‘Of course not,’ said Button. ‘And please don’t take offence from what I’ve said. But with the greatest of respect, can I ask you to just consider that there might be someone from your past who is behind this, someone who might have a grudge against you.’ She didn’t wait for him to reply, she picked up her briefcase, stood up and extended her right hand. ‘Anyway, be assured we will do our absolute best to protect you,’ she said.
Grechko stood up and shook her hand. He smiled, but it lacked any human warmth, it was more an animal-like baring of his fifty-thousand-dollar dental work. ‘I am grateful for all your help with this,’ he said. ‘I am sure you are a very busy woman.’
‘Trust me, Mr Grechko, you are right at the top of my list of priorities.’
Grechko released his grip on her hand and walked with her to the door. ‘I’ll show Miss Button out,’ said Shepherd. ‘Then I’ll go and have a chat with Dmitry.’
Grechko nodded and went over to a phone as Shepherd walked with Button along the hallway and out through the front door. Her black BMW was parked in the turning circle. ‘I thought you were going to ask him if he’d killed anyone on his route to the top,’ said Shepherd.
‘The thought had crossed my mind,’ said Button. ‘He won’t listen, will he?’
‘He’s sure that it’s the Kremlin behind the killings. But if he has got some skeletons in his past, he’s hardly likely to tell you, is he?’
‘Well, it’s making our job a lot harder,’ said Button. She took her key fob out of her pocket. ‘We’re going to take a closer look at Zakharov, Buryakov and Czernik.’
‘He might have a point,’ said Shepherd. ‘About the lie detector.’
Button wrinkled her nose. ‘I meant what I said. Anything out of the ordinary might spook the killer.’
‘I get that, but what if we made it look like the lie detector was for some other reason?’
‘I’m listening.’
Shepherd chuckled. ‘That’s all I have, unfortunately. But we could handle it so that all the staff have to take a lie detector test. Obviously we’re just interested in the six new arrivals to the bodyguard team.’
‘And we ask them right out if they’re helping a potential assassin?’
‘We’d need a good operator, that’s for sure. But he could be looking for general signs of nervousness. I’m just saying, the background checks haven’t turned anything up yet, which means that we’re pinning a lot on phone records. But if this assassin is as good as we think he is, I don’t see him giving much away on the phone.’
‘That’s a fair point,’ said Button.
‘I don’t mean to sound negative. I just think we might need to be a bit more proactive.’
Button unlocked the BMW. ‘On that front, you need to get closer to the six newcomers. See if your Spidery sense tingles.’
Shepherd chuckled. ‘I’ve met all six of them. And they all seem kosher.’
‘But then they would, wouldn’t they? You need to have a closer look, and I’ll talk to our technical people, see if they have any suggestions. And be careful, Spider. If the killer does have his own person on board, he’ll probably move quickly.’ She got into her car, started the engine and waved before driving off. The electric gate was already rattling open. As Shepherd turned back to the house he saw Grechko at the window. Shepherd nodded but Grechko didn’t see him, he was staring at Button’s BMW as it drove through the gate and turned into The Bishops Avenue.
The New Forest consists of more than two hundred square miles of pasture, heath and woodland and is the perfect place for dog-walking, horse-riding, exploring ancient monuments, and disposing of a body. Shepherd knew that the best way of getting away with murder was to make sure that the body was never found, which was why he and Harper were driving through the New Forest looking for a suitable place for a grave. They had driven there in a white Transit van that Harper had bought from a dealer in Croydon. It still had the details of a plumbing firm painted on the sides and a cartoon of a dog in a flat cap cleaning a drain across the rear doors. Harper had paid in cash and had swapped the plates for a set showing the number of a similar van he’d seen in central London.
Harper had driven the van, leaving London on the M3 as it began to get dark, turning on to the M27 and then following the A31 for ten miles before, on Shepherd’s instructions, turning off on an unnamed road that twisted and turned through thick woodland. There were no street lights and no other vehicles around so Harper had the lights on full beam, carving tunnels of light out of the darkness. Shepherd pointed ahead. ‘OK, let’s see if we can turn off somewhere here, some place where the trees are far enough apart for us to drive in a ways.’ He’d spent an hour or so perusing a map of the New Forest so he knew exactly where they were.
Harper slowed down and indicated he was going to turn, then laughed at his stupidity and switched off the indicator. ‘Force of habit,’ he said. He slowed the van to a crawl, then spotted a gap in the trees and turned off the road. The van bucked and rocked and the steering wheel twisted and turned as if it had a life of its own. He managed to get a hundred feet or so before the trees were so close together that he had to stop. He braked and switched off the engine. ‘What do you think?’ he asked.
‘Should be OK,’ said Shepherd. He opened the passenger door and stepped out. The only sound was the clicking of the engine as it cooled. He blinked slowly as his night vision slowly kicked in. There was no way of telling which way the road was, other than by the tracks in the mud.
Harper climbed out of his side of the van. ‘What about poachers?’
‘Poachers?’
‘Yeah, poachers.’
‘You might as well worry about a UFO landing where we are,’ said Shepherd. ‘We’re in the middle of nowhere. And tonight we’re just digging a hole.’
He walked around to the rear of the van and opened the doors. There were two brand-new spades there that Harper had bought from a garden centre before picking up Shepherd. Shepherd took them out, handed one to Harper, and shut the doors. ‘We need to walk a bit farther,’ he said, nodding at the vegetation. ‘Fifty feet or so should do it.’
He walked through the trees, the spade on his shoulder. He was wearing a leather bomber jacket and had tied a scarf around his neck. Harper, as always, had on his parka, the hood up. Shepherd trod carefully – the ground was uneven and protruding tree roots threatened to trip him at every step. They reached a small clearing and Shepherd motioned for Harper to stop. The two men stood in silence, their breath feathering in the night air. A fox barked off in the distance and then went quiet. Shepherd tested the ground with his spade. ‘This’ll do it,’ he said.