‘That’s my way in, then? I replace Ormsby?’
‘It’s the way I see it,’ said Hargrove.
‘Isn’t it a bit obvious?’
‘They probably won’t realise we traced the bullet. There’s no reason for them to think they’re suspects. People do have nervous breakdowns and disappear, and jobs don’t get more stressful than serving with an armed- response unit.’
‘How about an undercover cop pretending to be a member of an ARV? I’d be trying to set up cops with guns. How stressful is that?’
‘Are you saying you don’t want the assignment?’
Shepherd flashed Hargrove a tight smile. It was always up to an undercover operative to decide whether or not they would accept a job. It had to be that way. But Shepherd had never turned down an assignment and he had no intention of starting now. ‘I’ll need a couple of days on the range. If I’m rusty, they’ll spot it.’
‘We can fix you up on a police range here. Or in Scotland.’
‘I’ll get it sorted.’
‘Hereford?’
Shepherd nodded. ‘It’ll give me a chance to see Liam, too.’
‘Can you be ready to go in on Monday?’
That gave Shepherd six days to prepare. Six days in which to wipe away the persona of Tony Nelson and step into his new character. ‘If you can have the legend ready by then,’ he said. He took a deep breath. ‘No rest for the wicked.’
‘Are you okay?’
‘It never ends, does it?’ said Shepherd. ‘At first you think you’re making a difference, but for every villain we put away, there’s another two waiting to take his place.’
‘That doesn’t mean we stop trying, Spider. You’ve put some dangerous men behind bars. You can be proud of what you’ve achieved.’
‘Yeah, but in the grand scheme of things, what difference do we really make?’
‘Ah, now you’re getting all metaphysical. The meaning of life.’
‘I know what life’s about,’said Shepherd.‘It’s about raising children. First time I held Liam in my arms I knew that. Nothing else matters. But how do babies grow up to be rapists, drugs-dealers and murderers? I look at Liam and I just know he’s going to turn out okay. He’s only eight but you can already see he’s a good kid. He’s polite, he’s considerate, he doesn’t get into fights. Everybody likes him.’
‘He’s got you as a role model, Spider. And he couldn’t have asked for a better mother than Sue.’
‘I don’t think it’s down to that. I don’t remember teaching him the difference between right and wrong,’ said Shepherd, ‘but there isn’t an ounce of badness in him. Then you look at the kids prowling in packs doing drugs and mugging other kids for their mobiles and you wonder why they went bad. It’s not too big a step from playing truant to dealing drugs, and the next thing you know they’re shooting each other with automatic weapons.’
‘Kids go bad,’ said Hargrove, ‘and bad kids grow into bad adults, and our job is to put away as many of the bad guys as possible.’
‘Treat the symptoms, not the disease?’
‘Hell’s bells, Spider, are you having a crisis of confidence?’
Shepherd didn’t reply.
‘Do you want to see our psychologist?’ said Hargrove quietly. ‘Talk things through?’
‘I’m not crazy.’
‘It’s not about being crazy,’ said the superintendent. ‘It’s about stress and how you deal with it. That’s why we have a psychologist as part of the team, to nip problems in the bud. The last twelve months you’ve been through a lot.’
‘I know.’
‘Knowing it and dealing with it are two different things. You never really grieved for Sue.’
Shepherd stopped walking and glared at Hargrove. ‘Bullshit,’ he said. ‘Bull-fucking-shit.’
Hargrove put up his hands defensively. ‘I’m just saying, when it happened you were in prison undercover. You didn’t have time to deal with it. When you got out you had Liam to take care of. Then you wanted to get back into harness. You needed to work, you said. I thought maybe you were right, but you’ve gone from one job to the next and maybe you need time to grieve.’
‘I’m not the crying sort.’
‘Again, crying and grieving aren’t the same thing.’
‘I’m not seeing a shrink. End of story.’
‘Right. I’m just saying it’s an option.’
‘This isn’t about Sue. Or Liam. Or my stress levels. It’s about pissing on a forest fire.’
‘If we don’t try, if we let them get away with it, how does that make the world a better place? You were in Afghanistan with the SAS and we were supposed to have won that one, but did it really solve anything? That doesn’t stop us fighting for what we think is right.’
‘And now I’m going up against other cops?’
‘Cops who’ve gone bad, Spider. And in my book they’re worse than dyed-in-the-wool villains. Is that what this is about? Going after cops?’
Shepherd started walking again. ‘I’ll be fine. Trust me.’
Shepherd drove his CRV towards London at a steady seventy miles an hour, resisting the urge to join the stream of executive cars whizzing by in the outside lane. He used his hands-free to phone an au pair agency in Ealing and arranged an appointment for the following morning at ten o’clock. He’d already filled in their questionnaire, but they required a personal interview before they would send a woman to his house. From the sound of it, it was easier to get into the SAS than on to the agency’s books.
His second phone call was to Major Allan Gannon, who answered on the third ring.
‘Not caught you at a bad time, have I?’ said Shepherd.
‘Spider! Business, social, or are your nuts in the fire again?’
It was a fair enough question. Usually when Shepherd phoned the major he needed a favour. He explained that he was about to join a police armed-response unit and that he needed a refresher course in the equipment and tactics he’d be using.
Gannon chuckled. ‘Guess you’re a little rusty,’ he said. ‘When?’
‘Soon as possible,’ said Shepherd.
‘What are you doing over the next couple of days?’
‘I’m on my way to London and I’ve a few things to do in the morning, but then I’m yours.’
‘Come to the Duke of York barracks at noon,’ said Gannon. ‘Bring an overnight bag.’ He cut the connection, leaving Shepherd to wonder what he had planned. One thing he was certain of: he was putting himself in good hands. He’d served with the major in Ireland, the former Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan, and trained with him everywhere from the jungles of Brunei to the Arctic wastelands of northern Norway. There wasn’t a man he trusted more.
There was a double-knock on the hotel-room door. Sewell was staring at a spreadsheet on his laptop. ‘Go away,’ he said. ‘I don’t need the bed turning down.’
‘It’s not Housekeeping, Mr Sewell,’ said a man’s voice. It was the superintendent.
Sewell got up and walked to the door. He was naked except for a hotel towel wrapped round his waist.
Superintendent Hargrove was wearing an immaculate pinstripe suit, a crisp white shirt and a blue tie with red cricket balls on it. He was holding two bottles of Bollinger. ‘I gather this is your tipple.’
‘Does this mean we’re celebrating that shit Hendrickson being arrested?’ asked Sewell.
Hargrove looked pained. ‘Not exactly.’ He closed the door.
‘We said Monday. Today’s Tuesday. Forty-eight hours has become four days.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Hargrove, ‘I really am. It’s just that this is bigger than we first thought.’
‘Bigger than attempted murder?’
Hargrove looked around for somewhere to sit. Sewell had the only chair, facing his computer. ‘Do you mind if I sit on the bed?’ he asked.
‘Suit yourself,’ said Sewell. He popped the cork out of one of the bottles of champagne, went to the cramped
