All four of the Hassan brothers worked as mechanics and their sister Jasmine ran the office, a small windowless cubbyhole in the far corner of the garage. Omar’s father had also hired a bodywork specialist, a Pakistani who had been in the country for just two years and was claiming asylum as an Afghan refugee. His name was Faisal and he was in his thirties. He had left his wife and two children in Pakistan and planned to bring them over once he had been granted leave to remain, which his lawyer thought would take three more years at most.
Faisal did most of his work at the far end of the garage in an area closed off with plastic sheeting. He was preparing to respray a door he’d recently repaired. When he saw Omar, he took off his mask and waved at him. Omar waved back. Faisal was a good Muslim, a true Muslim, and, like Omar, a committed jihadist. He trusted Faisal completely. He had told him about his al-Qaeda training and that one day he hoped to bring the jihadist fight to England. Faisal had nodded enthusiastically and promised to help.
Just as Omar pulled open the door to the locker room, his third brother, Aidan, came out, zipping up his overalls. ‘Hi, bruv,’ said Aidan. ‘Where’ve you been?’ He was seventeen and getting ready to go to university, though he had applied to study in Manchester so that he could continue to work part-time in the garage. He had a black eye and a scrape across his nose from where a badly secured van bonnet had crashed down on him two days earlier.
‘Dentist,’ said Omar.
‘You okay?’
‘He gave me an injection.’
‘Sorry, bruv.’
‘Aidan, get over here!’ shouted Toby. ‘How long does a dump take?’
Aidan grinned at Omar. ‘He’s a charmer, isn’t he?’ He jogged over to Toby.
Omar went into the locker room, which contained a dozen rusting metal lockers that his father had picked up cheaply at a government auction years earlier. There was a bench against one wall and a door leading to the bathroom. It was a men-only affair and rarely cleaned. Jasmine had her own facilities next to her office and guarded them jealously – she had the only key. Omar pulled his key-ring from the pocket of his jeans and opened his locker. He took out the envelope of cash and rifled through it: there were at least a hundred fifty-pound notes. He put it on the shelf, covered it with a copy of
Motorcycle News
, then changed into his overalls, which were blue, with the name of the garage on the back. His heart was pounding. He was finally doing it. He was finally on a mission. His life was about to change for ever.
Shepherd squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and walked towards the hotel entrance. A dozen men in black tie, laughing and smoking cigarettes, were standing outside. Shepherd was wearing black tie, too, an Armani suit that had cost the best part of three thousand pounds. Willoughby-Brown had balked at that but Shepherd had explained there was no way he could turn up in a rented tux. The Rolex Daytona on his wrist was real and his shoes had cost close to five hundred pounds. Men like Tommy and Marty O’Neill could spot a fake from a hundred yards and that went for people as much as clothes and watches.
To the left of reception a sprawling bar area was packed with another couple of hundred men in dinner jackets. There were lots of shaved heads and gold chains. They turned to check Shepherd as he walked by, nothing aggressive, just alpha males wanting to know who the competition was.
Shepherd scanned the room and spotted Paul Evans almost immediately. Evans had been his introduction to the O’Neill family. He was an enforcer, one of the guys who were sent around to collect bad debts. Some debt-collectors used guns, others blunt instruments, but Evans was a big hard man whose intimidating presence and dead-fish stare were often enough to persuade people to pay up. When he wasn’t working, Evans was affable and good company, and had a plethora of funny stories about his childhood, usually ending with his Welsh miner father taking off his belt and giving him a good thrashing. Like a lot of villains, Evans could turn on the hard stare at will, switching from laughing
bon viveur
to menacing thug in a fraction of a second. Most of the men in the room had that quality, and while there was lots of laughter and good-natured back-slapping, there was an underlying tension, a sense that violence could kick off at any moment, leaving blood on the highly polished parquet floor.
Evans spotted Shepherd and waved him over. A chunky gold bracelet glinted on his right wrist with two large sovereign rings on his fingers – they functioned as an efficient knuckleduster when needed. Evans had close-cropped bullet-grey hair and a nose that had clearly been hit a few times. The slightly swollen left ear testified to his years as an amateur boxer, before he’d discovered that he could be paid handsomely for hitting people out of the ring.
‘Terry, good to see you, mate.’ Evans hugged Shepherd. ‘It’s going to be a fun night. What do you want?’
‘Gin and tonic,’ said Shepherd.
‘Double?’
‘At least.’
Evans headed for the bar. Shepherd knew the two men he was drinking with. The bigger of them was Jon Cooper, a second-hand-car dealer with a chunky diamond in his left ear. The other was a drug-trafficker, who split his time between a large detached house in Croydon and a villa with a pool outside Marbella. His name was Ricky Carter and Shepherd knew that the police had been after him for years, but as he never did any business when he was in the UK, he had never been caught. Cooper and Carter often hung out with Evans, and Shepherd always found them good company. He was pretty sure that would change if they ever found out he was an undercover MI5 officer.
‘You ever box, Terry?’ asked Cooper.
‘Never in a ring,’ said Shepherd. ‘But I’ve had the odd moment.’
Cooper laughed. ‘Yeah, I bet you have.’
‘I boxed a bit when I was a kid,’ said Carter, ‘but I didn’t want to mess with my good looks.’ He laughed and clapped Shepherd on the back. ‘Now if anyone needs punching I get someone else to do it.’
‘Always the best way,’ said Cooper. ‘You know, if you hit someone in the face, you’re more likely to break a bone in your hand than to hurt them. That’s why boxers wear gloves. I always thought it was so they wouldn’t hurt the guy too much but, nah, it’s to stop them breaking their hands.’
‘That’s why God invented knuckledusters, innit?’ said Carter, and all three men laughed.
Evans returned with Shepherd’s drink. Shepherd took a sip and winced. ‘Double? More like a treble.’
‘They water the gin down here anyway,’ said Evans. ‘The more the fucking merrier.’
‘Just telling Terry, boxers wear gloves to protect their own hands, not the other guy’s face,’ said Cooper.
Evans nodded. ‘True enough,’ he said. ‘Worst injury I had was in Brighton. Can’t remember how it started but I was up against two big chaps and I hit one of them right on the chin. He went down but I broke half a dozen bones in my hand. Took months to fix.’
‘What about the guy you hit?’ asked Shepherd.
‘Yeah, well, he went out like a light, obviously. But he’d have been up and about with nothing more than a sore chin. I was in pain for fucking days and couldn’t hit anyone for months.’ He held up his right hand and flashed the bulky rings. ‘Now these do the trick nicely. I don’t even have to hit hard, just make sure I twist as the fist goes in and the flesh gets ripped up nicely.’
Cooper shook his head, chuckling. ‘You’re an evil bastard, Paul.’
‘Just taking care of Number One, mate,’ said Evans. ‘Same as it ever was.’
Shepherd sipped his drink again. His eyes narrowed as he recognised someone over Carter’s shoulder. He hadn’t seen the man for more than ten years but his memory kicked in as accurately as if the police file was in front of him. Jeff Owen. Armed robber. He was in his late thirties now and had put on weight and lost some hair, but it was definitely him. Shepherd had been undercover, penetrating the gang Owen was in, when they had been busted. The guy who ran it, Ted Verity, was a nasty piece of work and had gone down for twenty-five years. Owen had been given fifteen, which meant that with good behaviour he would have been out in eight.
Shepherd’s mind raced. He had been working for a police unit back then and using the alias Bob Macdonald, a former squaddie who had turned to crime. He hadn’t given evidence against Owen and Verity and there was nothing in the police or CPS files that suggested Bob Macdonald was an undercover cop. But the final robbery hadn’t gone as planned, and at the last minute Shepherd had had to step in to make sure that civilians didn’t get hurt. He’d flattened Verity and threatened to shoot Owen. The script that Shepherd had stuck to was that he wasn’t happy with Verity’s plan to hurt the civilians and wanted out. So far as he knew the gang had believed it and no one had suspected he was a cop, but that didn’t mean they were likely to forgive and forget.
Shepherd considered his options. Jeff Owen might not recognise him – not everybody had his memory for faces. But ten years wasn’t a long time in the grand scheme of things and Shepherd hadn’t changed much over the past decade. Owen might have calmed down while he was in prison but Shepherd doubted it. Owen had personally vouched for Bob Macdonald and had brought him into the gang. They had become quite close over the months it had taken Shepherd to earn the man’s trust.
If Owen spotted Shepherd and confronted him, the O’Neill operation would go down in flames. There was no way he could explain how Owen knew Terry Taylor as Bob Macdonald, not in any way that would convince the O’Neills that something wasn’t wrong. It was just about possible that Macdonald had changed his name but if Taylor was a stone-cold hitman why would he be so coy about his armed-robbery past? And if Owen told them about the bust, how could he explain his decision to poleaxe the leader of the gang? Shepherd might, just might, be able to talk his way out of a beating, or worse, but the O’Neills would never trust him again.
‘So, you been busy?’ asked Evans.
Shepherd grinned. ‘Ducking and diving.’
‘A little bird tells me you were out in the New Forest.’
Shepherd kept smiling but his mind was racing. How much did Evans know? ‘You been following me, mate?’
Evans grinned and put his mouth close to Shepherd’s ear. ‘I was chatting to Marty earlier. He said you’d done him a favour. Taken care of some business.’
‘Fuck me, Paul, I was hoping there’d be some client confidentiality in operation.’
Evans laughed. ‘Your secret’s safe with me, mate. And I love that crack – they call you the Hammer because you nail it every time. That’s a fucking classic.’
‘What else did he tell you?’
‘No details, mate, don’t worry.’ He gestured at the door. ‘Now, come on. They’re going in.’
Evans guided Shepherd into the main dining room. There were a couple of dozen tables, each seating twelve, around a boxing ring, plus a long table for the main guests facing the action.
Shepherd glanced over his shoulder. Owen was lost in the crowd. ‘Give me a minute, just want to see where a pal of mine’s sitting.’
‘See you at the table,’ said Evans.
Shepherd hurried to a whiteboard with two sheets of paper stuck to it. He ran his finger down the first page, then found Jeff Owen halfway down the second. He was on table eighteen. There was a map of the seating plan. Evans had table three, which put them on the opposite side of the boxing ring. As long as Owen stayed seated, he wouldn’t see Shepherd. But if he decided to take a trip to the toilet, there was a fair chance he’d walk by Shepherd’s table. He cursed under his breath. He had to do something, and quickly.
He took another look around, then headed for the hotel reception area, which was still packed with dinner-jacketed men holding invitations. Shepherd went outside. There were fewer smokers than before, now split into two groups. Cigars seemed to outnumber cigarettes. Shepherd took out his phone, jogged across the road and tapped in Jimmy Sharpe’s number. He kept none on his phone, called everyone from memory and made a habit of deleting his call history. ‘Hi, Razor, where are you?’
‘What are you? My mother?’ growled Sharpe.
‘I’m in deep shit and you’re the only person who can get me out of it. Where are you?’
‘A curry house in the East End with a mate from the Fraud Squad,’ said Sharpe, his tone suddenly serious. ‘What do you need?’
‘I’m at a boxing do in the West End with a few hundred faces, most of them from south of the river. One might recognise me and if I don’t do something my case is going to fall apart.’
‘Who’s the face?’
‘Blagger by the name of Jeff Owen. He was number two in a crew run by Ted Verity. I put them away more than ten years ago and it looks like Owen’s out.’
‘What do you want me to do?’ asked Sharpe.
‘I need him taken away for a few hours.’
‘I’ll happily come around and flash my warrant card, but if he tells me to fuck off what can I do?’
‘It has to be more official than that or he’ll wonder what’s going on. Here’s my thought. He was given fifteen years, which means he’s out on licence. I’m sure under the terms of his parole he’s not allowed to mix with criminals and they’re wall to wall here. There’s three on his table alone. I’m thinking get his probation officer involved and have him hauled into a local station for questioning.’
‘That might mean him getting sent back to prison.’
‘He’s a nasty piece of work, Razor. He deserved more than an eight stretch.’
‘This’ll have to be official – you know that? I can’t start commandeering police stations and probation officers.’
‘Can you run it by Sam Hargrove? You’re still working for him, right?’
‘Sure.’
‘He knows this Owen character and he’ll remember the case.’
‘I remember it,’ said Sharpe. ‘Drug-dealer running his operation from behind bars.’
‘That’s the one. Fill Hargrove in and get him on the case. It needs to be quick, Razor. We’re just sitting down to eat.’
‘I’m on it,’ said Sharpe.
Shepherd ended the call and walked back to the hotel. The last of the smokers were finishing up and most of the tables were filled. There were now a dozen men sitting at the top table, a mix of former champion boxers, Catholic priests and two actors who’d had minor roles in Cockney gangster movies. Shepherd kept his head turned away from the table where Owen was sitting as he headed to his seat. He was between Evans and Cooper, Carter opposite. Including himself, there were a dozen men at the table and Shepherd knew all of the others by name and reputation. He shook hands with the four he hadn’t met and introduced himself. No one asked what he did or where he was from: it was taken for granted that he was one of them. If he was anything but, he wouldn’t have been there.