Stephen Leather - Dead Men

‘What about Liam?’

‘Slept through the whole thing. Katra, too. A couple of shots went off but we’ve cleared up the damage. Bit of blood on the hall floor but we can clean that up. A bullet went into the sofa and another buried itself in a wall.’

‘And the guy?’

‘Dead as disco,’ said Bradford. ‘So, now we’ve got a decision to make. Do you want us to call the cops or not?’

As a SOCA officer Shepherd was duty-bound to call it in. But if he did, his home would be crawling with scene-of-crime officers in their white suits, and detectives from the local force. There’d be journalists too, from the local paper at first but they’d soon be joined by others from the nationals, and television crews. Within hours it would be a circus.

‘Spider?’

‘Give me a minute, Jack. I’m considering my options.’

‘Whatever you decide is fine by us,’ said Bradford. ‘The guy took a couple of shots at me so he had it coming. We can take the body out of here and drop it in some very deep water long before it gets light. Won’t ever be your problem.’

What Bradford was suggesting was legally wrong, no question. The brothers had killed a man, and while it was obviously in self-defence, disposing of the body would be a criminal offence. If they were ever caught, it would spell the end of Shepherd’s career, and they would all be sent to prison. But if the killing was made public, there was a good chance it would end Shepherd’s career anyway. There would be an inquest, and the journalists would keep digging until they found out who Shepherd was and what he did for a living. He’d have to move house, and that would mean uprooting Liam yet again when he was finally getting some stability in his life. There was another option. He could call Charlotte Button, tell her everything and hope she would protect him. If she had been his former boss, Sam Hargrove, he wouldn’t have hesitated. But after what Major Gannon had told him, Shepherd wasn’t sure how far he could trust Button. If Gannon was right and her loyalties lay solely with MI5, she might decide to hang Shepherd out to dry.

‘Jack, if you and Billy did get rid of the evidence, how comfortable would you be with that?’

‘I wouldn’t give it a moment’s thought, Spider.’

‘No one heard the shots?’

‘Silencers all round,’ said Bradford.

‘How did he get in?’

‘Broke a glass pane in the kitchen door,’ said Bradford. ‘I’ll tell Katra I did it accidentally and we’ll get it fixed tomorrow.’

‘He’d have had a car,’ said Shepherd.

‘I’ll check for keys. He won’t have parked it too far away. I’ll take it somewhere and burn it.’

‘Where did you shoot him?’

‘The hall.’

Shepherd smiled, despite the seriousness of the situation. ‘In his body, Jack. Where did the rounds go?’

‘One in the back, two in the chest.’ Bradford sounded crestfallen.

‘Okay, I’m a bit dubious about dropping the guy in the drink with three rounds in him. If ever the body surfaces, the cops will be able to ID the gun.’

‘We can dump the weapon.’

‘Better to get the rounds out,’ said Shepherd. ‘Get the rounds out and put the body in the car. Use a can of petrol to get the blaze going, and leave the can on the lap of the body. Put a lighter in his hand before you start the fire. Do it somewhere where the car can burn out. The cops will probably put it down as suicide.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ said Bradford.

‘Go through the body first, see if you can get an ID on the guy. But leave everything on him when you torch the car.’

‘Got you.’

‘Jack, if you have any reservations about this at all, I’d understand.’

‘I know what cops are like,’ said Bradford. ‘No offence.’

‘None taken.’

‘If we come clean on this we’ll be answering questions for weeks. Billy and I don’t have time for that. We’ve got work to do. Plus the way the cops are now we might end up in court and then we’re screwed work-wise for life, no matter how the case pans out. So, fire it is.’

‘Call me if you need me. And if anything goes wrong, Jack, anything at all, it’s on me, understand?’

‘Nothing will go wrong, Spider.’

The line went dead. Shepherd got out of bed and went downstairs to make himself a cup of coffee. He doubted he’d get any more sleep that night.

Salih removed the back of his phone, lifted out the battery and the Sim card. It had been two hours since Tariq had phoned to say he was going inside the house. He hadn’t called back. There was no point in Salih checking the number. If Tariq had succeeded,he would have heard. That Tariq hadn’t called meant he was either dead or had been captured. Either way he was of no further use to Salih. He broke the Sim card in half and dropped it into the lavatory. It had probably been a set-up from the start. Whoever had turned Merkulov had wanted Salih to attack Daniel Shepherd so they could catch him in the act. Well, they’d failed. And forewarned was forearmed.

Dawn was breaking and the sky was streaked with orange behind the Belfast hills when Shepherd’s phone rang. It was Jack Bradford. Shepherd went into the garden to take the call. ‘Everything’s done,’ said Bradford. ‘He was in a hire car, nothing of any interest in it. His name’s Tariq Chadhar, twenty-three years old, had a driving licence with an address in Luton.’

‘Twenty-three?’

‘That’s what the licence said.’

‘And the guy looked twenty-three?’

‘Sure. You think the licence is fake?’

‘He’s young to be a professional hitman,’ said Shepherd.

‘They start young, these days,’ said Bradford. ‘Especially if he cut his teeth in Iraq or Afghanistan.’

‘Maybe,’ said Shepherd. ‘Liam and Katra still asleep?’

‘Like logs,’ said Bradford.

‘I owe you big-time,’ said Shepherd. ‘Are you and Billy okay to stay there until I’m back?’

‘As long as you need us,’ said Bradford.

‘And the house is like it never happened?’

‘So far as we’re concerned, Spider, it never did.’

Shepherd ended the call. He rubbed the back of his neck. He hadn’t run since he’d moved to Belfast and being confined to the house for hours on end was driving him crazy. He went upstairs, changed into a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a French Connection T-shirt. He pulled on a pair of training shoes and laced them. He preferred army boots but they would attract too much attention.

He let himself out of the front door, then jogged in his driveway as he worked out a decent route. He ran down the hill, his feet pounding on the pavement. The roads were deserted and there were no pedestrians about. A couple of dogs watched him run by, and he scattered a flock of pigeons. He was angry, but he wasn’t sure who with. The man who’d turned up at his house was dead, so there was no point in being angry with him. Shepherd doubted that the man the Bradfords had killed was the assassin who had been on Button’s trail; he was too young. And a professional wouldn’t have gone into a house where there were two bodyguards. So who was he, and what had he been doing at Shepherd’s house? Maybe Yokely’s mystery assassin was a red herring. Maybe the Asian had been working to a different agenda. Shepherd had come up against several Asians over the past few years. Maybe it was one of them or a relative out for revenge.

He upped the pace, his hands in tight fists. The big question was, how had the man known where Shepherd lived? He had only recently moved to Hereford and wasn’t on the electoral roll. And if the man had staked out the house before he went in, he must have known Shepherd wasn’t at home.

What if it had been the assassin Yokely had warned him about? Perhaps he had traced calls made from Shepherd’s mobile and been able to trace the landline that would have given him Shepherd’s home address – but, then, he’d also have known that Shepherd was in Belfast. So if the assassin had found Shepherd’s address, why had he sent an amateur?