Stephen Leather - Dead Men

‘You have a long and fruitful life ahead of you, I am sure,’ said Aslam.

A slight smile creased Othman’s weathered face. ‘Do not flatter me, my friend,’ he said. ‘I am too old for sweet words.’

‘I did not mean to offend,’ said Aslam. ‘I shall carry out your wishes immediately.’

Othman nodded. ‘I thank you for that. Let me know your fee and I shall have the money transferred to your account.’

‘Do you wish updates on my progress?’

‘I require only to know that the man and the woman are dead, that they died in pain, with the names of my sons in their ears.’

Aslam stood up, bowed, then walked back through the sand towards his quad bike. One of the bodyguards went with him.

Macgregor came into the marquee with the falcon. Othman held out his gloved hand, palm down, and the bird hopped on to it. He caught the jesses between his thumb and first finger, and with his other hand he stroked the falcon’s chest feathers. ‘So, sweet thing,’ he whispered, ‘are you ready to kill again?’

The bird returned the old man’s cold stare for several seconds, then it arched its neck and cried to the sky.

Shepherd finished his coffee, folded his copy of the Daily Mail , and stood up. He had been sitting in the coffee shop for a quarter of an hour. He hadn’t seen Charlotte Button go into the office so he assumed she was already there. He went outside, waited for a gap in the traffic and jogged across the road. The door that led to the offices on the upper floors was between a butcher’s and a florist’s. There were three brass nameplates and an entryphone with three buttons. Shepherd pressed the middle one and waved up at the CCTV camera that monitored the entrance.

The door buzzed and he pushed it open. Button hadn’t closed the door to the office and she smiled as he came up the stairs. She was wearing a red suit, the skirt cut just above the knee, and red high heels. ‘You could have at least brought me a tea,’ she said. You were in the coffee shop for fifteen minutes, weren’t you? Doing the Daily Mail crossword?’

‘The Sudoku, actually,’ said Shepherd, ‘so I guess that means you weren’t looking over my shoulder. Anyway, I was just checking I was clean. I wouldn’t want to blow a perfectly good SOCA safe-house.’ He followed her into the office, unable to stop himself admiring her legs. Button often wore jeans or other trousers so they were rarely on display. She had very good ones, he decided. Firm and shapely, the ankles smaller than his wrists.

‘I’ve got a meeting at SOCA headquarters this afternoon,’ she said, ‘and flashing a bit of skin tends to cut me a lot of slack.’

‘If my legs were as good as yours, I’d be flashing them too,’ said Shepherd.

‘Why, thank you, kind sir.’

The office was lined with filing cabinets and volumes on tax law. There were four desks, one in each corner of the room, and a door. Button went through it and sat on a high-backed executive chair behind a large oak desk. ‘Everything okay?’ she asked.

Shepherd took one of the two wooden chairs on his side of the desk. ‘Raring to go,’ he said.

‘I’m glad your hair’s growing back because we’ll be making use of your roguish good looks,’ she said, as she opened a manila file and passed a photograph across the table.

‘You are joking, I hope,’ said Shepherd, as he scrutinised the photograph. It was a head-and-shoulders shot, ten inches by eight, of a woman in her mid-thirties with shoulder-length wavy red hair and freckles across her nose. She was laughing and there was a sparkle in her green eyes. ‘Elaine Carter,’ said Button.

‘Pretty,’ said Shepherd.

‘Possible serial killer,’ said Button.

‘Ah,’said Shepherd. ‘I thought serial killers were all middle-aged white males.’

‘That’s if you believe in profiling,’ said Button. ‘Elaine here is a special case.’ She passed over another photograph, of a man lying face down on a terracotta tiled floor, a pool of blood around his head. ‘Her husband was Robbie Carter, an RUC Special Branch officer. An inspector.’

Shepherd looked at the photograph. The hair at the back of the man’s head was matted with blood. ‘She killed her husband?’ he asked.

‘Spider, your psychic skills leave a lot to be desired. We’ll get on a lot quicker if you let me tell you what we know and you make the occasional grunt.’

Shepherd looked more closely at the photograph of the dead man. There were smaller pools of blood around his knees.

‘Robbie Carter was shot by an IRA execution squad in nineteen ninety-six,’ continued Button. ‘They gunned him down in front of his wife and young son.’ She slid five photographs out of the file and spread them in front of Shepherd, like a poker player displaying a winning hand. She tapped the photograph on the far left. ‘Adrian Dunne. He was caught fleeing a punishment shooting a year after Carter was killed. He’d used the same gun as he had for the Carter killing and was sent down for life. Released under the Good Friday Agreement.’ She took another photograph and placed it on top of the first. It was a crime-scene shot. The body in it was naked and lying face down. There were gunshot wounds to the man’s head and knees. ‘Dunne was killed two weeks ago.’

She ran a red-painted fingernail down the photograph next to the one of Dunne. This man was the oldest of the five, with thinning grey hair and the ruddy cheeks of someone who had spent a lot of time outdoors. ‘Joseph McFee. Left the Provos once the Peace Process got rolling and is thought to have joined the Real IRA. He didn’t actually shoot Carter, and no evidence was presented that suggested he was carrying a gun, but he got life as well, plus additional life sentences for killing two British soldiers and three other policemen. He was released two months after Dunne.’

‘Is it just me or is the world going crazy?’ asked Shepherd. ‘He murders two soldiers and four coppers and we let him out?’

‘It was part of the Peace Process,’ said Button. ‘That was the deal.’

‘Then the deal sucks, as my son would say. What we’re saying is that if you murder a drug-dealer you’ll spend twenty years plus behind bars. Kill a copper or a soldier and they’ll let you out early.’

‘You won’t hear any arguments from me on that score,’ said Button. She took a photograph from the file and laid it over the head-and-shoulders picture of McFee. It was from a crime scene, an almost exact match of the first. ‘McFee was shot last week.’

She paused to make sure she had his undivided attention. ‘Both men, McFee and Dunne, were shot with the same gun. Robbie Carter’s service revolver.’

Shepherd quirked an eyebrow. ‘Open and shut, then?’

‘If it was, they wouldn’t have called us in,’ said Button. ‘Carter’s gun was never found. His wife said she had no idea where it was and there was a suggestion that the killers took it with them.’

‘Is that possible?’

Button shrugged. ‘Elaine Carter didn’t mention the gun being taken at the time but she was pretty forthcoming with other details. In fact, it was her recollections that helped put the execution squad behind bars. So we’re assuming that the gun wasn’t taken at the time. The rifling on the bullets used in both killings is an exact match to those on record for Carter’s gun. A Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum.’

‘Nice gun,’said Shepherd. ‘Not regular police issue,though. Back in the nineties the RUC were using the nine-millimetre Smith amp; Wesson 5904.’

‘Back then Special Branch were allowed a degree of flexibility in their choice of handgun,’ said Button. ‘The Magnum would be a man-stopper, I gather.’

‘It would do a lot of damage, that’s for sure,’ said Shepherd.