Stephen Leather: True Colours

‘I’m glad you did,’ said Button. ‘Without your warning, Mr Chaudhry and his family would probably have died.’

Shepherd groaned. He could feel his feet again and he wriggled his toes inside his boots.

‘Are you OK?’

‘I’ve just been hit with fifty thousand volts after putting out a fire with my bare hands, so no, I’m not OK.’

‘Your hands are fine,’ she said. ‘A bit singed, but no major burning. Which is more than can be said for Harris. He’s going to be hurting for a few weeks and he’s got months of skin grafts ahead of him. But you saved his life.’

‘Yeah, well, I’m sure he’ll be grateful. What about Weaver?’

‘An ARV ran into him at the end of the road,’ said Button. ‘Literally. He ended up on the bonnet.’

‘Better late than never,’ said Shepherd. He tried to sit up and Button helped him. ‘He bought the petrol a week ago, some service station on the M1. They should have CCTV footage.’ He touched his chest and winced. ‘That bloody hurts.’

‘Well, don’t touch it,’ admonished Button. ‘And they say it won’t hurt for long and there’ll be no lasting effects.’

‘I presume by “they” you mean the bastards who shot me,’ said Shepherd. He winced again. ‘Oh, and Weaver and Harris were behind that arson attack on the Pakistani family in Southall. Connolly knows what’s going on and he’ll roll over, guaranteed. He’s as weak as dishwater.’

‘That’s something,’ said Button. ‘Though frankly this is all a bit of a disappointment. The whole point of penetrating Weaver’s nasty little gang was to get close to his fascist German contacts in Frankfurt. They’re the ones planning the real atrocities. Weaver is just small time.’

‘He was planning on killing a whole family tonight,’ said Shepherd.

‘I’m not saying we didn’t do the right thing in stopping him,’ said Button. ‘But there were bigger fish to fry and now we’re going to have to find another way of catching them.’ She looked at her watch, a sleek Cartier on a blue leather strap. ‘We’ll stay in here until the cops have finished,’ she said. ‘Might as well maintain your cover. The fact you were tasered means Weaver and his pals won’t ever think that you were an inside man. You might even be able to use the Andy Taylor legend again down the line.’ She nodded thoughtfully. ‘If we play it right, we might be able to use it to our advantage. Use it as a badge of honour with the Germans.’

Shepherd took a slow, deep breath. His chest wasn’t burning as much and the feeling had almost returned to his fingers and toes. ‘I still can’t believe they tasered me with all that petrol around,’ he said.

‘It was either that or a bullet,’ said Button. ‘Be grateful for small mercies. They saw you helping Harris and then you moved towards them.’

‘I was unarmed, Charlie. And I was just about to put my hands up.’ He ran his hands through his hair. ‘Still, you’re right. It could have been worse.’ He winced as a sudden pain lanced through his chest, just below his heart. He took slow shallow breaths, panting like a dog.

‘Are you OK, Spider?’ asked Button, putting a hand on his shoulder.

‘I just need a shower,’ he said. ‘I feel dirty.’

‘Yeah, they were a nasty bunch,’ said Button. ‘But they’re off the streets now and they’ll be going away for a long, long time. Job well done, seriously. Bit scrappy at the end, I can’t argue with that, but you saved lives and put the bad guys away. There aren’t many men who could have done what you did tonight.’

Shepherd forced a smile, acknowledging the compliment. ‘I don’t understand how they can set fire to a house with kids and babies inside,’ said Shepherd. ‘Men hating men, OK, I get that, but how can you hate a baby?’

‘There’s no logic to what they do,’ said Button. ‘All we can do is try to stop it from happening.’

‘Yeah, well, we stopped it tonight but they’ve burnt other families in the past,’ said Shepherd. ‘And what’s crazy is that most of them are fathers themselves. Weaver’s got three kids, McDermid’s wife gave birth a month ago and Connolly’s got two daughters with one on the way.’ He shook his head. ‘I just don’t get it.’

‘There’s no point in looking for an explanation,’ said Button. ‘They’re just racist haters, with no rhyme or reason.’

‘People aren’t born hating,’ said Shepherd. ‘Kids of all races and colours play happily together when they’re toddlers. They have to be taught how to hate.’ He looked at his tattooed knuckles and grimaced. ‘I can’t wait to get these off,’ he said.

‘One laser treatment will do it,’ said Button. ‘Two at the most.’

‘I’ve never liked tattoos,’ said Shepherd. He turned his hands over and examined the reddened palms. They were greasy and he realised that the paramedics must have rubbed some ointment over the burns. Button was right, the damage was only superficial.

‘They were camouflage, and they worked,’ said Button.

‘I want them off tomorrow, first thing,’ said Shepherd.

‘No problem. Go home. Have that shower. I’ll call you first thing and I’ll have a laser clinic fixed up. And take a few days off, you’ve earned it.’

Yuri Buryakov stifled a cavernous yawn and glanced down at his watch, a Patek Philippe Tourbillon that had cost him over a million dollars. The conference had been going on for over eight hours now, with only a one-hour recess for lunch providing any relief. He had sat through a succession of speakers, listening to the simultaneous translation in his earpiece, but all he had heard was one piece of bluster or special pleading after another, one more reason why Russia should let the West have its gas, coal and oil for nothing.

He allowed his gaze to wander for what seemed like the thousandth time that day. He knew, because his German hosts had told him so over and over again until he could almost have recited it in his sleep, that the Sanssouci Palace in Potsdam was a rococo masterpiece built by Frederick the Great and rivalling Versailles for its opulence and extravagance, if not its size, but all that ornate plasterwork, marble, silver and gold was like too much rich food to him and left him feeling just as queasy. There was a certain irony that this pleasure palace, created by Frederick as a place to escape the burdens of state — its very name, Sanssouci, meant ‘without care’ — should now be playing host to a collection of politicians, officials, functionaries and flunkies, who could not have been less carefree, nor more dull and dour, if they’d tried.

The German Chancellor was the host of this international conference, called to discuss the future security of power supplies for the West. The US Secretary of State, the female head of the CIA, the British Foreign Secretary and the head of MI6, and the leaders or foreign secretaries and spy chiefs of all the EC and NATO countries, had been wrangling all day with the delegation from the major oil, gas, coal and electricity producers of Russia and half a dozen other states of the old Soviet bloc. Buryakov had no interest in spending any more time listening to the turgid speeches and debates, nor in gazing at the lavishly gilded interiors and the immaculate terraced gardens, ornamental fountains and sweeping vistas outside. Culture of all kinds — even the Bolshoi — left him cold. It had been a long day and he just wanted to get back to his hotel on Kurfurstendamm — the Knightsbridge of Berlin — and find some more congenial company than politicians, diplomats and bureaucrats. He would eat some oysters and caviar, drink some ice-cold schnapps or vodka, and then, if the mood was on him, have his bodyguards bring a whore to his suite.