Stephen Leather - False Friends

‘But as the Americans are taking the credit, they’ll be the ones suffering the consequences,’ said Button. ‘No one knows of our involvement and the Americans certainly won’t be publicising that you were with the Seal team.’

‘But if al-Qaeda does lash out at the UK, Raj and Harvey could be at the forefront.’

‘We’ll be listening for chatter and the Border Agency is on alert,’ said Button. ‘I think if anything it’ll subdue al-Qaeda for a while. They’ll retrench and regroup.’

‘Would you like a bet on that?’

‘I never gamble, Spider. You know that.’ She raised her glass to him. ‘And seriously, I’m glad you’re okay. I was never convinced that sending you to Pakistan was a good idea but my bosses wanted one of ours on the team. Word had come down from Number Ten.’

‘What, to demonstrate that the special relationship is still there?’

‘Who knows how our masters think?’ said Button. ‘It was probably just to get one over on the French.’ She sipped her wine again. ‘While we’re waiting for Chaudhry and Malik to be put into play there’s another job coming up, if you’re interested.’

‘I get a choice?’ said Shepherd. ‘That’s a change.’

‘It means a secondment to the Met.’

Shepherd’s eyes narrowed. ‘I’m not investigating cops again,’ he said. ‘I told you after the last time, that’s not what I’m about.’

‘Heard and understood,’ said Button. ‘No, it’s run-of-the-mill bad guys being targeted. And it’ll mean you meeting up with someone from your past. Sam Hargrove.’

It was the last name that Shepherd had expected to hear and he raised his eyebrows.

‘Sam’s found a home in the Met’s Covert Operations Group and needs a hand on an undercover job,’ continued Button. ‘He’s a DCS now. He was still a superintendent when you were with his unit, right?’

‘Yeah,’ said Shepherd. ‘Good to see him doing so well. Did he ask for me specifically?’

Button shook her head. ‘The Met is stretched, SOCA’s in disarray and the head of Covert Policing Command knows my boss at Five so I think it got discussed over lunch at the Garrick and I was asked to put someone forward. With your police background you were the obvious choice.’

‘Okay,’ said Shepherd hesitantly.

‘Problem?’

‘No, it’s not that. It’s just, you know, the past is a different country. You can’t go back, can you? I left the Met to join SOCA and left SOCA to go to Five. It’s going to feel strange going back to where I started.’

‘It wasn’t that long ago. But if you’ve any reservations, any reservations at all, let me know.’

‘No, it’s all good.’ He nodded. ‘Really. It’ll be interesting to see how the Met’s been getting on without me.’ Shepherd smiled. He wasn’t worried about working with Sam Hargrove again. In fact he was looking forward to it. He’d enjoyed working for Hargrove in the Met’s undercover unit in the days before it had been taken over by SOCA, and there had several times over the past few years when he’d considered giving his former boss a call.

‘Why don’t you sleep on it and if you’re not keen you can let me know tomorrow?’

‘I don’t need to,’ said Shepherd. ‘It’ll be fine. It’s not as if I’m rushed off my feet, is it?’

‘There’s a lot of waiting, that’s true,’ said Button. ‘But I’ve made it clear to Sam that if you are co-opted your Five work takes absolute precedence. If Chaudhry or Malik need you, you drop everything.’

Shepherd nodded and sipped his wine, watching her over the top of his glass. She almost always referred to the men by their family names, almost never as Raj and Harvey. He wondered if it was deliberate and that she was distancing herself from them. And that made him wonder how she referred to him when he wasn’t around. Was he Dan? Or Spider? Or Shepherd?

‘What?’ she said, and he realised that he must have been staring.

He grinned. ‘Nothing, I was just wondering if Jimmy Sharpe would be involved. I haven’t seen him for months but the last I heard was that he was doing some undercover work with the Met.’

‘Well, if he is, give him my best.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I’d better be going, I’ve a stack of emails that need answering and I’ve a conference call with Langley in a couple of hours.’

Shepherd slapped his forehead. ‘Damn, I knew I’d forgotten something. I was supposed to Skype Liam.’ He groaned. ‘They’re not allowed to use their laptops after eight. I’ll have to call him tomorrow.’

‘How’s he getting on at boarding school?’

‘Loves it,’ said Shepherd. ‘His grades are improving and he’s really into all the sports. He’s started rock climbing, and that’s something I used to do as a kid so hopefully we’ll get in a few climbs together at some point.’

‘It’s funny how quickly they adapt,’ said Button. ‘My daughter always wanted to go to boarding school. There were a few tears the first week she was away, but these days she can’t wait to get back. It’s a teenage thing, I guess; they’d rather be with their friends.’

‘It works out really well for me,’ said Shepherd. ‘I can take him out any weekend if I want and they’re very relaxed about midweek visits. I try to Skype him every evening but this whole Pakistan thing has meant that I haven’t spoken to him for a week.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘I spoke to him just before I went away, but obviously I didn’t say where I was going, just that I was working and that I probably wouldn’t be able to use my phone or computer. The Yanks were so paranoid they took everything off me as soon as I got to their airbase. They didn’t give me my phone back until I was boarding my plane this morning and by then the battery was dead.’

‘He’ll be okay. He’s used to your absences.’

‘It’s not him I’m worried about,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’m the one that misses him, not the other way round.’ He drained his glass. ‘At least I don’t have to nag him to do his homework; the school’s doing a better job of that than I ever did.’

He stood up and showed Button to the door.

‘I’ll get Sam to call you, then,’ she said, heading downstairs before he had time to worry about whether to shake her hand or accept a peck on the cheek.

Shepherd watched the battered black Golf GTI pull into the car park and drive slowly around before parking in the bay furthest away from the M1 motorway. London Gateway services, between junctions two and four north of the capital, was perfect for clandestine meetings. It was a place full of transients: everyone was a stranger and everyone was on the way to somewhere else. London Gateway was just a stopping-off point for a coffee, a toilet break or an expensive and badly cooked meal. Businessmen with mobile phones glued to their ears, chav housewives shepherding unruly broods towards the bathrooms, bald-headed white-van drivers chewing gum and knocking back cans of Red Bull, they all remained the centre of their own universes and showed little if any interest in the people around them.

Miles to the south, moored on the Thames in the centre of the city, was the museum warship HMS Belfast . Shepherd had read somewhere that the warship’s guns were aimed so that their shells, if fired, would fall directly on to the service centre. It was a nugget of information that his perfect memory kept locked away for ever, but for the life of him he had no idea why the centre had been targeted, and could only assume it was a comment on the drab architecture. Or maybe someone had once eaten a bad sausage roll there.

Shepherd climbed out of the Volvo, a three-year-old model from the office pool. He locked the door and walked over to the Golf, whistling softly to himself. He had a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes and he kept his head down. He tapped on the rear window of the car and the two men inside jumped as if they’d been stung, then they relaxed as they recognised him.