‘OK,’ continued Shepherd. ‘So we take him out to the New Forest, we do it there and we bury him where he’ll never be found. That’s the key to getting away with this. With no witnesses and no body, there’ll be no investigation. Thousands of adults go missing every year and unless there are suspicious circumstances no one cares.’
‘What about his daughter?’ asked Shortt. ‘She’ll report him missing.’
‘Adults go missing all the time,’ said Shepherd. ‘Unless there are signs of violence, he’ll just go on the list. If the body never turns up, there’s no crime to investigate.’
‘The New Forest is miles away,’ said Harper. ‘There’s plenty of places closer.’
‘We want to be out of the Met’s jurisdiction,’ said Shepherd. ‘And if it is ever found, the farther away the better. It’s driveable in ninety minutes or so and the roads are good.’
‘Makes sense,’ said McIntyre.
‘So, logistics,’ said Shepherd. ‘We need a vehicle, ideally something untraceable, to transport Khan from the pick-up point to the New Forest.’
‘I’ll get the car sorted,’ said Harper.
‘A van would be better,’ said Shepherd. ‘No one pays attention to vans. But it can’t be traced back to you, Lex. We’ll clean it afterwards but that’s no guarantee there won’t be DNA or something left behind.’
‘Give me some credit, Spider,’ said Harper. ‘I wasn’t planning on going to Hertz. I’ll pick up a second-hand one for cash and won’t bother registering it.’
‘Then clone a set of plates because these days London is awash with mobile CCTV, not to mention the static cameras. And you’ll need somewhere safe to keep it.’
‘I’ll sort out a lock-up,’ said Harper.
‘We’ll need something to bind him. We can knock him out but there’s no guarantee of how long he’ll stay out so we need duct tape and something to gag him with, and something to wrap him in. A carpet. Tarpaulin. Something like that.’
Shortt raised a hand. ‘I’ve got stuff like that in the garage.’
Shepherd shook his head. ‘No, it all has to be new. And bought from different shops in different areas. And paid for in cash.’
‘No problem, I’ll do it,’ said Shortt.
‘So far as the guns are concerned, we do it with the automatics so that if the body is ever found then the rounds will suggest a Russian or Afghan connection. But they’re automatics so we need to pick up the shell casings afterwards. And I can’t tell you how important it is that we clean every part of the guns, inside and out. Rounds and clips, too. Clean as a whistle.’ He looked over at Harper and grinned. ‘Whatever that means.’ He sipped his coffee again. ‘I plan to do it after dark in the New Forest, so hopefully there’ll be no one around to hear the shots. But even so I want suppressors on the Makarovs.’
McIntyre held up his hand. ‘I can do that,’ he said.
‘Doesn’t have to be too fancy,’ said Shepherd. ‘They’re not overloud in the first place.’
‘Pop bottle, cardboard baffles and Brillo pads,’ said McIntyre. ‘And Robert’s your father’s brother. But I’ll need somewhere to do it.’
‘You can use my garage,’ said Shortt. ‘Providing the wife’s out. I’ve plenty of tools there, too.’
‘Perfect,’ said Shepherd. ‘And we’ll have Jimbo’s duct tape to attach them. Now, assuming we get Khan out to the New Forest and slot him there, we’ve got to dispose of the body. We’ll need a hole digging and we’ll need that done in advance. It’ll need doing at night, the day before the shooting.’
‘The missus isn’t happy if I’m out at night,’ said Shortt.
‘If I’m doing it then I’ll need Jock on my job,’ said Shepherd. He looked at Harper. ‘You and me, Lex?’
‘Sure,’ said Harper.
‘I’ll get the spades. Can you get a throwaway mobile with GPS so that we can find our way back to it?’
‘Consider it done,’ said Harper, with a grin.
‘So we take Khan out to the New Forest, we do what has to be done, we drop him in the hole and we fill it up. Then we need to dispose of the guns and anything else left over. The duct tape, the suppressors, whatever we use to wrap the body in. Plus the spades, the phone we used to GPS the grave. Everything.’
‘We could just leave it all in the van and torch it,’ said Harper.
Shepherd shook his head. ‘That would draw attention and they’d have SOCO all over it,’ he said. ‘Anything not completely burned could be traced back to us. So you should sell on the van. Or leave it somewhere it’ll get stolen. I’ll take care of the guns and the ammo.’
‘I’ll take the burnable stuff to the quarry I used to use for shooting,’ said Shortt. ‘Get a little bonfire. It’s well away from London.’
‘Excellent,’ said Shepherd. ‘Now this is important. Everything you’re wearing on the day has to be run through a washing machine or destroyed. No arguments. If for any reason our names are in the frame SOCO will look for traces on all our clothes and footwear and if there is anything they’ll find it. So immediately afterwards you put all your clothes through a washing machine, twice. Wear trainers and dump them or burn them. And we all shower. Twice.’
‘Not together, though,’ said McIntyre. ‘I’ve had bad experiences with Jimbo in the shower.’
Harper laughed. ‘Where’s the soap?’
All four men joined in, laughing louder than the poor joke merited. It was a way of releasing tension, Shepherd knew. On the surface they all seemed calm and collected with no reservations about what they were planning. But taking the life of a human being was never done lightly and Shepherd knew that they would all be worried about it at some level or another. He waited for the laughter to die down. ‘Footwear is the most likely to carry traces, so no short cuts there. Don’t just throw them in the rubbish. Burning is best, or soak them in bleach and toss them, but again not in your household rubbish, somewhere miles from home. Same with any clothing you decide to throw away.’ He looked at Harper. ‘The van will need cleaning, too, inside and out. Best to use bleach on the inside, then take it to a car wash. Make sure the wheels are well clean because if they do get the van they’ll be taking a close look at the tyres. They can pretty much match mud in the way that they can fingerprints and DNA. So twice through a car wash, then up to you. If you want to sell it on, do it outside London. If you want to torch it, same applies.’
Harper nodded. ‘Sounds as if you’ve got all the bases covered.’
‘It has to be this way, Lex. The smallest thing can follow you around the world. A speck of DNA is all they need. And the phone we use to track the hole, I’ll dispose of that and the SIM card. And remember that your own mobile phones always give your position away. I know Lex is covered, but the rest of you, you need to get pay-as-you-go throwaway mobiles. We use them for this operation and then we ditch them. And whenever you’re out, you leave your identifiable mobiles at home and switched on. Got it?’
The three men nodded back at him. Harper slapped his hand down on the table, hard enough to rattle the mugs and whiskey bottle. ‘The bastard has had it coming,’ he said. ‘He’s finally going to get what he deserves.’
AFGHANISTAN, 2002
Ahmad Khan and the three paratroopers drove most of the way to the site of the rendezvous in silence, punctuated only by the terse directions that Ahmad gave them and the Paras’ radio transmissions back to base; if they failed to send the correct signal every thirty minutes, the alarm would at once be raised.
The road climbed steadily towards the mountains, its surface increasingly rough and pitted with crudely repaired craters where shells, mortar rounds or IEDs had blasted holes. Their progress was slow, but after driving for an hour and a half they reached a dead-end valley flanked by steep-sided hills. There the road dwindled to not much more than a narrow dirt track, running alongside the bed of a river that a few weeks before had been a roaring torrent of meltwater but was now just a dried-up jumble of rocks.