‘Don’t worry, like I said, they’re on their way.’
‘I’ll call you when I’ve talked to my friends,’ said Ali.
‘Do that,’ said Shepherd. He ended the call, put the phone on the table and sat back. ‘Okay?’ he said to Button.
She stood up. ‘It was fine,’ she said.
Singh disconnected the phone from the computer.
‘Do we wait for them to call, or do I call again in a day or two?’ asked Shepherd.
‘Let’s leave the ball in their court,’ she said. ‘SO13 has them under surveillance. Nothing’s going to happen without them knowing.’
‘Okay,’ said Shepherd. ‘Look, I need a favour – some personal time over the next few days. Are you okay with that?’
‘Spider, we’re in the middle of an operation.’
‘All I have to do is take a phone call.’
‘And hand over the guns, plus the explosives.’
‘I’ve plenty of days owing.’
‘What’s the problem?’
‘I’m in the process of moving house.’
‘To Hereford, right?’
‘I want my boy to be closer to his grandparents. Look, I’ll be around.’ He held up his mobile. ‘I’m always at the end of the phone.’
‘Okay,’ said Button, reluctantly. ‘I won’t put you down for any more cases, but if the Birmingham business starts moving, I’ll need you back.’
‘About that,’ said Shepherd, ‘there’s something else I need to ask you.’
‘Fire away.’
‘You won’t like it.’
‘I consider myself warned,’ said Button. ‘Get it off your chest.’
‘It’s an Anti-Terrorist Branch case, right?’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘How much of the operation is theirs?’
‘Most. We’re just providing the arms dealers. It’ll be an SO13 case when it gets to court.’
‘And, hand on heart, you don’t know who their undercover guy is?’
Button’s eyes narrowed. ‘I’m not in the habit of lying, Spider, to you or anyone else. Now, what’s your problem?’
Singh headed for the door with his laptop. ‘I’m off,’ he said.
‘Thanks, Amar,’ said Button.
Shepherd waited until Singh had closed the door behind him. ‘The problem is, I think Ali’s their undercover guy.’
Button shrugged. ‘You might be right.’
‘But you don’t know for sure?’
‘That’s twice you’ve suggested that I’ve been less than honest with you. SO13 wouldn’t tell me and, frankly, I didn’t feel that I had to know.’
‘You heard that story about him being knifed after seven/seven? Well, it didn’t ring true. I’ve told enough cover stories in my time and his lacked conviction. Anyway, the scar wasn’t right. It wasn’t a machete or a knife that did it. Looked to me like an industrial injury.’
‘So, as I said, you might be right. What of it?’
‘Ali’s running the show, you’ve seen that. He’s the top dog. Without him they’d just be a group of disaffected kids.’
‘Except that they’re in their twenties and three of them have been to Pakistan for six months, which would have given them plenty of time to slip away to an al-Qaeda training camp.’
‘Which three?’
‘The brothers, Asim and Salman, and Fazal.’
‘That’s your intel or SO13’s?’
‘It came out during the briefing,’ said Button. ‘These guys want to buy guns and explosives, Spider. They’re not planning a stag weekend.’
‘It felt to me as if Ali was the one in charge. Which means he’s been acting as an agent provocateur.’
‘No one forced them to go along with him,’ said Button.
‘Agreed. But you have to wonder what would have happened if he hadn’t been around to gee them up.’
‘In all probability someone else would have spotted their potential. But if it had been someone else, maybe we’d be dealing with four more suicide-bombers down the Tube.’
‘But we were the ones who mentioned explosives,’ said Shepherd.
‘You suggested they were available.’
‘And Ali said he’d talk to the others. He was the first to mention detonators. I reckon I’ve just been pitching to an SO13 agent. I’m getting a bad feeling about this, that’s all I’m saying. I think we set them up. I think Ali was setting them up from the start and we helped him.’
‘No one forced them to buy those guns,’ said Button. ‘The Ingram isn’t the weapon of choice for the country set. It’s for mass killing. It’s a gun you fire on a crowded bus knowing you’re going to kill and maim dozens of people. And the fact that we’re the ones offering him the explosives and detonators is a good thing, Spider. What if they’d ended up dealing with the Russians or the Serbs? Then they’d be on the loose with the real thing and we’d be none the wiser.’
‘Would they, though? Or would they just be sitting in their mosque up north mouthing off?’
‘There’s a parallel here,’ said Button, patiently, ‘in a case you worked on a while back under Hargrove. A woman who wanted her husband killed. You posed as a hitman and she asked you to kill her husband. The premise is the same. You were giving her the opportunity to hire a killer and once you made contact you suggested various ways in which her husband could be killed.’
‘She was already looking for someone to kill him,’ said Shepherd. ‘It wasn’t as if we put the idea in her head.’
‘Spider, we’re going round in circles. Anti-Terrorist wouldn’t have called us in if they didn’t think these men were a real threat. They don’t have the resources to go on wild-goose chases. But your feelings are on record, okay?’
Shepherd had pushed it as far as he could. ‘And you’re okay with me having a few days off?’
‘Providing you’re available for this Birmingham case, yes. Are you okay? You look tired.’
‘I didn’t sleep much last night,’ he said.
‘Maybe a couple of days off is what you need,’ she said. ‘I’ve been working you pretty hard over the last couple of months.’
Shepherd felt a twinge of guilt at her concern for his welfare, but he could hardly admit to her that the reason he was tired was because he’d spent the previous night flying to and from Baghdad.
Shepherd was in his bedroom packing clothes into a holdall when his personal mobile rang. It was Jimmy Sharpe. ‘Razor, what’s up?’
‘I’m in deep shit,’ said Sharpe. ‘Can you talk?’
‘I’m on my way out but, yeah, what’s the problem?’
‘That new shrink’s pulling the plug on me.’
‘She’s what?’
‘Racist tendencies make me unsuitable for undercover work, she said.’
‘She told you that?’
‘Button called me. And that pisses me off – she didn’t have the balls to tell me face to face. Had to do it on the phone.’
‘Bloody hell, Razor, what did you say to her?’
‘Told her to stuff her bloody job.’
‘I meant to Stockmann. What did you tell the shrink?’
‘It was just a chat, same as it always used to be with Gift. To and fro, a bit of banter, showing her I hadn’t lost my marbles and that I can still walk in a straight line without falling over my feet.’
‘So how did the racism issue come up?’
‘We talked about the recent cases. About the Pakis and that.’
‘And you called them Pakis, of course?’
‘Don’t you bloody start,’ snapped Sharpe. ‘Paki is short for Pakistani. I’m a Scot, you’re a Brit, a Paki’s a Paki. What am I supposed to say? A citizen of Pakistan?’
‘Anything else?’
‘It was just chit-chat, Spider – and, okay, I might have let my guard down – but now Button says I should be looking for a transfer.’
‘Did she say you were off the unit?’
‘Not in so many words. She didn’t flat out sack me, but the writing’s on the wall.’
‘What do you want me to do, Razor?’
‘Put in a good word. Tell Button how it is. She listens to you.’
‘She’s our boss, Razor. It’s her unit.’
‘If you don’t do something, I’m out. And I’m not going back into uniform at this time of my life.’
‘It won’t come to that, and you know it. There are other options.’
‘I don’t want other options. I want to stay in SOCA.’
Shepherd looked at his watch. He had four hours before his flight left Heathrow. ‘Let me see what I can do,’ he said.