Stephen Leather - Dead Men

‘I’ll call Kinsella’s handler. She can get her people to clean up her mess.’

‘Who’s going to tell Elaine Carter?’

‘It’ll be taken care of, but not by you. You’re off the case as of now.’

Shepherd nodded. ‘Where are you going?’

‘I’ll make sure this is squared away, then I’m going to see Patsy Ellis. She’s got some explaining to do.’

Shepherd took a final look round his hotel room. The only things left there belonged to Elaine. Her clothes, her toiletries, her magazines. When he walked out, it would look as though he had never been there. He wouldn’t be going back to the house in Belfast. Jenny Lock, the dresser, was on her way with a removal crew, and Amar Singh would already be in the house, removing his surveillance equipment. All that was left of Jamie Pierce was the Audi and he’d be returning that to the SOCA pool by the end of the week.

He walked out of the room with his holdall and took the lift to the ground floor. As he walked across the lobby he saw her coming through the revolving door and moved behind a pillar. She was talking animatedly into her mobile phone as she headed for the lifts. Shepherd watched her go. There was so much he wanted to say to her. He wanted to tell her that he’d killed Maplethorpe because she deserved to hear it from him. He wanted to tell her he had feelings for her, that he was close to falling in love with her. He wanted to tell her he was sorry he’d lied to her but that he was only doing his job.

He watched her take away the phone from her ear and press the button to call the lift. She dialled another number and Shepherd’s mobile rang. He took the call.

‘Jamie, where are you?’ It was her.

‘Still at the exhibition,’ he said. ‘What happened to you?’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I bumped into someone I knew in the ladies’. She’s CEO of a company in Londonderry and wanted me to put together a pensions proposal for her. We ended up in a wine bar round the corner.’

‘Why didn’t you call?’

‘I did. I went through to your voicemail. Didn’t you get my message?’

Shepherd closed his eyes. She had rung when he was in Kinsella’s hotel. He hadn’t taken the call and he hadn’t checked his voicemail.

‘Jamie, I’m sorry I didn’t call you right away but we were straight down to business. Are you okay?’

Shepherd was far from okay. He wanted to tell her John Maplethorpe had killed the men who had taken her husband from her, but he was fairly sure she already knew that. When he had opened the trunk in her attic, her husband’s watch had been ticking. Someone must have been handling it, and that someone must have been Elaine. The ammunition had been in the trunk, and rounds had been missing from the box. Shepherd had no way of knowing whether she had kept the gun in the trunk, but he was reasonably sure that she had given the rounds to Maplethorpe. It wasn’t something he could prove, even if he wanted to. Maplethorpe had killed the men and now he was dead. Case closed.

‘Jamie? Are you there?’

There were so many things Shepherd wanted to say to her, but he knew that nothing he said would make any difference. He was working under cover and he wasn’t Jamie Pierce, the man she liked and trusted. He was Dan Shepherd, a SOCA undercover agent and a professional liar. Almost everything she thought she knew about him was untrue and for that reason, and that reason alone, he could never talk to her again.

‘I’m here.’

‘Look, I’m just going to the room to freshen up. I’ll be over at the centre in about half an hour. We’ll have coffee.’

‘Okay.’

‘I’m going into the lift now. I’ll phone you later.’

‘Okay.’

‘Jamie?’

‘Yes?’

‘I love you.’

Shepherd watched her get into the lift. He waited until the doors closed before he walked out of the hotel. As he went to his car he checked his voicemail. There was a message from Elaine, telling him what wine bar she was in and asking him to join her. He switched off his phone, took out the Sim card and broke it in half.

Charlie Button was sitting at a table with a bottle of red wine in front of her when Patsy Ellis walked in. She raised her glass as Ellis sat down. ‘Red?’ said Ellis. ‘I thought you liked Chardonnay.’

‘You like Chardonnay,’ said Button. ‘I’ve always preferred claret.’ She picked up the bottle, filled the glass in front of Ellis, then topped up her own. She put down the bottle. It was almost empty.

‘Thank you,’ said Ellis.

Button lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply.

‘I thought you’d quit,’ said Ellis.

Button blew a tight plume of smoke at the ceiling. ‘So did I,’ she said. She waved at a waitress and mimed for her to bring over a second bottle. ‘Why did you lie to me, Patsy?’

Ellis sipped her wine and put the glass on the table, her fingers lightly touching the stem. ‘I didn’t lie,’ she said frostily.

‘You should have told me that Noel Kinsella was an MI5 agent.’

‘That was a long time ago,’ she said. ‘And I didn’t lie.’

‘You must have known what I was doing in Belfast.’

Ellis shrugged. ‘You’re with a different agency now,’ she said. ‘You’re not family.’

‘I’m not used to having guns pointed at me, Patsy, and it’s not an experience I want to repeat.’

‘If I’d known what was going to happen, obviously I’d have stepped in,’ said Ellis.

‘You had an IRA killer on the payroll,’ said Button.

‘Kinsella was a valuable source of intelligence,’ said Ellis. ‘You take your intel where you can, you know that – and that the people you get information from aren’t usually the sort you’d invite around for tea and crumpets.’

‘And Carter? What was he?’

Ellis sighed. ‘Carter was a grey area. Nothing to do with me, I swear.’

‘Black ops?’

Ellis smiled without warmth. ‘We don’t have a black-ops department, darling, as you also know. We leave that sort of thing to our American cousins.’

‘But he fed information to the Loyalists, didn’t he? Information that resulted in the murder of Republicans?’

‘That wasn’t official policy.’

‘You’re playing with words, Patsy.’ Button drained her glass. ‘Where is that damn waitress?’

‘There was never a policy of murdering Republicans, if that’s what you’re suggesting.’

‘The guys on Gibraltar in 1988 might argue with that,’ said Button. ‘If they weren’t dead, of course.’

‘That was an SAS operation, and you know it,’ said Ellis. ‘The Gibraltar team were planning to detonate a car bomb.’

‘The SAS acted on MI5 intel on Gibraltar,’ said Button, ‘and the UFF were using MI5 intel in Belfast to kill IRA Volunteers. Robbie Carter was the conduit for that information.’

The waitress returned with a bottle. She smiled apologetically. ‘I’m sorry, madam, you can’t smoke here.’

Button stabbed out her cigarette as the waitress showed her the label on the bottle. Then the two women sat in silence until the waitress had pulled the cork, set the bottle on the table and gone away. ‘Charlie, you’re making a mountain out of a molehill, you really are,’ said Ellis.

‘Well, having a gun pointed at you can distort your perception, I suppose.’

‘That was nothing to do with me,’ said Ellis.

Button refilled her glass. ‘The IRA hit team went after Robbie Carter because he was feeding information to a UFF hit team. Information supplied by MI5. So, whichever way you look at it, MI5 was involved in Carter’s death. Maybe not responsible, but certainly involved.’

Ellis said nothing.

Button lit another cigarette, then leant across the table. ‘If MI5 hadn’t fed information to Carter, there’d have been no reason for the IRA to go after him.’ She jabbed the cigarette at Ellis, punctuating her words.