Boots thudded across the grass. Shepherd felt a hand on his shoulder. ‘Stu, are you hit?’ It was Rose, but he sounded as if he was talking through water.
Shepherd continued to stare at Jones. A fist-sized chunk of his skull was missing and blood pooled on the grass. There were shouts in the distance and a woman screamed.
Rose knelt in front of Shepherd, put his hands on his shoulders and looked into his eyes. ‘Come on, mate, it’s okay.’
‘It’s not okay,’ said Shepherd flatly.
‘You did everything you could. It wasn’t your fault.’
‘Who’s fault was it, then?’
‘He shot himself – no one forced him to pull the trigger. Just be grateful that no one else got hurt.’
Rose pulled Shepherd to his feet. Two paramedics rushed across the grass with a trolley but slowed when they saw the damage to the man’s skull.
Rose put an arm round Shepherd and guided him away from the body. ‘You need a drink,’ he said.
‘I’m fine,’ said Shepherd.
‘First time you’ve seen a kill?’
‘No, but it’s the first time I’ve seen anyone kill themselves,’ he said. ‘He was talking to me and then . . .’
‘Did he mean to do it? It wasn’t an accident?’
‘He knew what he was doing. The gun he had doesn’t have a hair trigger. You don’t fire it by mistake.’ Shepherd looked over his shoulder at the paramedics who were zipping Jones into a black plastic body-bag. ‘I fucked up,’ he said.
‘No, you didn’t,’ said Rose. ‘He was hell-bent on doing it. There was nothing you could have said or done.’
Shepherd wondered if that was true. Maybe if he’d told Jones that he, too, had been in the SAS, maybe if he’d made that connection Jones would have talked for longer. And if he’d kept talking maybe Shepherd could have persuaded him not to take his life. But Rule Number One of living undercover was that you never told an outsider who you really were.
Rose put his arm round Shepherd’s shoulders. ‘You did the best you could, Stu. There aren’t many guys who would have gone out there the way you did.’
Shepherd gestured at the house. ‘The guy’s daughter, is she in there?’
‘Yeah. Emma, her name is.’
Shepherd shook off Rose’s arm and headed for the house.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Rose.
‘I’ve got something to tell her,’ said Shepherd.
Charlie Kerr poured himself a large measure of gin, splashed in tonic water and dropped in a slice of lemon. He drained half, then poured in more gin and belched.
He took a roll of black rubbish bags from one of the kitchen drawers and went upstairs. He put the glass between the twin basins in the master bathroom, then picked up Angie’s cosmetics and dumped them into one of the bags. He took her sanitary towels from the cupboard under the sink, her soap, her shampoo, her medicines, her cotton buds, everything she had ever touched, and tossed them into the bag. He took a long pull at his gin and tonic, checked that he hadn’t forgotten anything, then smiled at his reflection in the mirror. He’d be able to bring back all the women he wanted now. There was no nagging wife to bitch and moan.
He carried the bag into the bedroom and dropped it on to the king-size bed. He pulled open the drawers in the dressing-table, grabbed handfuls of her underwear and thrust it into the bag with her brushes, combs and hair spray. The book she was reading – the latest John Grisham – went in, with her alarm clock and slippers. He’d barely started on her wardrobes before the bag was full. He knotted the top, opened the bedroom window and threw it out. It landed on the lawn with a thump. He cursed when he saw it had burst and the contents were strewn across the grass.
Eddie Anderson appeared from behind the garage. ‘You okay, boss?’
‘Sort that out, Eddie.’ He went back to the wardrobes and filled the rest of the bags with Angie’s clothing. Gary Payne had told him she was dead. But the moment she had climbed into the car with Tony Nelson, she’d signed her own death warrant. No way could he have let her live. She’d wanted him dead so badly she’d been prepared to pay a stranger to put a bullet in his head. ‘Stupid cow,’ Kerr muttered. Stupid to have thought she could ever get the better of him. Stupid not to have spotted that she was dealing with an undercover cop. Stupid to have thought he would let her live. Now she was dead and soon Tony Nelson would be, too.
He finished filling another bag with Angie’s clothes and tossed it out of the window. Tony Nelson had it coming, whether or not he was a cop. He must have known who Kerr was. He must know who he was dealing with. And despite that, despite Kerr’s reputation, he’d still tried to entrap Angie. That was what riled Kerr more than anything: the fact that Nelson, or whatever his real name was, thought he was so much smarter than Kerr. ‘I’ll show you,’ muttered Kerr. ‘I’ll fucking show you what happens when you mess with Charlie Kerr.’
There’d be an inquest, of course, but there was no doubt that Angie had taken her own life. The cops would want to know how she got hold of the sleeping tablets and they’d be looking for someone to blame. Payne would never tell, of course. Kerr paid him handsomely for his loyalty. The custody sergeant would probably end up taking the blame for not searching her properly. And if that happened, Kerr would take pleasure in suing the police for millions. He smiled malevolently.
Sutherland drove the ARV into the car park from East Tenter Street and parked next to an undercover van belonging to the Specialist Firearms teams. It had the name of a fictitious florist on the side and a stencilled bunch of flowers that looked as if it had been done by a five-year-old.
Shepherd unlocked the gun-holder and handed the MP5s to Rose and Sutherland, then he climbed out and stretched. The heavy bulletproof vest played havoc with his spine but it had to be worn. He followed Rose and Sutherland through the rear entrance and along to the armoury. Two Specialist Firearms officers were already making their MP5s safe, the barrels pointed into Kevlar-lined metal containers with sand at the bottom while they pulled out the magazines and checked there were no rounds in the breech. The police were safety-conscious to a fault. It was a far cry from the laid-back attitude of the SAS where live weapons were carried as casually as mobile phones.
Rose and Sutherland unloaded, checked their carbines and Glocks, then handed them over to the armoury officer. As Shepherd cleared his weapons, Rose and Sutherland counted their ammunition and handed it in. ‘You okay, Stu?’ asked Rose.
‘Knackered,’ said Shepherd.
‘You need a pint at the Bull’s Head,’ said Rose.
‘Nah, raincheck,’ said Shepherd. ‘I need some kip.’
‘What happened today, there’s people you can talk to here. I don’t know how they did it north of the border but we’ve got psychiatrists and occupational health advisors on tap.’
Shepherd gave his Glock and ammunition to the armoury officer. ‘We had them in Glasgow, but they’re more trouble than they’re worth. I’ll go for a run when I get home.’
‘At night?’
‘Best time,’ said Shepherd. ‘Not so many cars around. A few miles will clear my head.’
‘What you did today, it was above and beyond, you know?’
‘Didn’t do any good, did it?’
‘You tried, and that was more than a lot of guys would have done.’ Rose patted Shepherd’s shoulder. ‘He was going to do it anyway, no matter what you said to him. He just wanted an audience.’
Shepherd knew Rose was right, but that didn’t make it any easier to deal with. He looked down at his bulletproof vest. There were still spots of Jones’s blood on it.
Shepherd woke with a start. His heart was pounding and he swung his feet off the bed. He sat with his head in his hands, trying to work out why he had been so affected by Barry Jones’s suicide. He had seen men die at close range, and some had been friends and colleagues. Jones was a stranger – yet he was the one giving him nightmares. He stood up and took deep breaths. He was wearing only pyjama bottoms and padded down the landing to the bathroom. He drank from the cold tap.
The door to Liam’s bedroom was open and the glow of his nightlight seeped out. Shepherd went into the room and found Liam on his side, mouth open, hair over his eyes. Shepherd knelt beside the bed and brushed it off
