‘You seem straight and level to me.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You were never the most relaxed of guys, but that’s the nature of our job.’
‘Thanks again. I’ll tell her when I see her next.’
‘Ah, the plot thickens. A woman?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘I guess it’s difficult for her to relate to, right?’
‘She’s a smart girl but, yeah, she’s never fired a gun in anger.’
‘Not many people have.’
‘I don’t see why they should expect me to spill my guts to a stranger, someone who has no conception of what it’s like to be in combat or to work undercover.’
‘I doubt they’d be using her if she wasn’t qualified.’
‘Oh, she’s good all right. Downright bloody devious. Keeps trying to get me to talk about Sue without asking me full on.’
‘Why’s she interested in Sue?’
‘She reckons I’m not dealing with her death. I get the feeling she thinks I should be crying my eyes out.’
‘We all deal with death in our own way,’ said Gannon.
‘There’s nothing wrong with me just because I’m not bursting into tears every other day.’
‘I didn’t say there was,’ said Gannon. ‘I know how much she meant to you. You gave up the Regiment for her.’
‘For her and Liam,’ said Shepherd. ‘She wanted the quiet life. Me at home with a pipe and slippers.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘Out of the frying-pan and into the bloody fire. She didn’t realise the cops would have me undercover. She saw more of me when I was with the Sass.’
‘How’s Liam handling it?’
‘How does any kid deal with the death of his mum? She was the world to him.’
‘Have you talked to him about it?’
‘It’s like pulling teeth.’
‘Like father, like son,’ said Gannon.
‘You think he gets it from me?’ said Shepherd.
‘You’re his role model,’ said Gannon. ‘If you’re the strong, silent type he’ll try to be the same.’
Shepherd stared up at the cloudless blue sky. ‘Maybe that’s it.’
‘What’s eating you, Spider?’ asked Gannon, quietly.
High overhead a 747 banked towards Heathrow. ‘I’m not sure. There’s something not right but I don’t know what it is.’ He wasn’t used to telling people how he felt: his whole undercover life was spent masking his true feelings.
‘Maybe Jones made you aware of your own mortality.’
‘I’m not suicidal,’ said Shepherd. Too quickly: he’d sounded defensive. ‘And I’ve seen men die. Hell, I’ve killed them close up, too.’
‘Yeah, but they were the enemy. You didn’t get to know them before you pulled the trigger. You had a chance to talk to Jones, to get inside his head – you let him get inside yours too. And there were obvious similarities to your own situation.’
‘Maybe.’ Shepherd was unconvinced. He was no stranger to death. He’d killed on missions and slept the sleep of the just. He’d seen friends and colleagues die, too – a young trooper had died after a snake bite in the Borneo jungle during a training exercise. He’d seen another fall to his death in a climbing accident. He would never forget the men’s faces, but they didn’t haunt his dreams as Jones did.
‘You and Jones both left the Regiment and both have one child,’ said Gannon. ‘Maybe you saw a bit of yourself in him. Seems to me that if you really want to get to the bottom of what’s troubling you, you should try opening up to the psychologist.’
‘But you think I’m okay?’
‘You keep asking me that, and you seem fine – but what the hell do I know?’
His head hurt. His throat hurt. His left knee felt as if it was on fire. His right hand ached and the slightest movement of his thumb sent pain lancing down his arm. The only good thing was that at least it meant he was alive. Eddie Anderson would have smiled except he was missing his front teeth and moving his lips was agony.
He heard movement at the side of his bed. He didn’t open his eyes. A nurse came to check on him every fifteen minutes. Sometimes they changed his dressings. There was a drip in his left arm and sometimes they did something with the bag.
‘You’re in a right state, aren’t you?’
Anderson opened his eyes a fraction and squinted up at his visitor. He expected a doctor but the man looking down at him wasn’t wearing a white coat. He was wearing a black raincoat over a dark blue suit. He was a tall, thin man with close-cropped bullet grey hair and he was holding a warrant card six inches from Anderson’s nose.
‘No comment,’ said Anderson, wincing because it hurt to speak.
‘I admire your loyalty but your boss is dead,’ said the detective.
‘Dead?’
‘Deceased. No more. Dead on arrival. He is an ex-boss. Am I getting through to you?’
‘What about Ray?’
‘Wates is in a worse state than you, Eddie. They’re taking his spleen out this afternoon.’
‘Shit,’ said Anderson.
‘You can live without a spleen. They say.’
Anderson closed his eyes.
‘Three against one and two of you are in intensive care while one’s on a slab. And the other guy, not a mark on him.’
Anderson said nothing.
‘You knew he was a cop, right?’ said the detective.
‘No comment.’
‘This is just you and me, Eddie. There’s no tape. Whatever you tell me stays in this room.’
‘Who the fuck are you?’
‘I’m a cop who hates mysteries,’ said the detective. ‘You, Charlie Kerr and Ray Wates go charging in with guns. Kerr gets shot dead, Wates gets beaten to a pulp and you get hit by a car. That’s a mystery.’
‘How do you know what happened?’ said Anderson. He opened his eyes. ‘You weren’t there.’
‘No, but I know a man who was,’ said the detective.
‘So why no caution?’ asked Anderson suspiciously. ‘You caution me, I get a brief. Piss off and leave me alone.’
The detective leaned over the bed, his face a few inches from Anderson’s. ‘The way things stand at the moment, they reckon you’re the victim here. Crazy as it seems, the plods think you, Charlie and Ray were attacked. So, you tell me what I want to know and I walk out of here and maybe, just maybe, you get to go home to your wife and kid in Chorltoncum-Hardy. But you screw me around any more and I’ll put the plods right. You’ll go down for attempted murder.’
Anderson glared at the detective. ‘It sounds like you know everything anyway.’
‘The guy you attacked, you knew he was a cop?’
‘Fucking right.’
‘And that didn’t worry you?’
‘It worried me and Ray, but Charlie wanted him dead.’ Anderson frowned. ‘No comebacks, right?’
‘On my mother’s life,’ said the detective.
‘Nelson tried to fuck with Charlie’s missus. Charlie, not surprisingly, took it personal. That’s why he was there. I told him it was a mistake.’
‘Nelson?’ said the detective. ‘Who the fuck is Nelson?’
‘Nelson’s the undercover cop. That’s the name he was using anyway. Tony Nelson.’ A wave of nausea washed over him and Anderson closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, the detective was staring at him. ‘How do you know he was an undercover
