Hard Landing (49 page)

He brought the Rover to a halt and sat there, chewing slowly. Fletcher climbed out of the BMW and walked towards him, his hands in his coat pockets. Yates wound down the window. ‘Where is he, then?’ he asked.

‘Pat’s calling him on the mobile,’ said Fletcher.

‘What’s the story?’

‘He’s a bit wary of being seen, that’s all. Come on, stretch your legs.’

Yates climbed out of the Rover. Fletcher took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. Silk Cut. He offered it to Yates. Yates was going to decline, then changed his mind. He spat out his gum and took a cigarette. He shielded it from the wind with his cupped hands while Fletcher lit it for him.

Neary got out of the BMW and leaned against it, his hands in his pockets.

‘How much is he going to give me, your boss?’

‘Don’t worry, he’ll take care of you,’ said Fletcher.

Yates shivered. ‘I’m going to the Philippines,’ he said. ‘Fed up with this weather. Fed up with the whole country.’ He took a long pull on his cigarette and blew a plume of smoke down at the ground.

‘Don’t blame you,’ said Fletcher.

Neary waved for them to go over to the BMW.

‘Now what does he want?’ said Fletcher.

Yates started walking towards Neary. He took another pull on his cigarette and filled his lungs with smoke. It wasn’t just the nicotine he missed, but the smoking. The feel of the cigarette in his hands, the inhaling, holding the smoke in his lungs, exhaling. Even the flicking of ash. They were all tactile sensations that were missing from the gum and the patches. He was going to start smoking again, he thought. So what if he got cancer down the line? He was just as likely to get hit by a bus while crossing the road. ‘How long have you been smoking, Kim?’ he asked.

Fletcher didn’t answer. As Yates turned to see what Fletcher was doing, a .38-calibre bullet exploded into the back of his skull and blew away most of his face.

‘Run it by me again, Spider. From the top.’ Superintendent Hargrove leaned back in his chair as Shepherd told his story for the third time. Hargrove steepled his fingers under his chin and listened. They were in an interview room in Paddington Green police station at the junction of Harrow Road and Edgware Road. Shepherd didn’t know why Hargrove had wanted to interview him at Paddington Green. It was the most secure police station in the country and the place where Special Branch interviewed suspected terrorists. Shepherd didn’t know and didn’t ask.

The story that Shepherd told the superintendent was close to the truth. The best lies always were. The interview room had a tape-recorder with two decks, but it wasn’t switched on. It was an informal debriefing, Hargrove had said, but if it had been that, they could have chatted in a pub or a coffee shop. So Shepherd checked and cross-checked everything he told the superintendent. One slip and he knew the man would pounce.

The story he told was simple. Shepherd had been sitting in his cell. The door had been opened by a man in a ski mask. Then he’d been taken to Carpenter’s cell. The man in the ski mask had knocked Carpenter out and forced Shepherd to carry him. That was pretty much the truth. Shepherd had no choice in that because it would all have been captured on CCTV.

They’d been taken to a van and driven out of the prison. Somewhere on the outskirts of London, Shepherd had been thrown out. Carpenter had gone off with the masked men. End of story. End of lie.

‘Did they have accents?’ asked Hargrove.

‘Irish, maybe.’

‘Maybe?’

‘Everything was staccato. Rushed. It’s hard to pin down an accent when all they say is “Run, run, run.” But if I had to choose, I’d say Irish.’

‘North or south?’

‘I couldn’t say. Hand on heart.’

‘We found a discarded Russian RPG launcher. Fire and throw away.’

‘That was how they got in?’

‘Blew the gate off. It was part of a shipment from Bosnia that Six tracked during the late nineties. Disappeared when it got to Belfast. Red faces all round but no heads rolled.’

‘IRA?’

‘Real IRA. The nutters.’ Hargrove leaned forward. ‘So, why do you think the Real IRA would break into a Cat A prison to break out a drug-dealer and not rescue their own?’

Shepherd pulled a face. ‘Money?’

‘Carpenter paid them? Is that what you think? Terrorists for hire?’

‘Overseas funding is down since September the eleventh. Carpenter’s got millions stashed away.’

‘So he pays politicals to break him out?’

Shepherd didn’t say anything. Hargrove was either being deliberately vague or setting a trap for him.

‘You ever have any dealings with the IRA in your former life?’ asked the superintendent.

‘Some,’ said Shepherd. ‘Provos mainly.’ Hargrove knew exactly what Shepherd had done in the army, where he’d served and who with.

‘What’s your opinion of the Real IRA?’

‘Like you said. Nutters.’

‘Well trained?’

Shepherd exhaled deeply. ‘Not really. They don’t have the same discipline as the Provos or the training facilities.’

Hargrove nodded. ‘That’s my opinion – and, in fact, most people I’ve spoken to don’t think the Real IRA would be physically capable of mounting an operation like the one at Shelton.’

Shepherd tried to look relaxed. Hargrove was an experienced interrogator so his body language wasn’t necessarily an indication of what was going through his mind.

‘At least we know who Carpenter’s man in the Church was.’

‘Who?’

‘Stan Yates. He drove the Head of Drugs Operations. Carpenter knew about everyone Mackie met outside the office, every phone conversation he had from the car.’

‘Yates is talking?’

‘Yates is dead. At least, we assume he is. He went missing the day after the breakout. Car’s gone too.’

‘He might have done a runner.’

‘His stuff’s in his flat. Passport, money, personal stuff. Carpenter’s had him killed, for sure.’

‘Red faces at the Church, then.’

Hargrove chuckled. ‘Mackie will probably be processing VAT refunds until he retires,’ he said.

‘And Rathbone was Carpenter’s man inside Shelton?’

Hargrove nodded. ‘We’ve arrested Stafford. Gosden has been suspended pending an inquiry. I doubt he’ll ever run a prison again.’

Shepherd had no sympathy for the governor. If he’d done his job properly, Carpenter would never have been able to run his operation from behind bars.

‘You didn’t have any clue that Carpenter was planning to break out?’ asked Hargrove.

Shepherd forced himself to relax. The interrogation was back on. ‘None at all,’ he said.

‘And if you had?’

‘Hypothetically?’

‘Hypothetically,’ said Hargrove.

‘I’d have called the number you gave me. Or gone through the governor.’

‘You wouldn’t call anyone else?’

Shepherd frowned. ‘Such as?’

‘We ran a check on all phone calls made prior to the breakout. There was just one from you. To DC Jimmy Sharpe.’

Shepherd looked at the superintendent, keeping his eyes steady and his breathing regular. No looking away. No fiddling with his hands. No biting his nails. ‘I wanted him to check on Liam.’

‘I can understand that. You were worried about your boy. It’s only natural. Did he go to see him?’

‘I’m not sure. He said he’d write to me.’

‘And he never wrote?’

Shepherd shook his head. ‘It’s water under the bridge now, isn’t it?’

‘It might be,’ said Hargrove.

‘Did you talk to Jimmy?’

‘Oh, sure. He said he was about to call on your in-laws when the shit hit the fan. He never got the chance to see if Liam was okay.’

Shepherd nodded slowly. ‘That sounds about right.’

‘He was a bit vague about the other thing you asked him to do.’

‘What was that?’ asked Shepherd.

Hargrove smiled tightly. ‘Your memory really is giving you problems, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘I hope it’s not early Alzheimer’s.’

‘I’ve been under a lot of pressure.’

‘You said if there were any problems, he was to call a number you’d given him.’

‘Don’t remember saying that.’

‘So you don’t remember who Sharpe was to call?’

‘Sorry. No.’

‘Must be contagious,’ said Hargrove. ‘Sharpe said he couldn’t remember the number either. Said he didn’t call because there wasn’t a problem.’

‘There you are, then,’ said Shepherd.

Hargrove studied Shepherd with unblinking brown eyes. Shepherd looked back at him. Now he knew what was coming. He forced himself to relax.

‘You had a visitor. On the fifteenth.’

‘I guess.’ He smiled. ‘You lose track of the days in prison.’

Hargrove was still staring at him. ‘You applied for a visiting order. Joe Humphreys. You put him down as a cousin.’

‘Bob Macdonald’s cousin.’

‘Who is he, Spider?’

‘Just a friend.’

‘Must have been important if you were prepared to compromise the operation to see him.’

‘I needed to see a friendly face, banged up in there.’

Hargrove chuckled. ‘Interesting choice of words,’ he said. ‘I had a look at the CCTV footage for the visiting room, the day Joe Humphreys visited.’

‘And why would you do that?’

For a brief moment Hargrove’s eyes hardened. ‘Just to put my mind at rest. It wasn’t the best picture quality in the world, but there wasn’t much of his face to see anyway, not with the baseball cap and sunglasses.’

‘It was a sunny day, when he visited.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I thought,’ said Hargrove. ‘How long have you known him?’

‘A few years, I guess.’

‘An elusive character, this Humphreys.’

‘In what way?’

‘He had photo ID to get in, but the address on the visiting order is a newsagent’s in Battersea.’

‘He moves around a lot.’

Hargrove settled back in his chair. ‘Going back to the phone conversation you had with Detective Constable Sharpe. Can you remember what you said?’

Shepherd had been expecting the change in subject so he wasn’t fazed by it.

‘Not word for word.’ A deliberate lie. Shepherd’s memory was faultless when it came to conversations.

‘Because I’ve listened to the conversation. Word for word.’

Shepherd kept on looking at the superintendent, kept a smile on his face, kept breathing regularly, kept his hands in his lap.

‘I think your exact words to Sharpe were that if there was anything untoward, he was to call the number you’d given him and tell him what had happened. “But that’s all. Don’t start raising red flags.” That’s what you said. What did you suspect might have happened?’

‘I just wanted reassurance that my boy was okay, that’s all.’

‘This man you wanted Sharpe to contact, he wasn’t the mysterious Mr Humphreys, was he?’

‘No.’

‘You’re sure of that? You being confused and stressed and everything.’

‘I’m sure.’

‘I’d like to talk to Mr Humphreys.’

Shepherd looked pained. ‘Like I said, he moves around a lot.’

‘You’ve always been one of my best men, Spider,’ said Hargrove. ‘I know you’re not bent, so I’ve got to ask you, unofficially and off the record without the machine running, is there anything you want to tell me?’

Shepherd stayed silent.

‘Anything at all?’

Shepherd shook his head.

There were two dozen DEA agents working out of the American embassy in Grosvenor Square, but Matt Willis was the one Major Gannon regarded most highly, not least because Willis had spent seven years as a Navy Seal and had seen action in the Gulf and Afghanistan.

The American’s Special Forces background gave the two plenty to argue about whenever they met up, and often led to early morning drinking sessions in the Special Forces Club, behind Harrods in Knightsbridge.

Gannon arranged to meet Willis there at lunchtime, so they would not be tempted to embark on a drinking binge. The club was in an anonymous red-brick mansion block. The brass plaque identifying it had been taken down after 11 September and now passers-by had no idea that some of the most specialised soldiers in the world were inside the building, or that drunken SAS and SBS officers often hurtled down the stairs on metal trays – a makeshift toboggan run.

Gannon signed in and went up to the first-floor bar, all dark wood and leather armchairs. Willis was already sitting in a corner, his back to the wall, nursing a tumbler of whiskey and ice. He stood up, shook hands with Gannon, then slapped him on the back and ordered him a whiskey as the major dropped into an armchair. ‘Busy?’ asked Gannon, placing his case on the floor next to the chair.

‘As ever,’ said Willis. ‘You?’

Gannon pulled a face. ‘Sitting on my arse in the barracks,’ he said.

‘Really?’ said Willis, grinning.

‘The Provos are finished, what’s left of the Republican movement are nutters, pretty much, and Al Qaeda aren’t up to much here. All quiet on the western front.’

‘Pity you missed out on Iraq.’

‘Tell me about it. Three-quarters of the Regiment were there but all I did was babysit the bloody sat-phone.’ He gestured at the case by his side. Wherever he went, Gannon had to take the Almighty with him.

The two men clinked their glasses and drank. ‘Have you got time for lunch?’ asked Gannon. The club’s dining room offered the sort of food that soldiers enjoyed – good solid meals with no-fuss service. Willis shook his head. ‘We’ve got a satellite conference with Langley this afternoon.’

‘It was a lot easier before the spooks got involved in drugs,’ said Gannon.

‘It was the end of the Cold War did it,’ said Willis. ‘Had to find themselves a new role and drugs was the war of choice. Half the undercover operations we run come up against CIA agents. They treat us like we’re the enemy.’

‘Same with the cops and our spooks. Hate the sight of each other, and we end up in the middle.’