Black Ops: The 12th Spider Shepherd Thriller (14 page)

‘My status isn’t an issue,’ said Drinkwater.

‘You can’t watch them all the time,’ said Shepherd. ‘You have to give them space, and sometimes they make bad choices. That’s part of growing up.’

‘Your son was found in possession of a Class A drug. That’s more than just a bad choice.’

Shepherd sighed. ‘Look, I used to be in the job. I was an undercover cop with the Met. Is there anything you can do to make this easier on Liam?’

Drinkwater’s eyes narrowed. ‘What are you suggesting, Mr Shepherd?’

‘I don’t know, professional courtesy. I was in the job. I’ll make sure he stays on the straight and narrow from now on. And he’s already told you everything he knows.’

Drinkwater took out a ballpoint pen and a small black notebook. ‘How exactly would this “professional courtesy” work, Mr Shepherd?’

‘Forget it,’ said Shepherd.

‘No, I’d like to know what you were implying. Some sort of special treatment, perhaps?’

‘I’m sorry if that’s the impression you got,’ said Shepherd. ‘I just hoped there was a way of resolving this without my son ending up in court, that’s all.’

‘Your son will be treated in exactly the same way that any member of the community would be if they were found in possession of a substantial quantity of a Class A drug. I hope you understand that, Mr Shepherd.’

Shepherd gritted his teeth. ‘I do. Yes.’

The detective put his hands palm down on the table. ‘So, I want to thank you for coming in, Mr Shepherd, but I’m afraid there is nothing we can do to help you. You’ll have your chance to speak in court, of course. And I suggest you get a good lawyer for your son.’

Shepherd opened his mouth to speak but then realised there was nothing he could say that would change the outcome. He stood up and offered his hand. ‘Thank you for your time, anyway, sergeant.’

Drinkwater shook his hand but clearly wasn’t happy with the physical contact.

‘I’ll show Mr Shepherd out,’ said Allen. He opened the door and took Shepherd down the corridor towards the reception area. He pressed the button to open the door and pulled it open. He looked at his watch. ‘My shift finishes at six,’ said Allen. ‘I’ll probably stop off at The Grapes for a pint on the way home.’

‘The Grapes?’

‘It’s a pub. Turn left and it’s a hundred yards down the road. You have a nice day.’

S
hepherd was sitting at the main bar in The Grapes with a Jameson and soda in front of him when DC Allen walked in. He was wearing a dark blue raincoat and had a red scarf around his neck. He looked around the bar, spotted Shepherd and walked over, taking off his scarf. The barman came over and Shepherd ordered a pint of bitter.

‘Busy day?’ asked Shepherd.

‘Every day’s a busy day,’ said Allen. ‘But it’s mainly paperwork and emails; I probably spend twenty per cent of my time doing real police work.’ He scowled. ‘The job’s changed, you know that.’

‘It was changing while I was there,’ agreed Shepherd.

‘Then you know what it’s like. And if anything it’s getting worse by the day. You can’t just do the right thing any more. You have to be seen to be doing the right thing. But it’s worse than that. You have to report anyone who isn’t doing the right thing. And if you don’t, you’re as guilty as they are.’

‘You have to spy on each other?’

‘It’s worse than the KGB, Dan.’

The barman put down Allen’s pint. Shepherd reached for his wallet but Allen shook his head. ‘I’ll get it.’

‘Don’t want to be seen accepting a bribe?’

‘Don’t want to be seen, period,’ said Allen. He paid for his beer and the two men headed over to a corner table. Allen sat down, took a long drink of his pint, and stretched out his legs. ‘Paul’s fast-track, I’m sure you gathered that. He plans to be a superintendent within ten years, who knows after that. He’s got a degree in economics, and never puts a foot wrong. So he plays it by the rules, has done from day one. Second day of training at Hendon he reported a guy for admitting that he had smoked dope.’

‘So he’s a snitch?’

‘It’s not as clear-cut as that. The guy could have been a plant. The Met plays tricks like that. The plant boasts about smoking dope. Anyone who doesn’t report him is off the course. Anyone who does report him gets a pat on the back. We all know that’s how it works.’

‘You’re saying he had no choice?’

Allen shrugged. ‘I’m saying he knows how to play the game. And that’s why I can’t help you. And neither can he. Those days are gone. If he didn’t report it he’d be out on his ear. So he won’t take that risk.’

‘Unless you both agree to help?’

‘Then he’d have something over me for the rest of my career and vice versa.’ He took another long pull on his pint. ‘It’s a minefield.’

‘Yeah, I can see that.’

‘I’ve got kids myself, Dan. I know what it’s like.’

‘Teenagers?’

‘Boy’s twelve and the girl’s eight. She’s all sweetness and light but my son …’ He shrugged. ‘They grow up so early, you know?’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘I don’t know if it’s the fault of the schools or the Internet but they know too much. They’re exposed to too much. You have to watch them twenty-four seven.’

‘Liam isn’t a dealer, you know that.’

‘He was caught with a dealing quantity, Dan. Bang to rights as they say in all the old cop shows. Can’t say that any more, of course. Everything that comes out of our mouths, on duty or off, has to be approved by PACE.’

‘He thought it was cannabis.’

‘That’s what he says. But even if it’s true, he still gets charged with possession of a Class A drug. Like Paul said back in the factory. The CPS guidelines are clear.’

‘Can’t you get the charge down to simple possession?’

‘If it was up to me, probably. But Paul won’t have it. And I understand why. He has to go for the higher charge wherever he can. If it came out that he’d gone for a reduced charge because Liam’s dad was a former cop …’ He sipped his beer again. ‘You’re not really Home Office, are you, Dan?’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘You’ve got a spook’s eyes.’

Shepherd laughed. ‘I’m not sure that’s true.’

‘I’m just saying. A little honesty might not go amiss.’

Shepherd grimaced. ‘If I was a spook, I wouldn’t be able to tell you, you know that. But I can tell you I was in SOCA for a bit.’

‘SOCA? Waste of time that was. Overpaid and underworked, too many cooks and not enough Indians or whatever the most damning metaphor is.’

‘That’s pretty much how I found it, yeah.’

‘And what were you doing for SOCA?’

‘Undercover work, mainly.’

‘What sort of cases?’

‘Drugs. Terrorism. Organised Crime. You name it.’

‘Not sure I could work undercover.’

Shepherd shrugged. ‘Not everyone can do it, that’s true. It’s a bit … stressful.’

‘And now?’

Shepherd grinned. ‘Yeah, my job now is stressful, too.’

Allen took another long pull on his pint. ‘I had a thought,’ he said eventually.

‘I’m listening.’

‘Paul isn’t going to drop the charges against your boy. Looking at it from his point of view, he can’t. He can’t even reduce the charge. He has to play it by the rules as he sees them. But maybe you could offer him something else.’

‘Something else?’

‘He needs a big score to make the next move up the ladder. Something high profile. A career maker. Liam’s conviction isn’t that, it’s just a bread-and-butter case. Now, he needs those to meet his targets, but he also needs something bigger to make his mark. Something to get him noticed. Now, you were a cop. You worked undercover. Maybe you could bring him a bigger fish.’

Shepherd swirled his drink around his glass. ‘You mean do Paul’s job for him?’

‘Paul’s backed up with paperwork and admin the same as me. He doesn’t have the time to put together anything major.’

‘And I do?’

‘I’m just saying, Dan. If you want to help your lad, give Paul something bigger to get his teeth into. Liam was holding the drugs for Roger Flynn. Roger Flynn won’t tell us who he got the drugs from. And why should he? Flynn is going to walk and Liam gets charged. We’ve got nothing on Flynn other than Liam’s word and he knows that. But Flynn must have got the drugs from someone, someone higher up the food chain. And that someone must have got the drugs from someone else. And at some point there’ll be a big fish. You give that big fish to Paul and Paul will probably drop the case against your lad.’ He sipped his beer, watching Shepherd over the top of his glass.

‘I’ve got no jurisdiction here, you know that?’

‘You’d have to be careful, sure. But all we’d need is intel. A call that so-and-so has five kilos of whatever and we’ll do the rest.’

‘And that will get Liam off the hook?’

Allen nodded.

‘I have your word?’

‘I’m not going to put anything in writing, Dan. But you give us a decent collar and I can guarantee that any charges against Liam will disappear.’

Shepherd noticed that Allen was no longer talking about it being solely Drinkwater’s collar. Now it looked as if both detectives would be taking the credit. He had the feeling that they were playing him, but under the circumstances he didn’t see that he had any choice other than to be played. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘I’ll give it a go.’

Allen reached inside his coat and pulled out a computer printout. ‘Roger Flynn is the youngest in a family of toerags. Basically he’s a drug dealer and graffiti artist, and like most of his family he’s quick to use his fists. He’s been cautioned half a dozen times but to be honest he’s more of an irritant than anything. But his family is involved in all sorts of shenanigans. Car theft, mail-order fraud, illegal fags, counterfeit DVDs, and drugs, of course. But they’re hardly the Corleones, it’s all low-level stuff. The dad has been inside half a dozen times, mainly for assault but did five years a while back on a drugs charge. Roger’s two elder brothers have both been inside, assault and GBH, and it’s only a matter of time before young Roger goes away.’ He handed the printout to Shepherd.

‘So it’s the dad you want?’ said Shepherd, flicking through the typed sheets. ‘Aidan?’

‘Aidan Flynn’s a pain in the arse, but his drug dealing is small time. He sells to the guys who stand on the street selling twenty-quid wraps of coke or heroin. Doubt that he has more than an ounce or two at a time. And he’s not stupid. He rarely has the gear himself. He gets others to hold it.’

‘Like Liam?’

Allen nodded. ‘Like Liam. But we’re not looking to target the Flynns. We want their suppliers. Though even they might not be big enough. We might need the suppliers to their suppliers.’

‘You’re not asking for much, are you?’

‘It’s not anything you haven’t done before.’

‘Sure, but then I’d have been part of a major operation. You’re asking me to go it alone.’

‘All we need is intel, Dan. And it’s your call. If you don’t want to do it …’

Shepherd sighed. ‘I’ll do it,’ he said.

‘Okay. Well I know the CPS is swamped at the moment, so I’ll sit on the paperwork as long as I can, and then it’ll be a few weeks on some lawyer’s desk at the CPS before anything happens. But the sooner the better, yeah? The further up the chain it goes, the harder it’ll be to derail it.’

Shepherd shook hands with the detective. ‘Thanks. I mean it.’

‘It’s professional courtesy,’ said Allen. ‘Just because the DS doesn’t know what it means doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.’

B
ridie O’Brien’s local was a dingy pub in the back streets of Kilburn. The surrounding Victorian houses might once have been family homes but were now all divided and sub-divided into flats and bedsits, housing a drifting, transient population. Many were on benefits, the remainder mostly manual labourers or petty criminals. There were plenty of Irish among them, but twenty or thirty other nationalities too, and people kept themselves to themselves, asking few questions and giving even fewer answers.

Jony found Bridie perched on a stool at one end of the bar. He had a couple of pints of Guinness but largely kept himself to himself, though he made sure that when he went to the bar for a refill he stood next to her while he was being served. As he picked up his pint, he winked at her, and said, ‘All right, darling?’ but then sat down at a table across the room and left as soon as he’d drunk his pint.

He was back the following evening, this time having arranged for a couple of stooges to be there as well, sitting in different parts of the room. They were fringe figures from Manchester’s criminal underworld, willing to do anything for cash, no questions asked. Having made sure that Bridie was again there to witness the performance, he strode across to one of them, pulled a bulky package from inside his leather jacket and handed it over. After a furtive glance around the room, the other man peeled some notes from a thick wad in his pocket, passed them to Jony and then hurried out.

Jony’s other mark had positioned himself just along the bar from where Bridie was sitting. Jony stood next to him without acknowledging or looking at him and ordered a pint. Out of the corner of his eye he made sure that Bridie was looking in his direction, then took a top-end smartphone from his pocket and put it on the bar. Under cover of taking a drink from his pint, the man next to him slid the phone into his pocket. He drained his glass and walked out, but as he brushed past Jony, there was the faint rustle of paper money changing hands.

When Jony looked up, Bridie was watching him. ‘That guy just nicked your phone,’ she said, smiling.

Jony grinned at her and flashed her a handful of notes. ‘Good thing I picked his pocket, then.’ He paused. ‘Buy you a drink?’

He was not alone when he went back to his bedsit that night, and Bridie went with him when he made a couple of ‘deliveries’ the next day. They again spent the night together – ‘perks of the job,’ Jony said when he reported in to Harper – and the following day, as they were once more nursing a drink in the pub, Jony played his next card. ‘I’ve a bit of a special delivery today,’ he said. ‘I need someone I can trust to keep watch for me. It’s worth a monkey if you’re interested.’

‘Five hundred quid? Of course I’m feckin’ interested,’ she said.