‘Let’s run by my house,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’ve got broadband.’
Shortt rolled Basharat over and bound his wrists with insulation tape. Then he and Armstrong helped the man to his feet.
‘Why are you doing this?’ asked Basharat, his voice muffled by the hood.
‘You don’t want to know,’ said Shortt. He put his face close to the Arab’s ear. ‘If we told you, we’d have to kill you,’ he whispered.
As Shortt and Armstrong bundled Basharat outside, the Major put his arm around Shepherd’s shoulders. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.
‘I’m not happy about it,’ said Shepherd, ‘but it had to be done.’
‘We didn’t hurt him, not really.’
‘We scared him shitless and maybe cracked a couple of ribs.’ They walked together towards the door. ‘How far would we have gone, boss,’ asked Shepherd, ‘if push had come to shove?’
‘Hypothetical question. No point going there.’
‘The guy’s done nothing wrong,’ Shepherd said. ‘He’s just a journalist doing his job.’
‘And Geordie was doing his,’ said the Major. ‘We did what we had to do, Spider. Now, let’s get that email and Basharat can go home.’
Geordie Mitchell paced up and down, swinging his arms. He always thought better when he was on the move, preferably on a run. The bigger the problem, the longer the run. Most of his former colleagues in the SAS were the same. Running was always the first step on the road to fitness. It built stamina and anyone preparing for the SAS selection course spent six months or more running three or four times a week. At first it was a chore, then it became a habit and eventually it was as natural as breathing.
As he paced around the room, he gazed at the floor. It was bare concrete. It didn’t matter how thick it was because he had nothing to dig with. They’d taken his belt and emptied his pockets, and there was nothing in the basement he could use.
Mitchell dropped to the floor and started to do press-ups, keeping his breathing steady and even. He did a slow twenty, then a brisk ten, then another slow twenty, enjoying the burn in his arms. When he’d finished the second set of twenty, he rolled over, linked his fingers behind his head and did fifty sit-ups, lay on the floor for a minute to recover, then did a second set. It was the middle of the night but the light was still on. It hadn’t been switched off all the time he’d been in the basement. He’d told Kamil that it was hard to sleep with the light on and Kamil had apologised but said that they had to be able to see him at all times. Every half-hour or so Mitchell would hear a soft footfall outside the door, then a brief silence as one of his captors looked through the peephole. The footfall was a good sign. It meant that there was no covert CCTV coverage of the basement.
Mitchell sat up, breathing heavily. He frowned as he stared at the wall in front of him. There was a small three-pin power socket about six inches above the ground. Mitchell got to his feet and walked over to it. He sat down and stared at it. Two small screws fixed the socket into the wall. The fact that the lights were on meant that there was power to the basement, which meant that the socket was probably live. A live power line could be used as a weapon. And there’d be wires running to the socket behind the wall. Wires could also be used as a weapon. He prodded the screws with his finger. They were in tight. He needed something to loosen them. A coin, or a flat piece of metal. He stood up and walked slowly round the room, even though he knew he was wasting his time: he had already searched every square inch.
The Transit van pulled up outside Shepherd’s house. ‘You’ve sold it already, have you?’ asked the Major, gesturing at the estate agent’s sign in the front garden.
‘Under offer,’ said Shepherd. ‘Should be exchanging contracts later this week.’ He opened the van’s side door and stood on the pavement looking at the house. The lights were off. It was just before eleven o’clock so Katra had almost certainly gone to bed.
The Major climbed out and walked with him to the house. Shepherd let them in and they went through to the sitting room. ‘Drink?’ he asked, as he sat down at his computer. There was a stack of paper in the printer’s tray: Liam had been downloading information on the space-shuttle programme.
‘I’m okay,’ said the Major. He pulled up a chair and sat down. He had written down Basharat’s email address and password on a piece of paper and he handed it to Shepherd, who launched his Internet browser, tapped in the address of the g-mail home page, then logged on to Basharat’s account.
There were half a dozen unread emails, all but one in English, the most recent from Basharat’s brother in Qatar. The four-minute video was tagged on to the email as an attachment and Shepherd clicked on it.
‘When are you moving to Hereford?’ asked the Major, as they waited for the file to download.
‘Should be about a month,’ said Shepherd. ‘We’ve already got a place fixed up. It’s just a question of handling the legal stuff.’
‘And the job’s okay with you being based out of London?’
‘The unit works all over the country so it doesn’t matter where my house is,’ said Shepherd. ‘The important thing is that Liam will get to spend more time with his grandparents. It’s important for him and it’s important for them. He’s all they have left of Sue.’
Shepherd’s wife had died two and a half years earlier in a road accident, driving Liam to school. She’d jumped a red light and her VW Golf had slammed into a truck. Since then Shepherd had juggled being an undercover cop with his responsibilities as a single parent. Even with Katra’s help it hadn’t been easy.
‘How are you getting on with Liam?’
‘Fine,’ said Shepherd. ‘He’s a great boy.’
‘He’s got over what happened?’
‘I don’t think either of us will ever get over it entirely, but he seems okay.’
‘What about you? Not seeing anyone?’
Shepherd chuckled. ‘Since when have you been all touchy-feely, boss?’
‘Three years is long enough, Spider. No one expects you to stay in mourning for ever.’
‘It’s two and a half. And I’m not in mourning.’ Shepherd grimaced – he had sounded defensive.
‘How long has it been since you went on a date?’
Shepherd laughed. ‘Do people still go on dates?’
‘I was trying to ask you subtly how long it’d been since you got laid.’
‘I don’t have much opportunity,’ said Shepherd. ‘Most of the women I’ve met recently have been either planning to have their husbands killed or blowing themselves to kingdom come. And I’m so busy that speed-dating is probably the only dating I’d have time for.’
The video finished its download and Shepherd opened the Windows Media Player so that they could watch it. The video had evidently been edited before it had been sent to the television station as it started in mid-sentence as a masked man with a Kalashnikov paced up and down in front of the camera.
The first thirty seconds hadn’t been shown on television, and there was no station logo as there had been on the transmitted version. ‘It’s clearer than the version we taped off Sky News,’ said the Major. ‘If there’s anything in it that’ll help us find Geordie we’ll stand a better chance of seeing it on this.’
They heard footsteps padding down the stairs and looked around to see Katra walk into the room, wrapped in a pink towelling robe. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said.
‘What were you expecting, burglars?’ asked Shepherd.
Katra looked confused. ‘No, I locked the doors,’ she said. Since she had arrived from Slovenia her English had improved by leaps and bounds, but she still hadn’t grasped Shepherd’s sense of humour.
Shepherd introduced Major Gannon.
‘Are you hungry?’ she asked. ‘I could make sandwiches.’
‘We’re fine,’ said Shepherd. ‘We’re doing a bit of work, so you can go back to bed. Sorry we woke you.’
‘I was waiting for you to come back,’ said Katra. ‘Would you like some coffee?’
‘Really, we’re fine,’ said Shepherd. ‘Now scoot.’ Katra giggled and went back upstairs. When Shepherd turned back to the Major, the boss was grinning at him. ‘What?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ said the Major.
‘She’s a kid,’ said Shepherd.
‘She’s, what – mid-twenties?’
‘Twenty-four. And I’m thirty-six.’
‘So when you’re ninety, she’ll be seventy-eight.’
