Stephen Leather: Hot Blood

‘No sweat,’ said Singh. ‘I’ll take Wild Bill Hickok for a drink.’ He turned back to the warehouse. ‘Oy, Razor, d’you fancy a pint?’

‘Do bears shit in the Vatican?’ yelled Sharpe.

Shepherd chuckled and headed for his car.

Shepherd parked the Series Seven BMW in the driveway. He was going to miss Graham May’s vehicle of choice. His own Honda CRV was four years old and he needed to replace it. But a Series Seven was well out of his price range.

The estate agent’s sign in the front garden had ‘ UNDER OFFER ’ across the top. A young couple, looking for somewhere bigger, had offered the asking price, which was double what Shepherd had paid six years earlier. He had made an offer on a house in Hereford, less than a mile from where his in-laws lived.

His son was in the sitting room, eating a sandwich. A glass of orange juice stood in front of him. Liam’s mouth was full so he waved at his father. Shepherd went to the kitchen, made himself a mug of instant coffee, then returned to the sitting room and dropped down on the sofa next to his son. ‘Did you do your homework?’ he asked.

‘Sure,’ said Liam, and drank some juice. ‘I had to do a book report.’

‘Which book?’

‘ Animal Farm. George Orwell.’

‘Great story,’ said Shepherd. ‘“Four legs good, two legs bad.”’

‘You’ve read it?’ said Liam, surprised.

‘At school, same as you,’ said Shepherd. ‘It’s a classic.’

‘You don’t read books.’

Shepherd raised his eyebrows. ‘What?’

‘You read newspapers.’

Shepherd wanted to argue but his son was right. The last time he’d read a book for pleasure must have been four years ago when he was on holiday in Spain with Sue and Liam. He rarely had time to read these days, and when he did have a few hours to spare more often than not he’d just vegetate in front of the television. In his younger days he’d been an avid reader – Ian Fleming, Len Deighton, Jack Higgins, John le Carre – but his work as an undercover police officer meant he no longer enjoyed crime stories. Real-life police work was never as cut and dried as it appeared in fiction, and the truly guilty rarely got their just deserts.

Before he could reply, Katra came in. She was wearing baggy khaki cargo pants and a loose sweatshirt. With no makeup and her hair tied back in a ponytail she looked younger than her twenty-four years. ‘You’re back early,’ she said. ‘Liam was hungry so I made him a sandwich.’ She was from Slovenia, but she had lived with them in London now for two years so her accent had almost gone.

‘No sweat,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’ll order a pizza later.’

‘Is it okay if I go to the supermarket?’

‘Sure,’ said Shepherd.

Liam picked up the remote control and switched on the television. ‘You don’t have time for TV,’ said Shepherd, as his son flicked through the channels.

‘Anything you want?’ asked Katra.

‘Toothpaste,’ said Shepherd. ‘The stuff for sensitive teeth.’

‘You have toothache?’ asked Katra.

‘Just a twinge,’ said Shepherd.

‘Receding gums,’ said Liam. ‘It happens when you get old.’

‘Older,’ corrected Shepherd.

‘Your hair gets thinner, your skin gets less flexible and your bones weaken.’

‘I’m so glad we had this little chat,’ said Shepherd. He held out his hand for the remote control. ‘Now, give me that and scoot. And I want to see the book report before you go to sleep.’

Liam tossed him the remote control and Shepherd hit the button for BBC1. On the screen a middle-aged man with a mahogany tan and a woman half his age with gleaming teeth were laughing about nothing in particular. On ITV another woman, with equally sparkling teeth, was talking about the weather as if her audience had learning difficulties. It was going to rain in Scotland. Grin. With a chance of hail in Aberdeen. Bigger grin. But London would be sunny. Mega-grin with sly wink. Shepherd flicked to Sky News. More expensive dental work. Two newsreaders, a man and a woman, with tight faces. In a square frame in the top left-hand corner, a man in an orange jumpsuit was kneeling in front of a banner. Shepherd froze. He increased the volume as the frame expanded to fill the screen. The man in the jumpsuit was in his late thirties, his hair close-cropped. He was glaring defiantly at the camera. It had been six months since Shepherd had seen Geordie Mitchell. Then, his hair had been longer, he had been a few pounds heavier and he had been wearing a Chelsea FC shirt, not an orange jumpsuit.

‘A British man working as a security guard in Iraq has been taken hostage by a group calling for the withdrawal of coalition forces from the country,’ said the female newsreader.

Shepherd wondered how the former SAS trooper would have reacted to being described in that way.

‘Last night Colin Mitchell’s captors released a video showing him in apparently good health. They are calling for a complete withdrawal of all British troops from Iraq within the next fourteen days.’

Shepherd hadn’t known that ‘Colin’ was Mitchell’s real name. He’d known him for more than ten years as Geordie.

Two men in dark green overalls, scarves over their faces and cradling Kalashnikovs, were standing behind him. A third was holding aloft a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. A fourth masked man was next to Mitchell, addressing the camera in Arabic. A translation of his rhetoric passed slowly across the bottom of the screen.

‘Mr Mitchell was taken hostage after the vehicle he was travelling in was ambushed and three of his Iraqi colleagues were killed,’ continued the newsreader. ‘He is believed to have been working in Iraq as part of a security detail guarding an oil pipeline running through the north of the country. Mr Mitchell’s abduction comes just weeks after the beheading of American hostage Johnny Lake. All the indications are that the same group is holding Mr Mitchell. Following Mr Lake’s abduction, the American government was given fourteen days to withdraw its troops from Iraq. This morning the Foreign Office refused to comment on Mr Mitchell’s abduction.’

Shepherd’s mobile rang and he put it to his ear as he stared at the screen. ‘Are you watching the news?’ said a voice. It was Major Allan Gannon, Shepherd’s former boss in the SAS.

‘Just seen it,’ said Shepherd.

‘We have to meet.’

‘Absolutely.’

Shepherd got to the Strand Palace Hotel shortly before midnight. Liam was fast asleep and Shepherd had told Katra that he would be back in the early hours. She was used to him coming and going at unusual times so she had said goodnight and that she’d see him in the morning. It had never been as easy getting away when he was married: Sue had wanted to know where he was going, what he’d be doing and how dangerous it was. And she would sit up all night, waiting for him to get back. It was even harder when he was away from home for days at a time. Then he hadn’t always been able to phone her, and even when he did his calls had been hurried and whispered. The difference, of course, was that Sue had been his wife and had loved him, while Katra was an employee.

The Major had booked a suite on the seventh floor. Shepherd knocked on the door. It was opened by a man a couple of inches shorter than him but with a similar physique. Like Shepherd, Billy Armstrong was a keen runner and they had often trained together when they were in the Regiment. ‘Spider, good to see you,’ said Armstrong. He was wearing a brown leather knee-length coat and tight-fitting jeans that were fashionably ripped at the knees. They hugged. It had been more than a year since they’d met.

‘Where are you these days?’ asked Shepherd.

‘Sofia, Bulgaria, babysitting an industrialist who’s only just this side of legal. You still a cop?’