Stephen Leather - True Colours

‘Difficult to say, no one’s taken a shot at me yet.’

Singh grinned. ‘I meant comfort-wise.’

‘Yeah, good. Most of the time I’m not even aware that it’s on.’

‘No itching, no discomfort?’

‘I’ve started wearing a regular cotton vest under it, and it’s fine.’

Shepherd shook hands with Singh then walked to the lift and took it to Button’s floor. She was sitting at her desk studying a whiteboard on which were stuck a dozen surveillance photographs of Asian teenagers. She waved a hand as he looked at the pictures. ‘Nothing to do with you, Spider,’ she said. ‘This is up in Bradford. They’re planning a Mumbai-type massacre. They seem serious, too.’ She nodded at a chair and Shepherd sat down, placing the backpack on the floor and hoping that she wouldn’t ask about what he’d been doing with Amar Singh. ‘But that’s not what I needed to see you about. There’s a problem over Grechko.’

‘Problem?’

‘Well, let’s call it a complication,’ said Button.

Shepherd used his satnav to find Shortt’s house, a neat three-bedroom semi-detached in Wembley, about half a mile from the stadium. There was a Jaguar parked in the driveway so Shepherd left his X5 in the street. It was just after ten o’clock in the morning. Shepherd had already checked in with Popov and Grechko wasn’t planning to leave the house until early evening, so he’d said that he would take the morning off. Shepherd had picked up Harper in Bayswater. As always he was wearing his parka with the hood up.

Shortt opened the front door wearing a polo shirt and pale blue jeans. He grinned when he saw Harper and stepped forward to hug him. ‘Bloody hell, what’s it been? Twelve years?’

‘More,’ said Harper. ‘You’re looking good, Jimbo.’

‘Clean living,’ said Shortt. ‘What’s with the parka? The mod look coming back, is it?’

Harper grinned and flipped the hood back as he walked into the hallway. Shepherd followed him. ‘Where’s the family?’ he asked.

‘The wife’s playing golf and the kids are at school,’ said Shortt, closing the front door.

‘Golf?’

Shortt shrugged. ‘I know. Why ruin a perfectly good walk by walloping a little ball with a piece of metal on the end of a stick? But she’s bloody good at it. Her handicap’s two. Her instructor reckons she’ll be scratch within the year.’

‘Good for her,’ said Shepherd, following Shortt through to the kitchen. He was carrying a black nylon holdall.

‘Coffee?’ asked Shortt. ‘I’ve just made a pot.’

Shepherd and Harper nodded and sat down at the kitchen table as Shortt prepared three mugs of coffee. Shepherd opened his holdall and took out the iPad and transmitter that Singh had given him. Harper looked at the transmitter with interest. ‘See, I knew you had a Q,’ he said.

Shepherd laughed. ‘We don’t call him Q. His name’s Amar.’

Shortt put the coffee on the table and sat down. ‘So what’s the story?’ he asked.

‘We need intel,’ said Shepherd. ‘Khan knows me so I have to keep well away. We need to get that transmitter on to his car, under a wheel arch, then follow him at a distance. Lex doesn’t have a car and neither does Jock, so it’s down to you with Lex’s help.’

‘I can do that,’ said Shortt.

‘The Jag’s a bit high profile,’ said Shepherd.

‘I’ll swap with the wife,’ said Jimbo. ‘She’s got a Vauxhall Astra.’

‘Best to attach it in the early hours of the morning,’ said Shepherd. ‘The range is limitless, pretty much. It tracks through the phone network so you can be anywhere in the world and pick up the location.’

‘Nice,’ said Harper. ‘Think you could get me one?’

Shepherd laughed. ‘No, and I’ll need that one back when we’re done.’

He reached into the holdall and took out a clipboard with a questionnaire and a laminated card clipped to it. He passed it across the table to Shortt. ‘We need to know what his personal situation is. It could be that he lives alone but, assuming he doesn’t, we need to know who he lives with, where he works, where he goes.’ He tapped the laminated card. ‘This is a council ID, no photograph but it looks like the real thing. Are you up for ringing the doorbell and seeing if you can get them to answer a few questions? You tell them that the council’s doing a residents’ survey to know what resources the area needs.’

Shortt nodded. ‘I can do that.’ He grinned. ‘I was always good at the secret squirrel stuff.’ He looked over at Harper. ‘Did Spider ever tell you about my little adventure during Selection?’

Harper shook his head.

‘I was told to go into a pub in the St Paul’s district of Bristol with a gun. I was the only white face in a pub full of Afro-Caribbean blokes. My sole task was to stay there for an hour without anyone detecting the weapon. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But the problem was that the pub was the headquarters for the local pimps and drug dealers, and any unfamiliar face was instantly suspect. As soon as I stepped through the door, one of the players whispered to this very good-looking woman who made straight for me. She said, “Hi, handsome, want to buy me a drink?” and was all over me, and her hands were everywhere — and I mean everywhere!’ He grinned. ‘Perks of the job, you might say. Of course, she didn’t really fancy me, she was just patting me down to check if I was carrying a weapon or wearing a wire.’

‘She didn’t find the gun?’

‘I’d tucked it between my legs. If she’d felt it I’d have just told her she was giving me a hard-on. But I tell you, by the time I walked out of that pub I had them eating out of my hands.’ He picked up the clipboard. ‘After that, this’ll be a piece of cake.’

‘Any chance of you doing this tomorrow?’ asked Shepherd.

‘I don’t see why not,’ said Shortt. ‘I can rejig my schedule easy enough.’ He looked over at Harper. ‘Where are you staying?’

‘Bayswater,’ said Harper.

‘I’ll pick you up five-ish, so we can get there nice and early,’ said Shortt.

Shepherd finished his coffee and put down his mug. ‘And the guns? Are they here?’

Shortt stood up, opened a cupboard and took out a pole with a hook on the end. He saw the look of confusion on Shepherd and Harper’s faces. ‘Attic,’ he said.

The three men went upstairs and Shortt used the hook to pull open a trapdoor and release a folding metal ladder. He propped the pole up against the wall, went up the ladder and flicked a switch. A fluorescent light flickered into life as Shepherd climbed up behind him. The attic had been lined with plywood and the floor was bare boards. There were half a dozen cardboard boxes and a metal trunk against one wall and a battered chest of drawers against another.

‘Give me a hand to move this,’ said Shortt, taking one end of the chest of drawers. Shepherd took the other and together they dragged it into the centre of the attic as Harper came up the ladder. Shortt pulled open one of the drawers and took out a screwdriver. The sheet of plywood behind the chest of drawers was held against the rafters by six screws and Shortt undid them one at a time. He passed them to Shepherd and pulled the sheet away and propped it against the wall.

Shepherd whistled softly as he saw what had been concealed behind the panel. There was an AK-47 with a foldable stock and below it an AK-74. And beneath the two carbines were two pistols. Standing upright was a Lee Enfield bolt-action rifle that must have been more than sixty years old. Shepherd took it out and held it up to his shoulder. ‘How the hell did you get this?’

‘Took it off a dead muj,’ said Shortt. ‘He didn’t have any use for it, seeing how he was dead and all.’