they might start looking at me. I’d rather sort it out myself.’
‘Spider, I don’t want you blowing an investigation just because you fancy a bit of rough-and-tumble.’
‘It’ll be fine. And I could do with the exercise.’
‘Do you need back-up?’
‘Charlie, if Elaine hadn’t been with me I’d have sorted it out then and there,’ said Shepherd. ‘I can handle it.’
Button gave him the address.
Shepherd went out and got into his Audi. He drove to West Belfast and parked in a quiet road about a hundred yards from the address Button had given him.
The house was in a two-storey brick terrace with a slate roof. At the end of the street a gable wall had been painted with a hooded terrorist holding a Kalashnikov rifle in front of the Irish tricolour. Shepherd looked up and down the street, but there was no one around. He put his finger on the doorbell and kept it there.
He heard a buzzing from inside the house and after a minute the lights went on upstairs. There were heavy footsteps on the stairs, then the light went on in the hallway and the door opened. ‘Who the feck is that?’ asked a man’s voice.
Shepherd took his finger off the bell, stepped back and kicked the door. The wood splintered and it crashed open, slamming the man against the wall. Shepherd stepped inside. The man was standing with his back to the wall, holding his bleeding right hand. He was wearing boxer shorts with red hearts on then and a grubby T-shirt. Shepherd recognised him as the man who had pulled the knife on Elaine and hit him in the solar plexus, then chopped him on the back of the neck as he slumped forward, gasping for breath. The man fell to the ground and curled up into a foetal ball. Shepherd closed the front door, kicked him hard in the kidneys, then hurried up the stairs.
A bedroom door was open and the light was on. The duvet had been thrown aside. The door to the front bedroom was closed. Shepherd flung it open. There was enough light coming in from the street for him to see a man in pyjama bottoms groping under his bed. A girl pulled the duvet around her as Shepherd walked purposefully into the room.
The man cursed and his hand appeared from under the bed holding a gun. Shepherd hit the gun away with his right hand, grabbed the man’s throat with the left and smashed his head against the wall, then did it a second time and slapped him, left, right, and left again. Blood splattered across the wall. The woman whimpered but Shephered ignored her. ‘Where’s my wallet?’ he asked. ‘And where’s my phone?’ He grasped the man’s nose and twisted it until he heard the cartilage crack.
‘Kitchen,’ said the man, blood pouring from his nostrils.
Shepherd hauled him off the bed by the hair and out on to the landing. He pointed at the crying girl. ‘Keep quiet and you’ll be fine.’ He shut the door.
The man was scrabbling on his hands and knees but Shepherd kept a tight grip on his hair. He dragged him to the top of the stairs, then kicked him. The man thumped down like a dead weight, leaving smears of blood on the wall. Shepherd hurried after him, then shoved him in to the kitchen. The two mobile phones were on the kitchen table, with Shepherd’s wallet and Elaine’s purse. Shepherd threw the man against the fridge, punched him in the stomach, and opened his wallet. The credit cards were still there but the money had gone. He bent down, took a handful of hair and pulled the mugger to his feet. ‘Where’s the money?’ he growled.
The man pointed to a drawer and Shepherd opened it. Inside, he found several hundred pounds and a plastic bag of little white tablets. Shepherd stuffed the cash into the pockets of his jeans, then kneed the man in the groin. ‘If I ever see you again, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?’ he hissed.
The man nodded.
Shepherd kicked him in the ribs. ‘I can’t hear you,’ he said.
‘I understand,’ said the man. The lower part of his face was covered with blood.
Shepherd sneered at him. ‘You really with the Provos?’
‘Yeah.’ He coughed and moaned.
‘Haven’t you heard? You’re supposed to have laid down your arms,’ said Shepherd. He stamped on the man’s right hand with the heel of his shoe and heard the fingers crack.
He went back into the hallway. The man who had opened the door was groaning. Shepherd stepped over him and walked out into the street.
The Jamie Pierce mobile rang as he headed for his Audi. It was Button. ‘Winning friends and influencing people, Spider?’ she asked.
‘All sorted,’ said Shepherd.
Salih’s mobile phone vibrated in his top pocket and he fished it out. It was Viktor Merkulov. The Russian wanted to meet so Salih arranged to see him in an hour at Porter’s restaurant in the heart of Covent Garden.
Salih arrived on time but the Russian was already at a corner table and half-way through a bottle of red wine. Salih knew it was one of the Russian’s favourite restaurants. It served traditional English food, fish and chips, steak and kidney pudding, with tourists making up most of its clientele. The tables were far enough apart for privacy and a tail would be easy to spot, but the food was why Merkulov had wanted to meet there. He waved his glass at Salih. ‘I knew you wouldn’t want wine so I started without you,’ he said, as Salih sat down.
Salih took a menu from a pretty Polish waitress and poured himself a glass of mineral water.
‘I’m having the steak and kidney – the pudding, not the pie,’ said Merkulov. ‘With mushy peas, of course.’
‘You are nothing if not predictable,’ said Salih.
‘If you find something you like, stick with it, my friend,’ said the Russian. He sipped his wine and dabbed his lips with a napkin. Salih ordered fishcakes and chips. ‘I have pictures for you,’ Merkulov went on, ‘of them both.’
‘Excellent,’ said Salih.
‘The woman joined MI5 from university,’ said the Russian. ‘A double first from Cambridge. She was with the International Counter-terrorism Branch. Two years in Belfast when the IRA was still active. Then she moved to the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre where she was regarded as a high-flyer. She was never involved with counter- espionage so she didn’t cross my path. As a serving MI5 officer she had the lowest of profiles. I have a birth certificate but little in the way of personal details, I’m afraid.’
‘No current address?’
‘She doesn’t appear on any electoral roll. It could be that she’s married, that Button is her maiden name and everything is in her husband’s. But even if that’s not so, MI5 would have sanitised everything. I did the check anyway. She is not registered with a general practitioner under her name and there are no credit cards for a woman of that name and general characteristics.’
Salih sipped his water. He had hoped for more but the Russian was right. If she worked for the security service her masters would protect her as a matter of course.
‘Last year she left MI5 to join the newly formed Serious Organised Crime Agency.’
‘Interesting,’ said Salih. ‘Intelligence agents don’t change horse mid-career.’
‘SOCA needed staff, and the traditional police are too set in their ways,’ said Merkulov. ‘They recruited from MI5,MI6 and various private-sector agencies. Button had run undercover operatives for MI5 so they approached her to run SOCA’s undercover unit.’
‘SOCA works throughout the UK, right?’
‘Country-wide,’ said the Russian. ‘The undercover unit mounts its own investigations but also accepts assignments from individual forces.’
‘Tell me about SOCA,’ said Salih.
‘Just under four and a half thousand employees. It was set up in 2006 when the British Government merged the National Crime Squad, the National Criminal Intelligence Service, the investigative sections of Customs and Excise and the Immigration Service.’
‘Do we know where she’s working at the moment?’
‘No. The problem is that SOCA is so new I have few contacts within it. I hope to rectify that over the next few months. I can tell you that she isn’t based at SOCA headquarters. In fact, she doesn’t appear to operate out of a permanent base and seems to have no ancillary staff reporting directly to her. I’m sorry I can’t be of more help.’
