Soft Target (9 page)

'We've opened a real can of worms.'

Shepherd looked across at him. 'He's known?'

Hargrove smiled. 'Oh, yes. Not Premier Division yet, but on the way. Greater Manchester Drugs Squad have been on to him for a while. The Firm and the Church have been keeping a watching brief.'

The Firm: MI5. It had been tasked with targeting big-time drugs-dealers and career criminals after the fall of the Soviet Union and the IRA's decision to start peace talks had left the Security Service with little to do. And the Church:

Customs and Excise.

'Why just a watching brief?' asked Shepherd.

'Kerr's one of the smart ones. Doesn't go near the gear,

doesn't touch the cash. It's a question of resources. It would cost millions to put him away. They've been hoping that eventually he'll deal with someone they've turned.'

Hargrove took a CD Rom in a plastic case from his blazer pocket and handed it to Shepherd. 'Those are the files on 67 him. Surveillance pictures, known associates, all the intel we have.'

Shepherd pocketed the disk. He knew that the nature of the investigation was about to change, but he waited for the superintendent to continue. Spectators cheered as a bald,

burly player ran a good fifty yards down the pitch and hurled himself between the posts. The referee's whistle blew long and hard.

'He runs a sideline in protection rackets but that's a hangover from his old days. Now he leaves that pretty much up to one of his heavies, Eddie Anderson. His nightclubs are busy, but they're money-laundering set-ups more than anything.'

And a source of eager young girls, Angie had said. The woman scorned. The woman whose life was about to change for ever, and not for the better, thought Shepherd.

'Kerr's father was an old-school villain, Billy Kerr. Armed robber who got involved in the drugs trade in the late eighties.

Got shot on the Costa del Crime a few years back.

Professional hit, but there was never anyone in the frame for it.'

'So Charlie's following in his father's footsteps?'

'Seems that way. But he's self-made. He was only a teenager when his dad was killed. He was living with his mother. She and Kerr had separated not long after he was born and Kerr had almost no hand in raising him. Must have been in his genes.' Play started again on the pitch. 'This could be a godsend, Spider.'

'Maybe,' said Shepherd.

'We've got her on tape, conspiracy to murder. If she turns up with the cash tomorrow, that's the icing on the cake. If we offer her a way out, there's a good chance she'll take it.'

'She's scared to death of him.'

'She doesn't have a choice,' said Hargrove. 'No real choice,

anyway. If she goes down he'll know exactly what she was planning. He might decide that life behind bars is punishment enough, but a guy with his resources can have someone killed in prison just as easily as on the outside. If she gives evidence against him, though, he'll be the one behind bars.'

'Yeah, but she's not stupid. She'll know that just because he's banged up doesn't mean he can't have her killed,' said Shepherd.

'So she's damned if she does and damned if she doesn't,'

said Hargrove. 'At least we can offer her protection. A new identity. The works.'

'Plus she gets to keep his money?'

'Anything that's not confiscated as the proceeds of crime,'

agreed Hargrove. 'That's got to sound more attractive than life behind bars.'

Shepherd stretched out his legs. If it had been a simple matter of offering Angie Kerr the choice of two evils, there would have been no need to give him the files on her husband.

Hargrove obviously wanted him to make the approach.

'We'll only get one shot,' said Shepherd. 'If she turns us down, Kerr will know we're on to him and go to ground.'

'Which means we're no worse off than we are now,' said Hargrove.

'And we've no idea how much she knows about her husband's operation.'

'Exactly,' said Hargrove.

'Which is where I come in?'

Hargrove looked at Shepherd. 'Are you okay about this?'

'It's messy,' said Shepherd, 'getting close to the wife to get to the husband.'

'No one's asking you to get into bed with her, Spider,' said the superintendent. 'Just find out how much she knows about his business. It could be that he keeps her in the dark, in which case she's no use to us.'

'And we charge her with conspiracy anyway? Even though there's a good chance he'll have her killed?'

'She's the one who's hired a killer. We can't let her walk just because her husband's a villain.'

'A drugs baron who knocks her around, who terrorises her and screws anything in a short skirt?'

The superintendent raised an eyebrow quizzically. 'You're not going soft on me, are you?'

'It's not about being soft. It's about justice. You're saying that if we can't put him away, even though he's a grade-A villain, we'll make do with wifey.'

'If you feel that strongly about it, make sure there's enough to put him away. And if wifey helps, wifey walks. Look,

there's a whole series of imponderables we have to nail down.

We have to find out how much she knows about Kerr's wrongdoing,

then see if she's prepared to give evidence against him - as his wife she's entitled to refuse. And if she is prepared to help, we'll need evidence to back it up.'

'What about Sewell?' asked Shepherd. 'He's not going to be happy about being kept under wraps.'

'Leave Sewell to me.'

'What about resources?'

'Whatever we need. Greater Manchester Police will be footing the bill.'

And taking the credit if we bring Kerr down, thought Shepherd, ruefully. It was always that way. Hargrove's undercover unit had a roving brief: forces around the country put in a request to the Home Office whenever they needed the unit's services, and Hargrove reported to the Home Secretary.

The members of the unit never took credit for their successes and never appeared in court. They simply amassed the evidence, put the case together and moved on. Taking credit would mean blowing their cover, and the last thing an undercover policeman needed was publicity.

Shepherd stood up. 'I'll make a call, tell her I need more info.'

'And get the deposit. We need it on video.'

Shepherd walked away, hands in his pockets. He didn't look back, but could feel Hargrove watching him. He cursed under his breath. The Angie Kerr job wasn't going to be as cut and dried as he'd hoped, and every day in Manchester was a day away from his son.

Rose drove back to the airport and parked the rental car next to his own vehicle. He checked that no one was around, then transferred the MAC 10 to the boot of his car. Customs checks into the UK were as cursory as those into Ireland so he had no qualms about taking it back to London.

He took the rental back to its drop-off point, then retrieved his own car and drove it to the ferry terminal. He had an hour's wait before boarding. His mobile rang as he was getting out of his car. 'It's good gear you've sold us,' said a voice. A guttural Irish accent. Not the boxer and not the man to whom Rose had spoken on the phone before.

'I told you so,' said Rose. He headed up the metal stairway to the main deck.

'And your price was fair. Would you be able to get us more?'

'Maybe,' said Rose.

'You know where we are,' said the man.

'Yes,' said Rose. He cut the connection and walked up on to the deck. He watched as the remaining cars drove on to the ferry. As they left Dublin port and headed across the Irish Sea, he took the Sim card out of the phone and flicked it out over the waves.

Shepherd made himself a cup of coffee, then slotted the CD into his laptop. The information on the disk was password 7i protected and Shepherd keyed in the eight-digit number that would give him access. It was one of the perks of having a near-photographic memory: he never had to remember a password or phone number.

The files were split into three sections: MI5, Customs and Excise, and the Greater Manchester Police Drugs Squad. The MI5 file was the largest but contained little intelligence. It consisted mainly of copies of wire-tap authorisations and transcripts of conversations that Charlie Kerr had made over the previous eighteen months, none of which appeared to have had anything to do with drugs. Hargrove had been right: the Security Service had nothing more than a watching brief, and if all they were doing was monitoring his phone traffic then they didn't stand a chance of getting anything on him. A criminal of Kerr's calibre would hardly start organising cocaine shipments by phone, even using pay-as-you-go mobiles. MI5 had access to the Echelon eavesdropping system, a joint venture between the United States, Great Britain and New Zealand, which allowed for the world-wide monitoring of all phone and email conversations.

It was also equipped with voice-recognition so accurate it could identify a target from among millions of conversations. But listening to Kerr and catching him in the act of setting up a major drugs deal were two different things. The only way to get him would be to use an undercover agent, or persuade a family member or associate to inform on him.

The Customs and Excise file was a tenth the size of MIs's,

but it contained surveillance photographs of Charlie and Angie arriving at Heathrow airport and leaving Malaga airport. Kerr was balding, a big man with broad shoulders.

He was a head taller than Angie and in several of the photographs he had an arm round her as if he wanted to establish ownership. There were also photographs of them at their 72 villa in Spain, and at various restaurants with several Costa del Crime faces. There was nothing wrong with the Kerrs wining and dining with major criminals, of course, drinking Dom Perignon and tipping with fifty-euro notes. It wasn't a criminal offence to associate with villains. Yet. There were reports of Kerr's trips to the United States, Drug Enforcement Administration and FBI reports on whom he had met in Miami. There was no information on any pending US investigations in the file, so either they weren't telling the Church or the Church was playing Secret Squirrel with its overseas information.

In theory, the intelligence services, Customs and the police were supposed to co-operate on major cases, but in practice they guarded their turf jealously. There was a lot of resentment on behalf of the police and Customs that MI5 had moved into anti-drugs work. The Security Service had shown little interest in catching drugs barons until their own jobs were on the line and now whenever they were involved in a major seizure their press-relations people went into overdrive,

trumpeting every drugs bust as a major victory for MI5. Also the spies were able to operate in decidedly grey areas, while the police had to follow the Police and Criminal Evidence Act to the letter. And while Customs had to fight for every penny of its budget, it seemed that MI5 had a blank cheque book to play with.

Customs had tried using an undercover agent to infiltrate Kerr's circle in Marbella, but two weeks into the investigation he'd been sussed and had made a rapid withdrawal. He was only identified by his cover name in the reports he'd filed. There was nothing in them that would have resulted in charges: he had met with Kerr three times in various nightclubs but the only conversations they'd had were social chitchat.

According to the agent, Charlie Kerr was notoriously unfaithful to his wife, and on the nights he was out without 73 her he usually ended up bedding one pretty girl or another,

although he was always back in his villa by dawn. The agent had suggested sending in a pretty female undercover agent but the head of Drugs Operations had vetoed a honey trap.

Charlie Kerr was too dangerous: a borderline psychopath.

The Marbella operation had been aborted one night after the agent had been out in a group with two of Kerr's associates,

Ray Wates and Eddie Anderson - the men Angie had talked about. They'd sat on either side of the agent and plied him with drink. When Charlie had left with a young Spanish waitress they'd suggested they move on to another club. The agent had had a bad feeling about the way the men were smiling at him. He'd pretended to be more drunk than he was and said he had to go to the bathroom. He'd broken a window, climbed down a drainpipe and caught a plane back to London. Shepherd understood the man's decision.

Sometimes you had to go with your instincts. If a situation felt wrong it probably was.

The police file contained more hard intelligence than those of MI5 and the Church put together. In his mid-twenties Charlie Kerr had been charged with armed robbery three times. Each time the case had collapsed before it had got to court. Witnesses were intimidated or paid off; evidence mysteriously disappeared. In one case CCTV footage was wiped in police custody. Kerr was thought to have been responsible for more than two dozen building-society and bank robberies over a five-year period, netting, according to police estimates, close to a quarter of a million pounds. Sometimes he worked alone, sometimes with a partner, and he hadn't served a day in prison. He had a criminal record, though,

for an assault on his eighteenth birthday: he'd bitten the ear off a middle-aged man in a pub and had been given a year's probation after three witnesses swore that he had been provoked. It was the only time he had been in court but it 74 meant that his fingerprints, teeth impressions and DNA were in the system.

Kerr had channelled the profits from the robberies into drugs but, because of his record, he took more care than most to cover his tracks. He was paranoid about phones and did virtually all his business outdoors, face to face. There were hundreds of surveillance photographs in his police file,

but no hard evidence of drugs-dealing. The police had looked into Kerr's nightclubs, and while they were sure he was using them to launder his drugs profits, they hadn't been able to prove it. There were also rumours that his men were extorting money from other nightclubs in the Manchester area, but only one owner had ever complained officially his club had burned down the next day and he left the city shortly afterwards.