Soft Target (41 page)

Jones was sitting cross-legged on the grass. As Shepherd approached, he lifted the barrel of his handgun and pressed it against his right temple. Shepherd stopped a dozen paces in front of him. 'Barry, I'm going to need you to do something for me,' he said quietly.

'Fuck off,' said Jones. He looked as if he hadn't washed or shaved for several days and Shepherd could smell the man's body odour.

'Listen to me, Barry. I need you to keep that gun exactly where it is, jammed up against your head.'

IJones frowned. 'What?'

Shepherd nodded at Rose. 'See that guy over there? If you start waving that gun around, he'll shoot you.'

'He'll be saving me the trouble.'

'Just so you know,' said Shepherd. 'As long as you keep — the gun where it is, we'll all be okay.'

'Just piss off and let me get on with it,' said Jones.

'You want to tell me what's made you so angry?'

'What are you? A shrink?'

¦ 'I'm the guy who's going to have to write the report if this turns to shit,' said Shepherd, 'and I hate writing reports.'

Jones stared at him. 'You're wasting your time establishing a rapport with me. I'm not interested.' His finger tightened on fl the trigger. The gun was a Chinese knock-off of a Colt .45.

I 327 It was old but it was in good condition and the barrel glistened with fresh oil.

'Where did you get the gun from, Barry?' asked Shepherd.

'Using my first name isn't going to win me over,' said Jones.

'Just curious,' said Shepherd. 'You don't see too many of those. Practically a collector's item.'

'I brought it back from Afghanistan. Souvenir.'

'You were in the army?'

'Sort of. Look, piss off and let me get this done, will you?'

Shepherd sat down slowly, taking care to make no sudden movements. 'I need to take the weight off,' he said. 'Been on my feet all day.' He stretched out his legs. 'The missus giving you grief, is she?' he asked.

'Ex-missus. As of yesterday.'

'And what's this about? Winning her back?'

'You don't know what you're talking about.'

Tyres squealed and a second ARV came round the corner.

Shepherd couldn't see who was inside it. The Vauxhall braked and stopped behind Rose's car.

'Reinforcements,' said Jones. 'The more the merrier.' He took the gun away from his head.

'Keep the gun where it is, Barry,' said Shepherd. 'They won't do anything while I'm here.'

'You think I'm scared of a few Robocops?'

'No, but if you do anything threatening, they'll blow you away.'

'So long as I'm dead I don't see it matters who does the job,' said Jones.

Shepherd glanced over his shoulder. Rose was behind the Vauxhall, his MP5 targeted on Jones's chest. The doors of the newly arrived ARV opened and two men hurried over to Rose, bent at the waist.

'What were you doing in Afghanistan?' asked Shepherd.

'That's classified,' said Jones. 'I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you.'

Shepherd smiled. So long as the man had his sense of humour, there was less chance of him pulling the trigger.

'Must have been hairy,' said Shepherd.

'It was no picnic' Jones took a deep breath, then let it out slowly.

'You were in the Sass?' Jones was almost a decade older than Shepherd so it was just about possible that they had served at the same time. Shepherd was sure he'd never met the man, though.

Jones shrugged. 'What's it to you?'

'I'm just trying to understand why you're doing this, that's all.'

'Post-traumatic stress syndrome, is that what you think?'

said Jones, contemptuously. 'You really are an amateur shrink,

aren't you?'

'If it's not stress, what is it? What you're doing isn't rational - you've got to admit that, right? Sitting on the grass with a gun pointed at your head.'

'Quicker than hanging or slicing my wrists.'

'Unless the gun jerks and you only blow off a piece of your skull. Then you spend the rest of your life being fed through a tube.'

'It won't jerk,' said Jones. He nodded at Rose. 'Is he any good with that thing?'

'Probably not as good as you,' said Shepherd.

Jones grinned ruefully. 'Not fired a Five for years,' he said.

'Like riding a bike,' said Shepherd. 'Why did you leave the Regiment?'

'RTUd. Just couldn't hack it any more.'

Life in the SAS was tough, and while some troopers served virtually their whole career in the Regiment, others burned out after just a few years. Shepherd had always felt 329 he could have done a full twenty years, but that was before Sue had become pregnant with Liam. Children changed everything.

'Couldn't hack the regular army either, not after being in the Sass. Went back to Civvy Street and it was pretty much downhill from then on.'

Shepherd's earpiece crackled. 'We've got you covered, Stu.

Any sign that he's getting aggressive and you hit the ground.'

Rose's voice was close to a whisper so there was no chance of Jones overhearing.

Shepherd nodded towards the house. 'Sharon's an army wife?'

'Met her after I left. She got pregnant first time we slept together and that was it. Game over.'

'Boy or girl?'

'Girl. You got kids?'

'No.'

'Keep it that way,' said Jones. 'They bring you nothing but grief and misery, wives and kids.'

'You don't mean that,' said Shepherd.

'You don't know what I mean.'

'I know most people say that kids are what life is about.'

'Yeah? And what if your wife uses your kid as a weapon to beat you over the head with? What if she poisons the kid against you so that she won't even talk to you on the phone because she's been told that you're the meanest bastard on God's earth?'

'I'm sorry,' said Shepherd, but regretted the words as soon as they'd left his mouth.

'No, you're not,' said Jones. 'You're trying to connect so that you can talk me out of doing what I'm going to do.'

'That's my job,' said Shepherd. 'It's what I'm paid to do.'

'Yeah, well, enjoy it while you can because when they've no more use for you you'll be out on the streets.' Jones took 330 another deep breath. 'You should leave now before you get blood on that nice clean Robocop uniform.'

'At least tell me why you're so keen to end it all. I thought the Sass never gave up. Fought to the last man. Never give up, never leave a man behind.'

Jones narrowed his eyes as he looked at Shepherd. 'Do I know you?'

'No.'

'What did you do before you were a cop?'

'Always been a cop.'

'Never been in the army?'

'Never wanted to sleep in a barracks,' said Shepherd.

'You look the type, that's all.'

'What type?'

'The type who passes selection, gets badged.'

'Is it as tough as they say it is?'

'Tougher than you can ever imagine. The Regiment has never lowered its standards. Your lot, they let anyone in now,

right? Height restrictions went, then they lowered fitness levels. Now, providing you've got a pulse, you can be a cop.

But the Sass, if you're not the best, don't even think about it.'

'And how do you get from there to here?' asked Shepherd.

An ambulance turned into the street. No siren, no flashing lights. Softly, softly.

'You mean how did my life turn to shit? Reality, mate. A wife who thought she was marrying a hero, a daughter who thinks I hate her, a world that doesn't give a shit about who I was or what I did. You'll find out the same, once you leave the police. You are what you do, and when you stop doing it, your life stops too.' He gestured at the house. A curtain flickered at an upstairs window. 'Think she even cares what happens to me? She's got a restraining order against me. I'm not supposed to come within half a mile of her.'

'Why's that?'

'Because she lied, told the judge I beat the crap out of her.

I never did. On my daughter's life I never lifted a finger to her. I've never hit a woman. Never have and never will. Now she's got herself another man and I'm still paying her half of everything I earn. Which is half of fuck-all.' Jones took a deep breath. 'This is a waste of time,' he said. 'Mine and yours.'

'I'm not going anywhere,' said Shepherd.

'You talk me out of doing this now, I go to jail for a few months and I'll still end up topping myself. Might as well let me get it over with.'

'What is it you want, Barry?'

'I want you to tell my daughter I loved her,' said Jones.

'Can you do that for me?'

'Barry--'

The gun went off and the top of Jones's head exploded.

Blood splattered across Shepherd's cheek but most of the brain and skull fragments sprayed over the grass. Jones's shoulders hit the ground with a dull thud. For a second or two Shepherd thought Rose had fired but his ears were ringing and he realised Jones had pulled the trigger.

'Stu, are you okay?' Rose's voice crackled in Shepherd's ear.

Shepherd nodded but didn't say anything. The gun lay on the ground, the barrel pointing towards him. Jones's eyes were wide open. His left leg twitched once, then was still.

There was a faint gurgling sound in his chest, which stopped.

Boots thudded across the grass. Shepherd felt a hand on his shoulder. 'Stu, are you hit?' It was Rose, but he sounded as if he was talking through water.

Shepherd continued to stare at Jones. A fist-sized chunk of his skull was missing and blood pooled on the grass. There were shouts in the distance and a woman screamed.

?

Rose knelt in front of Shepherd, put his hands on his shoulders and looked into his eyes. 'Come on, mate, it's okay.'

'It's not okay,' said Shepherd flatly.

'You did everything you could. It wasn't your fault.'

'Who's fault was it, then?'

'He shot himself - no one forced him to pull the trigger.

Just be grateful that no one else got hurt.'

Rose pulled Shepherd to his feet. Two paramedics rushed across the grass with a trolley but slowed when they saw the damage to the man's skull.

Rose put an arm round Shepherd and guided him away from the body. 'You need a drink,' he said.

'I'm fine,' said Shepherd.

'First time you've seen a kill?'

'No, but it's the first time I've seen anyone kill themselves,'

he said. 'He was talking to me and then . . .'

'Did he mean to do it? It wasn't an accident?'

'He knew what he was doing. The gun he had doesn't have a hair trigger. You don't fire it by mistake.' Shepherd looked over his shoulder at the paramedics who were zipping Jones into a black plastic body-bag. 'I fucked up,' he said.

'No, you didn't,' said Rose. 'He was hell-bent on doing it.

There was nothing you could have said or done.'

Shepherd wondered if that was true. Maybe if he'd told Jones that he, too, had been in the SAS, maybe if he'd made that connection Jones would have talked for longer. And if he'd kept talking maybe Shepherd could have persuaded him not to take his life. But Rule Number One of living undercover was that you never told an outsider who you really were.

Rose put his arm round Shepherd's shoulders. 'You did the best you could, Stu. There aren't many guys who would have gone out there the way you did.'

Shepherd gestured at the house. 'The guy's daughter, is she in there?'

'Yeah. Emma, her name is.'

Shepherd shook off Rose's arm and headed for the house.

'Where are you going?' asked Rose.

'I've got something to tell her,' said Shepherd.

Charlie Kerr poured himself a large measure of gin, splashed in tonic water and dropped in a slice of lemon. He drained half, then poured in more gin and belched.

He took a roll of black rubbish bags from one of the kitchen drawers and went upstairs. He put the glass between the twin basins in the master bathroom, then picked up Angie's cosmetics and dumped them into one of the bags.

He took her sanitary towels from the cupboard under the sink, her soap, her shampoo, her medicines, her cotton buds,

everything she had ever touched, and tossed them into the bag. He took a long pull at his gin and tonic, checked that he hadn't forgotten anything, then smiled at his reflection in the mirror. He'd be able to bring back all the women he wanted now. There was no nagging wife to bitch and moan.

He carried the bag into the bedroom and dropped it on to the king-size bed. He pulled open the drawers in the dressing-table, grabbed handfuls of her underwear and thrust it into the bag with her brushes, combs and hair spray. The book she was reading - the latest John Grisham - went in,

with her alarm clock and slippers. He'd barely started on her wardrobes before the bag was full. He knotted the top, opened the bedroom window and threw it out. It landed on the lawn with a thump. He cursed when he saw it had burst and the contents were strewn across the grass.

Eddie Anderson appeared from behind the garage. 'You okay, boss?'

'Sort that out, Eddie.' He went back to the wardrobes and filled the rest of the bags with Angie's clothing. Gary Payne had told him she was dead. But the moment she had climbed 334 r into the car with Tony Nelson, she'd signed her own death warrant. No way could he have let her live. She'd wanted him dead so badly she'd been prepared to pay a stranger to put a bullet in his head. 'Stupid cow,' Kerr muttered. Stupid to have thought she could ever get the better of him. Stupid not to have spotted that she was dealing with an undercover cop. Stupid to have thought he would let her live. Now she was dead and soon Tony Nelson would be, too.

He finished filling another bag with Angie's clothes and tossed it out of the window. Tony Nelson had it coming,

whether or not he was a cop. He must have known who Kerr was. He must know who he was dealing with. And despite that, despite Kerr's reputation, he'd still tried to entrap Angie.

That was what riled Kerr more than anything: the fact that Nelson, or whatever his real name was, thought he was so much smarter than Kerr. Til show you,' muttered Kerr. Til fucking show you what happens when you mess with Charlie Kerr.'