‘Should be about a month,’ said Shepherd. ‘We’ve already got a place fixed up. It’s just a question of handling the legal stuff.’
‘And the job’s okay with you being based out of London?’
‘The unit works all over the country so it doesn’t matter where my house is,’ said Shepherd. ‘The important thing is that Liam will get to spend more time with his grandparents. It’s important for him and it’s important for them. He’s all they have left of Sue.’
Shepherd’s wife had died two and a half years earlier in a road accident, driving Liam to school. She’d jumped a red light and her VW Golf had slammed into a truck. Since then Shepherd had juggled being an undercover cop with his responsibilities as a single parent. Even with Katra’s help it hadn’t been easy.
‘How are you getting on with Liam?’
‘Fine,’ said Shepherd. ‘He’s a great boy.’
‘He’s got over what happened?’
‘I don’t think either of us will ever get over it entirely, but he seems okay.’
‘What about you? Not seeing anyone?’
Shepherd chuckled. ‘Since when have you been all touchy-feely, boss?’
‘Three years is long enough, Spider. No one expects you to stay in mourning for ever.’
‘It’s two and a half. And I’m not in mourning.’ Shepherd grimaced – he had sounded defensive.
‘How long has it been since you went on a date?’
Shepherd laughed. ‘Do people still go on dates?’
‘I was trying to ask you subtly how long it’d been since you got laid.’
‘I don’t have much opportunity,’ said Shepherd. ‘Most of the women I’ve met recently have been either planning to have their husbands killed or blowing themselves to kingdom come. And I’m so busy that speed-dating is probably the only dating I’d have time for.’
The video finished its download and Shepherd opened the Windows Media Player so that they could watch it. The video had evidently been edited before it had been sent to the television station as it started in mid-sentence as a masked man with a Kalashnikov paced up and down in front of the camera.
The first thirty seconds hadn’t been shown on television, and there was no station logo as there had been on the transmitted version. ‘It’s clearer than the version we taped off Sky News,’ said the Major. ‘If there’s anything in it that’ll help us find Geordie we’ll stand a better chance of seeing it on this.’
They heard footsteps padding down the stairs and looked around to see Katra walk into the room, wrapped in a pink towelling robe. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said.
‘What were you expecting, burglars?’ asked Shepherd.
Katra looked confused. ‘No, I locked the doors,’ she said. Since she had arrived from Slovenia her English had improved by leaps and bounds, but she still hadn’t grasped Shepherd’s sense of humour.
Shepherd introduced Major Gannon.
‘Are you hungry?’ she asked. ‘I could make sandwiches.’
‘We’re fine,’ said Shepherd. ‘We’re doing a bit of work, so you can go back to bed. Sorry we woke you.’
‘I was waiting for you to come back,’ said Katra. ‘Would you like some coffee?’
‘Really, we’re fine,’ said Shepherd. ‘Now scoot.’ Katra giggled and went back upstairs. When Shepherd turned back to the Major, the boss was grinning at him. ‘What?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ said the Major.
‘She’s a kid,’ said Shepherd.
‘She’s, what – mid-twenties?’
‘Twenty-four. And I’m thirty-six.’
‘So when you’re ninety, she’ll be seventy-eight.’
‘And she’s an employee.’
‘I didn’t say anything, Spider.’
Shepherd burned the video on to a CD, then copied the original email on to the same disk.
‘Anything interesting in his in-box?’ asked the Major.
Shepherd clicked through Basharat’s emails. There was nothing out of the ordinary, mainly gossip to friends in Qatar and his brother in Riyadh. ‘Just chit-chat,’ he said. He ejected the CD and gave it to the Major. ‘What’s the plan now?’
‘We’ll give the video a full working over, and I’ll run a check on the email,’ said Gannon. ‘We should be able to track it back to its source. Let’s just hope it’s in Iraq.’
Shepherd walked the Major out to the van. Overhead the moon was full, so clear that they could see the craters on its surface. ‘Geordie’s boss is in town tomorrow,’ said the Major. ‘Can you come to Portland Place in the afternoon?’
‘Sure,’ said Shepherd. ‘We’re on a loose rein at the moment.’
The Major climbed back into the Transit van and drove off. As Shepherd walked to the front door he switched on his mobile. He had one voicemail message and he listened to it as he locked the front door. It was Caroline Stockmann, the unit’s new psychologist.
Shepherd walked into the King’s Head and looked around. Brown coat, brown hair and glasses, was how she’d described herself. Arranging to meet in the pub down the road from his house was a smart move, he thought, as he walked through the bar. If he didn’t turn up she didn’t have far to walk to his house. That had been one of Kathy Gift’s tricks, turning up on his doorstep unannounced.
Caroline Stockmann was sitting in a quiet corner with a pint of beer in front of her. Chestnut hair rather than brown, a bit shorter than shoulder-length, glasses with rectangular frames. She was reading a copy of the Economist and looked up from it as he walked over. ‘Dan?’ He frowned at the pint glass and she smiled. ‘You expected me to be sipping orange juice?’ she asked.
Shepherd was lost for words. That was exactly what he’d thought. It was late afternoon but, even so, their meeting was business rather than social. And a pint of beer was the last thing he’d have expected a female psychologist to be drinking. ‘Sorry. Yes. Dan – Dan Shepherd.’
‘You can have orange juice if you want, but I’m off home after this and I’ve had a rough day,’ she said.
‘No, I could do with a drink, too,’ said Shepherd. Stockmann extended her hand and he shook it. She had a firm grip. He noticed the engagement and wedding rings on her left hand. ‘Do I call you Dr Stockmann, Mrs Stockmann or Caroline?’
‘Caroline is fine.’
Shepherd went over to the bar and returned with a Jameson’s, soda and ice. He sat down opposite her. ‘Do you do a lot of interviews in pubs?’
‘I pretty much go where I have to,’ said Stockmann. ‘You guys don’t work office hours, and it’s not as if you can pop into the local police station, is it? Where did Kathy see you?’
Shepherd grinned. ‘She used to turn up at my house, but that was because I kept missing appointments.’
‘Deliberately?’
‘As you said, we work odd hours. It’s hard to plan ahead.’
‘Which is why pubs are a good idea,’ she said. ‘And they pull a good pint here.’
‘I’m not really a beer drinker,’ said Shepherd.
‘Watching your weight?’
‘It’s an undercover thing. If I drink beer, everyone knows how much I’ve had. If I’m on whiskey and soda, I can add more soda and ice and no one’s any the wiser. I can stay sober while everyone else drinks themselves stupid.’
‘Vodka and tonic would make more sense. There’s no colour to show how weak it is.’
‘Okay, but I like the taste of Jameson’s,’ admitted Shepherd. ‘You’ll find most of the undercover guys stick to spirits and mixers.’
‘You like undercover work?’
‘You couldn’t do it if you didn’t,’ said Shepherd.
‘What do you like? The challenge?’
‘Sure. You’re putting yourself up against some very heavy guys. One false move and it’s all over.’
‘That must be scary at times.’
‘Challenging.’
Stockmann smiled but said nothing.
‘You don’t take notes,’ said Shepherd.
‘I’ve got a good memory,’ she said. ‘Something we have in common.’
‘Photographic?’
‘I wish,’ she said. ‘But I can remember conversations almost verbatim. And I’m good with facts. And vocabulary. I speak five languages almost fluently.’
‘I envy you that. I’m bad at languages. My memory’s infallible with facts, faces and events, but I can’t process information the way you have to if you want to speak a foreign language.’