Black Ops: The 12th Spider Shepherd Thriller (41 page)

T
he depot was on an industrial estate a few hundred yards from the end of the M62, on the outskirts of Liverpool. The estate was composed of a dozen featureless buildings of varying sizes, of which the depot was the largest by far. It sat in the middle of the estate like a mother hen surrounded by its chicks. The depot, and a car park large enough to take twenty or so container lorries, was surrounded by a wire security fence and the whole area was covered by CCTV. The only way in and out was through a metal gate that rolled back and forth to allow the trucks in and out. There were two uniformed security guards to check the paperwork of the trucks as they entered and left, and another to operate the electric gate.

There was a large loading bay on one side of the building where three large grey trucks were parked up with their rear doors facing the building. Men in white overalls were unloading boxes on to trolleys and wheeling them inside. On the other side of the building was a smaller loading bay with several vans parked next to it.

‘So how does it work?’ asked Shepherd.

He, Sharpe and Justin were sitting in their Mondeo in the car park of a unit that had a large FOR RENT sign across its main door. Justin was in the back.

‘It’s a legit business,’ said Justin. ‘It’s been around since the seventies but they moved here a couple of years ago. They supply chicken around the whole of the north-west and down as far as Birmingham. Fish, too. Anything that needs refrigeration. There’s dozens of trucks that pass through here each day, some from the Dover ferries, some from Felixstowe. The vans are refrigerated and the chickens are packed in boxes. The only way to check the truck completely is to take out all the chickens. But if they get above a certain temperature then Health and Safety steps in and declares the consignment unfit for human consumption and Customs has to stump up the money. But they’re lazy bastards anyway. No one wants to be humping out dozens of cases of chicken. So ninety-nine times out of a hundred they don’t even check. But where they’re clever is that they only bring in ten or twenty kilos on a truck. That much gear is easy to hide. They build secret compartments into the trucks and Customs wouldn’t see if they were looking right at it. The only way they’d ever get caught is if they had serious intel, you know, telling them that there was gear in a specific truck, but that’s never going to happen. Even the drivers don’t know when they’re carrying gear.’

Shepherd twisted around in his seat. ‘How come you know all this?’ he asked.

‘One of their guys had a falling-out with them and ended up working for us. Gave us the full SP.’

‘And you didn’t think of shopping them to the cops?’

‘There’s no point. The gang’s got an inside man in the drugs squad. Any time they start sniffing around they just stop the shipments. Then they get the all-clear and it starts up again. It’s a sweet operation.’

‘So at any one time there’s probably hundreds of kilos of drugs in there?’

‘Yeah, but it doesn’t hang around for long,’ said Justin. ‘The smaller vans move the chicken and fish around to the supermarkets and restaurants they supply, and they use the same vans to move the drugs.’

Shepherd looked over at Sharpe. ‘What do you think?’

‘It’s a big operation,’ said Sharpe. ‘Plenty big enough, I’d say.’

‘Anything else you need?’ asked Justin.

‘Nah, you’ve done us proud,’ said Shepherd. ‘We’ll run you back home.’

J
eremy Willoughby-Brown pressed the remote to open his garage door and drove his Volvo carefully inside. There were four bikes parked to the left and a large lawnmower to the right and there were only a few inches to spare if he wasn’t going to scratch the paintwork of his car. He held the door close as he climbed out, then reached inside for his briefcase. As he straightened up he gasped involuntarily as he saw the figure standing in the open doorway. He held the briefcase up to his chest even though he knew it wouldn’t even come close to stopping a bullet.

The figure chuckled. ‘Don’t worry, Jeremy, I’m not here to shoot you,’ said the figure. ‘Not that I haven’t thought about it.’

The voice was familiar but Willoughby-Brown couldn’t quite place it. He took a few hesitant steps forward and then realised who it was. ‘Shepherd? What the hell are you doing here?’

‘Relax, Jeremy, that’s not a gun in my pocket, I’m just pleased to see you.’

‘What do you want, Shepherd?’

‘Oh, so now I’m Shepherd and not Danny boy. What’s happened, Jeremy? Are we not best friends any more?’

Willoughby-Brown glanced anxiously across at the house.

‘Don’t worry, I won’t keep you long,’ said Shepherd. ‘Emily will never know I’ve been here. She’s probably helping Joshua and Jane with their homework.’ He smiled as Willoughby-Brown stiffened. ‘What, you think you’re the only one who can get intel on people? I have to say I never pegged you for a married man. Not that I thought you were gay, just sort of asexual, you know? I could never picture any woman wanting you to climb on top of her.’

Willoughby-Brown glared at him but didn’t say anything.

‘But here you are, married to a former stockbroker, father of two lovely kids at private school. The perfect family. And I love the Jeremy, Joshua and Jane thing. Maybe if you have another son, you could call him Judas?’

‘What the fuck do you want, Shepherd?’

‘I want a chat.’

‘You could have come to my office for that.’

Shepherd shook his head. ‘I’m not going anywhere near your office,’ he said. He was wearing a long black overcoat and had his hands thrust deep into the pockets. The collar was turned up against the cold wind that was blowing down the street.

‘So you just come to my home instead?’

Shepherd shrugged. ‘How does it feel to know that someone has been digging into your personal life, Jeremy? It doesn’t feel good, does it? Bit like when you started talking about my two-bedroom flat and the view of the Thames. Just to let me know that you knew. But that didn’t intimidate me, it just made me angry.’

‘Fine, message received loud and clear. Now I’ll ask you again, what the fuck do you want?’

‘I’m not doing your dirty work any more,’ said Shepherd.

‘This is about Button?’

‘Of course it’s about her. If you want to bring her down, you can do it yourself. Lex Harper told me to fuck off and that’s what I’m saying to you.’

‘Because?’

‘Because I didn’t join MI5 to shaft my boss, a boss who I also count as a friend. If she’s broken the law then you can use someone else to put the case together because I’m not doing it. I take down villains and I take down terrorists, I don’t take down friends.’

‘Even friends who break the law?’

‘Like I said, if she’s broken the law then you go and put a case together, but I don’t want to be part of it.’

‘You don’t get to choose your cases,’ said Willoughby-Brown coldly.

‘Actually I do. I work undercover most of the time and I’m never asked to do anything that I don’t want to.’

‘This isn’t an undercover case.’

‘Yes, it is. You want me to screw over Charlie behind her back. You want me to look her in the eye and smile while at the same time I’m plotting with you to bring her down. And I’m here to tell you that’s not going to happen.’

Willoughby-Brown glared at him. ‘You do this and your career is over,’ he said quietly.

‘No, it’s not,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’ll still have a career, it just might not be with MI5. I had a career before Five and I’ll sure as hell have a career afterwards. If you want to get me fired, fine. We’ll see how you get on at an employment tribunal. But you’re not using me to take down Charlie Button. I’m done.’ He turned his back on Willoughby-Brown and walked away into the night, his feet crunching on the gravel drive.

Willoughby-Brown stood where he was, his heart pounding. He realised he was still holding his briefcase in front of his chest and he slowly lowered it. He took a deep breath, clicked the remote to shut the garage door and tried to smile as he headed towards his house.

H
arper and Maggie May took a taxi to the city’s nightclub area and it dropped them off outside a pretty rough bar that Harper was familiar with. The doormen greeted him with the traditional bouncers’ scowl and they both checked out Maggie May’s impressive legs and cleavage, which were very much on display, before waving them inside.

They found a seat at the table in a chill-out area away from the pounding house music on the dance floor, and drank a couple of beers as they surveyed the crowd. Eventually Harper found what he was looking for – a group of bikers who were all wearing filthy chopped-down denim jackets emblazoned with a lightning bolt motorcycle club insignia that looked to be first cousin to a Nazi swastika. They were loud and obnoxious and had carved out their own area in the bar. Most of the club’s patrons gave them a wide berth except for the young girls in short skirts and cropped tops who allowed themselves to be groped and fondled in exchange for alcohol and the white tablets the bikers kept feeding them. Several of the bikers had shaved heads; they all had tattoos and were missing teeth and while they were all big and well muscled Harper knew that none of them would be a problem, one on one. They were pack animals. They lived in a pack and they fought in a pack, and that was always their weakness.

Harper sipped his beer and chatted to Maggie May as he waited, like a cheetah surveying a pack of wildebeest, waiting for one to leave the safety of the herd. There were two false starts when two of the bikers went to the men’s toilets. The first time there were already two clubbers inside and the second the biker had been followed in by another man. It was third time lucky. The biker was just over six feet tall; his jacket sleeves had been hacked off to reveal his vivid full-length arm tattoos. His belt buckle was in the shape of a large razor blade and he had chunky metal rings on all his fingers, effectively giving him lethal, and legal, knuckledusters on each hand. He pushed a man in a black suit out of the way. The man turned and glared angrily but when he saw who had pushed him, he moved away quickly.

‘That’s the one,’ said Harper. ‘I’ll be in and out in thirty seconds. If anyone looks as if they’re going to follow us in, run interference.’

Harper slipped on his gloves as he headed into the toilets. He would only have a few seconds to take the man out but he had rehearsed it in his mind and knew exactly what to do. He pushed open the door. There were two stalls to the left and a long stainless steel urinal to the right. The biker was standing in the middle of the urinal, playing a stream of urine in the general direction of the wall but not seeming to care how much sprayed over the floor. He took a quick look over his shoulder as the door opened but then turned back to the matter in hand.

Harper walked quickly across the tiled floor, grabbed the back of the biker’s head and smashed it against the wall. The biker slumped to the floor and Harper helped him down, then stood over him and patted him down. He found a large folding knife in the back pocket of the man’s jeans and he slipped it into a Ziploc plastic bag which he shoved inside his jacket. Then he grabbed the biker’s hair and pulled out a clump, which went into a second Ziploc bag. Less than thirty seconds after entering the toilet Harper was heading out of the club with Maggie May and five minutes after that they were in a taxi heading back to the hotel.

S
hepherd and Sharpe were sitting at a table furthest from the bar when Drinkwater and Allen walked in. It had started raining outside and Drinkwater shook out a large golfing umbrella before slotting it into a stand by the door. Allen had already spotted Shepherd and strode across the pub to shake his hand.

‘Thanks for arranging this – I didn’t want to do it at your station,’ said Shepherd, keeping his voice low so that Drinkwater wouldn’t hear. ‘I owe you one.’

‘Paul’s more than happy to hear what you’ve got to say,’ said the detective. ‘I told him you could deliver him a big score and he’s been on tenterhooks ever since.’

The detective sergeant walked over, his face impassive. Shepherd got the impression that he didn’t smile much, but then detectives rarely did when on duty. Drinkwater made no attempt to shake hands. He nodded curtly at Shepherd and then gestured at Sharpe.

‘And this is …?’

‘An old colleague,’ said Shepherd. ‘Jimmy Sharpe.’

‘Less of the old,’ growled Sharpe.

‘Jimmy’s attached to the National Crime Agency.’

‘Then he won’t mind showing me his warrant card.’

Sharpe stood up, took out his warrant card and handed it over. Drinkwater studied it carefully, as if committing the details to memory, before passing it back.

‘Scottish?’ he confirmed.

‘Aye. I voted for independence but what can you do?’ said Sharpe. He sat down again. ‘Get the drinks in, Spider,’ he said, gesturing at his half-empty glass.

‘What can I get you guys?’ asked Shepherd.

‘We’re on duty. So an orange juice will do me,’ said Drinkwater.

From the look on his face it was clear that Allen would have preferred a beer but he asked for a coffee. They sat down as Shepherd went over to the bar but stayed silent until Shepherd returned with their drinks and a fresh pint for Sharpe.

‘So what have you got for us?’ asked Drinkwater, getting straight to the point.

‘It’s good news,’ said Shepherd. ‘The Yilmaz brothers aren’t as small time as you might have thought. They take a run over to Liverpool every two weeks to pick up their drugs from a firm there. Each trip it’s a couple of kilos of coke plus heroin, Ecstasy and amphetamines. They pay in cash too, on the spot.’

‘This Liverpool firm is where?’

‘The drugs are in a warehouse depot on the outskirts of the city. They bring them in from Amsterdam in refrigerated trucks full of chickens.’

‘Chickens?’ repeated the detective sergeant with a look of disbelief.

Shepherd nodded. ‘It’s clever. They’ve been doing it for years. They bring in a dozen or so trucks a day and distribute the chickens right across the north-west. Fish, too. It’s a real business, the drugs side is the icing on the cake. The drugs are kept in the depot and they use the same delivery vans to move them as and when.’