He went back into the room and started watching the football again. After twenty minutes Docherty called through from the terrace. ‘The eye candy is leaving.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Yeah. Probably shopping. She lives the life of Riley, that one, doesn’t she?’

  Shepherd popped some peanuts into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. The waiting was frustrating but there was nothing he could do to speed things up. Either Meyer would approach him or he wouldn’t. If Shepherd was too pushy, Meyer would be suspicious. The worry was that he would leave Marbella without making contact. If that happened, Shepherd’s options would be limited. He could hardly turn up at Meyer’s next port of call.

  He stared at the Jeff Taylor phone on the coffee-table in front of him. ‘Ring, you bastard,’ he said. ‘Ring.’

  ‘Windchaser’s setting sail,’ called Docherty.

  Shepherd went out onto the terrace. The catamaran was edging away from its berth. Jeeves was standing behind the wheel on the port side. Meyer and the two visitors were sitting in the cockpit, holding glasses of champagne. Docherty was clicking away on the camera. Shepherd picked up the binoculars again. The Colombians were smoking cigars. The younger one was definitely Juan Garcia. The older one still had his hat and glasses on but Shepherd was fairly sure it was indeed Oscar Lopez. He had seen Lopez’s DEA file five years ago and he was one mean son of a bitch. Lopez took care of discipline within the Hernandez cartel and dealt with any outside threats. According to the file, he was a fan of the Colombian necktie, where a victim’s throat was slashed from side to side and the tongue pulled through the open wound. Shepherd knew that the Colombian necktie was actually a myth – it was a physical impossibility – but the fact that the DEA believed it was a sign of just how much Lopez was feared. The agency was sure that he had killed at least four of their agents, but as all the murders had occurred in Colombia there was no evidence and no witnesses.

  Windchaser headed for open water. Shepherd looked at his watch. ‘I’m guessing they’ll be at sea for a while,’ he said. ‘I’ll hit the gym.’

  ‘Do me favour and get me a couple of vodka miniatures, will you?’ asked Docherty. ‘And another tonic water.’

  The inspector who’d vetoed the operation against the groomers was called Graham Reynolds, and Adam Kaiser had said he lived in Stanmore, in north-west London, about an hour from Bayswater on the Jubilee line. Standing checked the electoral roll and found a Graham Reynolds at a Stanmore address. An Angela Reynolds was also shown as living there, presumably his wife.

  Standing had decided he’d be better off meeting the inspector away from the police station: it was unlikely he’d say anything on the premises but on his home turf he might open up. He decided to head up to Stanmore in the early evening so he bought a long black coat and a pair of black leather gloves from a menswear store in the Whiteleys shopping centre in Queensway.

  He arrived in Stanmore at five thirty. The Reynoldses’ house was semi-detached in a narrow road a short walk from the Tube station. Standing walked by slowly. There was a parking space that had once been a garden but it was empty. Standing didn’t know if Reynolds drove to work or not but he decided to wait. If he knocked on the door and the inspector wasn’t in but his wife was, all it would take was one phone call for a van of police to arrive and he was in no mood for another Tasering. There were no obvious places where he could stand and watch the house without appearing suspicious, so he walked slowly down the road, then retraced his steps. Every now and again he would take out his phone and fake a call, looking as if he was waiting for someone.

  Six o’clock passed. Then six thirty. At just before seven a white Toyota turned into the road. Standing was about a hundred yards away and walking towards the house when the car turned and parked. He quickened his pace and got to the house just as Reynolds was climbing out. He was short and slight, less than five eight, and probably weighed seventy kilos. He was wearing a light blue fleece over his uniform and carrying a North Face backpack.

  ‘Graham Reynolds?’ said Standing, quietly.

  Reynolds spun around, his right arm moving instinctively to protect himself. Standing stood with his hands out of his pockets, his fingers spread wide to show that he wasn’t carrying anything.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Reynolds.

  ‘I just wanted a quiet chat, away from the station,’ said Standing. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  Standing smiled. ‘Here’s the thing, Inspector Reynolds. I’ll happily tell you who I am, and I can show you ID, but if I do that, it puts you in an awkward position.’

  Reynolds frowned. ‘How so?’

  ‘At the moment I’m just a stranger, someone you’ve never met and hopefully will never meet again. I just want a chat. Nothing more. If you’re ever asked about this meeting you can easily deny it ever happened. But it’s a lot harder to deny that once I’ve identified myself.’

  ‘And if I just tell you to go away and leave me alone?’

  Standing shrugged. ‘Then I’ll do that. Look, I didn’t go to the police station because I knew you probably wouldn’t see me, and I’d no doubt you wouldn’t tell me what I want to know. Because if I go to the station then it’s official and it’s on the record. This is neither. I know you’re a good cop. I know you wanted to investigate the grooming that’s been going on in Kilburn. And I know you were stopped. As a good cop, that’s got to weigh on you. You were prevented from doing your job, a job that needs to be done. I just want to know why.’

  Reynolds continued to stare at him. Standing could practically hear the man running through his options. He himself clearly wasn’t a threat: any threats would have been made already. The fact that Standing had turned up outside his home meant that he wasn’t just a random member of the public. But if he was in law enforcement he would have identified himself. So would a journalist. So why would a member of the public want a private chat about an operation that had been pulled?

  ‘You’re not a member of a right-wing group out to attack Muslims?’ Reynolds asked eventually.

  Standing shook his head. ‘It’s nothing like that,’ he said. ‘I just want the right thing to be done, and at the moment that’s not happening. Just a chat, Inspector Reynolds. No notes, no recordings, no comeback. I just want to know what happened.’

  Reynolds glanced at the house. ‘My wife’s going to be wondering what I’m up to.’

  ‘Tell her I’m a journalist looking for a quote on a story,’ said Standing.

  ‘You’re not, I hope.’

  ‘You have my word that I’m not a journalist, and never have been.’ He smiled. ‘I’m not much of a writer.’

  Reynolds gestured down the road. ‘Let’s walk.’

  Standing pointed in the opposite direction. ‘Can we walk that way? That’s where the Tube is.’

  ‘You don’t drive?’

  ‘Never took my test.’

  Reynolds began to walk and Standing matched his pace. ‘The way I understand it, you were keen to investigate an Asian grooming gang that was operating in Kilburn. They were taking young girls into a pound shop and plying them with drink and drugs.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I just do,’ said Standing. ‘But you stopped the investigation, ostensibly for cost reasons, though there was a suggestion it was a cultural thing.’

  ‘That’s the official line, yes.’

  ‘But it’s not the truth?’

  Reynolds didn’t say anything.

  ‘That must have pissed you off, right? You were ready to go, you had the bad guys in your sights, then someone higher up tells you to stop. Basically they didn’t want you to do your job. In which case, what’s the point, right?’

  Reynolds sighed. He took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and offered it to Standing. He shook his head and the inspector lit one for himself. He waited until he’d blown smoke up at the darkening sky before continuing. ‘I got called into my boss’s office. He’s a superintendent. He’s behind a desk most of the time but he’s a real copper and initially he’d given me the go-ahead to start the investigation. The plan was to put the shop under surveillance, see who was coming and going, ideally get some CCTV in there. We already knew that several young white girls had been taken there by Asian men so we needed to get a view on how big a problem it was and how many of the girls were under age. I get called in and I assume it’s to talk about resources and manpower but I’m told that it’s all off. My boss is with a deputy assistant commissioner. The DAC doesn’t say much. He’s just there to prove that what I’m being told is from the top. My boss tells me that the operation I’ve planned is going to cut across a long-term operation being run by another agency, and that we have to hold off on ours.’

  ‘Other agency?’ said Standing, frowning. ‘Did they say who?’

  ‘My boss didn’t while the DAC was there. Just that my operation was being put on ice, for the time being. The DAC thanked me for all my good work, assured me that this was in the best interests of the fight against serious crime, and said that if anyone asked I was to say the operation had been curtailed for budgetary reasons. I’m sent on my merry way and the DAC gets into his limo and is driven back to Scotland Yard. Once he’s gone, my boss has me back in the office and shuts the door. He’s as annoyed as I am and brings me up to speed. It’s MI5. They’re running an anti-terrorism case and our operation risks exposing it.’

  ‘Did he say what the case was?’

  ‘He didn’t know. But the obvious conclusion is that it’s Islamic fundamentalists and some of them are involved in the child grooming. If we pull them in on grooming charges, the anti-terrorism operation falls apart. According to my boss, the anti-terrorism operation is way bigger and involves more targets. Five don’t want their operation compromised so we stand down.’

  ‘Four girls died. Doesn’t that count for anything?’

  ‘Four girls died of heroin overdoses. There were no suspicious circumstances.’ Standing opened his mouth to speak and the inspector held up a hand to silence him. ‘Yes, I know what you’re going to say. Of course there’s something wrong when young girls die of drug overdoses and, yes, someone must have given or sold them the drugs. But the deaths themselves weren’t criminal acts. Two of the girls died in their own bedrooms and were found by their parents. One died outside, in a park, the fourth in a shooting gallery in Kilburn. But they all injected the drugs themselves. They all made bad choices.’

  ‘Or someone deliberately gave them much stronger heroin, knowing it would kill them.’

  The inspector stopped walking and turned to him. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘It’s possible, right?’

  ‘Anything’s possible. But why would anyone want them dead?’

  ‘It’s not rocket science, is it?’ said Standing. ‘The girls were coerced into having sex. With gifts, with sweet talk, with booze, with drugs. Whatever, they started having sex, then maybe photographs and video were taken, pressure was applied, and then the girls find themselves being passed around. That’s what happened up north, right, in Rotherham and all those places? Thousands of young white girls abused by Asian gangs.’

  ‘It’s a big jump between grooming and murder.’

  ‘It’s a logical one, though. Say the girls aren’t happy about what’s being done to them. They see what’s been happening up in Yorkshire and that these men are finally being sent to prison for what they did. Maybe they start to think about going to the police. The guys find out and decide to take action.’

  ‘You mean you think the girls were murdered?’

  ‘It’s possible. The girls were all being used by the Asian gang.’

  ‘The ones who died. That’s what we heard. But we hadn’t confirmed it. That was going to be part of the investigation.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘Just a guy who wants to know what happened. Okay, I won’t take up any more of your time. And thanks for talking to me.’ He offered his hand and the inspector shook it. ‘I realise you could have just told me to go fuck myself.’

  The inspector smiled. ‘I thought about it,’ he said. ‘But you were right, it did annoy me. It still annoys me. Kids are being abused and I’m being told to do nothing about it.’ He shook his head angrily. ‘It annoys the hell out of me. But what can I do? I’ve got twenty-five years in and I’d like at least one more promotion before I retire. And that’s not going to happen if I start making waves.’ He turned away and began to walk back to his house.

  ‘Oh, Inspector, one last thing,’ said Standing.

  Reynolds stopped. ‘What?’

  ‘The pound shop? Did you close down the back room?’

  ‘I was told to back off, and I did.’

  ‘You didn’t make a call, tell him to shut it down? Because he did. The room’s used as a storeroom now.’

  Reynolds looked at him quizzically. ‘You seem to know a lot about this.’

  ‘They’ve moved to a minicab office in Kilburn.’

  ‘That would make sense.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘One of the men we were looking at runs a cab company.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Hussain. Ali Hussain. There’s four of them own the business. Fifty or so drivers on the books, though last I heard a lot are moving to Uber.’

  ‘Why were you looking at Hussain?’

  ‘He was a regular visitor to the pound shop.’

  ‘Anything else on him?’

  The inspector shook his head. ‘Nothing known. I must go. My wife’s got the dinner on.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Standing. ‘Thanks for everything.’

  ‘I was never here,’ said the inspector. ‘And neither were you.’

  There was a decent gym in the hotel so Shepherd spent the best part of an hour exercising. When the lift doors opened on his floor, he was surprised to see Lisa standing in the lobby. ‘I’d just given up knocking,’ she said. She was wearing a yellow halter top, a short skirt that showed off her tanned legs, and high heels, but still looked tiny.

  ‘I was in the gym.’

  She nodded at his sweat-soaked shirt. ‘I can see.’

  ‘I’m just going to shower,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Probably a good idea.’

  ‘I thought you were out on the boat?’

  ‘Then you were obviously mistaken.’ She grinned. ‘Marcus wanted a boys’ trip. So I’m surplus to requirements. Me being a girl and all.’

  She made no move to leave so Shepherd unlocked his door and went inside. She followed him, then went to the minibar, squatted down and opened it. ‘There’s no champagne,’ she said.

  ‘I know. How remiss.’

  ‘What sort of hotel doesn’t have champagne?’ she asked.

  ‘This one,’ said Shepherd. ‘There’s white wine.’

  ‘Nah,’ she said. She took out a bottle of beer. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I’ll have a beer,’ he said. There was an opener on the side of the minibar and she used it to open the two bottles. She gave one to him and clinked hers against it. ‘Cheers, Jeff. My White Knight.’

  He grinned. ‘Cheers, Lucy. My Damsel In Distress.’

  They drank. ‘I’m going to have to shower,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t let me stop you.’

  Shepherd put down his beer and took his phone into the bathroom. He put it by the basin while he stripped off and stepped into the shower. He hit the cold water and gasped as it flowed over him. He closed his eyes and let the water play over his hair.

  ‘Do you always do that?’

  Shepherd jumped and whirled around. Lisa was leaning against the doorway, tapping her bottle against her chin, an amused smile on her face.

  ‘Do what?’

  She gestured at the phone with her bottle. ‘Take the phone with you into the bathroom.’

  ‘Sure. And do you always follow men into the bathroom?’

  She grinned. ‘Sure. Want me to join you?’

  Shepherd laughed, assuming she was joking. He grabbed the soap and turned the water up to warm. He looked over his shoulder. She hadn’t moved.

  ‘Well?’ she said.

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘Do you want me to join you?’

  ‘What about Marcus?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’re his girlfriend, right?’

  She laughed. ‘Well, I’m a girl and I’m his friend. But I’m not his girlfriend.’

  ‘Oh, come on, I’ve seen you together.’ He realised she had no intention of leaving so he began to lather himself.

  She raised her eyebrows in mock surprise. ‘You’ve seen me fucking him?’

  ‘No, of course not. But …’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘You walk hand in hand. You’re close.’

  ‘He’s a friend.’

  ‘You’re not sleeping with him?’

  She laughed again. ‘You’re an idiot.’

  ‘I don’t fool around with other guys’ girls,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘How very Victorian of you,’ she said. ‘You really don’t know, do you?’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘Marcus is gay.’

  Shepherd’s jaw dropped. ‘Get out of here.’

  ‘He doesn’t make it obvious but, yeah, he’s gay. I mean, he likes having pretty women around, and he’s charming and funny, but there’s never anything physical with us. And he’s the same with guys. When he hangs out with gay guys, he fools around, but in all the time I’ve known him I don’t think he’s had sex with anyone.’

  Shepherd put the soap back on its holder and rinsed himself off. ‘I’m gob-smacked,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t tell him I said anything,’ said Lisa. ‘He doesn’t like being gossiped about.’

  ‘What about Jeeves? Are he and Marcus an item?’

  ‘An item?’ She giggled. ‘Who says that, these days?’

  ‘You know what I mean. You stay on the boat. Are they …?’

  ‘Fucking? No, Jeff, they’re not. Look, Marcus is pretty much asexual. And Jeeves isn’t gay. He’s always trying to get into my pants when Marcus isn’t looking.’ She shook her head. ‘You really have no gaydar. You just can’t tell, can you?’

 

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