Branch and the Garda’s Special Branch C3 Section concentrated on terrorism and counterintelligence, so drugs were left to the boys in blue.
Half an hour on the Police National Computer was all it had taken for Rose to compile a list of the top three drug barons in the Irish Republic with their addresses. All had done business at one time or another with an Irish crime family in North London and were known to the Drugs Squad. All were put under surveillance whenever they set foot on British soil, but they weren’t stupid: they rarely visited the UK and even avoided stopovers at Heathrow
They were ex-directory, but Rose’s method of contacting them had been simplicity itself. He had sent a one- ounce package of his heroin by regular mail to each man, with a laser-printed note saying he had ten kilos for sale at twenty thousand euros a kilo, delivery in Ireland, and the number of a pay-as-you-go mobile that he’d bought in a shop on the Edgware Road. Two had replied. One had sent a text message in two words, one of which was an obscenity. The other had phoned late at night and started by telling Rose of all the terrible things that would happen to him if he was messing them around. Then he said they wanted to see the gear. He promised to call when he was in Dublin and the man had given him a mobile number. Game on. You didn’t have to be especially clever to be a drugs dealer, just careful. And, as gamekeeper-turned-poacher, Keith Rose knew how careful to be.
The heroin they’d taken from the Harlesden flat was double-wrapped in thick polythene so a drugs dog wouldn’t so much as wag its tail if it stumbled across it, but Rose knew that the chances of him being checked when he drove his car off the ferry from Holyhead to Dublin were next to zero. And, in the unlikely event that he was stopped, he’d produce his warrant card before they even thought about giving his car the once-over. If plan B went as well as he expected, he’d be back in London with two hundred thousand euros within twenty-four hours. Having taken the opportunity to down a couple of pints of the genuine black stuff.
A band was playing, far off in the distance. Shepherd groaned and opened his eyes. There was a bitter taste in his mouth. One of his mobiles was ringing. He groped for it. Hargrove’s phone. He swung his feet off the sofa and took the call. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.
‘Nothing, but we need to meet tomorrow,’ said the superintendent. ‘Charlie Kerr’s a bit out of the ordinary. I have to run some things by you before Monday.’
Shepherd rubbed a hand over his face. The lager bottle lay on its side by one of the sofa legs. He must have fallen asleep with it in his hand. ‘Fine. Where and when?’
‘I’ll let you have a lie-in,’ said Hargrove. ‘Let’s say three o’clock. There’s a rugby field in Trafford by a pub called the Golden Fleece.’
‘I’ll be there. Everything’s okay, right?’ He looked out of the floor-to-ceiling window that took up most of the left-hand side of the apartment. It was dark outside. A full moon hung in the pitch black sky, the night so clear that he could see the craters that pockmarked its surface.
‘Everything’s fine. I’ll brief you tomorrow.’
Shepherd cut the connection and stared at the phone. It was half past eleven. He cursed. He dialled Moira’s number and groaned inwardly when Tom answered the phone. He apologised for phoning so late.
‘It’s almost midnight.’ Tom groaned.
‘I promised to call Liam before he went to sleep.’
‘He’s been in bed for hours.’
Shepherd apologised again, but before he’d finished Moira had taken the phone from her husband. ‘Daniel, this isn’t good enough, it really isn’t.’
‘I fell asleep,’ said Shepherd, lamely.
‘And your son cried himself to sleep,’ said Moira. ‘I let him stay up until ten and that’s an hour past his weekend bedtime. You promised, Daniel, and you shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep.’
‘It wasn’t a question of not keeping a promise,’ said Shepherd. ‘I fell asleep, that’s all. It wasn’t deliberate.’
‘Whatever, he’s asleep now. Call again tomorrow. And think of how much your thoughtlessness has hurt him.’
She cut the connection. Shepherd lay back on the sofa and stared up at the ceiling. His mother-in-law was right. He’d let his son down yet again. His stomach churned and he felt like throwing up. He’d cut short his promised visit, he’d fallen asleep when he’d promised to phone and he’d left his son in storage, like unwanted furniture. If there had been a prize for worst father of the year, he’d win it. He made a silent promise to himself: as soon as the Angie Kerr job was tucked away, he’d make it up to Liam. He’d show his son just how good a father he could be.
Rose spent two hours driving around the north of Dublin looking for a suitable place to hand over the drugs, then spent the night in a cheap bed-andbreakfast. Before he went to sleep he phoned his wife and told her he was on a surveillance operation at Gatwick Airport and that he loved her. He spent five minutes talking to his daughter, then he phoned the Irish mobile number and told the man who answered that he would show him the heroin at eleven o’clock in the morning. He had the venue already planned and the Irishman didn’t argue. After making the second call he slept a dreamless sleep.
Breakfast was a full Irish – eggs, bacon, sausage, white pudding, black pudding, potato scone, fried bread – and Rose cleared his plate before he drove to the airport. He left his car in the short-term car park and walked to the arrivals terminal where he picked up the keys to a rental. He drove it to the short-term car park, and when he was sure he wasn’t being watched he switched the drugs and a cloth-wrapped bundle to the new car, then drove out of the airport whistling to himself.
The place he’d chosen for the handover was the car park of a pub on the edge of a rough housing scheme – blocks of flats with broken windows and graffiti, shopfronts protected by roll-down metal shutters. It didn’t look the sort of place that was regularly visited by the Garda, and he doubted that any of the locals would be members of a Neighbourhood Watch scheme. There were no CCTV cameras and the nearest police station was five miles away. According to the Police National Computer, it was slap in the middle of the area controlled by the gang that was going to buy the heroin. Rose had thought they’d be more relaxed on their home turf, less likely to be trigger happy.
He arrived half an hour before the time he’d told the Irishman. He parked with the front of his car facing the road and slid the cloth-wrapped bundle between his legs. He was wearing sunglasses and leather gloves, with a baseball cap pulled down over his face. A ten-year-old Mercedes pulled into the car park at a quarter to eleven. There were four men in it and Rose recognised two of the faces from the computer files. They were enforcers. The man who ran the gang was keeping his distance, but Rose had expected as much. He flashed his headlights and the Mercedes rolled slowly across the car park.
Rose stayed in his car. The rear doors of the Mercedes opened and two men walked towards him. They wore long coats that flapped in the wind, and had their hands in the pockets. Rose wound down the window. ‘Can you guys do me a favour and stop where you are?’ he called.
The two men halted, a dozen paces from the car. ‘Have youse got the gear?’ said the taller of the two. Six feet two, maybe, with wide shoulders hunched against the wind that blew between the blocks of flats. His nose was almost flattened against his face. A boxer’s nose.
‘Have you got the money?’
‘We’re gonna have to see the gear before youse gets to see the cash.’
‘I’ve no problem with that, but just so we know where we stand, what are you carrying?’
The boxer frowned. ‘What?’
Rose smiled patiently.‘What sort of weaponry have you got under your coats? I’m guessing handguns or a sawn-off at most.’ He raised the gun he was holding, just enough so that they could see what it was. ‘I’ve got an Ingram MAC 10, which fires eleven hundred rounds per minute and holds thirty in the magazine so I don’t want you making me nervous– if my trigger finger gets jumpy I could accidentally empty the whole clip in less time than you could say . . . well, before you could open your mouth, actually.’ He glanced at the weapon in his hand. ‘Recoil- operated, select-fire submachine-gun, fires from an open bolt. Nice, but not especially accurate beyond twenty-five metres. And in case you’re wondering, yes, it would shoot right through the panel of this door. And with the silencer, not too many people would hear it. Not that they’d give a shit around here anyway.’
The two men looked at each other, then back at Rose, whose smile widened. ‘I’m not trying to pull a fast one on you,’ he added. ‘I just want us to know where we all stand. Let’s see what you’ve got.’
The boxer slid his right hand out of his pocket. An automatic, probably a Colt. The other pulled back his coat:
