Hot Blood: The Fourth Spider Shepherd Thriller (A Dan Shepherd Mystery) Read online

  ‘You’re leaving Ealing?’

  ‘The house is under offer,’ said Shepherd, ‘and there’s a place in Hereford we’re interested in.’

  ‘Bereavement, divorce and moving house are the three most stressful events in anyone’s life. That’s what they say.’

  ‘Yeah, well, only someone who’s never been shot would say that,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘You’ve been shot?’

  ‘Isn’t it in my file?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘I didn’t see it,’ said Stockmann. ‘What happened?’

  ‘It was when I was in the SAS,’ said Shepherd. ‘Afghanistan. A sniper got me in the shoulder.’

  ‘Ouch,’ said Stockmann.

  ‘It was a bit more than ouch,’ said Shepherd. ‘If I hadn’t been helicoptered out, I might not have made it.’

  ‘That’s not why you left the SAS, though, is it?’

  ‘Nah. I was back on duty two months later. I left the Regiment when my wife fell pregnant. She thought I should spend more time at home.’ He snorted. ‘That’s not how it worked out, though. I was probably away more as a cop than I was when I was with the Regiment.’

  ‘Out of the frying-pan into the fire?’

  ‘Exactly how she put it,’ said Shepherd. ‘Though Sue was a bit more expressive.’

  ‘More adjectives?’

  ‘A lot more.’

  She raised her glass and winked. ‘I do like a good pint.’ She took a sip and put the glass down in front of her. ‘Kathy Gift was doing your biannuals for how long? Three years?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ said Shepherd. ‘Do you know her?’

  ‘We met a couple of times to go over her cases.’

  ‘Is that what I am? A case?’

  Stockmann smiled, and Shepherd forced himself to relax. Or at least to appear relaxed – he could never really let go when he was talking to the unit’s psychologists. There was too much at stake. They chatted and nodded sympathetically but at the end of the day they decided whether or not he was fit to do his job.

  ‘It makes the transition easier, allows me to hit the ground running, as it were,’ she said. ‘But I suppose it does give me the advantage. I know a lot about you but I doubt that you were able to find out much about me.’

  Shepherd smiled thinly. She would have expected him to check her out – he was a policeman, after all – but while his MI5 contacts had heard of her, none had met her and none had been able to add anything to what Charlotte Button had told him. She was right: she did have the advantage. ‘So, let’s get on to an even playing-field,’ she said, smiling brightly. ‘What would you like to know?’

  ‘I’m not sure there is anything,’ said Shepherd. ‘It’s not like we’re best buddies, is it? Kathy went off and got married and we knew nothing about it.’

  ‘You expected a wedding invitation?’

  Shepherd swirled his whiskey around his glass. ‘No, of course not. But it’s a strange situation. You get to know our innermost thoughts, you get closer to us than our families and friends do, yet there’s no emotional context. You care, but you don’t care.’

  ‘Kathy liked you, I’ve no doubt about that … Sounds like we’re at primary school, doesn’t it? Who likes who, who’s best friends with who.’

  ‘It’s not a question of liking, it’s a question of trust.’

  ‘My security rating is about the highest there is, but I don’t suppose that’s what you mean,’ said Stockmann. ‘You mean emotional trust.’ She leaned forward. ‘Dan, I believe in what I do, and I’m absolutely committed to doing the best possible job I can for the unit.’

  ‘A friend of mine once explained the difference between commitment and involvement,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘The breakfast analogy? The chicken is involved and the pig is committed?’

  ‘Well, that spoils that story,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘I do understand that when you go into a situation under cover your life is on the line. And the worst thing that can happen to me is that I break a nail typing up a report. But that doesn’t mean I don’t understand or that I don’t empathise with what you do. Anyway, come what may, we’re stuck with each other. I have to do the biannual thing for Charlie, so let’s have a chat and a few drinks and then we can go our separate ways.’

  ‘Are you full-time with SOCA now?’

  ‘I’m a sort of consultant,’ she said. ‘I’ll still be doing some work with Five.’

  ‘You’ve been with them for a while?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘Almost a decade,’ she said.

  ‘Charlie said you were with something called the Predictive Behaviour Group.’

  ‘The mind-readers,’ she said. ‘Getting inside other people’s heads.’

  ‘Which is what you’re doing with the undercover unit now.’

  She smiled. ‘Bit different,’ she said. ‘In the unit’s case, I’m there to help. The PBG was more about stitching people up – finding their weaknesses and advising others on how to exploit them. It was fun at times.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘How much did Charlie tell you?’

  ‘Not much.’

  She took another sip of her pint. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any harm in telling you – you’ve signed the Official Secrets Act.’

  ‘And I’m one of the good guys,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Indeed you are. Anyway, when the group was first set up its main task was to advise ministers on how foreign politicians would react to certain situations. Then our brief widened and we started giving briefings on major criminals to the security services. How would Gangster A react if approached by an attractive female undercover agent? What would Gangster B do if asked to give evidence against a competitor? That sort of thing.’

  ‘Interesting,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘It got a lot more so when we started to get more proactive,’ said Stockmann. ‘MI5 set up a unit whose brief was basically to unsettle some of the biggest villains in the UK, the really heavy guys, the ones who are virtually untouchable by conventional policing. The idea was to put them under pressure by screwing with their lives.’

  ‘In what way?’

  Stockmann giggled. ‘We had carte blanche,’ she said. ‘That didn’t mean they did everything we suggested, but we were free to let our imaginations roam. From simple things like scratching their cars or arranging for roadworks outside their house, to mortgage loans being called in or flights cancelled.’

  ‘How does that help anyone?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘It’s about putting them off-balance,’ she said, ‘annoying them until their life is in total disarray. The idea is that they spend so much time worrying about all the fertiliser that’s being thrown at them that they row with everyone close to them. They start making mistakes, being more hands-on, which means you guys stand a better chance of catching them in the act.’

  ‘You’re telling me you were paid to annoy people?’

  ‘That’s about it,’ she said, ‘but we got results. We’d been looking at a heroin dealer in Wolverhampton and we suggested that his wife’s dog was kidnapped. It was obvious that she loved it more than him, but then it was around more than he was. Cocker spaniel with lovely eyes. Anyway, the dog duly went missing and she nagged him so much that he belted her and a neighbour called the police. They went in to sort out the domestic and found two kilos of heroin in his kitchen. He was fairly low down the food chain but the Drugs Squad turned him and we put half a dozen very heavy guys behind bars.’

  ‘Who does the dirty work?’

  ‘You mean who kidnapped the dog? The spooks, bless them. They love playing games. Now, one thing’s not in your file and that’s your nickname – Spider.’

  ‘I ate one once,’ he said.

  ‘Lovely,’ said Stockmann.

  ‘It was in my SAS days. Jungle training. We had a competition to see who could eat the most repulsive thing. I ate a tarantula.’

  ‘And you won?’

  Shepherd shook his head. ‘Came second.�
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  ‘What did the winner eat?’

  ‘You don’t want to know.’

  ‘I’ve got a pretty strong stomach.’

  ‘Really, you don’t want to know. It all got a bit silly.’

  ‘Boys will be boys,’ said Stockmann. She raised her glass to him. ‘How did the tarantula taste?’ she asked. ‘Like chicken, I suppose.’

  ‘Like a spider,’ said Shepherd. ‘Bit chewier than a caterpillar.’

  Stockmann chuckled. ‘Must come in handy, your SAS background,’ she said, ‘insect-eating notwithstanding.’

  ‘I don’t behave like a cop who’s spent ten years pounding the beat,’ said Shepherd, ‘and I’m fitter than most.’

  ‘And there’s the weapons training.’

  ‘I wondered when you’d get around to that.’

  ‘We’ve got to talk about it, Dan. It happened.’

  ‘It happened,’ agreed Shepherd.

  ‘Any thoughts on it?’

  Shepherd sat back in his chair. ‘I talked it through with Kathy. They made me have several sessions with her.’

  ‘You understand why. You shot three people, two men and a woman.’

  ‘I took out three suicide-bombers who, if they’d had their way, would have killed hundreds of innocent people.’

  ‘But being right doesn’t make killing any easier.’

  ‘Actually, it does,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘There’s as much stress-induced illness on the winning side as there is on the losing side,’ said the psychologist.

  ‘You’re talking about war,’ said Shepherd. ‘War’s a different sort of stress, the stress of never knowing if you’re next to be killed. Law enforcement is different. You make a decision and go with it. Providing you make the right decision, everything falls into place. If I’d shot three innocent people I’d be feeling guilty, no question, but the three terrorists I shot were just about to blow themselves and others to kingdom come. If your question is whether or not I regret what I did, then the answer is no. Definitely not.’

  ‘Because you were in the right?’

  ‘Because I did what had to be done,’ he said.

  ‘Do you believe in the death penalty?’

  ‘In general, no. For paedophiles and serial-killers, probably. But we’re never going to have the death penalty in this country again. The way things are going, our penal system does all it can to put murderers back on the streets.’ He frowned. ‘You’re not suggesting that I executed them, are you?’

  ‘No, that’s not what I meant.’

  ‘Because I didn’t shoot them as a punishment. I shot them to stop them killing others.’

  ‘Do you want to hear my theory on murder victims?’ asked Stockmann.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘It’s the victims-generally-ask-for-it theory. Not very politically correct, I’m afraid, in this day and age.’ She took another sip of her beer. ‘I’m not talking about terrorism or random killings, but they really are a tiny minority of murders.’

  ‘Most victims know their killers,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Stockmann. ‘Family members or neighbours account for ninety per cent of murders.’

  ‘And the victims ask for it – is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, that’s just my way of describing how I think it works. No one deserves to be murdered. But in the vast majority of cases, the behaviour of the victim leads to their death. It’s the wife nagging at her husband when he gets back from the pub. Should he be coming home drunk? No, of course not. Does she have the right to nag him? Of course she does. But it’s the fact that she nags him when he’s drunk that leads him to pick up a kitchen knife and stick it into her heart.’

  ‘Cause and effect?’

  ‘Exactly. Two guys in a pub, both the worse for wear. They start to argue. Punches are thrown, a bottle gets smashed and is shoved into a guy’s throat. If the victim had walked away before the bottle was smashed, he’d still be alive.’

  ‘But if you take that argument further, you could say that anyone who walks down a dark alley deserves to be mugged. Or a woman who goes out alone at night is asking to be raped.’

  ‘Would you walk alone down a dark alley if you didn’t have to?’

  ‘No, but we live in a country where anyone should be able to walk anywhere without fear of being attacked.’

  ‘Dan, I’m not on the side of the murderers, muggers and rapists. And of course I’m not saying that anyone deserves to be robbed or raped. But murder is different. It’s a lot easier to mug or rape than it is to kill. Murder is a big step – the biggest. And I believe that, more often than not, the victim is controlling the situation.’ She smiled. ‘Like I said, it’s not a politically correct view. But I’d say that the terrorists you killed brought about their own deaths by virtue of their actions. So I can see why there wouldn’t be much guilt attached to what you did.’

  ‘Is that really your theory?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, is it really your theory or is it a way of assessing how I feel about killing?’

  Stockmann smiled. ‘Do you think I’m that devious, Dan?’

  ‘You work for MI5 and they don’t come more devious than that.’

  ‘And now I work for SOCA. And we’re just chatting. Do I believe that the behaviour of a murder victim results in their death? Yes, I do. Cross my heart and hope to die.’

  ‘OK. So, how does it look? Am I fit for duty?’

  ‘No question about that,’ said Stockmann. She handed him a business card. ‘That’s got my mobile number, Dan. If ever you want a chat, give me a call. I’m not just there for the biannuals or when Charlie wants reassurance. I’m a resource you can use whenever you want.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Shepherd, slipping the card into his wallet. ‘Have you met Razor yet? Jimmy Sharpe?’

  ‘He’s next on my list. Why?’

  Shepherd grinned. ‘No reason.’

  ‘He’s a character, I gather,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Shepherd. ‘For sure.’

  Rob Manwaring cradled the twelve-gauge automatic shotgun and wished for the thousandth time that he could fire the weapon in anger. He was one of a dozen marines in Baghdad who had been selected to try out the Auto Assault 12 but although he had been on two patrols a day for the best part of a month he’d yet to fire at anything other than a range target.

  The AA12 was a street sweeper. It could empty its twenty-round drum magazine in two seconds, and came with a full range of ammunition including non-lethal rounds, shot and solid bullets, and high-explosive armour-piercing projectiles that could pierce quarter-inch-thick steel plate. Manwaring was carrying all the different types of ammunition, and was itching to fire them. Along with the AA12, he had been given all the latest combat equipment. He had an Advanced Combat Helmet, which was three and a half pounds lighter than the old Kevlar helmet, a pair of Wiley X goggles, Infantry Combat Boots Type II, which were more comfortable and durable than the old army boots, with the added benefit that they never needed polishing – at least that was the theory, but they got just as dusty and muddy as the old ones ever had. He also had on the army’s latest Interceptor Body Armour, guaranteed to stop a 9mm bullet, with the Armour Protection Enhancement System, for further protection to the groin, arms and neck. He’d been offered the Deltoid Extension pack, for the shoulders and the sides of the ribcage, but it added an extra five pounds in weight and limited the movement of his arms so he’d turned it down. It was all very well looking like Robocop, Manwaring figured, but it was no good if he couldn’t use his weapon effectively. Several of the guys in his unit had discarded the heavy body armour to save even more weight but Manwaring had heard too many stories about snipers for that.

  He and three members of his unit were on foot patrol, and their armoured Humvee rolled about fifty feet ahead of them. The top brass had decided that more troops should be out and about, mixing with the locals, winning
hearts and minds. Manwaring considered it a waste of time: there was no way he could laugh with the locals when he was dressed in full combat gear and carrying a weapon that could kill a couple of dozen with one burst. All the chewing-gum in the world wasn’t going to change the view of ordinary Iraqis that the Americans were an occupying power. They just wanted their country back.

  A group of children in threadbare shirts and shorts ran over, their bare feet kicking up dust. ‘Hey, dudes!’ shouted one. He couldn’t have been more than seven. ‘High five!’ He held up his hand.

  Manwaring grinned. He held the AA12 against his chest and raised his right hand. The boy had to jump to reach it. ‘What’s your name?’ asked Manwaring, and took a swig from his water bottle.

  ‘Chiko!’ shouted the little boy.

  ‘Chiko? That’s a Mexican name, isn’t it? Are you Mexican?’

  ‘Chiko!’ yelled the little boy. ‘Chiko! High five!’

  Manwaring gave the boy a second high five, then called to the other guys in his unit, ‘Anyone got some gum?’

  ‘You getting soft in your old age, Rob?’ said the guy to Manwaring’s right. Ben Casey was a ten-year veteran: he had served in Afghanistan three times and was on his second tour in Iraq. Casey pulled an open pack from one of his vest pockets and tossed it to Manwaring, who fumbled with his gun.

  ‘Butterfingers!’ shouted Casey, as the gum bounced off Manwaring’s helmet. The sticks tumbled out of the pack and landed on the ground. The children yelled and scrambled for them.

  One of the older boys pushed Chiko aside and the little boy fell, scraping his knees. He rolled on to his back, sobbing.

  ‘Hey!’ shouted Manwaring. ‘Be careful!’ He bent down and reached for the child’s arm.

  As the body armour rode up to his waist, the Sniper’s bullet smacked into the base of his spine and ripped through his gut. Manwaring fell forward, on top of the now screaming boy, blood pooling around them. The AA12 fell from his grasp and clattered on to the road.

  The Sniper smiled as he watched the Americans run for cover. ‘Allahu Akbar,’ he whispered. God is great. The man’s name was Salam, but he no longer answered to that name. He was Qannaas, the Sniper. He had killed two hundred and thirty-seven Americans in less than three years, every one with a single bullet.