Shepherd had made the cardinal error of an undercover agent – he had revealed that he knew something his character shouldn’t. He knew that Maplethorpe had been Robbie Carter’s best man because he’d seen the wedding photographs in the trunk in Elaine’s attic. ‘Elaine mentioned it,’ he said. He cursed himself because now he’d been forced to tell a direct lie – which Maplethorpe could check.
‘Robbie was like a brother to me,’ said Maplethorpe.
‘And Elaine?’
‘What do you mean?’ said Maplethorpe, leaning forward.
‘You obviously care a lot about her. That’s why you’re here, right?’
‘There’s something not right about you.’
Shepherd’s mind was racing. What had he done to make the detective suspicious? ‘Specifically?’
‘That’s the thing, Jamie,’ said Maplethorpe. ‘There’s nothing I can put my finger on. Bit by bit everything makes sense. Education, work record, no criminal offences. You’re a model citizen.’
‘You checked me out? Isn’t that against the Data Protection Act?’
‘Elaine’s a good friend of mine, and I want to make sure she doesn’t get hurt.’
‘I’m a good guy, John,’ said Shepherd.
‘That’s what the stats say,’ agreed Maplethorpe. ‘But it’s a sum-of-the-parts thing. It doesn’t add up.’ He winced and put a hand to his temple.
‘Are you okay?’
‘It’s nothing,’ said Maplethorpe. ‘Headache.’
‘Do you want an aspirin or a paracetamol?’
Maplethorpe fumbled in his pocket, brought out a small plastic bottle containing white tablets and shook out a couple. He swallowed them and washed them down with whiskey.
‘Sure you’re supposed to take painkillers that way?’ said Shepherd.
‘Yeah, well, you’re a website designer, not a doctor.’ Maplethorpe put the bottle away. ‘Are you with MI5, Jamie?’
Shepherd laughed. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘There’s something about you that makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. I don’t think you’re a serial killer or a paedophile, but I don’t think you’re a computer geek either.’ He swirled his whiskey in his glass as he studied Shepherd with hard eyes.
‘I could show you my CV.’
‘If you were a spook, your CV would be perfect. Which it is.’
‘I swear to you I don’t work for MI5,’ said Shepherd. ‘But if I did, why would that concern you? I’m hardly likely to be spying on Elaine, am I?’
‘It’s a question of honesty, Jamie. I don’t think you’re bad, but I don’t think you’re being honest with her. And I don’t want Elaine hurt. She’s taken to you. She’s not exactly been celibate since Robbie was killed, but she’s very selective, and the few relationships she’s had haven’t lasted long.’
‘I’m not surprised, if you paid her boyfriends a visit like this,’ said Shepherd.
‘I’m looking out for her,’ said Maplethorpe.
‘Are you sure that’s all it is?’
Maplethorpe thrust out his chin. ‘What are you getting at?’
‘Are you married, John?’
Maplethorpe scowled at him. ‘You want to be careful, Jamie,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t believe all the PR crap about Belfast being a changed city. It’s still a very dangerous place to have a cop mad at you.’
‘And are you?’ asked Shepherd. ‘Mad at me?’
Maplethorpe gave Shepherd a long, hard look. ‘Not yet,’ he said.
‘That’s a relief,’ said Shepherd.
‘You see, that’s what worries me, Jamie,’ said Maplethorpe. ‘You’re not intimidated by me, are you? I mean, you pretend to be, but under that soft exterior you’re as hard as fucking nails, aren’t you?’
‘Wanna arm-wrestle? Or slap dicks on the table and see which of us has the biggest?’
Maplethorpe put his glass on the coffee-table and stood up. ‘I’ll be off,’ he said.
‘You’re not drinking and driving, are you?’
Maplethorpe ignored him. ‘Let me leave you with one thought,’ he said. ‘If you
are
up to something, if you have some agenda I’m not aware of, then leave Elaine out of it. Because if you cause her any pain, any pain at all, it will be revisited on you a thousandfold.’
‘Message received and understood,’ said Shepherd.
‘I’ll let myself out,’ said Maplethorpe, heading for the front door.
Shepherd watched him drive away. His mobile rang. ‘What the hell was that about?’ Button asked.
‘Marking his territory, maybe,’ said Shepherd.
‘There’s no suggestion there was anything between him and Elaine Carter, is there?’
‘I haven’t picked up on it from her.’
‘And if there was, you would, right?’
Shepherd frowned. Did Button know how close he and Elaine had become? ‘She talks about him but always as a friend.’
‘So maybe he’s just looking out for a friend.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Any idea what set him off?’
‘He’s a senior police officer. You don’t get to be a detective superintendent without being a good reader of people.’
‘Suspicions are all he can have because your legend’s watertight,’ said Button.
‘It had better be,’ said Shepherd. ‘He’s right about what he said. If I fall foul of the cops here I’ll have to get out sharpish.’
‘If he was sure of anything, he wouldn’t have come round for a chat,’ said Button.
‘That’s true,’ agreed Shepherd. ‘Look, can you check on why he’s taking early retirement? He said it was because he was fed up with the job, but he has bad headaches.’
‘You think he’s got a medical problem?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘I’ll get on it.’
Liam frowned at the book in front of him and chewed the end of his biro. Billy Bradford was sitting on the other side of the kitchen table, munching a bacon sandwich. Liam smiled hopefully at him. ‘Do you know about factor trees?’
‘I was never any good at biology,’ said Bradford.
‘It’s maths,’ said Liam, scornfully.
‘I knew that,’ said Bradford.
Katra put a mug of black coffee in front of him, then went to the sink and began to load dirty plates into the dishwasher.
‘Did you used to work with my dad?’ Liam asked Bradford.
‘Me and Jack joined just as he left.’ Bradford sipped his coffee. ‘He was a bit of a legend, your dad.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Because of his nickname, Spider. He ate a tarantula when he was on a jungle training exercise.’
‘A tarantula?’ Katra queried.
‘It’s a big hairy spider,’ said Bradford. He used his free hand to mime a spider scurrying across the table. ‘They still talk about what a mad bastard he was.’ He grinned apologetically at Liam. ‘Sorry.’
‘My dad’s a mad bastard?’ said Liam in mock-horror.
Suddenly Bradford was serious. ‘Don’t ever tell him I said that.’
‘Your secret’s safe with me, Billy,’ said Liam. He pushed his exercise book across the table towards Bradford. ‘If you help me with my homework.’
‘Let’s wait for Jack,’ said Bradford. ‘He’s the smart one.’
‘I thought you were the smart one,’ said Katra.
Bradford shook his head. ‘Nah, I’m the good-looking one,’ he said. Headlights flashed across the hall window. ‘Speak of the devil.’
Tariq watched through his binoculars as the black Range Rover drove up in front of the house and parked. He hadn’t seen it before and the dark green CRV and the BMW SUV were parked in front of the garage. A man in a padded jacket climbed out and headed for the front door. It was Shepherd, Tariq realised. The man looked round, then slotted a key into the lock and let himself in. Tariq grinned. He’d made the right decision in waiting for it to get dark. While he’d been showering and praying in the motel, Shepherd must have left the house and just returned. If Tariq had gone straight in he’d have missed him. But now he was there, with the boy and the girl. The dashboard clock told him it was just before nine. His heart began to pound and he took deep breaths, trying to calm himself. A light went on in the front bedroom, and a few minutes later, it went off. The boy was going to bed. Tomorrow was a school day so he’d be up early. Except that tomorrow he wouldn’t wake up. He’d be dead like his father.
Tariq’s mouth had gone dry and he cursed himself for not bringing a bottle of water. He had a packet of chewing-gum in his pocket, though, so he took it out and popped a piece into his mouth.
An hour or so later the lights went out downstairs, except for the one in the hall. A moment later the upstairs lights went on. The girl and Shepherd were getting ready for bed. The lights stayed on for about half an hour and winked off just after eleven, leaving the upstairs windows dark.
Tariq watched the house as the digital clock ticked off the minutes. Midnight passed. Then one o’clock. His palms were soaked with sweat and he wiped them on his trousers. Then he took the back off his phone, removed his Sim card and slid in the pay-as-you-go card he’d bought from a shop in London’s East End. He switched on the phone and took deep breaths as he waited for it to boot up.
Headlights moved slowly up the hill and Tariq lay across the passenger seat until the car had gone by. Then he sat up and tapped out Salih’s number. He answered on the third ring. ‘Now,’ said Tariq. ‘I’m going to do it now. They’re all in bed. I’ll call you when it’s done.’
The line went dead.
Billy Bradford tossed a can of lager to his brother and popped the tab on his own. ‘Are you heading off?’
‘Think I’ll watch the fight,’ said Jack. ‘Heavyweight championship.’
‘Two black guys trying to kill each other. Might as well drive over to Manchester,’ said Billy.
‘Ha-ha,’ said Jack. He sipped his lager and sat in the armchair opposite the plasma television. He lit a cigarette. His Glock, a bulbous silencer screwed into the barrel, lay next to the ashtray.
‘Look, I’ll do the night shift if you want. I’m not tired,’ said Billy, as he sat on the sofa and swung his feet on to the coffee-table.
‘You know Katra doesn’t like feet on the furniture,’ said Jack.
‘Yeah, well, she doesn’t like us smoking in the house, either.’
Jack chuckled. ‘You’re just pissed because she likes me more than you.’
‘In your dreams,’ said Billy.
‘You asked her out yet?’
‘Have you?’
‘I’m here to work,’ said Jack. ‘And so are you.’
‘This isn’t working,’ said Billy. ‘It’s babysitting.’
‘Spider’s not paranoid,’ said Jack. ‘If he says someone’s after him, he’s not making it up.’
‘Arab terrorist, international hitman, it’s all a bit Andy McNab, isn’t it?’
‘You ever meet McNab? He’s out in Hollywood, I heard, advising on action movies.’
‘Where did we go wrong?’ asked Billy. ‘He gets lost in the desert, now he’s out in Hollywood and we’re babysitting a boy and an au pair in Hereford.’
‘Billy, stop bitching. Spider’s Sass and he needs help. Watching TV and having Katra cook for us is hardly shit work, is it?’ He sipped his lager. ‘Anyway, we’ll be back in Baghdad soon enough.’
Tariq crept around the side of the house. He had stuck the gun into the belt of his trousers, the silencer in his jacket pocket. He was carrying a brown-paper bag containing a sheet of sticky-backed plastic and a small hammer.
The kitchen was in darkness and he peered through the window. He hadn’t seen a dog when he’d had the house under surveillance and there was no sign of a food or water bowl. He knelt down, peeled the back off the plastic, then pressed it against the pane of glass closest to the door lock. He listened for a few seconds, then drove his elbow into the glass. It splintered and most of the glass remained stuck to the plastic. Tariq peeled it away and kept it glass side up as he placed it carefully on the ground.
He pulled the gun from his belt and screwed in the silencer, then reached through the hole in the glass and flicked open the Yale lock. He turned the handle and pushed open the door. As he stepped into the kitchen his shoe crunched on a small piece of glass that had escaped the plastic. He realised he was holding his breath and forced himself to relax.
He cocked his head to one side, frowning. He could hear sounds from down the hall. A fight. A crowd roaring and the thud-thud-thud of punches. A boxing match. His heart started to pound again. Shepherd should have been in bed with the girl. His finger tightened on the trigger. It didn’t matter. With the silencer on the gun, the girl and the boy wouldn’t hear a thing. He could shoot Shepherd downstairs, then go up and kill his family. Salih had said he should kill Shepherd if he was in the house and his family if he wasn’t, but in killing them all he would show he was committed to what he was doing, that it made no difference if his target was a man,a woman or a child. They were infidels. A human being who did not believe in Allah was not a human being. He was lower than an animal, lower even than the insects that crawled along the ground. He went up on tiptoe and moved silently across the kitchen floor. He paused at the door. The television was in the front room, the sound turned low so that it wouldn’t disturb the sleepers upstairs.
Tariq moved along the hallway. The sitting-room door was open. He raised his gun. There were eleven bullets in the magazine. He’d taken them out in his room, counted and recounted them,wearing gloves as Salih had instructed. They were so small, the bullets. Just an inch long, bright and shiny. It was hard to believe that something so small could kill a man, but Tariq had seen at first hand the damage that bullets could do. As part of his training, at a camp near Malakand on the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan, he’d been taught how to shoot and how to kill, how to make explosives by mixing ammonium nitrate fertiliser and aluminium powder. His instructors had shown him how to strip and fire a Kalashnikov, and many different types of handgun.
Most of his training had been on target ranges, but during their second month three prisoners had been brought in, bloody, battered, begging for their lives, and tied to posts. Tariq and five other British Muslims had been lined up in front of them and told to fire. Tariq had needed no urging. He had been the first to pull the trigger. His shot had hit the prisoner on the left, blowing away a big chunk of his head. His second shot had missed but then he had remembered his training and held the gun with both hands. His next three shots had hit the chest of the man in the middle. Tariq had turned the gun on the third man, even though he was already riddled with bullets, and he had carried on firing until the hammer clicked on empty casings. He had screamed then, as had the others, screamed and yelled and danced, kicking up dust, as the instructors clapped and cheered. Killing was easy, Tariq had learnt that day. It was easy and it was pleasurable. As he’d danced and chanted praise to Allah, he’d realised he had an erection. He’d been turned on by the killings. For a moment he’d been ashamed, but then he’d realised that the erection was a gift from Allah, a reward for what he’d done.