants makes me very uncomfortable. But I would say that what we’re dealing with is considerably more serious than nailing pigs’ heads to mosque doors. Gary Dexter’s group has contacted right-wing groups on the Continent with a view to acquiring RPGs, obviously with the aim of attacking mosques.’

  ‘Property damage, then,’ said Bacon.

  ‘Well, I’m sure they’ll be firing at mosques but there’s a good chance that people will get hurt or killed. Look at that attack on the mosque in Acton. A lot of people were hurt and we were lucky there weren’t any fatalities. The European groups involved are heavy-duty organisations, Julie. They’re not just a few angry skinheads.’

  She nodded reluctantly. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ she said.

  He couldn’t tell if her comment was sarcastic or not. ‘Look, if you’re uncomfortable with this stage of the investigation, you’re free to drop out,’ he said. ‘Jimmy and I can handle it.’

  She shook her head fiercely. ‘No way,’ she said. ‘I got him into this and I’ll see it through to the end.’

  Shepherd flashed her a smile. That’s exactly what he had expected her to say. ‘I’ll make sure he’s not in any danger,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not sure that’s a promise you can make,’ she said. ‘But thank you.’ She smiled and sipped her coffee.

  ‘So the way I understand it, Harry’s status has to be reviewed every month,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘It’s a formality,’ said Sharpe. ‘It’s supposed to ensure the welfare and safety of the lad and to ensure that the deployment is, to quote the rule book, “necessary and proportionate”. But really it just goes across a chief super’s desk and he ticks a box and initials it.’