loved the job and relished its challenges, but it wasn’t the sort of profession that a seventeen-year-old should be nudged towards. And the way the police were going, he wouldn’t recommend any youngster to sign up straight from school. Police pay wasn’t great, while political correctness and mounting paperwork meant that the job was as much about protecting your back as it was about putting villains away. The only way to make a decent career was to go in as a graduate on the fast-track promotion scheme, but then it was more about climbing the greasy pole than it was about fighting crime. Shepherd had always been happier at the sharp end. As a soldier he had wanted to be where the bullets were flying. As a police officer, he wanted to be head-to-head with the bad guys. But explaining that to a group of impressionable schoolchildren probably wasn’t what the lovely Mrs Hale-Barton had in mind.
‘Liam’s still in class,’ she said. ‘School finishes in ten minutes. I can have him brought here or you can wait for him at the gates.’
‘No problem, I’ll wait outside,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’m really grateful for you giving Liam another chance.’
He waited at the school gates until he heard the bell ring. Thirty seconds later the doors banged open and pupils flooded out, laughing and shouting. On the road a line of four-wheel-drives stretched into the distance as far as he could see, engines running. Shepherd stood with his hands in his pockets, wondering what he should say to Liam. Discipline was the part of parenting he hated most, but kids needed boundaries: they needed to be told what their limits were and kept to them. They had to be taught the difference between right and wrong, and when they did wrong they had to be punished. Shepherd hated punishing his son. He’d never laid a finger on him. Never had and never would. He’d always left the disciplining to Sue when she was alive. Good cop, bad cop. She’d administer the punishments, and Shepherd would flash his son a sympathetic smile when she wasn’t looking. It was only after she had gone that Shepherd had understood how much she must have hated the bad-cop role.
Shepherd saw Liam among a group of youngsters, all with their ties at half-mast and their shirt collars open. A grin broke across Liam’s face, which vanished when he realised why his father was there. He slowed and stared at the ground, avoiding Shepherd’s baleful stare.
He muttered something as he got close.
‘What?’ said Shepherd.
‘I said I’m sorry,’ Liam mumbled.
‘You are in so much trouble,’ said Shepherd.
‘I know,’ said Liam. ‘They’re going to exclude me.’
‘No, they’re not,’ said Shepherd. He started walking away and Liam hurried after him. Shepherd held up his right hand, the thumb and first finger almost touching. ‘But you were this close to getting kicked out. You’re lucky the headteacher decided to give you a break. What the hell were you thinking of?’
‘I don’t know. It just looked kind of cool.’
Shepherd stopped dead. ‘ Cool? There’s nothing cool about knives.’
‘I’d never seen a flick-knife for real, only on telly.’
‘Yeah? Well, the reason for that, Liam, is that they’ve been banned since 1959. Since before I was born. And since 1988 no one has been allowed to carry any knife with a blade more than three inches long unless they’ve a very good reason. And why would you even think you could go waving it around at school?’ He started walking again.
Liam followed. ‘I wasn’t waving it, Dad. I was just showing it to my friends.’
‘Well, your little show-and-tell has cost you your PlayStation. And the TV comes out of your room. And I want you to help Katra with the washing and cleaning. You’re going to be in the garden every weekend, pulling up weeds.’
‘Okay,’ said Liam.
‘You know how dangerous knives are, right?’
‘Of course.’
‘And flick-knives are just about the most dangerous of them all. You press the button and the blade is there. It serves only one purpose. It’s not like a Swiss Army knife. The only thing you can do with a flick-knife is attack someone.’
Liam said nothing.
‘Do you know where I got it from?’
Liam shook his head.
‘Someone tried to stick it into me. And they weren’t playing. The only reason you carry a weapon like that is if you want to hurt someone. And you don’t want to hurt anyone, do you?’
‘No. I just wanted to show it to my friends.’
‘Can you imagine what would have happened if someone had taken it off you and started waving it around? Someone could have been cut – or worse. And it would have been your fault. What were you doing in my bathroom anyway?’
‘I wanted some toothpaste and I saw the knife by the basin.’
‘You shouldn’t have taken it, Liam. Hell, if you’d asked me about it I could have explained what it was and why I had it. Why didn’t you ask me first?’
Liam was silent.
‘Because you knew I’d say no, right?’
‘I guess.’
‘So you knew that what you were doing was wrong, didn’t you?’
Still Liam said nothing.
‘That makes it worse. You were being sneaky.’
‘I wasn’t, Dad.’
‘You thought that if I didn’t know you had it you could take it to school. That’s being sneaky. I thought you were better than that, Liam.’
Liam muttered under his breath.
‘What?’ said Shepherd.
‘I said I’m sorry,’ said Liam.
‘Okay,’ said Shepherd. ‘And I’m sorry, too.’
‘For what?’
‘For having it in the house. For not locking it away. We both made mistakes, kid, but it’s not the end of the world.’
‘So will you have a punishment, too?’ asked Liam.
Shepherd pointed a finger at his son. ‘It’s punishment enough being your father sometimes,’ he said. ‘Don’t push your luck. And we’d better get a move on, because you’re going to be cleaning the toilet before dinner.’
Shepherd took the Central Line to Tottenham Court Road, walked down Oxford Street, checking reflections in store windows, and headed into the Virgin megastore. He spent a full fifteen minutes in the classical-music section, then wandered round hip-hop, checking faces. There was no overlap.
He took the escalator to the ground floor, then walked along Oxford Street to Borders bookstore. He took the escalator up, then went down in the lift, did a final check at Oxford Circus Underground station then left through the Regent Street south exit and walked as rapidly as the crowd of shoppers allowed to the Ritz Hotel.
He felt underdressed as soon as he entered the lobby. Even the receptionists were better dressed than he was and for a moment he regretted not putting on a suit. He’d known there would be a dress code so he’d forgone his regular jeans and put on grey flannel trousers but he’d decided to keep his leather jacket. He didn’t exactly blend in, but here it was more about having the right attitude than about the name on the label inside a suit.
He heard the sound of clinking cutlery and a piano to his left and strode confidently in that direction. Middle- aged women in Gucci and Chanel, wearing Rolex or Cartier watches, were nibbling at finger sandwiches and sipping tea from delicate china cups, trying not to disturb their perfectly applied make-up. He scanned the faces. Botoxed foreheads. Lifted brows. Collagen lips. Bleached hair. Then he saw a face that was smiling naturally, without the benefit of a surgeon’s intervention. Dark chestnut hair, brown eyes that were almost black and a well-cut dark blue jacket and skirt that suggested quiet professionalism rather than ostentatious spending. She got to her feet and flashed him a small wave. He wasn’t surprised that she had recognised him so easily. Charlotte Button would have had access to his Metropolitan Police file: she would know everything about him and would have seen every photograph, surveillance and official, that had ever been taken of him.
