Soft Target

‘That’s my way in, then? I replace Ormsby?’

‘It’s the way I see it,’ said Hargrove.

‘Isn’t it a bit obvious?’

‘They probably won’t realise we traced the bullet. There’s no reason for them to think they’re suspects. People do have nervous breakdowns and disappear, and jobs don’t get more stressful than serving with an armed-response unit.’

‘How about an undercover cop pretending to be a member of an ARV? I’d be trying to set up cops with guns. How stressful is that?’

‘Are you saying you don’t want the assignment?’

Shepherd flashed Hargrove a tight smile. It was always up to an undercover operative to decide whether or not they would accept a job. It had to be that way. But Shepherd had never turned down an assignment and he had no intention of starting now. ‘I’ll need a couple of days on the range. If I’m rusty, they’ll spot it.’

‘We can fix you up on a police range here. Or in Scotland.’

‘I’ll get it sorted.’

‘Hereford?’

Shepherd nodded. ‘It’ll give me a chance to see Liam, too.’

‘Can you be ready to go in on Monday?’

That gave Shepherd six days to prepare. Six days in which to wipe away the persona of Tony Nelson and step into his new character. ‘If you can have the legend ready by then,’ he said. He took a deep breath. ‘No rest for the wicked.’

‘Are you okay?’

‘It never ends, does it?’ said Shepherd. ‘At first you think you’re making a difference, but for every villain we put away, there’s another two waiting to take his place.’

‘That doesn’t mean we stop trying, Spider. You’ve put some dangerous men behind bars. You can be proud of what you’ve achieved.’

‘Yeah, but in the grand scheme of things, what difference do we really make?’

‘Ah, now you’re getting all metaphysical. The meaning of life.’

‘I know what life’s about,’said Shepherd.‘It’s about raising children. First time I held Liam in my arms I knew that. Nothing else matters. But how do babies grow up to be rapists, drugs-dealers and murderers? I look at Liam and I just know he’s going to turn out okay. He’s only eight but you can already see he’s a good kid. He’s polite, he’s considerate, he doesn’t get into fights. Everybody likes him.’

‘He’s got you as a role model, Spider. And he couldn’t have asked for a better mother than Sue.’

‘I don’t think it’s down to that. I don’t remember teaching him the difference between right and wrong,’ said Shepherd, ‘but there isn’t an ounce of badness in him. Then you look at the kids prowling in packs doing drugs and mugging other kids for their mobiles and you wonder why they went bad. It’s not too big a step from playing truant to dealing drugs, and the next thing you know they’re shooting each other with automatic weapons.’

‘Kids go bad,’ said Hargrove, ‘and bad kids grow into bad adults, and our job is to put away as many of the bad guys as possible.’

‘Treat the symptoms, not the disease?’

‘Hell’s bells, Spider, are you having a crisis of confidence?’

Shepherd didn’t reply.

‘Do you want to see our psychologist?’ said Hargrove quietly. ‘Talk things through?’

‘I’m not crazy.’

‘It’s not about being crazy,’ said the superintendent. ‘It’s about stress and how you deal with it. That’s why we have a psychologist as part of the team, to nip problems in the bud. The last twelve months you’ve been through a lot.’

‘I know.’

‘Knowing it and dealing with it are two different things. You never really grieved for Sue.’

Shepherd stopped walking and glared at Hargrove. ‘Bullshit,’ he said. ‘Bull-fucking-shit.’

Hargrove put up his hands defensively. ‘I’m just saying, when it happened you were in prison undercover. You didn’t have time to deal with it. When you got out you had Liam to take care of. Then you wanted to get back into harness. You needed to work, you said. I thought maybe you were right, but you’ve gone from one job to the next and maybe you need time to grieve.’

‘I’m not the crying sort.’

‘Again, crying and grieving aren’t the same thing.’

‘I’m not seeing a shrink. End of story.’

‘Right. I’m just saying it’s an option.’

‘This isn’t about Sue. Or Liam. Or my stress levels. It’s about pissing on a forest fire.’

‘If we don’t try, if we let them get away with it, how does that make the world a better place? You were in Afghanistan with the SAS and we were supposed to have won that one, but did it really solve anything? That doesn’t stop us fighting for what we think is right.’

‘And now I’m going up against other cops?’

‘Cops who’ve gone bad, Spider. And in my book they’re worse than dyed-in-the-wool villains. Is that what this is about? Going after cops?’

Shepherd started walking again. ‘I’ll be fine. Trust me.’

Shepherd drove his CRV towards London at a steady seventy miles an hour, resisting the urge to join the stream of executive cars whizzing by in the outside lane. He used his hands-free to phone an au pair agency in Ealing and arranged an appointment for the following morning at ten o’clock. He’d already filled in their questionnaire, but they required a personal interview before they would send a woman to his house. From the sound of it, it was easier to get into the SAS than on to the agency’s books.

His second phone call was to Major Allan Gannon, who answered on the third ring.

‘Not caught you at a bad time, have I?’ said Shepherd.

‘Spider! Business, social, or are your nuts in the fire again?’

It was a fair enough question. Usually when Shepherd phoned the major he needed a favour. He explained that he was about to join a police armed-response unit and that he needed a refresher course in the equipment and tactics he’d be using.

Gannon chuckled. ‘Guess you’re a little rusty,’ he said. ‘When?’

‘Soon as possible,’ said Shepherd.

‘What are you doing over the next couple of days?’

‘I’m on my way to London and I’ve a few things to do in the morning, but then I’m yours.’

‘Come to the Duke of York barracks at noon,’ said Gannon. ‘Bring an overnight bag.’ He cut the connection, leaving Shepherd to wonder what he had planned. One thing he was certain of: he was putting himself in good hands. He’d served with the major in Ireland, the former Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan, and trained with him everywhere from the jungles of Brunei to the Arctic wastelands of northern Norway. There wasn’t a man he trusted more.

There was a double-knock on the hotel-room door. Sewell was staring at a spreadsheet on his laptop. ‘Go away,’ he said. ‘I don’t need the bed turning down.’

‘It’s not Housekeeping, Mr Sewell,’ said a man’s voice. It was the superintendent.

Sewell got up and walked to the door. He was naked except for a hotel towel wrapped round his waist.

Superintendent Hargrove was wearing an immaculate pinstripe suit, a crisp white shirt and a blue tie with red cricket balls on it. He was holding two bottles of Bollinger. ‘I gather this is your tipple.’

‘Does this mean we’re celebrating that shit Hendrickson being arrested?’ asked Sewell.

Hargrove looked pained. ‘Not exactly.’ He closed the door.

‘We said Monday. Today’s Tuesday. Forty-eight hours has become four days.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Hargrove, ‘I really am. It’s just that this is bigger than we first thought.’

‘Bigger than attempted murder?’

Hargrove looked around for somewhere to sit. Sewell had the only chair, facing his computer. ‘Do you mind if I sit on the bed?’ he asked.

‘Suit yourself,’ said Sewell. He popped the cork out of one of the bottles of champagne, went to the cramped bathroom and took two plastic cups off the glass shelf by the basin. He poured champagne into them and gave one to the superintendent. That Hargrove knew Bollinger was his favourite champagne suggested that he had done more than get the laptop from his car when he visited Sewell’s house, but Sewell wasn’t up to picking a fight. ‘You realise you’re running out of any goodwill you might have had?’ he said.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ said Hargrove.

Sewell doubted that was true. The superintendent had obviously come to the hotel with something on his mind, and he’d never been lost for words during their previous conversations. ‘Enough is enough,’ he said. ‘I’ve given you four days, which is twice as long as you said it would take. You said you had all you needed to arrest Hendrickson.’

‘We do,’ said Hargrove.

‘So arrest him. Throw the shit into a cell and let me get back to running my company.’

‘I wish it was as simple as that,’ said Hargrove. He sipped his champagne. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any whiskey in the minibar is there?’ he asked.

‘There isn’t a minibar. Hendrickson will have better facilities in prison than I’ve got here,’ Sewell said.

‘But you’ve got your computer. And I’ve given the sergeant cash for any food you want bringing in.’

‘I want to go home,’ said Sewell flatly.

‘We need more time,’ said Hargrove.

Sewell swore.

‘Possibly the rest of this week.’

‘I told you already, Hendrickson could be bleeding my company dry. By the time I get back into my office there might be nothing left. What then, Superintendent? The police will come up with three million quid, will they? Out of petty cash?’

‘Actually . . .’ Hargrove took an envelope out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Sewell, who put down his beaker and opened it. It was from the chief constable of Greater Manchester, agreeing to reimburse him for any money he lost as a result of his co-operation with the ongoing investigation. He would also guarantee a consultancy fee of twenty-five thousand pounds, whatever the outcome of either case.

‘He can do that?’ asked Sewell.

‘He can do whatever he wants with police funds,’ said Hargrove.

‘This guy you’re after, the second investigation, he’s big, yeah?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Hargrove. ‘He’s big.’

‘Big kudos for you if you get him, commendations all round, the chief constable looks good?’

‘If it wasn’t important, we wouldn’t have put your case on hold,’ said Hargrove.

‘So he’s bigger than me, is that what you mean?’ Sewell bristled. ‘I sit here in this pokey hell-hole while you find bigger fish to fry?’

‘No one’s saying your case isn’t important, Mr Sewell. Larry Hendrickson will go to prison for a long time, and rightly so. But what we’re working on now is a different sort of case. I wish I could go into details, but I can’t. What I can tell you is that the guy we’re going after is a nasty son-of-a-bitch and the police here have had all sorts of problems with him. You’ll win all sorts of Brownie points if you help take him out.’

Sewell reread the chief constable’s letter. ‘The twenty-five grand’s mine whatever happens?’

‘Providing you co-operate.’

‘And if I come to you after this is over and tell you that as a result of that shit Hendrickson being in charge of my company I’m a hundred grand down, the Greater Manchester Police will write me a cheque to cover the loss?’

‘That’s what the letter says,’ said Hargrove. ‘The chief constable might want to see a breakdown of your losses, but I can’t see him going back on his word.’

‘All right, then.’

‘You’re okay to lie low for the rest of this week?’ asked Hargrove.

‘Yes, but not here,’ said Sewell. ‘I want an upgrade.’

‘I don’t think that’ll be a problem. We’ll move you tomorrow.’

‘Five stars.’

‘Agreed,’ said Hargrove wearily.

‘A suite. Not a room.’

Hargrove nodded.

‘And sex,’ Sewell added.

‘I’m going to have to draw the line there, Mr Sewell,’ said the superintendent.

‘I’ve had nothing but my right hand for company,’ said Sewell. ‘That’s a cruel and unusual punishment in my book.’

‘I can’t risk you meeting a girlfriend,’ said Hargrove. ‘It’s only four or five more days.’

‘It wouldn’t have to be a girlfriend,’ said Sewell. ‘I’d use an escort agency. They’ll send a girl round. I’ll make sure it’s not one I’ve had before.’

Hargrove rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Okay,’ he said wearily.

‘And the sergeant uses his money to pay for it.’

‘For God’s sake, man!’ said Hargrove.

Sewell shrugged. ‘I can’t use my credit cards, can I?’ he said. ‘Besides, if the chief constable wants me to be happy, he’ll pay.’

Hargrove stood up. ‘I think I’d better go before you take the shirt off my back,’ he said.

‘It wouldn’t fit,’ said Sewell, grinning, ‘but I’ll have the tie.’

Angie Kerr climbed out of the shower and stood watching her reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror as she towelled herself dry. The scab on her breast was about to come off and she dabbed it carefully with the edge of her towel. It wasn’t the first time her husband had burned her, but if everything went to plan it would be the last. No more burns, no more slaps, no more punches to the stomach that he knew would hurt but not leave a permanent mark. All his friends knew how he treated her. Sometimes when he abused her in public, she got a sympathetic glance or some small acknowledgement that they knew what she was going through, but they were all too scared of Charlie to say anything.

Eddie Anderson had come closest to talking to him about it. Charlie had punched her in the stomach while they were in the VIP section of Aces after she’d asked him to stop flirting with one of the waitresses. The girl was a tall, leggy blonde, barely out of her teens, and Charlie had had his hand on her backside, squeezing it as if he was checking a melon for ripeness. The girl was leading him on, flashing her eyes and flicking her hair, and she had known full well that Angie was his wife.

Angie had waited until she and her husband were alone before she told him she didn’t like him making a fool of her. He’d smiled coldly, then slammed his fist into her belly. She’d been unable to breathe for a minute or so, gasping as tears streamed down her face. Charlie had stood up and walked over to the bar where Eddie and Ray were drinking. Angie had just about recovered her breath when Eddie came over and told her he was to drive her home. Angie didn’t argue. She knew that if she did, her husband would hurt her all the more.

He had given her his arm, she had taken it gratefully and they had walked out together. Angie would never forget the look of triumph on the waitress’s face. She wondered if the girl knew what Charlie was like, if he ever showed her his violent side. Maybe he only needed one woman to dominate, and it was her bad luck that he’d chosen her. Eddie had helped her into the back of the car, but he didn’t say anything until he was sitting in the front with the engine running. He’d looked at her in the rear-view mirror. ‘Are you all right, Mrs Kerr?’ he’d asked.

He’d kept looking at her, waiting for her to answer. Angie had wondered what he expected her to say. If she’d said no, she wasn’t, that her husband had hit her one time too many, would he have taken her to hospital? To the police station? Had Charlie asked Eddie to pretend to be concerned to see how she’d react? And if she had told Eddie that she was sick to death of the beatings and the verbal abuse, would he have told Charlie, and would Charlie have made her life more of a misery than it already was?

‘The way he treats you, it’s not right,’ Eddie said quietly. This time she had seen concern in his eyes.

Angie had found herself smiling, even though her stomach felt as if it had burst. ‘I’m okay, Eddie,’ she’d said. ‘I know he loves me really.’

Eddie had stared at her for several seconds, then put the car into gear. He hadn’t spoken again all the way home, even when he’d walked her to the door.

Angie towelled her hair dry, brushed it, and sprayed Kenzo perfume around her neck. Charlie liked her to smell good when she got into bed. She turned off the light and walked into the bedroom.

He was standing by the window, looking up at the moonlit sky. ‘I love you, Peaches,’ he said, without turning.

She knew he meant it. But ‘love’ didn’t mean the same to Charlie Kerr as it meant to most people. It meant control. It meant ownership. He loved his car. He loved his house. He loved his villa in Spain. And he loved her.

‘Come here,’ he said.

He was naked – he never wore anything in bed and insisted that she didn’t either. She padded across the carpet and slid her arms round his waist, pressing her breasts to his back.

‘You’ll never leave me, will you?’ he said.

The moon was full and looked so close that Angie felt she could almost reach up and grab it. ‘No, Charlie. I’ll never leave you,’ she said.

‘You know what would happen if you did?’

Angie swallowed. She kissed the back of his neck.

‘I’d find you,’ he said. ‘I’d track you down and I’d kill you with my bare hands.’

‘I know you would,’ she whispered.

He reached behind and stroked the insides of her thighs. ‘You’re my wife and I love you,’ he said.

‘I know.’

‘If I didn’t love you, I wouldn’t lose my temper,’ he said.‘I’d just walk away. I wouldn’t care.’He turned and pressed his lips against hers, his tongue forcing its way into her mouth so quickly that she didn’t have time to breathe. She felt herself gag and fought it. The times when he was having sex with her were the most dangerous. If she did the wrong thing, said the wrong thing, even moaned in the wrong way, his caresses turned to punches, his kisses to bites. She let him kiss her hard, and moaned softly, the way he liked. She had to make him think she was enjoying it. He stopped kissing her and held her head in his hands, staring into her eyes. ‘I love you, Angie,’ he said.

‘I love you too,’ she said, although it had been a long time since she’d loved him. Now there was just contempt for him in her heart, and hatred. She didn’t want to leave him. She wanted him dead. And Tony Nelson was going to kill him for her.

Charlie grinned, then turned her so that she was facing the window. He grabbed her wrists and put her arms up against the glass. ‘Open your legs,’ he said.

Angie did as she was told, and he forced himself inside her.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes, yes, yes.’ She stared up at the moon and imagined Tony Nelson shooting him in the back of the head with a large handgun. ‘Yes,’ she moaned. ‘Yes, yes, yes.’

Shepherd walked around the ground floor of the house, checking the locks on the windows and doors. He was only going to be away for a couple of days but there had been several opportunistic break-ins in the area, according to a flyer put through his letterbox by the local crime-prevention officer.

He’d considered selling the house after Sue’s accident but Liam had protested vociferously. It was Mum’s house and he didn’t want to live anywhere else. Shepherd knew what the boy meant. He’d been the one who’d paid the mortgage but Sue had decided on the décor and furniture and there wasn’t a room that didn’t have her presence in it. Saying goodbye to the house would mean saying goodbye to Sue, and neither he nor Liam was prepared to do that.

Most of the books on the shelves in the sitting room had been Sue’s and her magazines were in the bathroom. After he’d got back from Manchester he’d cleared Sue’s clothes out of his bedroom into black plastic bags, then left them in the spare room. He couldn’t throw them away.

One of his mobiles rang and he hurried to the kitchen. It was the one Hargrove used, but a woman’s voice spoke. She introduced herself as Kathy Gift and said that Superintendent Hargrove had suggested she call to arrange an appointment.

‘Why?’ he asked. Hargrove hadn’t mentioned her.

‘Sorry, I should have said. I’m a psychologist attached to Superintendent Hargrove’s unit,’ she said.

‘I said I didn’t want a shrink,’ he said. ‘Anyway, I’m just about to leave for a training exercise.’

‘When are you back?’

‘A couple of days.’

‘Friday?’

‘I’m not sure, but I’ll be away from London at the weekend whatever happens.’

‘Will you call me when you’re back so that we can schedule an appointment?’

‘Of course,’ said Shepherd, and cut the connection. He had no intention of meeting her or any other psychologist.

He looked at his watch and cursed. He’d told the au pair agency he’d be there at ten and he was already a few minutes late. He carried his bags out to the CRV and drove half a mile to the neat row of shops where the agency had its offices above a veterinary surgeon. He parked on a meter, buzzed the intercom and hurried up the stairs.

The office consisted of two rooms, one with two secretaries surrounded by filing cabinets and a window overlooking the rear yards of the shops, and a larger office for the owner, Sheila Malcolm, BSc. Shepherd knew about the academic qualification as it was on the agency’s letterhead and on the metal plate on the door.

Shepherd apologised for being late and the secretaries made him wait while Miss Malcolm rearranged her schedule to accommodate him. She was alone in her office when Shepherd was ushered in and he assumed that either she had been on the phone or she was punishing him. He apologised again as he sat down in front of her desk.

Miss Malcolm tapped on her computer keyboard and looked at the screen over the top of her glasses. ‘You need someone to live in and take care of your home and your young son.’ She was archly elegant in a well-cut two-piece tweed suit. Her dyed auburn hair was perfectly coiffured and her pale pink lipstick had been applied with a surgeon’s precision.

Shepherd nodded.

‘A lot of our girls are reluctant to live in when there isn’t a lady of the house,’ said Miss Malcolm.

‘My wife died,’ said Shepherd.

Miss Malcolm had the grace to blush. She removed her spectacles and let them hang round her neck on a thin silver chain. ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ she said. ‘It’s usually divorced husbands who come to us, and they’re sometimes more trouble than they’re worth.’ She flashed him a smile. ‘I’m sure you understand.’

‘My wife died,’ repeated Shepherd, ‘and, as you can see from the form I filled in, I’m a police officer. I think it’s fair to say that I’m a safe bet.’

‘Absolutely, Mr Shepherd.’

‘My boy is with his grandparents at the moment, but I want live-in help so that he can be with me.’

‘A boy should be with his father,’ said Miss Malcolm. She looked at her terminal. ‘You have a room for her, which is good, and a car. How does your son get to school?’

‘Car,’ said Shepherd.

‘And will you be responsible for the school-run, or will the girl?’

Shepherd swallowed. Images flashed through his mind. Sue at the wheel of her black VW Golf. Liam in the back seat. Sue twisting to pick up Liam’s backpack. The traffic lights on red. The Golf accelerating. The supermarket lorry.

‘Mr Shepherd?’

Shepherd shook his head. ‘I’d do it when I was in London, but from time to time I’ll be away.’

‘You travel a lot?’

‘Some.’

‘So you’d want someone a bit more mature, who could take responsibility for everything in your absence.’

‘That sounds good,’ said Shepherd. ‘If possible, I’d prefer them to be British.’

‘Ah, these days we have few British girls on our books,’ Miss Malcolm said. ‘It wasn’t always like that, of course. Some of our best girls were filling in time before university. We had Cheltenham Ladies’ College girls, but now they’re either working in Switzerland or trekking across South East Asia. The bulk of our girls are from the new entrants to the EU, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia. I can wholeheartedly recommend the Polish girls. They’re hard workers and trustworthy. We’ve had a few negative experiences with the Slovenians, but we now have them thoroughly checked before we bring them over.’

Shepherd would have preferred a girl from the UK so that he could run his own check through the Police National Computer, but it sounded as if he wasn’t going to get the chance. ‘Do you have anyone who could start immediately?’

‘I have three Polish girls arriving tomorrow, two from Estonia, and I’m having half a dozen applicants interviewed in Slovenia later this week. Nurses. They can earn five times as much in London as au pairs.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Now, I’ll have to check whether they have international driving licences, and I’m not sure whether they want live-in positions. Sometimes they like to stay together. We try to discourage sharing – bad habits spread. But we should have several likely candidates for you to see before the end of the week.’

‘And they’re all screened for criminal records?’ asked Shepherd.

‘Absolutely,’ said Miss Malcolm. ‘We insist on a letter from the local police authority saying they haven’t committed any offences, and an HIV-status certificate. We prefer them to have references from previous employers, ideally in the UK. That’s not always possible, of course, as many are coming here for the first time.’

Shepherd stood up. ‘I’m going to be away for a few days,’ he said. ‘You can get me on my mobile.’

‘Going anywhere nice?’ asked Miss Malcolm.

‘Not really,’ said Shepherd. ‘Business rather than pleasure.’

‘Well, hopefully by the time you get back we’ll have fixed up the perfect young lady for you,’ she said brightly.

The phone rang and Sewell frowned. He wasn’t allowed to call out and since he’d been in the hotel no one had rung him. He picked up the receiver. ‘Yes?’

‘Mr Sewell, this is Sergeant Beattie, downstairs.’

Sewell sighed, expecting bad news.

‘If you could have your bag packed, we’d like to move you in about fifteen minutes.’

Sewell thanked him, then threw his clothes and washbag into the holdall he’d brought with him when the police had picked him up from home on Friday morning. He switched off his laptop, closed it and put it into its nylon bag with the unopened bottle of Bollinger.

The sergeant knocked on his door and took him downstairs to where a younger officer in plain clothes was waiting at the wheel of a green Rover. Sewell and the sergeant climbed into the back. There was no small-talk during the short drive across the city, but Sewell wasn’t trying to make friends with his custodians.

The lobby of the hotel to which they took him was a big improvement on his previous accommodation. It was bright and airy, and there were three pretty girls behind the desk who greeted them with smiles. The sergeant handled the check-in, the younger plain-clothes officer carried Sewell’s holdall.

A porter showed them to Sewell’s suite. There was a large sitting room with a sofa, two armchairs and a television set three times the size of the one in the previous hotel. There was a DVD player, too. Sewell opened the minibar and grinned. There was a full range of beer, spirits and mixers, and two half-bottles of champagne. It wasn’t Bollinger, but it was drinkable.

There was another big-screen TV in the bedroom and a king-size bed. The bathroom contained a Jacuzzi and a shower big enough for a rugby team. Sewell’s smile widened. Things were getting better by the minute.

‘Is there anything we can get you, sir?’ asked the sergeant.

Sewell picked up a copy of the room-service menu and flicked through it. Oysters, fillet steak, Dover sole, a full range of French and Italian wines. ‘Hookers,’ he said. ‘Lots and lots of hookers.’

The guard checked Shepherd’s ID against the computer printout on his clipboard and waved to the far end of the parade-ground.‘If you’d park in bay thirty-two, sir, and head on through the door over there. Major Gannon’s expecting you.’

Shepherd edged the CRV over the metal teeth that would rip into the tyres of vehicles going the wrong way. He appreciated the ‘sir’ but it didn’t apply to his former rank in the SAS or to his present status as a detective constable with the police.

He locked the car and went through the door with his overnight bag. Two soldiers in fatigues were standing behind a reception desk. Shepherd showed his ID and one took him down a corridor and knocked on a mahogany door. As he walked in, Major Gannon was already striding across the room, his arm outstretched. ‘You’re looking good, Spider,’ he said.

‘Thanks, sir. You’re in no bad shape yourself.’ The major was a big man with a strong chin, wide shoulders and a nose that looked as if it had been broken at least once. He had the appearance of an enlisted man rather than the high-flying officer that he was. In all the years Shepherd had known him he had never heard him referred to as a Rupert, the derogatory term troopers used to describe their officers. The major was always ‘the Boss’. Shepherd had gone into battle with him twice, and would have died for him without a second thought.

Gannon shook his hand and slapped him on the back. ‘Tea?’ he asked. ‘Staff’s got a brew on.’

‘Thanks,’ said Shepherd. ‘Two sugars.’

The staff sergeant poured a mug of thick, treacly tea, splashed in a little milk and used a dessertspoon to heap in two mounds of sugar. Gannon sat down behind his desk. Behind him was a large window overlooking the parade-ground. There were three phones on the desk, and the briefcase containing the secure satellite phone they called the Almighty lay on a table. It never left Gannon’s side. The only people who had access to it were the prime minister, the Cabinet Office, and the chiefs of MI5 and MI6. When it rang it meant that all hell was breaking loose somewhere. The major was head of the Increment, an ad hoc pulling-together of men from the Special Air Service and the Special Boat Squadron to carry out missions deemed too dangerous for the intelligence services.

Shepherd sipped his tea. ‘Thanks for doing this at short notice, Major,’ he said.

‘Not a problem,’ said Gannon.

‘I didn’t think they allowed live firing here, it being in the centre of London and all,’ said Shepherd.

‘We’re not training here,’ said the major. ‘We’ll be in Stirling Lines.’

Shepherd’s heart sank. It had taken him the best part of an hour to drive from Ealing to Central London, and this meant retracing his route plus an extra four or five hours westward to Hereford. They wouldn’t get to the barracks until evening, so they probably wouldn’t start training until tomorrow. A whole day wasted.

Gannon looked at his watch. ‘Transport’s on the way,’ he said.

‘Great,’ said Shepherd.

‘I’ve been reading up on SO19 procedures,’ said the major. ‘I’ve already briefed the guys in Hereford and they’ll have the Killing House set up for us.’

The Killing House was where the SAS rehearsed its hostage rescues. Shepherd had spent hundreds of hours there when he was in the Regiment, firing live ammunition at targets while colleagues played the part of hostages, often smoking and cracking jokes as the bullets flew.

‘Have you done much firing recently?’ asked Gannon.

Shepherd carried a pistol when he was undercover and the operation warranted it, but he’d never had to fire it in anger. Apart from a yearly range assessment, there was no requirement for him to do any live firing. It was different for the officers in SO19: their shooting skills were constantly tested and assessed, hence the need for Shepherd to get in some practice.

The windows rattled and Gannon looked over his shoulder. A large green helicopter settled slowly in the middle of the parade-ground. Its rotors slowed and the turbine settled back from a deafening roar to a juddering growl.

‘Our chariot awaits,’ said the major. He stood up. ‘You can bring your tea with you, if you like.’ He grinned at Shepherd’s confusion. ‘One of the perks of the job,’ he said.

There were three troopers behind Shepherd, their feet shuffling in the darkness. There were no lights in the Killing House, and the troopers hadn’t been given night-vision goggles. Their Heckler & Koch MP5s had been fitted with 1003 Aiming Projectors, which shone a tight beam of intense light from a fifty-five-watt halogen bulb directly along the gun’s line of fire. The light could be used to blind targets temporarily but because the beam was so focused it didn’t affect the user’s night vision.

Shepherd had the retractable stock version of the weapon, the MP5A3, which was favoured by the SAS because they often used their weapons covertly. It was also in general use by SO19.

Shepherd had memorised the layout of the Killing House by glancing at a hand-drawn map for less than five seconds. His memory gave him an advantage over the troopers he was with, but they spent up to three hours a day practising there and knew all of its permutations. The corridor they were in had three doors off it as well as the one they had just come through. There was a door at the end, facing them, another on the right three paces ahead and a third on the left a little further on.

Shepherd’s eyes were stinging from the cordite in the air and his ears were buzzing. They were using live ammunition and the floor had to be swept clear of dozens of empty cartridges after each scenario had been played through. They weren’t wearing gas masks because armed police were generally not permitted to use tear gas or thunderflashes, unlike the SAS who used pretty much any ordnance they needed to achieve their objective.

Shepherd flashed his light at the door on the right, then kicked it open and went in low to the right. Two troopers behind him followed, one to the left, one to the right, while the third stayed in the corridor. Lights flashed. There were two targets in the room, one sitting at a desk, the other standing in the far corner. ‘Armed police, drop your weapons!’ shouted Shepherd, as he pulled the trigger and sent three slugs thudding into the chest of the desk target, a diving suit filled with straw. MP5s ratt-tatt-tatted behind him and the target in the corner was hit in the chest and head.

More flashes to confirm that the room was clear, then back out into the corridor. The formation changed: this time Shepherd brought up the rear and waited in the corridor while the three troopers burst into the second room. There were three short bursts of fire. One target, another padded diving suit. The briefing had specified six targets and one hostage. That meant the hostage and three targets were in the last room.

Shepherd led the way down the corridor. He flashed his light at the door then went through, keeping low as he swept his MP5 around the room, stabbing at the light button. Flash, flash, flash. There were more flashes behind him. One hostage, four targets. The briefing had been flawed to catch them out, but the troopers with Shepherd were old hands and one snorted just before Shepherd yelled, ‘Armed police,’ and the firing started.

Bullets thudded into the four padded diving suits and within seconds it was over.

‘Clear,’ said Shepherd.

The hostage was sitting on a straight-backed wooden chair holding a transceiver. He spoke into it. ‘Lights,’ he said.

The overhead fluorescent bulbs flickered into life. Major Gannon surveyed the targets. ‘Not bad,’ he said. Like Shepherd and the three troopers, he was wearing black overalls and a Kevlar vest. ‘You might have given me a new parting, but I’m not bleeding so that’s a good sign.’

Shepherd smiled. None of the bullets had gone anywhere near the major. It was traditional for troopers to play the part of hostages in the Killing House. It demonstrated trust but it also gave them the chance to experience being under fire. The major had had more than enough experience of gunfire and that he had decided to sit in on Shepherd’s initial exercise was a better demonstration of his faith in Shepherd’s ability than any written evaluation.

‘It’s interesting without the night-vision gear,’ said Shepherd.

‘The cops aren’t trained in it,’ said the major. ‘Nine times out of ten they wouldn’t go into a no-light situation. Too risky.’

Shepherd had read the S019 manuals and it was clear that the police followed different procedures from the SAS. They went in hoping that the incident could be resolved without shots being fired. They identified themselves as armed police and would charge in shouting that the targets were to drop their weapons. They were only to fire if they were under attack or if civilian lives were at risk. The SAS went in as a last resort and went in hard. There was no shouted identification, no need to tell the bad guys to give up. They went in intending to shoot and kill. The chest and the head were the only targets. Double tap, triple tap, it didn’t matter: all that mattered was that the target went down and stayed down. If Shepherd stood a chance of being accepted as a member of an armed-response unit he’d have to forget most of what he’d learned as an SAS trooper.

There was a further problem, which Hargrove had made clear to him when he’d accepted the assignment: once an SO19 officer had fired his weapon he was immediately removed from firearms duty until the incident had been investigated. That could take months. If there had been a fatality, it could take years. If Shepherd fired his weapon, the undercover investigation would be over.

The major stood up and stretched. ‘Your marksmanship is spot on,’ he said. ‘Can’t fault you on that. But we’re going to have to slow your reaction time a bit.’ He grinned. ‘Crazy, I know, but at the moment you’re moving at twice the speed of a cop. You’re identifying yourself and firing at the same time and that’ll get you drummed out the first time it happens in the real world.’

Shepherd nodded.

‘On style, I’d keep your weapon high, stock to shoulder,’ said Gannon. ‘I know we fire from the hip, but the cops train that way. Generally they don’t go up against multiple targets so intimidation is the name of the game. They hope the bad guy will back down. Most armed cops go through their whole career without ever firing their gun in anger.’

‘Got it,’ said Shepherd.

‘What you just went through is as tough as it will get,’ said the major. He gestured to a small CCTV camera in the corner of the room. ‘We’ll review the tapes, then run through a few exercises, just to get you more in tune with the cop way of doing things.’

‘I appreciate it, Major.’

Gannon waved away his thanks. ‘It’s an interesting exercise,’ he said. ‘Like detuning a high-performance car. Come on, let’s get some fresh air while they’re getting the tapes ready.’

They walked away from the Killing House to the barracks memorial garden in front of the Regimental church. The SAS had moved from its old barracks in May 1999, and taken over the former RAF Cledenhill base. They had brought the Killing House with them and the clock tower from the old Stirling Lines barracks had been rebuilt in the garden. Engraved on it were the names of all the members of the SAS who had been killed in action.

‘You know there’s always a place for you here, Spider,’ said the major.

‘On the clock tower? Thanks a lot, but I don’t plan to shuffle off this mortal coil just yet.’

The major ignored his jibe. ‘With the Regiment,’ he said.

‘I’m a bit long in the tooth to be abseiling out of helicopters,’ said Shepherd.

‘You’re thirty-four. Hardly over the hill. And the Regiment could use you on the directing staff. We lost three instructors last month. They’re in Iraq pulling in two grand a week.’

‘I appreciate the offer, but I was never cut out to be an instructor. Besides, as a cop I can spend more time with my boy.’

‘An undercover cop?’ said Gannon. ‘That means being away for days at a time, maybe weeks, doesn’t it? If you come back to us you’d be based here and have most weekends off. House prices are a darn site cheaper than London, too. Your in-laws are still in this area, aren’t they?’

‘Born and bred,’ said Shepherd. ‘They’re taking care of Liam until I get my situation sorted. It’ll be okay.’

‘The offer stands,’ said the major. ‘You change your mind, let me know.’ They headed towards the administration block. ‘These rogue cops, aren’t they going to be suspicious when you turn up out of the blue?’ asked Gannon.

‘Alleged rogue cops,’ said Shepherd, with a smile. ‘That’s the thing about being a cop – we have to bother with things like proof and evidence.’

‘But presumably they wouldn’t be sending you in unless they were pretty damn sure.’

‘Like my boss says, knowing and proving are two different things. But my legend’ll be watertight.’

‘It had better be,’ said the major. ‘Bad cops with automatic weapons. Not a pleasant mix.’

‘I’ll be okay,’ said Shepherd.

Gannon slapped him on the back. ‘I don’t doubt it for one minute,’ he said.

The Saudi knew that he would be lucky one day. That was all he needed. One lucky day when Allah smiled on him. He’d been at university in London when the IRA had almost killed the then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. They’d exploded a huge bomb in her Brighton hotel and she had been pulled from the rubble, shaken but alive. The Saudi had never forgotten what the IRA had said afterwards: Margaret Thatcher had been lucky, but she would have to be lucky for ever; they only had to be lucky once. The Saudi felt the same.

He had been unlucky three times already. He had planned the perfect operation in Manchester. Five men in Manchester United’s Old Trafford stadium all fitted with explosive vests, ready to blow themselves up shortly after kick-off. The tickets had been acquired, the volunteers had been selected, but even before the explosives had arrived in the country a careless conversation on a mobile phone had been picked up by an electronic monitoring station at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire. Within days the five volunteers, all Iraqis with British citizenship, had been arrested.

Then he had arranged for a truck filled with fertiliser explosive to be driven to the base of the London Eye by the river Thames. They had been betrayed by an old man who had overheard a whispered conversation in an East London mosque. He had spoken to his imam, who had made a phone call. Two days later a rented garage in Battersea was raided and four men were taken to Belmarsh prison. The Saudi had been on his way to the lock-up to collect the truck when the police went in. Five minutes later, and he would have been arrested with the others. Allah had smiled on him, but it had not been his lucky day.

The Saudi had next planned to detonate a car bomb in Trafalgar Square, but the day he was due to strike there had been a trade-union protest and the square was sealed off. The Saudi and another man had driven the explosive-laden car around the West End for the best part of two hours before they had abandoned the mission. The Saudi had told his associate to take the car back to the house in St John’s Wood that they were using as a base, but again he had been betrayed. The house was raided that night and the associate was arrested. He, too, was now in Belmarsh. The authorities hadn’t released details of the arrest or the car bomb. The Saudi knew why: if the public were aware of how close al-Qaeda had come to detonating a massive bomb in Trafalgar Square they would lose all confidence in the security services.

The Saudi ran his hands down the canvas vest. It fitted well. He had made it himself, stitching it by hand. It was woman’s work, but no woman could be trusted to know what he had planned. He had been unlucky three times but he would not be unlucky a fourth.

The four other men who had given themselves to the mission did not know each other. They knew only the Saudi, and only he knew that they were involved. Even if one of the others was caught or went to the authorities, they knew nothing of any value. They didn’t know what the target was. They didn’t know when they would be deployed. And they didn’t know who else was involved. They would be told only hours before it was due to happen.

The Saudi only ever spoke to the men in person. He never used the telephone, he put nothing in writing. There were no computer files, no letters, no written instructions, just whispers and nods. All four men were highly trained and all had made their preparations. They were ready to die, happy even to give up their lives. They craved the opportunity to die killing infidels. And if the Saudi’s plan worked, and if he was lucky, many hundreds of infidels would die. Soon.

Shepherd borrowed a car from the SAS pool and drove from the Stirling Lines barracks to Tom and Moira’s semi. He phoned from the car to let them know he was on the way. ‘I wish you’d let us know you were coming, Daniel,’ Moira said. ‘I could have aired your room.’

Shepherd hadn’t known he was going to Hereford until the helicopter had landed on the parade-ground in London. ‘It’s a flying visit, literally,’ he said. ‘I’m only here for two days and then I’m back to London.’

Shepherd heard Liam shouting in the background. ‘Is that Dad?’

‘Liam wants to talk to you, as you probably heard,’ said Moira.

‘Dad, where are you?’ Liam asked excitedly.

‘On my way to see you,’ he said. ‘I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.’

‘Are we going to London?’

‘Not yet. Soon, though.’

‘But you can stay here for a while?’

‘For tonight, at least,’ said Shepherd. ‘Let me talk to your gran.’

Liam put his grandmother back on the line. ‘You don’t have to go to any trouble, Moira. I can bunk down at the barracks.’

‘Nonsense,’ she said briskly. ‘You’ll spend the night with us and that’s the end of it. And you shouldn’t be using the phone while you’re driving. That’s how accidents happen.’

She cut the connection before he could explain that he was using the hands-free kit.

When he pulled up in front of the house, Liam was in the garden, waiting for him. Shepherd picked up his son and swung him round. ‘I missed you, kid.’

‘Put me down!’ squealed Liam.

Shepherd lowered him to the ground and tickled him. Liam ran giggling into the house and Shepherd chased after him. They stopped short when they saw Moira in the kitchen doorway, her arms folded across her chest. ‘No running in the house, Liam,’ she said.

‘Sorry, Gran.’

‘Sorry, Moira,’ said Shepherd. He winked at Liam and his son giggled.

‘Don’t forget your homework,’ said Moira.

‘Gran . . .’

‘It’s got to be done. You either do it now or you do it after supper. And I’m sure after supper you’ll want to play with your father. Why not pop up to your room and get it out of the way?’

Liam looked up at his father. ‘You’re staying?’

‘Of course.’

Moira took Shepherd into the kitchen and made a pot of tea. ‘Just two days, you said?’

‘Today and tomorrow. I’ll head back to London Thursday evening, but I’ll be here at the weekend.’

‘And you’re doing something with the Regiment?’

Shepherd could hear the suspicion in her voice. She’d never been comfortable with the fact that he was an SAS trooper, and Shepherd realised she thought he might be planning a return to soldiering. She had no need to worry because that was the furthest thing from his mind. ‘Just some technical training,’ he said, ‘to do with a police job.’

She poured milk into his tea and handed him the cup and saucer. There were no mugs in Moira’s house.

She sat down at the kitchen table. ‘Tom and I have been talking,’ she said, ‘about Liam. He’s settled in so well with us. The school was prepared to take him on a temporary basis because of the circumstances, but I’ve already spoken to the headmistress and there’s a permanent place for him if we want it. We’d have to move quickly, though, it’s a popular school . . .’

‘He’s my son,’ said Shepherd. ‘He belongs with me.’

‘Of course he does,’ she said. ‘No one’s trying to take him away from you. But he’s been with us for most of the past four months, and when you do come it’s usually a flying visit. It’s not as if your job is nine to five, is it?’

Shepherd opened his mouth to reply but shut it again when he heard a key in the front door. He stood up and smiled when Tom Wintour walked in. ‘Dan, good to see you,’ he said. ‘I was wondering whose car that was out front. Where’s the CRV?’

‘It’s a loaner,’ said Shepherd.‘The CRV’s in London.’

Tom shook hands with him, then dropped his battered leather briefcase under the kitchen table. ‘Are you staying?’ he asked, as he sat down at the table next to Moira. He was portly with receding grey hair and thick horn-rimmed glasses. He was a bank manager and looked the part in his dark blue pinstriped suit, starched white shirt and inoffensive tie.

Moira poured him a cup of tea. ‘Of course he’s staying,’ she said.

‘I was going to bunk at the barracks, but Moira insisted,’ said Shepherd.

‘You’ll be able to have breakfast with Liam,’ said Tom. He sipped his tea. ‘Did Moira tell you we’ve been talking about Liam’s future?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Moira.

‘We love having him here,’ said Tom. ‘There’s plenty of room. There’s the garden. The school is only ten minutes away.’

‘I was telling Daniel about the school,’ said Moira.

‘I appreciate the offer,Tom, really I do, but I want Liam with me.’

‘Absolutely,’ said Tom. ‘That’s where he belongs. But until your situation is a bit more stable, why not let him stay with us?’

‘I don’t see him enough as it is,’ said Shepherd.

‘But how is that going to change if you take him back to London and get a housekeeper?’ asked Moira.

She and Tom were facing him and Shepherd felt as if he was being grilled in a police interrogation room. He toyed with the idea of refusing to say anything until his lawyer arrived.

‘He’ll be in the care of a stranger most of the time. The agencies that fix up housekeepers can be a nightmare. Half the time they don’t even know the girls they’re dealing with. At least here Liam is with family,’ Moira added.

‘I’m his family,’ said Shepherd.

‘We’re his grandparents, Daniel. We have rights, too.’

Shepherd didn’t want to argue with them. He knew they only had Liam’s best interests at heart. And, besides, they were right. ‘I’ll make sure I get someone decent,’ he said. ‘I’ll check references and stuff. It’ll be fine.’

‘And what happens if you’re sent away from London?’ said Moira. ‘Susan said you were away all the time.’

‘Not all the time,’ said Shepherd, defensively. But, again, he knew she was right. He could as easily be assigned to a case in Aberdeen as London. And while he was always free to turn down an assignment, he doubted that Hargrove would keep him on the team if he only accepted jobs close to his home. ‘Even if the case is outside London, I’ll be able to get home at night and at weekends more often than not.’

‘Daniel, you’ve been in Manchester for the past week,’ said Moira, patiently.

Shepherd took a deep breath. It would have been easier if his mother-in-law had been shouting at him but she was calm and reasonable, the logic of her argument forcing him into a corner. ‘I want to try,’ he said. ‘If it doesn’t work out, I’ll rethink my situation. But I was a good father when Sue was alive, and I don’t see that I’m going to be a bad one now that she’s gone.’

‘Nobody’s suggesting that,’said Tom.‘We just want the best for your boy.’ He sighed and ran his finger around the rim of his cup. ‘Have you thought about moving jobs within the force?’

‘Pounding a beat, you mean?’

‘There are jobs, surely, that would allow you to spend more time at home.’

It was something Sue had raised a few weeks before she’d died. Shepherd had said he’d think about it, but in his heart of hearts he knew he’d never ask for a transfer to a desk job. He’d given up his army career without hesitation when Sue had become pregnant with Liam. Life in the SAS was dangerous at the best of times and he had narrowly escaped death in Afghanistan after taking a sniper’s bullet in the shoulder. But it was only after he’d been recruited into Hargrove’s undercover unit that he’d discovered police work could be every bit as dangerous as serving with special forces. At least when he was in the SAS he had had a pretty good idea of who was going to be taking pot-shots at him. Now that he mixed with the criminal fraternity, he never knew who might decide to stick a knife in his back, both literally and figuratively. It was what gave the job its edge. There were times when it was considerably more stressful than going into battle with men you trusted with your life. But he couldn’t tell Tom and Moira that. He always downplayed his police work with them, as he had with Sue.

‘I can’t be stuck in an office,’ said Shepherd, and immediately regretted the words – that was exactly where Tom Wintour had been for the past thirty years. ‘I need to be out and about . . .’ he added. Tom was a good man and had done a sterling job in raising Sue and taking care of Moira. While it wasn’t a life that Shepherd could have lived, he respected the man as a good father and husband. ‘ . . . there are fewer perks when you’re office-bound. I get travelling expenses, overnight expenses, lots of overtime. It makes a big difference to my pay cheque.’

‘Money isn’t everything, Daniel,’ said Moira.

Shepherd forced himself to smile. ‘No, but it’ll make our life easier,’ he said.

‘Just think about it,’ said Tom. ‘He’d have stability here, and he wouldn’t have the problems you get in inner-city schools these days.’

‘What problems?’asked Shepherd.‘I live in Ealing.’

‘Oh, come on, Daniel, we read the papers,’ said Moira. ‘Drugs, shootings, classrooms full of asylum-seekers.’

‘You don’t want to believe everything you read in the Daily Mail.’

‘It’s not about what paper we read,’ said Moira. ‘It’s about the quality of education. The schools in London, the state ones anyway, are dire, and you can’t argue with that.’

‘Liam’s school is fine,’ said Shepherd. ‘Sue went to a great deal of trouble to make sure we were in the right catchment area. Anyway, it’s not about schools. I’ll send him private if I have to. It’s about my son being with me, and I’m sorry, but that’s not negotiable.’ His stomach was churning and his heart pounding. ‘I don’t want to fight, I really don’t.’

Tom smiled sympathetically. ‘It’s not a fight, it’s a discussion about what’s best for Liam.’

‘I know,’ said Shepherd.

‘Let’s just leave it for the moment, shall we? You’re here, Liam’s here. Moira can cook us some supper and I’ll open a bottle of wine.’

‘Maybe I’ll go and help Liam with his homework.’

‘Good idea,’ said Tom. ‘Red or white?’

‘Whatever you’re having is fine,’ said Shepherd. He saw Moira and Tom exchange a worried look as he left the kitchen. Despite Tom’s conciliatory words he knew that there had been only a temporary cessation in hostilities. The war would continue.

Sewell flicked through the TV channels. Comedy shows, gardening, a quiz hosted by an effeminate comic. A leaflet on top of the TV explained how to access the paid-for system. A dozen new-release movies were on offer, with four pornographic films. The hotel charged ten pounds each, but Sewell decided that the police could pay for an orgasm or two. At the bottom of the leaflet a brief note informed guests that the hotel was equipped with wi-fi, allowing guests to access the Internet without connecting through a phone line.

‘Thank God for four-star hotels,’ muttered Sewell. He sat down at the dressing-table, opened the laptop and tapped his fingers impatiently as the computer booted up. He flicked the wi-fi switch and waited while the machine searched for a frequency to lock on to. A bubble appeared at the bottom right of the screen. WIRELESS CONNECTION AVAILABLE. Sewell was online.

He launched Outlook Express and waited as more than forty emails dropped into his inbox. There were a dozen from contacts on the dating service he’d joined. He didn’t bother reading them. Most of the rest were junk, offering everything from penile extensions to American university degrees. There were a dozen emails from clients and four from people at work. Nothing from Hendrickson, of course. Sewell cursed under his breath. He was looking forward to sitting in court the day Hendrickson was sentenced. Fifteen years to life, Hargrove had said. Sewell intended to give Hendrickson a piece of his mind before they took him away.

There were two emails from clients he often played golf with, asking why he hadn’t turned up on Saturday, and one from his stockbroker, tipping a couple of shares. Nothing urgent.

He closed Outlook Express and opened Internet Explorer. He was able to access his two personal bank accounts online and checked them both. There had been no withdrawals, but Sewell hadn’t expected to see any. There was no way Hendrickson could access them, even if Sewell was declared dead. It was the office accounts he was worried about, but he couldn’t get to them online.

He went to the company website and logged on, typing his user ID and password. Nothing much had changed since he’d been in the office. A few more orders had been placed. He went through to the accounts section and flicked through it. Everything was as it should have been. But Sewell was worried about the company bank accounts. He sat back and chewed his lower lip. He hated not knowing what Hendrickson was doing.

He closed Internet Explorer and opened Outlook Express again. He wrote an email to John Garden, swearing the lawyer to secrecy and asking him to check the status of the company bank accounts. Garden ran the company’s legal department as well as acting as Sewell’s private legal adviser and had been with him even before he’d set up the company. Sewell hesitated before he sent the email. The superintendent had been unequivocal about him not making contact with anybody until Hendrickson was in custody. ‘So sue me for not obeying your every word,’ Sewell said, and pressed send.

Shepherd tucked the quilt under Liam’s chin. ‘Good night, sleep tight, hope the bedbugs don’t bite,’ he said, and kissed his son on the forehead.

‘Will you be here tomorrow?’ asked Liam, sleepily.

‘Sure. I’ll have breakfast with you and drive you to school.’

‘And will you pick me up?’

‘I’ll try,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’ve some work to do at the barracks. Some training.’

‘Secret Squirrel?’

Shepherd laughed. ‘Yes. Secret Squirrel.’

‘Are you going back in the army?’

‘Definitely not.’

‘So you’re going back to London?’

‘In a day or two.’

‘Can I come with you?’

‘I’ve got to get us an au pair fixed up first, but as soon as I’ve done that you can be back in your old room.’

‘Soon?’ Liam’s eyes were half closed and Shepherd could see he was struggling to stay awake.

‘Soon,’ said Shepherd.

‘Promise?’

‘Promise.’

‘Okay.’ Liam’s eyelids fluttered and closed.

Shepherd stroked his cheek. ‘Sweet dreams, kid,’ he said.

Shepherd woke up and tried to work out where he was. He relaxed when he remembered he was in Moira and Tom’s house, in the double bed he had shared with Sue whenever they had stayed over. He looked at his watch. It was seven thirty. He could hear Moira downstairs in the kitchen, getting breakfast ready.

He slid out of bed, shaved, showered and changed into a clean shirt and jeans. Liam was sitting at the kitchen table, spooning porridge into his mouth. ‘Hiya, kid, what time do we have to leave for school?’

‘Half past eight,’ Liam replied.

‘Liam, not with your mouth full,’ admonished Moira. ‘Egg and bacon, Daniel?’

‘Lovely,’ said Shepherd. His mother-in-law was a first-class cook and served a great fry-up. ‘Egg and bacon’ was her shorthand for eggs, bacon, sausage, fried bread, tomato and baked beans. He helped himself to coffee. ‘Where’s Tom?’ he asked, sitting next to Liam.

‘Tom leaves at seven on the dot,’ said Moira, ladling beans on to his plate. ‘He likes to be first in. Makes a point of it. He hasn’t had a day off sick in twenty-seven years. What about you? What are you doing today?’

‘It’s Secret Squirrel, Gran,’ said Liam. He took a couple of gulps from a tall glass of orange juice.

‘Just training,’ said Shepherd. ‘Nothing exciting.’ He didn’t want to tell his son or Moira that he was going to spend all morning firing handguns to get his accuracy up to the level expected by SO19.

He tucked into his fry-up, and Liam went upstairs to get ready for school.

‘Shall I pick him up this afternoon?’ asked Moira, and poured herself a cup of tea.

‘What time does he finish?’

‘Half past three.’

‘Thing is, I’m not sure what time I’m going back to London.’

‘But you’ll be here this evening?’

‘I hope so, but it’s not up to me. The Regiment’s handling transport.’

‘This coming and going doesn’t do Liam any good at all,’ said Moira. She sighed. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to nag.’

‘I’ll phone you when I’m done,’ said Shepherd, ‘and, whatever happens, I’ll be back at the weekend.’

Liam reappeared with his schoolbag. Shepherd wolfed down the last of his breakfast, picked up his overnight bag and took his son to the car. Liam gave him directions, and Shepherd realised he’d never even seen the school his son went to. He had no idea who his teacher was. He started to ask questions about it, but Liam was monosyllabic. ‘It’s not my school, Dad,’ he said eventually. ‘My school’s in London.’

‘I know,’ said Shepherd.

‘London’s where my friends are.’

‘I know.’

‘So don’t keep asking me about it. I won’t be here long.’

‘Okay.’

‘Will I?’

‘I hope not.’

Shepherd pulled up and Liam unclipped his seat-belt. ‘I’ll see you tonight, yeah?’

Shepherd nodded.

‘You will be here, won’t you?’ asked Liam.

‘I’ll do my best, kid,’ said Shepherd.

‘Promise?’

‘Cross my heart.’

Liam beamed, slung his bag over his shoulder and ran to the gate. Shepherd knew he’d been playing with words and was suddenly ashamed. He had promised he’d try to be there, but that was not how Liam had understood it. So far as Liam was concerned, Shepherd had promised to be there, and that was a promise he couldn’t make. Telling people what they wanted to hear was part of working undercover, but it was no way for a father to talk to his son.

Larry Hendrickson was sitting with his feet on the desk and sipping his second cup of coffee when his intercom buzzed. It was his secretary telling him that Norman Baston was outside and wanted a word. Hendrickson told her to send him in. Baston was the firm’s IT team leader, a nerdish computer geek with slicked-back hair and two PhDs. He rarely left the computer room so Hendrickson realised it had to be important. Either something was wrong with the system or he had received another job offer and wanted his salary bumped up again. He was already earning six figures, but was worth every penny. The problem was, he knew it.

‘How’s it going, Norm?’ asked Hendrickson, swinging his feet off the desk.

‘Have you heard from Roger?’ asked Baston. He had few social graces and never made small-talk. He was far more comfortable with his computers than he was with people.

‘Not since last week,’ said Hendrickson.

‘Any idea where he is?’

‘What’s the problem?’

‘Maybe nothing, but he logged on yesterday and went through the accounts system. I just wondered if something was wrong.’

Hendrickson fought to stay calm. ‘If there was a problem, I’m sure he’d mention it to me.’

‘When’s he coming in?’

‘Like I said, I haven’t spoken to him since before the weekend, but he didn’t say he was going anywhere.’

‘We had a meeting fixed up today. Thursday, ten fifteen. His secretary says he hasn’t been in all week.’

‘You know what Roger’s like.’

‘He hasn’t even spoken to Barbara.’

‘It’s only Thursday, and it’s not as if the ship will sink if he’s not at the helm, is it? Have you tried his mobile?’

‘Goes straight through to voicemail.’

Hendrickson’s mind was whirling from the ramifications of what Baston had said. Sewell couldn’t have logged on because he was in a shallow grave in the New Forest. So who had got hold of his User ID and password? The only person that came to mind was Tony Nelson. Had he decided to make some extra money by stealing from the company? He might have tortured Sewell before he killed him, forced him to hand over details of the company bank accounts. Hendrickson tried to appear calm. As far as anyone in the company was concerned, Sewell had gone AWOL for a few days. It wasn’t unusual, and it was far too early for Hendrickson to show signs of concern. ‘Email?’ he suggested.

‘I’ll send one now. I just thought maybe he’d said something to you.’

Hendrickson shook his head. ‘I’m sure it’s not worth worrying about.’

Baston put his left thumb to his mouth and began to gnaw at the nail. He ambled out of the office.

Hendrickson stood up and began to pace. Everything had been going exactly as planned. Sewell was dead and buried. Hendrickson had yet to call in the police, but when he did they’d find the house empty. They’d check the hospitals, maybe the ports and airports, run a check on Sewell’s credit cards. It would become a mystery that they’d never solve. Hendrickson knew Sewell liked to meet women through on-line dating agencies and chatrooms: at some point he’d suggest that maybe he had met someone online and either run off with them or been murdered. After a respectable amount of time he’d tighten his control over the company, sack Sewell’s people and bring in his own. There’d be no need to sell the company, not when he was in sole control. That was the plan – but now Nelson was threatening to ruin everything. He wanted to scream with frustration and hurl his coffee mug at the wall, but he fought to stay calm. Now was not the time to lose his temper. He had to stay in control. He’d hired one killer. Now all he had to do was find another and get him to take care of Nelson. It was just a question of money, and Hendrickson had more than enough of that.

He walked down the corridor to Sewell’s office, where Barbara was busy on her word-processor. He tapped on the door. She looked up and smiled when she saw him. ‘Larry, how can I help you?’ She was an attractive brunette in her late forties.

‘Any sign of Roger?’

She shook her head. ‘He’s not answering his phone either.’

‘He didn’t say where he was going, did he?’

‘I was expecting him on Monday.’

‘He mentioned going to Florida. Did he say anything to you?’

‘He didn’t ask me to get him tickets.’

‘And there’ve been no emails from him?’

‘Not this week.’

‘No contact at all?’

‘Do you think something’s wrong, Larry?’

Hendrickson tried to look relaxed. It was too soon to start raising red flags, but it was only natural to be concerned if his partner had gone missing. ‘No– you know what he’s like. He’ll probably turn up tomorrow with a sore head. Anything urgent I can take care of for him?’

‘He’s right up to date. He worked late last Thursday to clear his desk.’

Hendrickson frowned. That wasn’t like Sewell. He was forever behind with his paperwork. In fact, he left much of the day-to-day administration to Hendrickson. ‘I’m the ideas man,’ he’d always say. ‘You’re the bread-and-butter guy, Larry.’ Hendrickson had to chase him to sign contracts and cheques.

‘Thursday night?’

‘He was still here when I left. That’s why I wasn’t worried when he didn’t come in on Friday. I assumed he had a long weekend planned. I’m sure he’s fine.’

‘You’re probably right,’ said Hendrickson. ‘If he does phone in, ask him to give me a call, will you?’

Hendrickson headed back to his own office. He didn’t think for a minute that Sewell would call. Not unless they had phones in hell. But he needed to know who’d been using Sewell’s ID and password to log on to the company system. And what they wanted.

The major walked with Shepherd across the grass to the outdoor shooting range. Four troopers in fatigues were firing three-round bursts of their MP5s at metal cut-out figures of terrorists, the sound of gunfire echoing off the nearby barracks buildings.

‘The Trojan units favour the Glock,’said the major. ‘You used the SIG-Sauer, right?’

A sergeant was loading ammunition into magazines at a wooden bench and he nodded at Shepherd. His fingers were slipping rounds into the magazine quickly and efficiently, working purely by feel.

‘Started with the Browning Hi-Power but, yeah, the fifteen-round magazine gives the P226 the edge every time,’ said Shepherd.

‘The cops use the Glock with a ten-round magazine. The pros put eight in the mag so that the spring doesn’t get overstrained. Two point five kilogram trigger pull. Not my favourite short, but you’re stuck with it.’ Gannon picked up one of the pistols on the bench and handed it to Shepherd.

‘They say it never jams, right?’ said Shepherd.

Gannon pulled a face. ‘No guns jam,’ he said. ‘Ammunition jams. Put a crap round in a Glock and it’ll jam. If you want jam-free, stick with revolvers, and live with having only six shots. The cops don’t bother putting tracer rounds at the bottom of the mag. We do, because in situations where we need constant firepower it lets us know when to change mags. Cops make every shot count so they should always know how many they’ve got left. That’s the theory. Now, let’s see what you do at ten metres.’

Shepherd picked up one of the magazines and slotted it into the butt of the Glock. Gannon stood slightly behind him as he adopted the classic firing stance. Left foot slightly ahead of the right, right hand around the butt, left hand around the right. The targets were simple ringed bullseyes, about two feet in diameter. He fired eight shots in four groups of two at one of the targets, then lowered the gun. All eight shots had gone through the centre of the target; the holes could have been covered by a fifty-pence piece.

‘Show-off,’ said the major, grinning.

‘Like riding a bike,’ said Shepherd. He ejected the empty mag and slotted in a fresh one.

He walked with the major to stand in front of the second target. This one was twenty-five metres away. Shepherd fired four groups of two in quick succession. His accuracy at the longer distance was virtually unchanged.

The major nodded approvingly and walked with Shepherd to the third target. This one was fifty metres away, the upper limit for a handgun. Beyond fifty metres, hitting a target with any degree of accuracy was down to luck more than training. He took a few seconds to get comfortable, forced himself to relax, then fired eight shots. All were within the centre three rings and could have been covered by a saucer. Eight killing shots at fifty metres was good shooting by anyone’s standards. He ejected the mag, opened the breech to check that it was clear, locked the top slide in place and handed the gun to Gannon.

‘Your accuracy’s spot on, Spider, can’t fault you on that,’ said the major. ‘Technique-wise, the double tap is fine for the range, but it’s single shots when you’re on the street. Remember, with the boys in blue every shot counts and has to be accounted for. The big difference between us and the cops is that we shoot until the target goes down. Cops shoot when only absolutely necessary to neutralise the threat.’

‘Got it.’

‘I bloody hope so, Spider, because if you revert to your Sass training and empty a magazine into a bad guy, you go to jail and don’t pass go. Cops can only fire if life is in imminent danger. As soon as the bad guys drop their weapons, you stop firing.’

‘Okay.’

‘What we’re going to do now is to take you back into the Killing House and run you through a series of drills, using blanks. We’ll throw dozens of civilian situations at you. Teenager with an airgun, angry husband holding wife hostage, armed bank robbers, the works. We’ll be testing two things – your marksmanship and, more importantly, your judgement calls. You can’t afford to make a mistake.’

Just then his mobile phone rang. Shepherd grimaced. ‘Sorry,’ he said to the major. ‘I’ve got to keep it on in case the job needs me.’

‘Go ahead,’ said Gannon.

Shepherd walked away and took the call. It was Miss Malcolm from the au pair agency. ‘I haven’t caught you at a bad time, have I, Mr Shepherd?’ she asked.

Shepherd wondered what she’d say if he told her that he was about to go into the SAS Killing House to practise hostage-rescue techniques. ‘No, it’s fine, Miss Malcolm.’

‘I’ve had four girls arrive in London at short notice and I thought I might show you the pick of the litter, so to speak.’

‘That’s good news,’ said Shepherd. ‘The sooner the better, as far as I’m concerned.’

‘I was wondering if I could have one pop along to see you on Friday morning.’

‘That would be fine,’ said Shepherd. There was a burst of automatic fire from the far end of the range.

‘What on earth was that?’ asked Miss Malcolm.

‘Nothing,’ said Shepherd. ‘Just a car backfiring.’ He realised that the major was listening. Gannon mimed firing a burst at him with an MP5 and Shepherd waved him away. ‘Thanks for your call, Miss Malcolm,’ he said and cut the connection. It was only when he put away the phone that he realised she hadn’t told him the girl’s name or where she was from. ‘Sorry,’ he said to Gannon. ‘I’ve got to get an au pair fixed up sharpish.’

‘Couldn’t get one for me, could you? I could do with something to keep me warm at night.’

‘She’ll be cooking, ironing and babysitting Liam. That’ll be her lot,’ said Shepherd. ‘She’ll probably turn out to be a twenty-stone Romanian weight-lifter, but looks are pretty low on my list of requirements.’

Shepherd spent all morning in the Killing House under the supervision of the major and a counterterrorism instructor, a grizzled sergeant whom Shepherd remembered from his days in the SAS. They broke for lunch at one and the major took Shepherd to the mess. A special-projects team, a captain and fifteen troopers, were at an adjoining table and clearly curious as to who the major was with.

‘So, what do you think of the new place?’ asked Gannon, as he started on a plate of sausage and chips.

‘More space than the old barracks,’ said Shepherd. ‘Food’s the same as it ever was, though.’

‘Funnily enough, it used to be the RAF’s catering school,’ said Gannon, stabbing at a sausage. ‘They didn’t leave any chefs behind so we’re stuck with our old guys. Still, it’s only fuel, isn’t it?’

‘That was one of the first things I noticed when I left the Regiment,’ said Shepherd. ‘The weight started to go on. I put on ten pounds in the first month.’

‘All the coffee and doughnuts you cops eat, I suppose.’

‘Soldiering burns up the calories. Police work is less physical, certainly the sort I do.’

‘Stressful, though.’

‘Yeah, I suppose so. Long-term stress. In the Sass, the stress comes in bursts mainly. Bang, bang, bang, then it’s all over and you wait for the shit to hit the fan again. In undercover work it’s constant. Even when a case is over there’s still the worry that someone might find out who you are and what you did.’

‘Revenge, you mean?’

Shepherd buttered a chunk of bread. ‘You’re on your own if it goes tits up,’ he said. ‘In the Sass you’ve got the Regiment to take care of you. Safety in numbers.’

‘Cops take care of their own, don’t they?’

‘Uniforms, maybe, but I’m in a special unit. Most people don’t even know I’m a cop.’

‘Armed?’

‘If it goes with my cover. But as Dan Shepherd, no, I’m not supposed to carry a gun.’

‘Not supposed to?’

Shepherd chuckled. ‘Some rules are meant to be broken,’ he said. ‘Anyone sneaks into my home in the middle of the night, they’d better be wearing body armour.’

They finished their lunch and walked back to the Killing House, past the ammunition stores and the briefing room they called the Kremlin. As always Gannon was carrying his sat phone.

‘How much longer will you be heading up the Increment?’ asked Shepherd.

‘It’s open-ended,’ said the major. ‘Apparently I’m doing such a good job they want me there until I retire or kick the bucket.’

‘All this al-Qaeda activity must keep you in the firing line,’ said Shepherd.

‘You don’t know half of it, Spider. Five is asking us to do some pretty heavy stuff, these days. Stuff we’d never have got away with in the old days.’

‘Difficult to get a handle on what they want, isn’t it?’

‘You knew where you were with the Provos – Brits out, a united Ireland. Simple. Everyone knew what they wanted, and why the British wouldn’t give it to them. What the hell does al-Qaeda want? No one really knows. Death to infidels? The Yanks out of Saudi? Every woman in the world wearing a veil? And the way they wage war is so alien. Suicide bombers? Killing women and children? The Provos could be evil bastards at times, but the al-Qaeda lot are something else. How the hell are you supposed to deal with a suicide bomber?’

‘It’s a sick business, all right.’

‘It’s going to happen here, Spider. Sooner or later. Five are working overtime to keep the lid on it, but there’s only so much they can do. And when it happens it’ll be big.’

‘Spectaculars, the IRA called them,’ said Shepherd. ‘Always hated that. Almost glamorised what they did. A bomb’s a bomb. Casualties are casualties.’

‘But even they drew the line at planes. Or trains. They could have put a bomb on a British Airways flight whenever they wanted. The Dublin to Belfast train was a sitting target. But they never went for it. You know why?’

‘They followed rules, I guess,’ said Shepherd.

‘They regarded it as a war and they followed the rules of war. Most of the time. But al-Qaeda has no rules. The end justifies the means, no matter what the means are. They’ll blow up a school if it serves their purpose. A football ground. The more horrific the better. They’ve got guys out in North Korea trying to buy uranium to build a dirty bomb. They were in Russia for anthrax. They’ve got cells all over the world stockpiling explosives. It’s like trying to treat cancer. You take out one tumour and another one grows somewhere else. You’re always one step behind, trying to catch up. At least with the Provos we knew who the bad guys were. We had the RUC on our side and we had real intel. You know how many Arabs they had working for MI5 on 9/11?’

‘I’d guess none.’

‘You’d guess right. They had a few Arab speakers but they were white Oxbridge graduates. It’s no wonder intelligence in that area is so weak. Still is, as far as I can see. Most of what’s in the MI5 files that go across my desk is guesswork.’ He lifted the sat phone. ‘I just carry this around and wait for it to ring.’

They reached the Killing House. ‘Question,’ said Shepherd.

‘Fire away.’

‘How do you handle a suicide bomber?’

‘You don’t,’ said the major. ‘You can’t. They want to die, so there’s nothing you can say to them, no way you can apply pressure. You have to take them out with as few casualties as possible.’

‘So you slot them, end of story?’

‘Head shot because the explosive is generally strapped to their body. But even then, chances are they’ll go bang. They normally hold the trigger and all they have to do is press it. Even with a clean head shot the hand can spasm and set it off. Plus there’s plan B.’

‘Plan B?’

‘Whoever sends the bomber into play usually has a fallback position. Either a timer or a remote-control trigger. They often use mobile phones.’

‘So slotting the guy doesn’t necessarily make the bomb safe?’

‘The guy can be dead on the ground and you still can’t go near him, not before the bomb-disposal guys. The only way to deal with them is to take them out before they get to their target area. Once they’re in place, you’re screwed. The Israelis deal with them on a daily basis and the only defence they’ve got is public vigilance. You see a Palestinian wearing a bulky jacket, you scream like hell and run for it.’

The sergeant was at the entrance to the Killing House, carrying an MP5. He nodded at Shepherd. ‘You ready for round two, Spider?’

Shepherd grinned. He relished working with professional soldiers again. Undercover work was solitary. He met Hargrove, he occasionally worked with other agents if the particular job required it, but generally he was alone. The comradeship of the Regiment was one of the things he missed most about it.

‘We’ll run through some group hostage situations,’ said Gannon.‘Then I’ve arranged for sniper training.’

‘Excellent,’ said Shepherd. That was another thing he missed about the SAS. The chance to play with big boys’ toys.

When the sergeant called time on the exercises in the Killing House Shepherd was exhausted. He’d been working with four troopers from the counterterrorism wing and they’d pushed him hard. He drank from a plastic bottle of water and spat on the ground. ‘Nothing like the taste of cordite, is there?’ said Gannon.

‘How did it look?’

‘You’ll fit right in to SO19,’ said Gannon. ‘Not quite up to our high standards, of course.’

‘Of course,’ said Shepherd. He handed his weapon to the sergeant.

‘We’re going to have to leave the sniping,’ said Gannon.‘I’ve got to head back to London. Chopper’s ready now.’

Shepherd looked at his watch and groaned. He hadn’t realised how long he’d been in the Killing House. He pulled out his mobile phone and called Moira.

‘Daniel,’ she said, and Shepherd could tell she was annoyed with him.

‘Hiya, Moira. Look, I’m not going to be able to pick Liam up.’

Moira sighed. ‘I collected him from school half an hour ago. A teacher phoned me to say that Liam was waiting at the gates.’

Shepherd’s heart sank. ‘Oh, God, I’m sorry.’

‘And I don’t think that taking the Lord’s name in vain is going to make things any better,’ said Moira.

‘Can I talk to him?’

‘He’s very upset, Daniel.’

Shepherd gritted his teeth, unable to believe he’d screwed up again. Why hadn’t he kept a closer eye on the time?

‘You can’t keep doing this to him,’ said Moira. Her voice was flat: she wasn’t accusing him, simply stating a fact.

‘I know. Can you just tell him I was held up?’

‘He knows that. He knows you don’t do it deliberately.’

The fact that she was being so understanding made Shepherd feel worse. ‘I’m sorry, Moira.’

‘I know you are. You’re always sorry when you let him down. But you can’t keep doing it.’

‘Please, Moira, can I speak to him?’

‘He’s crying. He won’t want to speak to you. Not for a while.’

Shepherd felt as if he’d been punched in the solar plexus. He squatted with his back to the wall. ‘Look, can you get him into the back garden in fifteen minutes?’

‘What on earth for?’

‘Please, Moira, just do as I ask, will you?’

‘Daniel . . .’

‘Fifteen minutes,’ said Shepherd. He cut the connection and banged the back of his head against the wall. ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’

Moira knocked on the bedroom door. ‘Liam?’ she said. There was no reply so she knocked again. ‘Liam?’

‘I’m not hungry,’ said Liam.

‘I haven’t made supper yet,’ said Moira. ‘I want you to come outside.’

‘Why?’

‘I just do.’

‘I want to stay here.’

‘Listen to me, young man, you’ll do as you’re told. Open this door now.’

Moira heard him slide off the bed and pad across the floor. He opened the door and looked up at her, cheeks wet with tears. ‘It’s not fair,’ he said. ‘Dad always does this. He always says he’ll be there and then he’s not.’

Moira bent down so that her face was level with her grandson’s. ‘Your father loves you very much, but sometimes he’s busy.’

‘He thinks his work’s more important than me.’

‘No, he doesn’t,’ said Moira. ‘You’re the most important thing in the world to him. Now, don’t be silly and come out into the garden.’

Liam followed his grandmother down the stairs and out through the kitchen door. Moira took him to the end of the garden where Tom had planted a clump of rosebushes. A light wind blew through the branches of a weeping willow close to the shed.

‘What are we doing, Gran?’ asked Liam.

Moira wasn’t sure, but she’d heard the insistence in her son-in-law’s voice and could tell how upset he was. If he wanted them in the garden, then that was where they would be. They heard the helicopter before they saw it, a thudding whup-whup-whup to their right. Moira shaded her eyes with her hand and peered into the sky. There were large cumulus clouds dotted around, as white as cotton wool. She made out a black dot, no bigger than an insect, highlighted against one, and pointed at it. ‘There, Liam, see it?’

Liam jumped up and down. ‘Is it Dad?’

Despite herself Moira smiled. ‘Yes, I think it probably is.’

The helicopter flew lower and gradually they could make out the rotor and the tail. Then they saw a figure in the open hatchway.

‘It’s Dad!’ yelled Liam.

The helicopter was too far away for Moira to make out the man’s features, but she had no doubt that it was her son-in-law. It was a grand gesture, indeed, but he didn’t seem to understand that being a parent wasn’t about making grand gestures, it was about providing security, and being there for your child, day and night. Liam needed a father who helped him with his homework, played football with him in the garden, tucked him up at night, not an action hero who flew in by helicopter to prove how sorry he was.

The helicopter circled the garden, the rotor wash squashing the grass flat. The man waved from the open door. Liam waved back excitedly. ‘Dad!’

The man blew a kiss.

Liam blew one back. ‘Look, Gran!’

Moira patted his shoulder. ‘Yes, I see him.’

The helicopter banked, flew off to the east, towards London. Liam watched it go. ‘He does love me, doesn’t he, Gran?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Moira, quietly. ‘He does.’

Norman Baston bit into his cheeseburger and checked his email inbox for the tenth time that evening. There was no reply from Roger Sewell. Baston had tried Sewell’s mobile twice and both times it had gone straight to voicemail. Sewell hadn’t logged on again. The first time he’d come in remotely: he hadn’t accessed the system from within the company. Baston wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve. The meeting Sewell had missed that morning had been an important one. Baston knew that Sewell was vehemently against Hendrickson’s ambition to sell the company. If he succeeded, Baston would never realise the true value of his share options. He wanted Sewell to agree to a new contract that would make up for the money he’d expected to get when the firm was sold. It was Sewell’s company and Baston had no quarrel with that, but he knew what a crucial role he had played in its success. It was time for Sewell to pay the piper.

Baston knew exactly what was going on at the company. He had access to the company’s computer records and could monitor all internal and external emails. Sewell was fanatical about his staff not talking to his competitors, and he also wanted to know what they said to each other. Every Monday Baston provided him with a breakdown of Internet usage and a summary of the more interesting email traffic. He knew exactly who Hendrickson was talking to, and what he stood to make if the sale went through. He’d seen all the arguments that Hendrickson had put forward in his attempts to convince Sewell to sell. And he’d read all Sewell’s objections.

Baston also knew what Sewell got up to in his free time, how he liked having sex with women he met through the Internet. Sewell used pictures of male models to lure in young women, then offered them money for kinky sex. Ninety-nine per cent turned him down, but a one per cent success rate was more than enough when he was getting several hundred replies a month. Baston knew where Sewell took the women, what he did with them, and he knew where on the system Sewell stored the digital photographs he took of his escapades. Baston was sure that Sewell would agree to his pay demands. Blackmail was an ugly word. But so was transvestite. And dildo.

Baston took another bite of cheeseburger and slotted a handful of French fries into his mouth. He chewed with relish. It was almost eleven o’clock at night but he was in no rush to go home. Home was a two-up, two-down terraced house in Salford that wouldn’t have been out of place in an episode of Coronation Street. He’d inherited it from his parents after they’d died in a motorway pile-up outside Preston on the day before his seventeenth birthday. He hadn’t changed anything in the house and still slept in a single bed in the second bedroom. He hadn’t been in his parents’ room since the day they’d died. He hadn’t even opened the door. His father’s pipe was still in the ashtray next to the wing-backed chair by the gas fire. Baston never sat in the chair, or in his mother’s space on the sofa. He never cooked in the house. His mother had never let him make so much as a cup of tea, and all he ate now were takeaway meals and breakfast cereal. Home was just a place where he slept and ate.

His office was where he preferred to be, working on his beloved computers. He preferred the machines to his colleagues. Computers never lied, or sneered at you because you had spots or because you would rather read a software manual than talk about soccer or women’s breasts. The money Baston earned wasn’t important, other than as a means of keeping score. There was nothing he wanted to buy. He didn’t drive, he didn’t drink or do drugs, he had all the clothes he needed and the company paid for all the equipment he wanted. But money gave him status. He had access to the payroll program – he’d designed it, and he knew what everyone in the company earned. There weren’t many who earned more than he did, only Hendrickson, Sewell and the sales manager,Bill Willis. If Sewell met Baston’s latest demands he’d overtake Willis. Then it would be Baston who did the sneering as he walked through the car park and saw Willis climbing into his convertible Saab, dressed in his made-to-measure suit and carrying his calf-leather briefcase. Willis always said, ‘Good evening,’ when he saw Baston heading towards the bus stop, and sometimes offered him a lift, but Baston knew he did so only to ram his success in Baston’s face. Well, soon the tables would be turned. Baston knew about Willis’s affair with one of the secretaries in accounting. He was married and so was she, and Baston had kept copies of all the lovey-dovey emails they sent each other. One day he’d send Willis’s wife an envelope stuffed with hard copies. That would serve Willis right.

Baston checked his inbox again, but there was nothing from Sewell. It wasn’t like his boss. Sewell checked his emails every hour or so, and his mobile was rarely off. Baston had sent him half a dozen emails asking him to get in touch either online or by phone. Now he logged on to the company’s email system and checked Sewell’s mailbox. The mail hadn’t been read since Sewell had logged on to the system on Wednesday night. The six emails he’d sent him were all there, unread.

Baston sat back and stared at his monitor. Sewell wasn’t picking up his office email, but he had a personal account, one he used on his laptop. Baston could access the laptop whenever Sewell was online. A couple of years earlier Baston had put in a keystroke program and set up backdoor access that allowed him to roam through the laptop’s hard drive whenever the machine was connected to the Internet. He knew that Sewell would go apeshit if he ever found out, but he’d gone to a great deal of trouble to cover his tracks. His fingers played across the keyboard. Sewell wasn’t online.

Baston took another bite of his cheeseburger and chewed thoughtfully. Okay, so Sewell wasn’t online. And he wasn’t picking up his emails. But maybe he’d sent emails last time he was online. He wiped his greasy hands on his trousers and tapped on the keyboard. He ran a search program, looking for any emails sent to company employees within the last forty-eight hours. There was one, to the head of the firm’s legal department, John Garden. Sewell had sent it on Wednesday night and Garden had read it first thing that morning. It was still in his inbox. Baston chewed as he read it. Sewell didn’t say where he was or what he was doing. In capital letters he told Garden on no account to tell Larry Hendrickson that he’d been in touch, and asked him to check if there had been any unexpected transfers from the company bank accounts and to send a reply to Sewell’s personal email address.

‘What the hell are you up to, Roger?’ Baston muttered. He hated mysteries. And Roger Sewell was certainly behaving mysteriously.

Shepherd opened the fridge and groaned when he saw there was no milk. He took a sip of black coffee, then sat on the sofa and phoned Moira. Liam answered. ‘I knew it would be you, Dad,’ he said excitedly. ‘Did you fly all the way to London in the helicopter?’

‘All the way.’

‘In the clouds and stuff?’

‘We flew under the clouds. You can’t see where you’re going when you fly through clouds so it’s dangerous.’

‘Can I go in a helicopter one day?’

‘Sure you can,’ said Shepherd.

‘Why didn’t you land?’

‘You have to stay away from trees and buildings. I’m sorry I didn’t pick you up from school today. I was busy. I wanted to, but it didn’t work out.’

‘That’s okay.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Course.’

‘Gran said you waited outside.’

‘I was at the gate. Mrs Mowling asked me who was picking me up and she rang Gran. It was okay.’

‘But you were cross with me, yeah?’

Liam didn’t say anything.

‘I’ll see you at the weekend, right?’ said Shepherd.

‘In the helicopter?’

‘I’ll probably drive.’

‘And I can come back to London with you at the weekend?’ asked Liam.

‘Maybe.’

‘You always say “maybe” when you mean “no”. It’s not fair,’ said Liam.

‘If I can make it happen, I will,’ said Shepherd, ‘but I have to get things sorted first. I haven’t even got any milk in the fridge so how could I make you breakfast?’

‘Toast,’ said Liam.

‘No bread.’

‘I don’t need breakfast.’

‘Most important meal of the day,’ said Shepherd.

‘Says who?’

‘Says everyone. Your gran for a start.’

‘I don’t care about breakfast. I want to live at home.’

‘I know you do, kid. I’m only teasing. Let me get some help fixed up and then you can move back in.’

‘Okay.’ Liam sounded wretched.

‘I mean it,’ said Shepherd.

‘Okay.’

‘What are you doing now?’ asked Shepherd.

‘Talking to you.’

‘Before I phoned?’

‘Watching TV.’

‘And you’ve done your homework?’

‘I did it before supper.’

‘Good lad.’

‘Dad?’

‘Yes?’

There was a long pause. ‘Nothing,’ said Liam, eventually.

‘What?’

‘Nothing. See you at the weekend. ’Bye.’ The last few words tumbled out and Liam cut the connection before Shepherd could say anything else. He wasn’t sure if his son had been about to cry or if he was rushing off to do something. Shepherd thought about ringing back, then decided against it. If Liam was upset, a phone conversation wouldn’t help.

When the doorbell rang Shepherd was in the shower. He cursed, grabbed a towel and peered down through the bedroom window. His visitor was a young woman, shoulder-length brown hair, raincoat with the collar up. Shepherd frowned, then remembered that Miss Malcolm had promised to send a potential au pair for him to interview. He opened the door and smiled apologetically. ‘I’m in the shower – give me a minute to get dressed,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you make us both a coffee? The kitchen’s down there.’He pointed, then padded back upstairs where he finished drying and pulled on a grey turtleneck pullover and black jeans.

As he walked into the kitchen the woman handed him a mug of black coffee. ‘I didn’t know if you wanted milk or sugar,’ she said.

‘Black is fine,’ he said. ‘I’m out of milk anyway.’ He sipped the coffee. ‘So, where are you from, then?’ he asked.

The woman frowned. ‘Hampshire, originally.’

‘You’re English?’

‘That surprises you?’ she asked.

‘It’s just that Miss Malcolm said most of the girls in your line of work were from Eastern Europe.’

The woman’s frown deepened. ‘Who do you think I am?’ she said.

‘You’re from the agency? The au pair?’

Now the woman’s eyes sparkled with amusement. ‘You’ve been giving me the runaround for the past week.’

Shepherd groaned. ‘The psychiatrist?’

‘Psychologist.’

‘I’m sorry, but I’m busy.’

‘I just want a few minutes of your time, DC Shepherd.’

Shepherd glared at her. ‘How long have you been with Hargrove’s unit?’ he asked.

‘Six months.’

‘Okay, first rule of this business, we never use ranks or honorifics.’

‘We’re in your home.’

‘It doesn’t matter where we are. You get in the habit of using ranks or saying “sir” and one day you do it in front of someone who gives a shit and puts a bullet in my head.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

Shepherd looked at his watch.

‘Really, this won’t take long,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to ask you to lie on a sofa and talk about your mother. I just want a quick chat.’

‘You want to evaluate my mental state to see whether or not I’m suitable for undercover work,’ said Shepherd. ‘I don’t mean to sound paranoid,’ he added.

‘Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean we’re not out to get you,’ she said. She smiled and took a sip of her coffee. ‘Dan – it’s okay if I call you Dan, is it?’

‘Anything’s better than Detective Constable.’

One of his mobiles rang. It was Hargrove. ‘I’ve got to take this,’ he said. ‘Can you wait for me in the sitting room?’ He went out into the garden before he took the call. ‘If you’re calling to check whether she’s here, the answer’s yes,’ he said frostily.

‘Excuse me?’ said Hargrove.

‘The psychologist. She’s here.’

‘Ah,’ said Hargrove. ‘That’s not why I’m calling, but I’m glad you two are talking.’

‘Because you don’t think I’m up to the job?’

‘Because we all deal with stress in different ways, and she can help you cope with what’s going on in your life.’

‘And what if I refuse to talk to her?’

‘That in itself is a sign that something’s amiss,’ said Hargrove. ‘It’s like a guy with cancer refusing to see a specialist. Denial doesn’t solve anything.’

‘I don’t have cancer, and I’m not in denial,’ said Shepherd.

‘Spider, will you cut me some slack here? You have to see a certified psychologist at least twice a year. You know that. All agents do.’

‘This is different, and you know it is. She’s here to see if I’m firing on all cylinders or if I’m a few sandwiches short of a picnic. And I know I’m mixing my metaphors.’

Hargrove chuckled. ‘Just have a chat with her, and that’ll be the end of it.’

‘Unless she discovers I’m suicidal.’

‘Are you?’

‘Of course not,’ said Shepherd, then flushed as he realised the superintendent was joking. ‘If you’re not calling about her, then what’s up?’ he asked.

‘Angie Kerr,’ said Hargrove. ‘Good news, bad news. The good news is that the CPS wants to do a deal with her.’

‘And the bad?’

‘They want you to make the approach. Because you were on the original case, the Hendrickson one, they want continuity of investigation. If someone else takes over now it’ll be harder to show the chain of the investigation down the line. Charlie Kerr could scream entrapment if a new officer makes the approach. If you do it, it becomes part of the ongoing investigation. You were pursuing the case against her but offered her the option of giving evidence against her husband.’

‘I hope you told them no,’ said Shepherd. ‘There’s no way I want a gangster like Charlie Kerr knowing I was on his case. And it’ll all come out in pre-trial disclosure if I make the approach.’

‘I’m ahead of you, Spider,’ said Hargrove. ‘I told them in no uncertain terms that your security is paramount.’

‘They actually thought I’d go to Angie Kerr and tell her I was an undercover cop? How stupid are the CPS?’

‘They just want to make the best case they can,’ said Hargrove. ‘You can see their point. I’ve suggested we fix up another meeting, then we move in and arrest you and her at the same time. She’ll think we have you in custody and that you’ll roll over on her. We give her the out of rolling over on her husband and that should be that.’

‘I’m due to start with SO19 on Monday,’ said Shepherd. ‘You know how hard it is to stay in character on a job. Am I supposed to hold down two now?’

‘It would just be a meet. You can say you want to go over a few details.’

‘I’m not sure about this,’ said Shepherd. ‘We already have the evidence against her. Manchester CID can bust her for conspiracy to murder on that, and they don’t have to tell her I was undercover. Bearing in mind what her husband will do to her, she’d be a fool to turn down any deal.’

‘If she sees you arrested, she’ll know it’s over.’

Shepherd sighed. ‘Okay. When? I’m on duty all next week, two until ten every day. I can hardly tell them I’m taking a day off to go to Manchester.’

‘What about this afternoon?’

Shepherd cursed. There was time to fix up a meet in Manchester, but it was a long drive and the weekend traffic would be a nightmare. ‘I’ll phone her and get back to you,’ he said.

‘Thanks, Spider. I’ve got your SO19 legend ready and a vehicle. I’ll get them to you this afternoon.’

Shepherd cut the connection, left the mobile on the kitchen table with the two others and went through to the sitting room. The woman was sitting in one of the armchairs. She had taken a clipboard out of her briefcase and was sitting with it on her lap. Her coffee was on a side table. Shepherd headed for the sofa, then stopped himself and sat in one of the armchairs instead. ‘Don’t read anything into my choice of seat,’ he said. ‘I can let you finish your coffee but then I’ve got to drive up to Manchester. Hargrove’s orders. If you have a problem with that, take it up with him.’

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘By the way, I’m Kathy Gift. It’s Dr Gift, actually, but I take your point about not using honorifics.’

‘Gift?’

‘As in present,’ she said. ‘It used to be longer. My great-grandparents were German. They cut off a few syllables when they moved to England.’ She crossed her legs. She was wearing a dark blue skirt that rose above her knees, a matching jacket and a cream shirt. There was a gold necklace with a Star of David round her neck. ‘Did you meet my predecessor?’ she asked.

The previous psychologist had been a sixty-yearold man who wore tweed jackets and smoked a briar pipe. He had a clutch of professional qualifications and was one of the most humourless men that Shepherd had ever met. ‘Only when I had to.’

‘And you weren’t impressed?’

‘He was a clever guy, but unless you’ve done what we do it’s hard to understand what’s involved.’

‘The pressures?’

‘I’m not saying you can’t empathise, because of course you can. But that’s a world away from understanding what we go through.’

‘Is it possible to explain what it’s like?’

‘You’ve spoken to other agents, haven’t you?’

She brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. ‘They all say the same thing initially,’she said.‘Unless you’ve done it, you can’t understand what it’s like.’

‘There you go, then.’

‘But after a few sessions, they realise I’m there to help, not to be judgemental or make career decisions. I’m just someone you can unburden yourself to. Someone who can offer an objective view on how to deal with problems that arise.’

Shepherd’s brow creased. ‘But you’re more than that, aren’t you? You’ve a direct line to Hargrove, and if you think a guy’s going over the edge you’re duty-bound to tell him.’

‘Is that how you’re feeling – that you’re about to go over the edge?’

Shepherd chuckled. ‘You don’t miss a trick, do you?’

‘I’m not trying to trick you. I just want to know what makes you tick. Superintendent Hargrove is concerned, that’s all. You’ve been under a lot of stress lately and he wants reassurance that all’s well.’

‘I can do the job. Isn’t that all that matters?’

‘Short term, of course results are important. But think of a racing car belting along at top speed and developing a fault. Until it blows apart everything probably seems fine.’

‘Does he think I might fall apart?’

‘Don’t read too much into that analogy,’ she said. ‘And he thinks highly of you. You know that.’

‘But he still wants me to talk to a shrink.’

‘Think of it as preventive maintenance.’

Shepherd sipped his coffee. ‘Okay, let’s talk technique. You’ve read my file?’

‘Of course.’

‘So you know about my trick memory.’

‘Photographic, it says in the file.’

‘Whatever. I can recall pretty much everything I see or hear. It fades eventually if I don’t use the information, but short term it’s infallible. It’s because of my memory that I have few problems in maintaining my cover stories. I’m able to compartmentalise the roles I play. I put them on and take them off like I change clothes.’

‘As easy as that?’

‘It’s not easy, but it’s easier for me than it is for a guy who has to try to remember what he said to whom and where he was when he said it. I can cross-reference everything without thinking about it.’

‘You’re lucky.’

‘I guess.’

‘But you’ve been less lucky on the home front.’ She was watching for his reaction.

‘I’m handling it,’ he said.

‘How?’

‘My boy’s staying with his grandparents and I’m interviewing au pairs. As soon as I’ve found one Liam can move back in with me.’

‘That’s not handling what happened, is it? You’re dealing with practicalities, not your feelings.’

‘My feelings don’t come into it. My wife died, it was a damn shame, but life goes on.’

‘You miss her.’ It was a statement, not a question.

‘Of course I miss her.’

‘And Liam?’

‘He lost his mother.’

‘Does he talk about it?’

‘No.’

‘Have you raised it with him?’

‘I don’t want to upset him. He’s a child.’

‘He has to talk about it, Dan. And so do you.’

‘In time.’

She smiled sympathetically. Shepherd was an expert at reading faces, but he still couldn’t tell if her smile was genuine or not. ‘There’s nothing wrong with grief,’ she said. ‘It’s part of the process.’

‘I know, eight stages,’ said Shepherd. ‘Denial, anger, bargaining, guilt, depression, loneliness, acceptance and hope.’

‘And what stage are you at?’

‘I know Sue’s dead, there’s no one to be angry with, there’s no one to make a deal with to get her back, it wasn’t my fault so I don’t feel guilty, I’m too busy to be depressed, I don’t get lonely, I accept that she isn’t coming back. So where does that leave me? At hope? Hoping for what?’

‘It’s interesting that you say there’s no one to be angry with.’

‘It was an accident. She was driving Liam to school and went through a red light. A truck hit her. End of story.’

‘You don’t have to be angry with a person. You can simply be angry with the unfairness of it. Why your wife? Why not some other woman on the school-run?’

‘Shit happens.’

‘Yes, but when it does, don’t we wonder why it’s happened to us?’

‘Thinking about it won’t bring her back.’

‘So you block it.’

‘You’re putting words into my mouth.’

‘So tell me what words you’d use. At the moment all I’m getting is negatives. You’re not guilty, you’re not angry, you’re not depressed. What are you?’

‘I really am going to have to get my skates on,’ said Shepherd. He stood up. ‘I don’t want to be rude but I have to go.’

‘What you really mean is that you want me to go.’

‘That’s right.’

She stood up and handed him her mug. ‘I want to schedule a meeting with you over the next few days.’

‘I’ll let you know.’

Gift’s eyes hardened. ‘I don’t think you understand, Dan. I’m not asking, I’m telling. I have the authority to remove you from active service if I’m not completely satisfied that you’re up to the job.’

‘Bollocks.’

She flashed him a tight smile. ‘Check with the superintendent if you like, but he’ll confirm what I’m saying.’

‘The case I’m on is more important than whether or not I cry myself to sleep at night.’ He held up his hand quickly. ‘Not that I do.’

‘Have you cried at all since your wife died?’

The question stopped Shepherd in his tracks and he lowered his hand. He hadn’t cried when he’d learned that Sue had died. And he hadn’t cried at her funeral. Or afterwards, when he lay alone in the double bed, still able to smell her perfume on the pillow. He wasn’t the crying sort. He’d lost friends, seen two blown to bits by a landmine in Kuwait, but he’d never cried for them. If you saw action you saw death, and there wasn’t time to stand over a grave bawling your eyes out. But friends and fellow soldiers weren’t wives, and it was only when Gift asked the question that Shepherd saw something was wrong when a husband didn’t weep for his dead wife.

Gift touched his elbow. ‘I’m not the enemy, Dan. I’m here to make your life easier.’

‘I can’t come into the office,’ he said quietly.

‘No one’s asking you to,’ she said. ‘I can come to you.’

‘And all we do is talk?’

‘Just talk. What about Monday?’

‘I start the new job on Monday,’ he said. ‘I don’t need any distractions.’

‘Tuesday, then? Or Wednesday?’

‘Wednesday,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’ll be here most of the morning.’ He had already checked with SO19 and he was on the two until ten shift for the first week.

He accompanied her to the front door and let her out. He watched her walk to her black Mazda sports car. He wondered what her choice of car said about her. He had been telling the truth when he told her he could slip into and out of his roles without difficulty. What he hadn’t told her was that he was often more comfortable when he was playing a role than when he was being himself. And even he knew that that wasn’t a good sign.

As the psychologist drove away, Shepherd saw a girl walking briskly towards his garden gate. She was in her twenties, dark hair dyed blonde, wearing a knee-length black leather coat. She walked down the path. ‘My name is Halina, from the agency,’ she said. She had high cheekbones, green, cat-like eyes, gleaming white teeth and a slight American accent.

Shepherd shook her hand. Her nails were painted red but bitten to the quick and she had silver rings on most of her fingers. ‘Where are you from, Halina?’ he asked as they went inside.

‘From Poland,’ she said. ‘Warsaw. I have my references here.’ She handed him a large manila envelope. ‘My name, it means “light” in English.’

Shepherd opened the envelope. There was a letter from a factory manager in Warsaw saying that she was a hard worker and good timekeeper, another from an American couple who said she had done a great job taking care of their six-year-old daughter during their year-long stay in the Polish capital. There was also a photocopy of the application form she had filled in to join Miss Malcolm’s agency. Everything seemed in order. Halina spoke good English, had a clean driving licence and a consistent work history. But something was not right about her. He didn’t know what it was, but he knew she wasn’t to be trusted. His policeman’s instinct had kicked in and he had been in the job long enough to know that, more often than not, he could rely on his gut feelings. He made small-talk with her for fifteen minutes, then sent her on her way with a promise that he’d call Miss Malcolm on Monday. He didn’t want her within a mile of his son, no matter how glowing her references.

He phoned Miss Malcolm and explained that the girl she’d sent wasn’t suitable. She promised to call as soon as she had any other prospects, but pointed out that it was a seller’s market. ‘Like plumbers or electricians,’ she said, ‘sometimes you just have to take what’s available.’

Shepherd thanked her and rang off. His personal opinion was that the welfare of his son was a hell of a lot more important than a leaking tap or a blown fuse, but he knew there was no point in picking a fight with her. If he was going to find someone suitable, he needed Miss Malcolm on his side.

He picked up the Tony Nelson phone and took a deep breath. He had to stop being Dan Shepherd, single parent and undercover police officer. Everything he said on the phone had to be in character. Cold, efficient, ruthless. He focused on what he was about to do. Then he rang Angie Kerr. Her voicemail kicked in and Shepherd cut the connection. He’d try later.

He changed into his running gear and picked up his weighted rucksack. He did a fast ten kilometres and by the time he got back to the house he was drenched with sweat. Two cars were parked in the road outside the house, a new red Rover and a three-year-old white Toyota. Two men were standing at the front door, one with a clipboard, the other with an A4 manila envelope. Shepherd didn’t recognise either but they both had the short hair and stout shoes that marked them out as police officers in plain clothes. ‘Dan Shepherd?’ said the man with the clipboard.

‘Yeah,’ said Shepherd. He slipped off the rucksack and dropped it on the path.

‘Compliments of Superintendent Hargrove,’ said the man, nodding at the Toyota. He held out the clipboard and a pen. ‘Sign at the bottom, please.’ The car would be registered, taxed and insured in the name of the legend he was using as an SO19 officer.

‘The gear’s in the back, sir,’ said the man, handing him the keys. ‘You can check it if you want.’

‘I’m sure it’s fine.’

‘Second page, sir.’

Shepherd signed for the equipment he’d need for his SO19 duty: bulletproof Kevlar vest with ceramic plate, black Nato-style ballistic helmet, Kevlar gloves with leather trigger finger, equipment belt with plastic retention holster for the Glock, Sure-Fire combat light, CS spray, plastic handcuffs, retractable baton, radio pouch and magazine pouches.

‘And page three is for documentation, sir.’ The man fished a white envelope out of his coat pocket and handed it to Shepherd, who signed on the third page, then handed the clipboard back to the man.

The second man gave him the manila envelope. ‘Background files, no need to sign for them,’ said the man. He had a Northern Irish accent. ‘Normal procedures apply.’ They went back to the Rover and drove off.

‘Normal procedures’ meant memorise and destroy. Shepherd opened the boot of the Toyota, took out the black nylon equipment bag and let himself into the house. He dropped the bag and the rucksack in the kitchen, then showered and changed back into his grey pullover and black jeans. He made himself some coffee before he opened the manila envelope.

It contained a CD disk and a dozen sheets of paper in a clear plastic file. Shepherd dropped down on to his sofa and swung his feet on to the coffee-table. The file contained his SO19 legend. He scanned the sheets, committing them to memory. He was Stuart Marsden, armed cop. Three years on the beat in Glasgow followed by four years in a Strathclyde armed-response unit. Two commendations for bravery, promotion on the horizon, single with no children. No emotional baggage. It was a far cry from Shepherd’s own situation.

Marsden’s date of birth was his own. That was par for the course: the people who put together the legends stuck as close as possible to the operative’s own history. It was the small things that could trip up an agent. Getting his birth sign wrong. Forgetting the name of the station in the town where he was born.

He’d worked undercover in Glasgow on several long-term operations so he knew the geography of the city, and an hour or two with a guidebook and map would fill in any gaps.

When he’d finished he closed his eyes and ran through the details. It was all there. He had no idea why he had almost total recall while most people struggled to remember their own telephone number, but it had saved his life on at least two occasions. Once he’d been tied to a chair in a basement faced with three men with axe handles and it had only been his memory that had convinced them he was an art thief who specialised in early-nineteenthcentury religious works. The second time he’d been helping to load a yacht with several hundred kilos of Moroccan hashish when one of the crewmen recognised him from a previous operation. He had pulled a gun and threatened to shoot. Shepherd had been using a different identity on the first operation but his faultless memory had pulled up enough detail from the original legend to persuade the sailors that he’d switched identities because he was being pursued by the DEA. He’d ended up drinking brandy with them all night, their new best friend.

He tossed the plastic file on to the coffee-table, then slotted the CD into the laptop. It contained the personnel files of Sergeant Keith Rose and two dozen members of SO19. Shepherd didn’t want to read the files: it felt like eavesdropping on colleagues. It was one thing to target drugs-dealers and armed robbers, quite another to go against fellow police officers. Keith Rose might well be a bad cop, and there might well be others among the files on the CD, but the majority of the men Shepherd had to read about would be good, honest officers. Shepherd knew how he would hate another cop to read his personnel file– with information about Sue’s death, or what Kathy Gift thought of the way he was dealing with stress. He wouldn’t want a fellow officer to look for signs that he was corrupt.

He stood up and paced around. It was always up to him whether or not he accepted an assignment, but the only reason he had for saying no to this case was that he didn’t want to investigate other cops. And Shepherd knew that wasn’t a good enough reason. He sat down again and started to read.

Norman Baston ambled down the corridor towards Larry Hendrickson’s office. He grinned amiably at Hendrickson’s secretary. ‘Is your lord and master in?’

‘Good morning,Norman,’she said.‘Let me check.’

She picked up her phone and spoke to her boss, then nodded for him to go through.

Hendrickson looked up from his terminal as Baston walked into his office. ‘What’s up, Norm?’ he asked.

Baston closed the door behind him. ‘Have you and Roger got a problem?’

Hendrickson frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

Baston sat down in one of the two chairs facing Hendrickson’s desk and stretched out his legs. ‘You still want to sell the company, right?’

‘You know I do. If it wasn’t for Roger, we’d have done the deal six months ago, but he’s the majority shareholder.’

‘Do you think he might be trying to force you out? And by you, I mean us.’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

Baston took a typed sheet from his jacket pocket and slid it across Hendrickson’s desk.

Hendrickson blanched as he read it.

‘If everything’s rosy, why is he asking John to check the company accounts and not say anything to you?’

Hendrickson fought to keep calm. ‘He’s maybe got a better offer on the table and wants to juggle the figures.’ He stared at the heading on the email, then glanced at the calendar on his desk. The email had been sent on Wednesday night. Five days after Roger Sewell had been shot and buried in the New Forest. And Sewell was dead: Nelson had shown him the photographs. Hendrickson dropped the sheet of paper on to his desk. ‘There’s no way anyone else could have sent that, is there?’

Baston’s brow creased into deep furrows. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Someone messing about with Roger’s email address.’

‘Not unless he gave someone his password. And why would he do that?’

Hendrickson’s heart was pounding and he had a headache. If Nelson was accessing the computer and sending emails under Sewell’s name, what was he hoping to achieve? And why would he email John Garden? If it was money that Nelson wanted, he could have forced Sewell to sign a few cheques before he put a bullet in his head. None of this made any sense. Unless Sewell wasn’t dead. A cold shiver ran down Hendrickson’s spine. And if he wasn’t dead, how had Nelson got the Polaroids?

He tried to keep his voice steady. ‘Has John replied to Roger’s email?’

‘Not yet. What do you think Roger’s up to?’

‘He’s the boss, Norm. He can do what the hell he wants.’

‘But I get the feeling he’s cutting you – and me – out of the loop.’

‘Now you’re being paranoid.’

Baston tapped the sheet of paper. ‘He wants John to check the company accounts, get back to him on his personal email and not tell you. That’s being devious. He’s up to something. For all we know he could be selling his stake to some multinational and we’ll get sod all.’

‘Roger wouldn’t do that.’ Hendrickson was close to throwing up. ‘Look, he’s taken a few days off and he wants to keep a check on things. He probably doesn’t want me to know he’s looking over my shoulder.’ Hendrickson got up, came round the desk and opened the door. ‘It’s nothing, Norm.’

Baston scratched his neck. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about it,’ he said.

‘It’s all that junk food you eat,’ said Hendrickson. ‘Go on, I’ll give you a call as soon as I hear from him.’

Baston didn’t seem convinced. Hendrickson patted his shoulder and eased him out of the room. He closed the door, then rushed over to the desk, picked up the sheet of paper and reread it. If Sewell wasn’t dead, what had Nelson been playing at? And why hadn’t Sewell turned up at the office?

Sewell had to be dead. What was happening now was the prelude to some blackmail attempt. He took out his mobile and called Angie. Her phone went straight to voicemail. Hendrickson didn’t like to leave a message but he couldn’t spend all day calling her. ‘Angie, hi, it’s Larry. Look, I need to talk to you. It’s urgent. Your husband – don’t do anything until you’ve talked to me, okay?’ He cut the connection, then realised he hadn’t said anything about Tony Nelson. Maybe he should have warned her about him. He put his thumb on the redial button but had second thoughts. He didn’t want to sound too worried – it might spook her. Besides, she’d know what he meant. He had to stay in control. A plan was already forming in his mind. He’d get Angie to fix up a meeting with Nelson, then he’d turn up and force the man to tell him what he was playing at.

Charlie Kerr closed one eye, sighted along his cue, and hit the white ball. It clipped the red into the corner pocket and pulled back behind the brown. ‘Nice,’ said Eddie Anderson. He was standing by the scoreboard, balancing his cue on his left foot.

Angie appeared at the door in her pale blue towelling robe, with a glass of orange juice. ‘I’ll be by the pool, babe.’

‘Don’t forget we’re out tonight,’ he said. Two members of the Carlos Rodriguez cartel were coming over to finalise a cocaine deal he’d been putting together. The plan was to take them out to dinner with a couple of high-class escort girls. Dinner at an upmarket Thai restaurant followed by a visit to one of the city-centre casinos, then straight to Aces where they’d get the full VIP treatment.

‘I’ll look good for you, babe,’ she said. She walked up and kissed his cheek. ‘Don’t worry.’

Kerr patted her backside. ‘You always look good,’ he said. He grinned at Anderson. ‘What do you think, Eddie? She looks good, yeah?’

‘A sight for sore eyes,’ said Anderson.

Angie flashed him a smile and headed for the pool. Kerr bent over the table and potted the brown. ‘Nice shot,’ said Anderson.

Kerr went for another red but it hit the edge of the pocket and spun across the table. He swore. ‘I need a coffee. Angie!’ he shouted. There was no answer. ‘I don’t know why we even have a pool,’ he said. ‘She never bloody swims in it, just lies down next to it. Angie!’

‘I’ll make it,’ said Anderson.

‘Your coffee tastes like shit,’ said Kerr.

He went through to the kitchen and switched on the kettle. Angie’s mobile was on the black marble work surface, plugged into a mains socket. Kerr picked it up. It was switched off. He pressed the power button, then spooned coffee into the cafetière. He picked up the phone. There was a single voice message. Kerr played it. Who the hell was Larry?

Shepherd took the black nylon equipment bag up to the bedroom and laid out the contents on the bed. It had his Stuart Marsden cover name scratched into it and looked as if it had been in use for years. The equipment was all labelled, too. Police officers were as bad as SAS troopers when it came to liberating or souveniring equipment. A name-tag was sewn into the inside of the bullet-proof vest and the belt, and ‘Marsden’ had been scratched into the side of the holster. A printed name-tag had been sellotaped to the stem of the flashlight and the CS spray, while ‘SM’ was painted inside the helmet. All the equipment was in good condition but had clearly been used. It was the little things that mattered when it came to maintaining a cover. If he turned up at SO19 with brand new gear, questions would be asked.

He hauled on the vest. It was similar to the one he’d worn in the SAS. It weighed several kilograms, with the ceramic plate in the front pocket to protect the heart and vital organs. He slid the belt round his waist, then slotted the CS spray and retractable baton into their holders.

He took off all the equipment and repacked it in the nylon bag, then sat down on the bed and opened the white envelope. He had destroyed the CD files Hargrove had sent, then burned the sheets of paper. But the white envelope contained the documents he’d need as Stuart Marsden: there was a warrant card, and a driving licence, both with a recent photograph, a Bank of Scotland debit card and a Barclay card. The credit cards would function, Shepherd knew, but every pound would have to be accounted for at the end of the operation. He had a spare wallet into which he slotted the cards and the licence, with half of the banknotes from his own wallet. He put it into his bedside cabinet. He had the weekend to himself before he stepped into the shoes of Stuart Marsden, armed policeman. Not shoes, he reminded himself. Boots. SO19 officers wore regular army-issue black leather boots, and the ones Hargrove had sent were brand new. Shepherd would have preferred to wear his own, but they were brown. He’d have to go running in the new boots, wearing two pairs of thick wool socks to protect his feet until they were broken in.

He got changed and went downstairs with the boots. Before he left the house he phoned Angie Kerr again. The call went through to voicemail, but Shepherd didn’t leave a message.

Angie stretched out on the sun-lounger, then pulled her Marlboros and lighter from the pocket of her robe. She lit a cigarette and she looked at the back of the house. It didn’t feel like a home, even though she’d lived there for more than five years. Charlie had bought the place without telling her. He hadn’t even told her he was putting their old house up for sale. The first she’d known of the sale was when an estate agent had walked in while she was in the shower.

Angie took another pull on her cigarette. She’d decided to sell this house, once Charlie was out of the way, and all the furniture. She’d walk away with just her clothes. She didn’t want anything that would remind her of him. She’d have to wait until a decent interval had passed – play the grief-stricken widow for a few months – but then she’d be set for life. The house was worth at least two million, there was almost a quarter of a million in their joint account, and she had access to three safety-deposit boxes in various banks containing cash and Krugerrands worth well over half a million. She didn’t know where Charlie kept all his money but she had no doubt he had millions stashed in overseas accounts. He’d made a will shortly after they’d married so she was pretty sure that his lawyers would tell her where the money was. But even if they didn’t she had more than enough to live in luxury for the rest of her life.

She flicked ash and lay back on the sun-lounger, enjoying the feel of the sun on her face. She’d sell the villa in Marbella too and buy a place in France. Charlie hated France. He hated the food, he hated the people, he hated not being able to speak the language. He felt comfortable in Spain. He was a face there, he was known, feared. He was ushered into the best nightclubs without queuing or paying, he got the best seats in all the restaurants, and young women lined up to sleep with him. Once Tony Nelson had done his job, she’d never go to Spain again. She’d buy an apartment in London, Chelsea maybe, and a farmhouse in France. She’d make new friends. Real friends. The only friends she had now were the friends Charlie chose for her.

It hadn’t always been like that. He’d been charming when they’d first met. She had been seventeen and a virgin, he was six years older, with money in his pocket, a green MGB and his own house. He had known the men on the doors of all the city’s top clubs. Angie worked at a city-centre hairdresser’s and was only six months away from being a fully qualified stylist when Charlie had walked in, wearing his Armani suit and Gucci shoes. He flirted with her and asked her out, and she had said yes. He was charming, generous and made her laugh. Her parents had been against the marriage but she’d been looking for a way to leave home since she was fourteen and eloping was the perfect excuse.

The first year had been a dream. She’d never asked where Charlie’s money came from, and hadn’t really cared. He hadn’t started hitting her until the second year. He was on his way out one night and she’d asked where he was going. He slapped her, hard, then immediately apologised. He’d hugged her and promised he’d never hit her again, and the next day he’d given her a gold Rolex. He’d hit her again the following week when he saw she wasn’t wearing the watch. She reached over and touched the Rolex. She wore it all the time now, even in the shower. She wouldn’t wear it after they’d buried Charlie. She was going to have it buried with him. She smiled at the thought of him spending eternity with the watch she loathed.

She took another drag on her cigarette, held the smoke deep in her lungs, then exhaled. She’d never smoked before she’d met Charlie. Now she smoked two packets a day. When Charlie was out of the way, she’d stop.

She shivered, although it was a warm day, and opened her eyes. Her husband was standing at the bottom of the sun-lounger. Angie was wearing her sunglasses up on her head and she dropped them down so that she could see his face. He was smiling at her, the cold, humourless smile that was usually the prelude to a beating. Then she saw that he was holding her mobile phone in his left hand.

‘In the house,’ he said. ‘Now.’

‘Charlie, what’s wrong?’

‘You and I are going to have a little chat,’ he said coldly. ‘About Larry.’

Larry Hendrickson walked out of the changing room and threw his towel over his shoulder. He went through the weight-training area. Exercise was the last thing on his mind but he wanted to see Angie Kerr and she was often at the health club during the week. It was where he had met her, where he’d noticed the bruises. She’d first told him about her abusive husband in the club’s fruit juice bar, where he’d talked about Sewell and how his dog-in-the-manger attitude was damaging the company and the prospects of everyone who worked for it. Now he needed to talk to her again, about Tony Nelson. She hadn’t returned his call and he didn’t know where she lived so the health club was his best chance of finding her.

He looked through the glass panel in the door to the aerobics room. A couple of dozen plump housewives were trying to keep up with a lithe ponytailed blonde from New Zealand. Angie wasn’t among them. Hendrickson walked on to the treadmills. There were two blondes at the far end, watching Sky News as they jogged up steep inclines, but neither was Angie Kerr. She wasn’t on any of the exercise bikes, either.

Angie was a keen squash player but she wasn’t on any of the squash courts. And she wasn’t in the sauna or at the juice bar. He ordered an orange and carrot juice and sat down at an empty table. He didn’t know what car she drove and he didn’t want to draw attention to himself by asking at Reception if she was in today. He’d just hope she showed up.

His mobile rang and he looked at the display. It was her. ‘Jesus, Angie, where the hell have you been?’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Have you spoken to Nelson yet?’

Angie didn’t reply.

‘Angie, have you spoken to Nelson yet?’

‘Not since Monday, no.’

‘Have you paid him yet?’

‘What’s wrong, Larry?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think we can trust him, that’s all.’

There was another long pause.

‘Angie, are you listening to me?’

‘I have to see you, Larry,’ she said. She sounded close to tears.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’m at the health club. Can you get away?’

‘You can come here, to the house.’

‘What about your husband?’

‘He’s away,’ said Angie. ‘He won’t be back until next week.’

‘Where do you live?’

‘Hale Barnes, about ten minutes’ drive from the club. Can you come now?’

‘No problem,’ he said. ‘What I’ve got to say is best not said over the phone. Give me the address.’

Hendrickson stopped the car at the roadside and looked at Angie’s house. It was big and modern with huge picture windows and tall chimneys. A long drive wound through sprawling lawns dotted with clumps of well-tended trees. It must have been worth a fortune. Hendrickson could see why she didn’t just walk away from her husband.

There were large black wrought-iron gates at the entrance but they were open. A single car was parked in front of the double garage: Angie’s Jaguar.

It was the first time Hendrickson had been to Angie’s house. She’d be alone and emotionally vulnerable, especially when he told her what Nelson had been doing. Hendrickson could be a shoulder for her to cry on, and maybe, just maybe, it would lead to something else. He’d fancied Angie the first time he’d seen her in the health club. Slim and blonde with full breasts and long legs. Now he’d tell her what had happened and she’d be scared and he’d take her in his arms and tell her it was all right, he’d take care of her, and then he’d cup one of those wonderful breasts. He’d kiss her on the cheek, and then he’d find her lips, and then he’d whisper that maybe they’d be more comfortable in bed.

He took a deep breath and put his Mercedes in gear, rolled slowly up the drive and parked next to the Jaguar. He climbed out and walked to the front door, whistling softly. He rang the bell and shifted from side to side as he waited for the door to open. He heard high heels clicking on a hard wood floor and his stomach turned over. High heels and stockings, her on top, tossing her blonde hair and urging him on.

The door opened. Hendrickson’s smile hardened when he saw that Angie in the flesh was a far cry from the sexy siren of his fantasy. Her face was tear-stained and there was a red blotch on her left cheek as if she’d been slapped. Her hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail and her lipstick was smeared as if she’d been roughly kissed. ‘Hello, Larry,’ she said, avoiding his eyes. ‘Come on in.’ She held open the door, looking at the floor.

‘Are you okay?’ said Hendrickson. It wasn’t how he’d imagined it. She had on wooden sandals, baggy jeans and a pink sweatshirt.

‘Come inside,’ she said.

Hendrickson stood at the threshold. He had a sudden urge to get back into the Mercedes and drive away. But he knew he had to find out what Tony Nelson was up to and the only way to do that was to talk to Angie. He had to find out how far she had gone with Nelson. And he had to get her to arrange a meeting with the man so that he could catch him unawares.

He stepped into the hallway and she closed the door behind him. She pressed her back against the door, her hands flat against the wood. She started crying, big, gasping sobs. Hendrickson didn’t know what to do. In his fantasy he’d held her and tried to kiss her, but sex was now the furthest thing from his mind. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

She didn’t say anything, just stood shaking her head and sobbing.

‘Is it Nelson? Has something happened?’

Angie wrapped her arms round her stomach and slid down the door until she was crouched on the floor. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

Then Hendrickson heard a sharp laugh and whirled around. Two men were standing in a doorway. One was short with tight, black curls and the other was shaven-headed and had the build of a wrestler. He wore a sovereign ring on his wedding finger and a thick gold chain on his right wrist. As he stared at Hendrickson he cracked his knuckles, like pistol shots. It was the smaller man who had laughed. He was carrying a large kitchen knife and swished the blade from side to side. Hendrickson swallowed and took a step back. ‘Who are you?’ he stuttered. ‘What do you want?’

‘We want a chat,’ said the man with the knife.

‘What about?’ said Hendrickson. He took another step back. ‘This isn’t m-m-my house,’ he stammered. He pointed at Angie, who was still sobbing, her forehead resting on her arms. ‘I’m just visiting. I’m not her husband.’

‘No,’ said a voice to his left. A third man walked out of the sitting room. He was tall with receding hair and, like the other big man, he was holding a knife. Its blade glinted under the hall light. The man smiled – a cruel smile, the smile of a man who enjoyed inflicting pain. ‘I am,’ he said.

It took less than five minutes for Larry Hendrickson to tell Kerr everything he knew about Tony Nelson. There had been no need to torture him, or even to hurt him, but Kerr had done it anyway and taken pleasure in it. Wates and Anderson had taken him down to the wine cellar and tied him to a chair while Kerr had taken Angie up to the bedroom. Angie had cried and kept repeating that she was sorry, but it didn’t mean much when she’d hired a hitman to murder him.

Kerr had taken her to the bedroom, made her undress and raped her on their king-sized bed. She didn’t protest and she didn’t struggle. He swore at her when he came and slapped her face. Then he used two Kenzo ties to bind her wrists and ankles and pulled the phone out of its socket. She lay on her side, sobbing into a pillow.

He showered, changed into a fresh polo shirt and khaki chinos, then went downstairs. He walked through the kitchen to the garage and took a pair of bolt-cutters before he headed down to the basement. Kerr could smell the acrid tang of urine as he walked down the wooden steps. Hendrickson had wet himself.

‘This is a mistake,’ quavered Hendrickson.

‘Couldn’t agree with you more, Larry,’ said Kerr, swinging the bolt-cutters.

‘I don’t know what she told you, but it was all her idea,’ said Hendrickson.

‘My wife, you mean?’ asked Kerr.

‘Please—’ said Hendrickson.

‘Please what? Please don’t hurt me? Please don’t kill me?’

‘Look, I’ve got money—’

‘Not as much as I have, Larry.’ Kerr slapped the bolt-cutters in the palm of his hand. ‘This Nelson, how did you get in touch with him?’

‘I phoned him.’

‘I meant the first time. I’m assuming you didn’t get his name from the Yellow Pages.’

‘A friend of a friend. He knows people, he said he’d put the word out, and Nelson got in touch.’

‘What’s he look like?’

‘Dark brown hair, just under six foot. He looks . . .’ Hendrickson struggled to find the right word. ‘ . . . normal,’ he said eventually. ‘He looks like everyone else.’

‘What does he drive?’

‘A Volvo. A grey Volvo.’

‘I don’t suppose you know the number?’

Hendrickson shook his head.

‘Because it’ll save you a toe if you do.’

Hendrickson started to plead but Kerr knelt down next to the chair. He rolled up Hendrickson’s left trouser leg. ‘Nice material,’ said Kerr. ‘Armani?’

‘I don’t know, please, God, I don’t know!’ screamed Hendrickson.

‘Looks like Armani,’ said Kerr.

‘The number of his car. I don’t know the number of his car. Why would I know the number of his car, for God’s sake?’

Kerr slipped the bolt-cutting blades on either side of the little toe on Hendrickson’s left foot. Hendrickson struggled but his ankle and knee were tied to the chair. He rocked the chair backwards and forwards but Wates grabbed his shoulders to hold him still.

Kerr pressed hard on the handles of the bolt-cutters and Hendrickson screamed as the blades bit into his flesh. Kerr felt resistance as the blades hit the bone but he forced the handles together and the toe fell to the floor. Hendrickson’s screams went up an octave. Kerr straightened up, grinning. Anderson had turned away but Wates was grinning as widely as Kerr, relishing Hendrickson’s shrieks. The wine cellar was soundproofed and the nearest neighbour was a hundred yards away so there was no possibility that anyone would hear what was going on.

Gradually Hendrickson’s screams subsided. He was breathing heavily, and his eyes glazed over. Kerr realised he was going into shock. ‘Get him some water,’ he said to Anderson, who hurried up the stairs.

‘How did you meet my wife?’ he asked.

Hendrickson coughed. ‘The gym,’ he said.

‘What – you just walked up and asked if she wanted her husband dead?’

Hendrickson shook his head. Kerr grabbed his hair. ‘Don’t you pass out on me, you shit,’ he said.

When Anderson returned with the water he put the glass to Hendrickson’s lips and he gulped the water. ‘Thank you,’ he gasped.

‘When was the last time you saw Nelson?’

‘Last Friday.’

‘And he killed your business partner?’

Hendrickson nodded.

‘How much did you pay him?’

‘Thirty grand.’

‘How did he do it?’

‘Shot him and buried him in the New Forest.’

‘Nice,’ said Kerr. ‘And you thought he could do the same to me, did you?’

‘That’s not what—’

‘You calling me a liar, Larry?’

‘It’s not that – I just gave her his phone number.’

‘What did I ever do to you? Did I ever cause you any grief? Did I run over your cat? Because if I did, I’d rather you told me now.’

‘I just gave her his number, that’s all.’

Kerr opened his eyes wide. ‘Oh, that’s all right, then. All you did was give my wife the phone number of a contract killer. It’s all been a misunderstanding, then.’

‘Look, please, there’s something you need to know—’

‘I think I have the gist,’ said Kerr, slapping the bolt-cutters against his palm.

‘There’s something else,’ said Hendrickson. ‘If I tell you, will you let me go?’

‘I don’t think there’s anything else I need to know. My darling wife has told me everything.’

‘No, this Nelson, he’s up to something. That’s why I called Angie. He’s trying to stitch me up.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘If I tell you, will you let me go?’

‘If you don’t, I’ll start work on your hands,’ said Kerr.

‘I don’t want to die,’ said Hendrickson.

‘No one wants to die,’ said Kerr. ‘So talk.’

Hendrickson looked at Anderson.

‘Don’t look at him, Larry, look at me. What about this Nelson guy?’

‘He’s been using Roger’s email address to get information about the company.’

‘Who’s Roger?’

‘My partner. The guy I wanted out of the way.’

Kerr frowned. ‘You’re not making any sense. This Roger guy is dead?’

Hendrickson nodded. ‘Nelson showed me photographs. Polaroids.’

‘Of what?’

‘Of Roger. Dead.’

‘But you didn’t see the body?’ asked Kerr, thoughtfully.

‘I didn’t want to be there. I just wanted him out of the way.’

‘So Nelson did the dirty and showed you Polaroids and you gave him the cash?’

‘Yes. But a couple of days later someone logged on to our company website using Roger’s password. And sent an email about the company accounts.’

‘And you think it was Nelson?’

‘It couldn’t be anyone else. That’s why I was trying to get hold of Angie. To warn her about Nelson.’

Kerr considered what Hendrickson had said.

‘So, can I go?’ said Hendrickson. ‘Please. I’m sorry about what happened, but all I did was give your wife a number.’

Kerr ignored him. Nelson must be an amateur to start using a victim’s email. A professional would do the job he’d been paid for, then vanish. Messing around with emails was a risk, and a true professional wouldn’t take risks. Kerr was getting a bad feeling about the mysterious Tony Nelson.

‘I just want to go home,’ pleaded Hendrickson.

‘You’re starting to annoy me now, Larry,’ said Kerr.

Hendrickson began to cry and the damp patch around his groin darkened.

‘Christ, I hate it when they piss themselves,’ said Kerr.

He took off four of Hendrickson’s toes and both his thumbs before he got bored with the torture. Hendrickson had stopped screaming and was passing in and out of consciousness. Kerr dropped the bolt-cutters on the floor and stood back. He nodded at Wates, who pulled a large plastic bag over Hendrickson’s head and used electrical tape to seal it round his neck. Hendrickson struggled for a couple of minutes, then went still.

Kerr went upstairs to the bedroom. Angie was still lying on the bed, crying. Kerr untied her ankles and stroked her hair. ‘Stop crying,’ he said.

Angie took a ragged breath.

Kerr helped her sit up. ‘Come on, there’s something I want you to see,’ he said. ‘In the wine cellar.’

Shepherd phoned Hargrove just before midnight and explained that he’d had no luck in contacting Angie Kerr. Every time he called it went straight through to voicemail, which meant that her phone was switched off so his number wouldn’t show up as a missed call. He’d left one message, short and to the point, asking her to call him, but she hadn’t got back to him.

He went to bed and lay awake for most of the night. He kept thinking about Sue, replaying her accident. He missed her smell, her touch. He missed arguing with her and making up. He missed being inside her and holding her as she gasped. As dawn broke he went downstairs and poured himself a large measure of Jameson’s, then tipped it down the sink. Alcohol wasn’t going to solve anything.

He changed into a pair of faded army shorts and a tattered T-shirt, pulled on two pairs of wool socks and the black army boots, then hefted the brick-filled canvas rucksack on to his shoulders. He ran for the best part of an hour around the streets of Ealing, his boots thudding on the pavements, the rucksack straps chafing his shoulders, taking a perverse pleasure in the pain. By the time he was back home he was close to exhaustion. He took off the boots and socks and examined his feet. No blisters.

He showered, then changed into jeans and a black pullover and walked down to the local shops. He bought copies of the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph and the Sun and, on a whim, a ticket for that night’s lottery draw, letting the machine choose his numbers. He picked up a carton of milk and two freshly baked croissants from the delicatessen, then headed home.

He made himself a cup of coffee and took it with the croissants into the garden. There was a wooden table with two bench seats and he sat down. He and Sue had built the table and seats from a kit they’d bought at their local garden centre. The instructions had been in some Oriental language and half the bolts were missing. Shepherd broke one of the croissants into small pieces. Sue had been seven months pregnant and she’d never looked sexier as she’d brushed her hair out of her eyes and laughed at his D-I-Y attempts. He looked up at the rear of the house. He’d stripped and repainted all the bedroom windows while Sue had done the ones on the ground floor. She’d changed the layout of the garden, putting in two rockeries, a couple of flowerbeds and a dozen fruit trees. The kitchen was her design too, and so were the two bathrooms. She had put her heart and soul into the house and there was no way he could bring himself to sell it. In time, maybe, but not yet.

He finished the croissants and coffee and carried his empty mug back into the house. He looked at his watch. Almost midday. Miss Malcolm had assured him that a girl from the agency would drop in before noon. He had planned to interview the girl, then drive to Hereford to spend the weekend with Liam. While he was up in his bedroom packing an overnight case the doorbell rang.

The girl standing on the doorstep barely came up to his chest, had black hair and wore no makeup. She smiled up at him. ‘Mr Shepherd?’

‘Yes?’

‘I am Katra. The agency said I was to come and see you.’ She was holding a similar manila envelope to the one Halina had shown him. ‘I hope now is not an inconvenient time for me to call.’ She said each word slowly and precisely, as if she had memorised the sentence, and nodded when she’d finished.

‘Come on in,’ he said, and held the door open for her. She was wearing a green parka with a fur-lined hood, sand-coloured cargo pants and scuffed Timberland boots. He showed her into the kitchen. ‘Tea or coffee?’

‘Just water,’ she said. ‘Please.’

Shepherd gave her a glass of tap water and opened the envelope. There was a copy of her agency application, which he scanned. She was twenty-two, although she looked less. She had left school at sixteen and had only worked in a shoe factory. There was a letter on headed notepaper from a police inspector in Slovenia saying that Katra did not have a criminal record. Shepherd frowned. Miss Malcolm hadn’t mentioned she was sending a Slovenian – in fact, she had left him with the impression that she didn’t trust them.

‘You’ve not worked as an au pair before?’ he asked.

‘I have five younger brothers,’ she said.

‘Five?’

‘Five. The youngest is Rufin and he is twelve and can take care of himself now so my father says I can come to England. I want to study English. And work.’

‘You helped raise your brothers, is that it?’

‘My mother died when Rufin was born. My father worked in a steel mill so I had to take care of them all.’

Shepherd did the maths in his head. ‘You were ten when she died?’

‘She was bleeding and the hospital didn’t have enough of her type of blood.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I was very sad but it was a long time ago.’

‘And your father never remarried?’

‘He said he never wanted another wife, that no one could take her place. I cooked and cleaned and took care of them when they were sick. It wasn’t too difficult. I had aunts to help me sometimes and the teachers at school did what they could.’

‘Your father was lucky to have a daughter like you.’

Katra grinned. ‘He knows that. He tells me all the time that I’m just like my mother.’

‘Your English is good but it says here you left school at sixteen.’

‘I studied at home. One of the teachers gave me some books and sometimes she would come to the house to help me practise.’

‘And then you worked at a shoe factory?’ There was a reference letter from the manager, who said that Katra had been a diligent worker and that after six months he had promoted her from the production line to the quality-control department.

‘My father had an accident at the steel mill so I went to work.’

‘You were working and taking care of your family?’

‘The boys were older so they helped. It wasn’t so hard.’ She sipped her water.

‘Miss Malcolm explained my situation?’

‘She said you are a widower and you have a young son.’

Widower. It was the first time Shepherd had heard himself described like that. It sounded Victorian, as if he should have been wearing a frock coat and top hat. But it was what he was. A man whose wife had died.

‘Where is your boy?’ asked Katra.

‘Liam is with his grandparents. I’m on my way to see him now. I need someone who can take him to and from school. You can drive, right?’

‘My father taught me. I have a licence.’

‘An international licence?’

Katra nodded.

‘And I need someone to do laundry, clean the house and cook.’

‘You need a wife,’ she said.

At first Shepherd thought she was being funny or sarcastic, then realised she was not, just factual. It was exactly what he needed. He needed Sue. ‘You’re right,’ he said.

‘I can take care of you both,’ she said. ‘I cook good.’

‘I bet you do,’ he said. He glanced at his watch. ‘Look, what are you doing today?’

‘I come to see you. Then Miss Malcolm said I should call her. That is all I do today.’

‘Where are you staying?’

‘I share a room in a house in Battersea,’ she said. ‘Some Slovenian girls who have been here for a year are letting me stay with them until I have a job. One hundred pounds a week. That’s good, no?’

It seemed expensive to Shepherd, but he smiled and said that it sounded like a good deal. ‘Why don’t you come with me? We’ll go and see Liam.’

She beamed up at him. ‘I have the job?’

Shepherd looked at her. His life often depended on his ability to read people, and he trusted his instincts. Katra seemed open, honest and without guile. ‘Let’s see how you get on with my son first.’

Katra grabbed him around the waist and hugged him, then released him and apologised. ‘I’m sorry, it’s just that I’m so happy.’

Shepherd couldn’t stop a grin.‘Let’s see what Liam thinks,’ he said. ‘He’ll be spending more time with you than I will.’ He picked up his car keys and tossed them to her. ‘You can drive. It’ll give me a chance to see how you handle the car.’

‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

‘Hereford. It’s near Wales. Over to the west.’

She frowned. ‘Do I need a visa? I have my passport but my visa is for the United Kingdom only.’

Shepherd laughed. ‘No, love, you don’t need a visa for Wales.’

He told her to get the car started while he fetched his bag. As he went into the bedroom he caught sight of himself in the mirror. He was smiling, and felt guilty suddenly, as if he had been disloyal in some way to Sue. He sighed. ‘She’ll be good for Liam, love,’ he whispered. ‘She’ll make him laugh. She might even bring some happiness back into the house. God knows, we could do with some.’ He picked up his overnight bag, then went downstairs and locked up.

The engine was running as he climbed into the CRV. Katra was already wearing her seatbelt. He fastened his. ‘Let’s go then,’ he said. ‘You can tell me the story of your life as you drive.’

Wates rolled Hendrickson’s body over on the plastic sheeting. Kerr pointed to a severed toe. ‘You’ve missed a bit, lads,’ he said.

Anderson picked it up, tossed it next to the body and grimaced. ‘What’s the story, boss?’ he asked.

‘Wait until it’s dark and bury it where it’ll never be found. If we knew where the partner was we could bury them together.’

‘What’s the plan about this Nelson guy?’

‘We’ll have a word in his shell-like. Find out what the score is.’

‘Can I say something, boss?’ Anderson looked pained.

‘What the hell’s crawled up your arse and died?’ said Kerr.

‘This is not a good idea, that’s all, you taking this personal.’

‘For fuck’s sake, Eddie, this guy was talking to my wife about putting a bullet in my head.’

‘I don’t mean him. I mean Nelson.’

‘I’ve got to find out what he’s up to. Angie’s given him fifteen grand and he’s not made a move, but he’s pissing around sending emails under a dead guy’s name. That’s a mystery and I hate mysteries.’

‘You’ve always said, right from the first time I started with you, that you never go near the gear or the money. You let Muppets take the risk, you take the reward.’

‘The Gospel according to Charlie Kerr,’ said Kerr.

‘Right, so why are you taking risks with this? What you did to Hendrickson, that was fair enough, he came to your house. But this Nelson, if you’re going to do something, why do it yourself? There’s guys who’d do it for you as a favour, you know that.’

‘Because this is personal, Eddie.’ Anderson still looked uncomfortable. Kerr patted him on the shoulder. ‘It’ll be easy-peasy,’ he said. ‘Angie’ll make a call to arrange a meet and when he turns up we’ll play Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? – he just won’t get to phone a friend.’

Shepherd and Katra arrived in Hereford as the sun was dipping below the horizon. The traffic had been heavy, with holidaymakers heading to Wales for the weekend, and there had been long tail-backs. Shepherd had been impressed by Katra’s driving. She accelerated smoothly and used her mirrors constantly. He had felt relaxed with her at the wheel and knew he could trust her with Liam in the car.

He gave her directions to Moira’s house, and on the way briefed her on what to expect from his in-laws. With the best will in the world Moira was certain to view Katra as an interloper and would probably give her a hard time. Tom would be more easy-going but he wouldn’t be comfortable with a stranger taking care of his grandson. ‘Just be yourself,’ concluded Shepherd. ‘They won’t be fooled by flattery. I tried that when I first met them.’ He shuddered at the memory. ‘Shot me down in flames.’

He’d worn a suit and tie and smiled so much that his face had ached. He had seen the suspicion in Moira’s eyes as soon as he told them he served with the Special Air Service. There was constant friction between the Regiment and the locals, especially in the town’s drinking establishments. The SAS lads needed to blow off steam from time to time, and the local men weren’t happy that the town’s girls made a beeline for the super-fit, self-confident soldiers. Evidently Moira wasn’t going to allow Shepherd to take her beloved daughter without a fight, and her interrogation was as bad as anything he’d faced on his selection week.

Her observations had echoed the views of Shepherd’s own parents when he had told them he wanted to drop out of university, although she had made her point more succinctly. Why would anybody give up a promising academic career for a job whose ultimate aim was to kill people?

Shepherd had drunk a couple of glasses of Tom’s best whiskey and tried to explain that being in the SAS wasn’t about killing people, it was about being the best of the best. It was about testing yourself to breaking point, and defending your country, standing up against the bullies of the world be they terrorists or dictatorships. He never convinced Moira, but he won over Tom. And while they’d both been dubious about an SAS trooper courting their daughter, it was clear that they respected his honesty.

Katra parked the CRV in front of Moira and Tom’s house and looked up at it. ‘It’s nice,’ she said. ‘Well cared-for.’

‘Yeah, she’s house-proud, is Moira,’ said Shepherd.

‘What shall I call her?’

‘Mrs Wintour,’ said Shepherd. ‘Her husband is Tom but you’d better call him Mr Wintour unless he says otherwise.’

‘And is it okay to call you Dan or shall I call you Mr Shepherd?’ she asked.

Shepherd took his hand off the door handle. It was a good question. Moira would notice the informality if she used his first name, and it might be better to make it clear from the outset that Katra was an employee and not a family member. ‘Mr Shepherd’s a good idea, Katra,’ he said, ‘but only while they’re around. Everywhere else it’s Dan.’

The front door opened as Shepherd reached for the bell. ‘Dad!’ Liam shouted. Shepherd picked him up and hugged him. Liam looked at Katra over his shoulder. ‘Who’s she?’ he asked.

‘Manners,’ said Shepherd.

‘I’m Katra,’ she said.

‘Are you my dad’s girlfriend?’

‘Liam!’ said Shepherd.

Moira came down the hallway. ‘What’s this about a girlfriend?’ she said.

‘Liam’s overactive imagination,’ said Shepherd, putting his son down. ‘This is Katra. She’s an au pair.’

‘I thought you were getting a housekeeper,’ Moira said frostily.

‘Housekeeper, au pair, it’s pretty much the same, isn’t it?’

‘Pleased to meet you, Mrs Wintour,’ Katra said.

Moira shook her hand. ‘How old are you?’ she asked.

‘Katra’s twenty-two. Can we do this inside, Moira?’

Moira sniffed pointedly.

‘Where are you from?’ Liam asked Katra, as they walked down the hallway towards the kitchen.

‘Portoroz,’ she said. ‘In Slovenia.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘It’s in Europe,’ she said. ‘Near Russia.’

‘I’ve never heard of it.’

‘We’re a quiet country,’ she said, smiling. They went into the kitchen.

Moira closed the front door. ‘You said you were getting a housekeeper, Daniel. That girl looks barely old enough to take care of herself.’

‘She’s the oldest in her family and she practically raised her siblings single-handed,’said Shepherd.‘She won’t have any trouble with one eight-year-old boy.’

‘Totally unsuitable,’ she said, folding her arms.

‘Moira, she’ll be fine.’

‘When you said housekeeper, I imagined someonemore my age, with experience, someone reliable.’

‘She’s got references and I’ll make some checks of my own on Monday. Liam’s taken to her already.’

‘Liam doesn’t know any better. And what about food? What do they eat in Slovenia?’

Shepherd started to laugh, but stopped when Moira’s eyes narrowed. ‘I’m sure she’ll cope with egg and chips,’ he said. ‘That’s still Liam’s favourite, isn’t it?’

‘Fine, if you won’t take me seriously,’ said Moira. She headed for the kitchen, and Shepherd followed her. He knew it wasn’t Katra personally that Moira was against: it was the idea of anyone other than herself taking care of Liam. He could have turned up with a fifty-year-old Cordon Bleu-trained Scot and Moira would have given her the cold shoulder.

Liam was sitting with Tom at the kitchen table while Katra was spooning coffee into a cafetière. Liam was repeating something she’d said.

Katra laughed. ‘No, you say “prav zadovoljen sem” because you’re a boy. I’m a girl so I say “prav zadovolna sem”. It’s only a small difference, but it’s important.’ She repeated ‘zadovoljen’, stressing the final syllable.

‘Prav zadovoljen sem,’ Liam said, slowly and carefully.

Katra clapped. ‘Well done! You sound like a Slovenian already.’

Liam beamed. ‘Katra’s teaching me Slovenian,’ he said to Shepherd. ‘Prav zadovoljen sem,’ he said. ‘It means I’m happy.’

‘Well, if you’re happy, I’m happy,’ said Shepherd.

‘Let me do that,’ said Moira, reaching for the cafetière.

‘Let the girl be, Moira,’ said Tom. ‘Be nice for the two of us to be waited on for a change.’ Moira glared at him, clearly annoyed at what she saw as a betrayal. He put up his hands in surrender but grinned at Katra, which only made Moira angrier.

‘Tom, this is my kitchen, always has been and always will be,’ she said.

‘And no one keeps a better kitchen than you, my angel,’ said Tom, ‘but if Katra is going to look after Liam and Dan, we should at least let her show us what she can do.’

Moira stood wringing her hands, then sat down at the table.

Liam kept up a torrent of questions while Katra made the coffee. What was her family like? Where had she gone to school? How long would she be staying in England?

‘Maybe five years,’ said Katra.‘I want to earn enough money to start my own business and learn English.’

‘Your English seems pretty good to me already,’ said Tom.

She poured the coffee and carried it over to the table, along with a jug of milk and the sugar bowl. She sat next to Shepherd and watched expectantly as they all sipped. Shepherd and Tom nodded approval, then looked at Moira. She shrugged. ‘Lovely, Katra. Thank you.’

‘How about we give Katra a trial run?’ said Shepherd. ‘She could cook dinner for us.’

Moira’s jaw dropped. ‘Oh, no, I’m doing a roast. I’ve got everything planned.’

Tom put a hand on her arm and gave it an encouraging squeeze. ‘It’s a good idea,’ he said. ‘It’d give you a night off. We could have a nice bottle of wine and let Katra get on with it.’

‘Go on, Gran,’ said Liam. ‘It’ll be fun.’

Katra smiled. ‘I’d be happy to cook for you all,’ she said.

‘There you are, then,’ said Tom.

Shepherd looked at his watch. ‘The lottery,’ he said. ‘I bought a ticket today.’ He fished it out of his wallet.

‘Daniel, really! The lottery’s nothing more than legalised gambling.’

‘It’s for good causes,’ said Shepherd. ‘Come on, you can check the numbers with me.’

Moira glanced at Katra, who had opened the refrigerator and was checking the vegetables. ‘I’ll stay with Katra,’ she said, but Tom took her arm and eased her out of the kitchen.

They went through to the sitting room and he switched on the television. Within five minutes the winning numbers were on the screen. Only two matched numbers that Shepherd had chosen. He scowled and tore his ticket in half.

‘Serves you right,’ said Moira primly.

‘I was going to give you half if I won,’ he teased.

‘I don’t believe that for a second,’ said Moira.

‘Well, you’ll never know now,’ he said.

They watched television until eventually Liam appeared in the doorway. ‘It’s all ready,’ he said.

Katra had prepared the kitchen table with silverware and napkins, and had placed two candles in the centre. There was a wooden basket filled with chunks of bread, and a bowl of sautéed potatoes that smelt strongly of garlic.

‘I did the potatoes,’ said Liam.

Moira looked worriedly at the sink but gleaming pans were stacked on the draining-board and Katra had polished the stove until it shone.

Katra opened the oven and took out a casserole dish.

‘I was going to roast the chicken,’ said Moira, ‘with stuffing.’

‘I know, but Liam said he wanted to try Slovenian food so I showed him how to make kurja obara. It’s a sort of chicken gumbo.’

‘It smells great, Gran,’ said Liam.

‘It’s a recipe from my aunt,’ said Katra, ‘with parsley and celery.’

‘You’re right, Liam – it does smell good,’ said Tom, sitting down and rubbing his hands.

Katra placed a stainless-steel bowl full of steaming dumplings on the table. ‘Metini struklji,’ she said. ‘I took some mint from the garden,’ she told Moira. ‘I hope you don’t mind. The dumplings are traditional Slovenian food but not all English people like them and Liam said you liked sautéed potatoes so I did them as well. Except Liam cooked them.’

‘You told me what to do,’ said Liam. ‘She’s a great cook, isn’t she, Grandma?’

Moira looked at Liam for several seconds, then she smiled. ‘Yes, she is,’ she said. She patted Katra’s arm. ‘It looks lovely, dear. And if it tastes half as good as it smells I think my husband will be fighting to keep you here!’

Katra blushed and giggled. She sat down and served Moira first, then heaped spoonfuls of the chicken on to the plates in front of Shepherd, Tom and Liam. When she’d helped herself, she reached over and took Moira’s hand. ‘Perhaps I could say a grace,’ she said.

Moira nodded enthusiastically. ‘That would be wonderful,’ she said, and gave Shepherd a meaningful look.

Shepherd smiled but didn’t rise to the bait. The fact that he had no religious leanings was one of the many reasons his mother-in-law had thought him an unsuitable husband for Sue. They had been married in Tom and Moira’s church in Hereford but he had had to bite his tongue during their pep talks with the local vicar. He had seen and been through too much to believe in God.

Moira took Liam’s hand and Shepherd took the other. They all bowed their heads as Katra prayed. When she raised her head she said, ‘I hope you all enjoy it.’

They did. Several times during the meal Shepherd caught Moira looking wistfully at Katra. He knew what she was thinking. Katra was physically different from Sue, but her smile and laugh were similar. Liam seemed to have picked up on it, albeit subconsciously. He behaved as if he had known her for years. When the meal was over he helped her clear the table and wash up.

‘What do you think, Moira?’ asked Shepherd, as they went back through to the sitting room for coffee.

‘She’ll do, I suppose,’ she said grudgingly, but Shepherd knew that Katra had won her over, big-time.

The explosives came into the country with some hand-carved furniture that had been ordered by a minor diplomat who was related by marriage to the Saudi royal family. The consignment carried diplomatic privilege and wasn’t even looked at by Customs. It wouldn’t have mattered even if they had inspected the container because the explosives were so well hidden they would never have found them. The furniture was taken to the diplomat’s five-bedroomed house in Mayfair where the Saudi used an electric saw to reduce a mahogany chest to firewood. In the process he retrieved forty plastic-wrapped packages of Semtex. It had been manufactured by the Czechs and shipped to Libya. A Libyan captain with two expensive mistresses had smuggled twenty kilos of it out of his barracks and sold it to a Palestinian, who paid in brand new hundred-dollar bills and took the explosives overland to Saudi Arabia, hidden in a false compartment in a four-wheel drive.

The Saudi already had the detonators. They had been brought into the country by a pilot with Emirates Airlines, hidden in a false compartment of his flight case. The pilot was sympathetic to the aims of the Saudi and his compatriots. He was a Palestinian and two of his teenage cousins had been killed by the Israelis for not stopping quickly enough at a roadblock. The boys were unarmed, just children, and the Israelis hadn’t even offered an apology.

The Saudi was able to buy the rest of the equipment he needed in London. Wire, digital alarm clocks, electrical switches, batteries and a soldering iron. The four vests were tight-fitting with ten pockets, each pocket a perfect fit for one of the packages of Semtex. He sewed the vests by hand, pricking his fingers so often that they were spotted with his blood.

He unwrapped the plastic packages, then used Sellotape to wrap dozens of two-inch nails around each block of explosive and placed them in the pockets. The explosions would be devastating but the shrapnel would do most damage.

He tested the electrical circuits on his dining-table, using flashlight bulbs in place of the detonators. Each vest had three detonators, all connected to one electrical switch. Pressing the electrical switch connected the detonators to the battery. Three was overkill, the Saudi knew, but the detonators couldn’t be tested in advance.

A second circuit ran parallel to the first. It connected the battery to the detonators via a digital alarm clock. Irrespective of whether the electrical switch was activated, the clock would close the second circuit at two minutes past five p.m. The men had been told to trigger their devices at five p.m. If they failed to do so, the bombs would detonate of their own accord. The men would not be told of the secondary circuit.

It was standard operating procedure, the Saudi knew. Most of the hijackers in the planes that had been flown into New York’s World Trade Center had not been told the true nature of their mission. Only the pilots had known. Until the last few seconds the majority of the hijackers had thought that they would be landing at JFK airport and the hostages held until America agreed to al-Qaeda’s terms. As far as the Saudi’s men in London were concerned, they would be the ones in control. They would decide if and when to press the switch. But the Saudi knew that the human element was the weak link in any operation. If the men were captured or injured they might not be able to press their switches. If they had a change of heart, the clock circuit would take over and override the switch mechanism. It was a necessary subterfuge, the Saudi knew. The operation was more important than the operatives.

Shepherd let Katra drive the CRV back to London. Liam wanted to sit in the front but hadn’t argued when Shepherd insisted that he was in the back. He wanted to learn more Slovenian words and Katra taught him a couple of songs. When they got back to Ealing he was singing on his own and could count up to twenty.

Shepherd had tried calling Miss Malcolm from Hereford to confirm that he wanted to hire Katra but had only reached the agency’s answering-machine. He decided that there wouldn’t be a problem and told Katra that she was hired. Katra had beamed.

Moira hadn’t been happy about Shepherd taking Liam to London. There had been tears in her eyes as she’d said goodbye and as the car drove away she’d collapsed into Tom’s arms. Shepherd told himself that his son belonged with him, and Liam was thrilled to be going back to London, especially when he realised that Katra would be taking care of him.

They drove via Battersea, where Katra picked up her suitcase and said goodbye to her friends.

Shepherd let them into the house and switched off the burglar alarm as Liam rushed upstairs with Katra to show her his room. He went into the kitchen. There was a photograph of Sue and Liam on the refrigerator door, held in place by a magnet in the shape of an apple. It had been taken at Hallowe’en the previous year. Liam had been invited to a school-friend’s fancy dress party and Sue had made him a pirate’s outfit. Shepherd had been away on an assignment in Bristol and the job had kept him away overnight so Liam had insisted that he and his mother take a photograph. It was the best photograph he’d ever seen of his wife and child: Sue’s arm was around Liam’s shoulders and they were both grinning from ear to ear.

He heard Liam and Katra laughing upstairs and suddenly felt guilty. He kissed the first and second fingers of his right hand and pressed them to his wife’s face. ‘I’ll always love you, Sue,’ he said softly. ‘She’s just here to keep us together as a family.’

A wave of sadness rushed over him. He was never going to see her again. The photographs and memories were all he had now.

‘Dad!’

Shepherd jumped.

‘Dad, come here!’

Liam was standing at the top of the stairs, one hand on the banister, the other pressed against the wall, swinging his legs backwards and forwards.

‘I’ve told you not to do that,’ said Shepherd. ‘It’s dangerous.’

Liam stopped. ‘Where’s Katra sleeping?’

‘The spare room.’

‘Can’t she sleep with me?’

‘It’s not a sleepover party, Katra’s here to work,’ said Shepherd. ‘Anyway, boys and girls don’t share rooms.’

‘You and Mum did,’ said Liam.

‘Well, if you and Katra ever get married, you can share,’ laughed Shepherd, ‘but until then she has the spare room.’

Katra came up behind Liam and stroked his hair. Liam giggled. ‘Will you marry me, Katra?’

‘Of course. When you are old enough.’

Shepherd went up the stairs and opened the door to the spare room. ‘Have a look, Katra, see what you think.’

There was a double bed and a built-in wardrobe with mirrored sliding doors and a small teak dressing-table. ‘It’s lovely,’ said Katra. ‘Perfect.’

‘You’ll have to share the bathroom with Liam, I’m afraid.’

‘That’s fine,’ she said. ‘In Portoroz we had one bathroom for the seven of us.’

‘Seven?’ said Liam.

‘My father and me and five brothers.’

‘What about your mother?’

‘Katra’s mum died when she was young,’ said Shepherd. He patted Liam’s shoulder. ‘That’s something you’ve got in common.’

‘Was it an accident?’ Liam asked Katra.

‘She was sick.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Liam. He slipped his hand into hers and squeezed it.

‘It was a long time ago,’ she said.

‘It’s not fair, is it, when things like that happen?’

She looked down at him and nodded. ‘No, it’s not fair.’

‘I’ll keep the bathroom tidy,’ he said.

‘Thank you.’

‘It’ll be a first,’ said Shepherd.

‘Dad!’

Shepherd went back outside to fetch Katra’s suitcase and his overnight bag, then took them upstairs. Katra was sitting on her bed. ‘This is so nice,’ she said.‘Thank you.’She pointed at the two black plastic bags at the foot of the bed. ‘What are they?’ she asked.

‘My wife’s . . .’ began Shepherd, but Sue wasn’t his wife, not any more. How was he supposed to refer to her now? ‘They’re Sue’s clothes,’ he said finally. ‘I wasn’t sure what to do with them. I’ll find somewhere else for them.’ He picked them up, one in each hand, and took them down to the garage. He put them under the tool bench, then showed Katra the freezer, which was packed with ready meals. ‘You eat these?’ she said, picking up one of the ice-encrusted boxes.

‘Only if I can’t get a takeaway,’ he said.

‘Takeaway?’

‘You know. Chinese or Indian food. You buy it and take it away.’

‘I will go shopping tomorrow for real food. And you have herbs in your garden?’

‘Are weeds herbs?’

She either didn’t understand the joke, or ignored it. ‘I will need garlic, parsley, marjoram, tarragon and horseradish,’ she said.

‘I guess the supermarket will have them,’ he said. ‘We can go tomorrow. We’ll drop Liam off at the school, then we’ll shop and then I’ve got to go to work. I start at two and my shift finishes at ten so I’ll be back at eleven.’

They headed back to the kitchen. ‘What time does Liam go to bed?’

Shepherd shrugged. ‘So long as he’s up for school, I leave it to him. What do you think? Ten?’

‘Nine might be better.’

‘Nine it is,’ said Shepherd.

Back in the kitchen she opened the fridge and checked the sell-by date on a box of eggs. Then she opened a carton of milk and sniffed it. ‘I can make omelette tonight,’ she said. ‘With chips.’

‘Great,’ said Shepherd.

He switched on the kettle and reached for two coffee mugs, but Katra beat him to it. ‘You relax,’ she said. ‘I will make coffee.’

Shepherd moved out of her way. ‘That grace you said at dinner yesterday, what was it?’

Katra turned pink. ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘I was hoping you wouldn’t ask.’ She busied herself spooning instant coffee into the mugs.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Shepherd.

‘Actually, my family isn’t religious,’ she said. ‘My mother was, but after she died my father refused to set foot inside a church and threw out my mother’s Bible and crucifix.’

‘What about the grace?’

‘I thought Mrs Wintour might like a prayer, so I said a poem.’

‘A poem?’

‘Well, it was a traditional Slovenian song.’

‘What does it mean?’

‘You really want to know?’

Shepherd was enjoying her embarrassment. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘I think it’s important that I know.’

Katra looked as if she was in pain. ‘Well, it’s about a young man who is planning to visit his three girlfriends. The first is a waitress and she will give him something to drink. The second girl is a cook and she will give him something to eat. And the third . . .’

‘Yes?’ said Shepherd, encouragingly.

‘The third is the one he really loves and she will take him to her room.’

Shepherd bit his lower lip to stop himself laughing. ‘Her room?’

Katra looked even more uncomfortable. ‘You know,’ she said. ‘She loved him, so . . .’ She shrugged.

‘And you pretended to be saying grace?’

‘You’re not angry, are you? I am so sorry. I just wanted to please her.’

‘No, Katra, I’m not angry.’ He couldn’t contain himself any longer and burst out laughing.

Liam came in from the sitting room. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

Shepherd grinned at Katra. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Everything’s fine.’

One of the mobiles in his jacket pocket rang. He was carrying three and he fished them out. It was Hargrove, and he went through to the sitting room to take the call. The superintendent wanted to know if he’d spoken to Angie Kerr.

‘I’ve tried every hour but her phone’s off. I don’t want to leave a message.’

‘What do you think?’

‘I don’t know. If she’s had a change of heart she’d have got back to me. It could be as simple as a lost phone.’

‘I’ll check to see if she’s reported it,’ said Hargrove. ‘I’ll put a tail on her as well. But if all else fails you’ll just have to go up and front her.’

‘I’m starting with SO19 tomorrow,’ said Shepherd. ‘Two until ten, it won’t give me much time.’

‘You could get your mates to helicopter you.’

Shepherd grinned. ‘You heard about that.’

‘I wish I had SAS resources,’said Hargrove. ‘Worst possible scenario, you could call in sick and drive up. We’ve got to nail her, and soon.’

‘Let me know about the phone,’ said Shepherd.

‘You got the Stuart Marsden legend?’

‘Sure. It’s fine.’

‘And everything went okay at Hereford?’

‘I’m up to speed. I don’t expect any problems.’

‘I meant with your boy. Is he okay?’

‘Yeah, he’s fine. He’s back here now.’ Liam came running into the sitting room. ‘Can I play football in the garden with Katra?’ he asked.

Shepherd waved him away. ‘I’ve got some father stuff to do,’ he said to Hargrove.

‘Enjoy it while you can.’ Hargrove laughed. ‘Teenagers are a whole different ball-game.’

Shepherd cut the connection and went back to the kitchen. Katra and Liam were running around the garden, chasing a football. Liam was whooping and waving his arms. Shepherd hadn’t seen him so happy for a long time. It was good to have a woman back in the house, even if she was an employee.

Shepherd woke up with a start. He looked at the bedside table and cursed. He hadn’t set the alarm. He grabbed a dressing-gown and rushed down the hallway to Liam’s bedroom. He wasn’t there. Shepherd hurried downstairs. His son was sitting at the kitchen table, washed, dressed in his school uniform and demolishing a plate of scrambled eggs and cheese on toast. His favourite. Katra was pouring coffee.

‘Look what Katra made for me,’ said Liam through a mouthful of egg. ‘I showed her how to do it, but she uses water instead of milk.’

Katra handed Shepherd a mug of coffee. ‘There’s no need to get up,’ she said. ‘I can take him to school.’

‘I said I’d show her where to go,’ said Liam.

‘Are you sure?’ Shepherd asked Katra, and sipped his coffee. She’d made it just as he liked it.

‘It’s no problem,’ said Katra.

Shepherd forced a smile. It was the first time he’d entrusted his son to anyone other than family, and he barely knew Katra. ‘Okay,’ he said.

‘Is the white car yours too?’ asked Katra.

‘It’s for work,’ said Shepherd. ‘You can use the CRV.’ He hadn’t told Katra the exact nature of his work, but she knew he was a police officer.

Liam finished his breakfast and Katra helped him put on his coat. Shepherd kissed him. ‘You be good, yeah?’ he said.

‘I’m always good,’ said Liam.

‘I’ll do the shopping on my way home,’ said Katra.

Shepherd took out his wallet and gave her two fifty-pound notes. Then he knelt beside Liam. ‘I won’t be here when you get home,’ he said. ‘My shift finishes at ten, so I won’t be back until you’re in bed.’

‘I could stay up,’ said Liam.

Shepherd laughed.‘You’ll be in bed by nine,young man.’

‘But you’ll come in and see me, even if I’m asleep?’

‘Sure,’ said Shepherd.

He stood at the front window and watched Katra and Liam climb into the CRV. Panic gripped him and he fought to control it. Liam had been in the back of the car when Sue had jumped the red light and crashed into a delivery truck. He’d emerged from the accident unscathed but he’d seen his mother die and Shepherd couldn’t imagine what that must have been like for an eight-year-old boy.

Liam waved. ‘Seatbelt,’ mouthed Shepherd. Katra turned and said something to the boy, then Liam clipped on his belt.

The CRV was a big four-by-four with airbags and anti-lock braking system and it was high off the ground, more crash resistant than the VW Golf Sue had been driving when she’d died. Even so, Shepherd had to fight the urge to run out and tell Katra he’d drive Liam to school. It was ridiculous, of course. Moira had been running Liam to and from school in Hereford and Shepherd hadn’t given it a second thought. Sue’s accident had been a stupid mistake, coupled with bad luck. Liam was no more at risk in the CRV with Katra than any other child on the school-run that morning. He’d be fine. Katra beeped the horn and Shepherd raised his coffee mug in salute. Suddenly he remembered that he hadn’t given Katra a mobile phone so that she could contact him in an emergency. ‘Relax,’ he whispered. ‘He’s in good hands.’