Stephen Leather - Cold Kill

‘You know who the contact is?’

‘It’s all wrapped up,’ said Button. Another phone rang. Her landline. ‘Dan, my other line’s going. Call me when you’ve got the passport.’ She stood up and cut the connection. Poppy raced to the door, tail wagging.

‘I’m answering the phone, silly,’ she said. ‘We’ll do the walk thing later.’

At the mention of the word, Poppy’s tail wagged even more enthusiastically. Button shook her head. Poppy had been her husband’s idea. Given the choice, she would have preferred a cat, but as the house had been her call, as had been the car, their daughter’s boarding-school and the cottage in the Lake District, she reckoned he deserved the pet of his choice.

She picked up the phone. It was Patsy Ellis, her former boss at MI5’s International Counter-terrorism Branch. Ellis was also one of MI5’s representatives on the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre and was tipped as a potential director general.

‘How goes SOCA?’ asked Ellis.

Button looked across at the files on the coffee table. ‘Slowly,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to make any mistakes with my team. There’s a lot at stake.’

‘Absolutely,’ said Ellis. ‘You won’t have the Official Secrets Act to hide behind. Everything you do will be followed by every investigative journalist in the country.’

‘This is a pep talk, is it?’ asked Button.

Ellis laughed. ‘You don’t need one from me, Charlie,’ she said. ‘I put you forward for the job, remember?’

‘Only because I was after yours,’ said Button, only half joking.

‘A few years out of the fold will do you the world of good,’ said Ellis. ‘And you’ll be able to take the credit for your successes, which we’re never allowed to do.’

Button knew she was right: SOCA had been a good career move – if she made a success of it.

‘Before you get too settled in, we’ve had a request for your assistance,’ said Ellis.

‘We?’

‘It came from the DG’s office. Not for you personally but the DG decided you were the perfect candidate.’

‘Because?’

‘Your Arab language abilities, as it happens. And your interrogation skills. Oh, and your sex, which makes it even more intriguing.’

‘My what?’

‘They wanted a woman. Ideally a pretty one. I was going to cry sexism when I heard, but there is a method to their madness.’

‘Patsy, you’re talking in riddles. Who’s “they”?’

Poppy nuzzled the back of Button’s legs.

‘The Americans. The request came from Homeland Security, which, as you know, now covers a multitude of sins. But it came at the highest level. Actually phoned the DG at home at five o’clock in the morning, and you know how she relishes her beauty sleep. Seems they’ve got someone in their embassy they need interrogating.’

‘They’ve got their own Arab speakers, surely?’

‘They want some UK involvement, because although the embassy is effectively on American soil it’s still our country. Just about. And apparently the only Arab speakers they have in situ are Muslims, and that’s not what they want.’

Button looked at her watch. ‘When?’

‘Now,’ said Ellis.

The windows overlooking the garden rattled.

‘It’s going to take me a while to get to Grosvenor Square,’ said Button.

The rattling intensified. The trees at the end of the garden bent over as if they were being pushed down by invisible hands.

‘Not as long as you think,’ said Ellis.

Button heard the whup-whup-whup of the helicopter’s rotor-blades, then saw its shadow flash across the lawn.

‘Must be important,’ said Button.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Ellis. ‘Very.’

Button replaced the receiver and looked down at the Labrador. ‘Your walk will have to wait, Poppy.’

The dog’s tail beat a tattoo on the carpet.

‘You really are a stupid animal,’ said Button. She headed for the kitchen door. She’d phone her husband when she got to Central London. When all was said and done Poppy was his dog.

Jimmy Sharpe lit a cigarette and blew smoke out of the open window of the Vauxhall Vectra. Shepherd coughed pointedly and Sharpe flashed him a tight, but non-apologetic, smile.

‘When did you start smoking?’ asked Shepherd.

‘When I was twelve,’ said Sharpe.

They were sitting in the car a short walk from the Uddin brothers’ Edgware Road bureau de change. It was just before eleven o’clock, an hour before Shepherd was due to collect his new passport.

‘Haven’t seen you smoke before.’

‘Don’t read anything into it,’ said Sharpe. ‘I just felt like a cigarette.’

‘Okay.’

‘And, Hargrove never allowed smoking on the job.’

‘Ah, so while the cat’s away…’

‘I just felt like a cigarette.’

‘Fine. Makes a change from you farting.’

‘Hey, you don’t have to wait in the car,’ said Sharpe. ‘There’s a Starbucks over there. Or you can go sit with the sand jockeys and have a hubble-bubble pipe.’

‘Not very politically correct, Razor.’

‘Well,’ said Sharpe, ‘take a look round you. Arab cafes, Arab shops, Arab banks and half the shops here have got Arabic signs. You wouldn’t think this was England.’

‘You’re Scottish, remember?’

‘So?’

‘They’ve as much right to be here as you.’

‘Yeah, but look at them, the way they walk around in their white dresses with those tea-towels on their heads. Making their women wear black from head to foot. I’m Scots, sure, but you don’t see me walking around in my kilt scratching my sporran, do you?’

‘And your point is?’

‘I don’t know what my point is.’ He took another long drag on his cigarette. ‘Maybe there is no point.’

‘What do you make of Button?’ asked Shepherd.

‘Ah, a loaded question if ever I heard one,’ said Sharpe. ‘Not wearing a wire, are you?’

‘You know I’m not, you prat. And I’m serious,’ said Shepherd.

‘Have you had a run-in with her already?’

‘Have you?’

Sharpe laughed. ‘I love talking to you, Spider. Your defences are never down, are they? You’re always in character.’

‘That’s bollocks.’

‘Have I ever spoken to the real you in all the years I’ve known you? I get the feeling that all I ever talk to are the roles you’re playing.’

‘That’s not true.’

Sharpe narrowed his eyes and puffed at his cigarette. He held the smoke deep in his lungs, then exhaled it in a tight plume through the window.

‘Razor, piss off, will you?’ said Shepherd.

‘I’m your back-up, remember? I can’t piss off. If I piss off who’s going to haul your nuts out of the fire if it all goes tits up?’

‘Like you did in Paris?’

‘Cheap shot. Anyway, Paris worked out all right, considering it was kick, bollock, scramble all the way.’

‘I was bundled into the boot of a car at gunpoint,’ said Shepherd.

‘I know.’

‘I could have been killed.’

‘Could’ve, would’ve, should’ve,’ said Sharpe. ‘Anyway, what’s that got to do with Charlotte Button?’

Shepherd tilted his head back and stared up at the car roof. ‘Nothing,’ he said.

‘Paris wasn’t even her operation,’ said Sharpe. ‘That was Hargrove, God rest his soul.’

‘Why didn’t Joycie join SOCA?’

Sharpe grinned wolfishly. ‘What did you hear?’

‘That he wanted to stay with the Met.’

‘That’s the gist of it. He’s moving to the Drugs Squad.’

‘Button said she wanted him in the SOCA unit.’

‘Apparently.’

‘So?’

‘I think his exact words were “I’m fucked if I’m gonna take orders from a tart” – or something like that.’