Stephen Leather - Cold Kill

Shepherd unscrewed the top and raised the bottle to his lips. He held it there, knowing that what he was doing was out of character. He never used alcohol as a crutch. He’d known lots of men, in the SAS and the police, who turned to the bottle in times of stress, but he had always found relief in other ways. He put it down. It was time for a run. A long, punishing run. A run that would leave him bone-weary and aching.

He was about to head upstairs when he heard a mobile phone ring – the Tony Corke phone in the pea coat. He bent down and fished it out. The call was coming from a blocked number. Shepherd accepted it and put it to his ear.

‘It’s Richard,’ said an American voice. Shepherd knew only one American called Richard. And only one American who would have the technical expertise to get hold of the number of the pay-as-you-go mobile.

‘Yes,’ said Shepherd. Yokely was the last person he wanted to talk to.

‘I just called to say congratulations,’ said Yokely.

‘Congratulations?’ Shepherd knew what he was alluding to, but he could feel resentment and hostility building in him with each second that the man was on the line.

‘The Eurostar,’ said Yokely. ‘You saved the day, I’m told.’

‘I had help,’ said Shepherd. ‘A colleague was with me. He was stabbed.’

‘But you took care of all four of the bastards, didn’t you? Even left us with one to question.’

‘Jimmy’s fine, thanks for asking,’ said Shepherd, frostily. ‘Nearly bled to death, but, hey, plenty more cops where he came from, right?’

‘Dan, you did what needed doing. You neutralised a threat. God damn it, you saved more than seven hundred lives today. I assumed you’d be pleased, basking in the glory and all that.’

‘I killed three people,’ said Shepherd. ‘Two men and a woman who were prepared to die for their beliefs.’

‘Exactly,’ said the American.

‘You don’t get it, do you?’ asked Shepherd.

‘I get it, Dan. You went up against four hardened terrorists and you won. And you even managed to do it all on the British side of the tunnel so that the French can’t try to fuck things up for us.’

‘Why do you people always talk as if it were a game?’ said Shepherd. ‘It wasn’t a bloody game and I didn’t win anything.’

‘Yes, you did. If they’d succeeded, seven hundred innocent men, women and children would have died today. Civilians who were just going about their daily lives. Innocents, Dan. And they’re alive because of you. Because of what you did. You should be proud.’

‘If that’s what you want to hear then, yes, I’m proud. But I still killed three people and I’ll have to live with that.’

‘It’s not so bad,’ said Yokely. ‘And it gets easier.’

Anger flared deep within Shepherd that someone could be so casual about the taking of human life. ‘Not for me, it doesn’t,’ he said.

‘Really? Are you saying it wasn’t easier after what you did down the Tube? Wasn’t it just that little bit easier to pull the trigger this time?’

‘Are you saying I’m getting desensitised to killing?’

‘I’m just saying that there are people in Washington who’ve heard about what happened today and have been on to me asking why you’ve not signed with us.’

‘Because I’m not an assassin.’

There was a long pause, and for a moment Shepherd thought he’d lost the connection. ‘Are you sure about that, Dan?’ Yokely said eventually, his voice little more than a soft whisper. ‘Are you one hundred per cent sure about it?’

Shepherd cursed and flung the mobile at the wall. He found himself looking at the bottle of Jameson’s. He stared at it for several seconds, then went upstairs to change into his running gear.

The Saudi rested his head against the fuselage and looked out of the window at the lights of London far below. They had beaten him, drowned him, abused him. They had killed his cousin. They had burned his brother alive. They had done their worst and they thought they had triumphed. The English woman had thought she was so clever. He could see it in her eyes: the contempt as she questioned him, so sure that she was his intellectual superior. The Saudi would have given almost anything to see her expression when she discovered he had outsmarted her.

The plane banked to the left as it climbed. The Saudi was manacled, hand and foot. He was wearing a white paper suit and paper slippers. Sitting next to him was a marine, square-jawed with a crew-cut and hard blue eyes. A typical American, thought the Saudi, big-boned and stupid. He regarded the Saudi with undisguised hatred. The Saudi didn’t care. There was nothing else they could do to him.

He didn’t know who else was on the plane. He’d been taken from the embassy in a van with a hood over his head. Once he was seated on the plane the hood had been removed and the marine had told him not to turn round. There were definitely other passengers on board, though. As he’d been helped up the stairs to the plane he’d caught a glimpse of black loafers with tassels. The Saudi didn’t know if they belonged to one of the Americans or to another prisoner.

He’d heard shouts as they’d boarded the plane, an Asian man insisting he was British and that they had no right to be taking him out of the country. The Saudi hadn’t bothered protesting. Citizenship no longer counted for anything in a world dominated by the United States.

No one had told him where he was being taken, but the Saudi knew they were going to Cuba. Guantanamo Bay. The interrogation would go on for years. Followed by imprisonment. Execution if he was lucky. The offer of money and a new life had always been a lie, even if he had been prepared to co-operate. The Americans had him and they would never let him go. But they hadn’t beaten him. The Saudi smiled to himself. They hadn’t won. They thought they had, but they were wrong.

Shepherd slept badly. He tossed and turned and didn’t fall asleep until the early hours of the morning. Even then he was plagued with nightmares about what had happened on the train. He had reacted instinctively – his training had taken over as it always did when he was in combat – but that didn’t make it any easier to deal with the taking of life. And he’d killed a woman. That she’d been a woman hadn’t occurred to him as he’d pulled the trigger. He’d seen her stab Sharpe, the blood, the screwdriver in her hand, and he’d fired. He’d been aiming for her head but the bullet had caught her in the throat, and even if he’d had all the time in the world he’d still have gone for a killing shot. In his dreams he wasn’t firing a single shot, he was blasting away with both hands on his gun. And the woman he was shooting wasn’t the terrorist on the Eurostar. It was Charlotte Button. Then it was Katra. Then it was Moira. Then it was Kathy Gift. And even though he recognised the faces in his dream, he kept firing.

When he woke, it was almost eleven o’clock and sunlight was streaming through the curtains. His leg muscles ached from his late-night run and he had a throbbing headache. He grabbed his towelling robe and ran downstairs. He made himself a cup of coffee, went into the sitting room and switched on the television. He sighed and put his feet on the coffee table as he flicked through the channels. He frowned as he stared at the pictures on the screen. Police in yellow fluorescent jackets were cordoning off a section of a London street. The picture changed. Ambulances were arriving at a city-centre hospital. A sombre Sky newscaster summed up what had happened. Three bombs had gone off in the Tube system. A fourth had destroyed a London bus.

The city had ground to a halt. The Tube system had been closed, buses had stopped running, the police were advising everyone not to travel unless it was absolutely necessary.