Rough Justice (43 page)

Shepherd climbed out of his car. He walked towards Talovic’s house.

‘I’m not scared of you!’ Talovic yelled.

Shepherd saw the net curtains twitch at the sitting-room window and caught a glimpse of a grey-haired woman with a tight, pinched face before the curtain fell back into place. He walked past the Honda Civic. The back seat was filled with old fast-food wrappers and screwed-up carrier bags. There was a scratch running down one side of the car and a wing mirror was cracked. He stopped beside it and stared at Talovic. ‘This has gone too far,’ said Shepherd. ‘You’re going to war over nothing.’

‘War? What do you know about war?’ snarled Talovic.

‘I know you slashed my tyre and threw a brick through my window.’

‘Prove it,’ sneered Talovic.

‘And you did it for nothing,’ said Shepherd.

‘Nothing to you, maybe, but my son is in trouble with the police because of your son.’

‘Your son is in trouble because he filmed an assault,’ said Shepherd. ‘A racist assault.’

‘Your son gave the video to the police. He shouldn’t have done that,’ said Talovic.

‘My son did no such thing,’ said Shepherd. ‘I showed the video to his teacher and the school called in the police. But that’s nothing to do with Liam or me.’

Talovic jabbed his rolled-up newspaper at Shepherd’s face. ‘It’s everything to do with you. And you have to stop it. You have to stop it now.’ He took a step towards Shepherd.

‘I can’t do that. It’s a police investigation. It’s up to them.’

‘Your son can tell the police that he was mistaken, that somebody else gave him the video.’

Shepherd shook his head angrily. ‘I keep telling you that’s not going to happen. He’s not going to lie to the police and neither am I.’

Talovic prodded Shepherd in the chest with the newspaper. ‘If you know what’s good for you, you’ll do it.’

‘Are you threatening me?’ said Shepherd.

‘I’m telling you that if you don’t want something bad to happen to you, you’ll tell the police that your boy made a mistake.’

Talovic went to prod him again but Shepherd slapped the newspaper away. It fell from Talovic’s hand and landed on the uncut lawn. ‘Don’t touch me,’ he said softly. ‘I came here to talk to you, not to start a fight.’

‘We’re already fighting,’ said Talovic. ‘You are trying to destroy my life and so I will destroy yours.’

‘Now you’re being ridiculous,’ said Shepherd. ‘This is an argument over nothing.’

‘Nothing? You report my son to the police and you say it’s nothing!’

‘It’s something that you can easily sort out with them.’

‘You caused this problem, you can sort it out,’ said Talovic.

‘That’s not going to happen,’ said Shepherd, quietly.

‘Then if it doesn’t, I’ll fuck with your life – I’ll fuck with you so bad that you’ll wish you’d never set eyes on me.’

‘What are you talking about?’ said Shepherd.

‘I’ll kill your fucking son and I’ll rape that pretty wife of yours and I’ll kill her and then I’ll kill you and I’ll dance on your graves.’

Shepherd couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘What?’ he said. He realised that Talovic thought Katra was his wife.

‘You’re deaf and stupid, are you?’ said Talovic, taking a step towards him. His face was so close to Shepherd’s that spittle peppered his chin. He pushed Shepherd in the chest with the palm of his hand. ‘You will tell the police you made a mistake or I will burn your fucking house down.’

Shepherd was genuinely stunned by the man’s outburst. He had stood face to face with some of the hardest criminals in the country but had never felt anything approaching the pure hatred that was pouring out of Talovic. ‘You can’t threaten someone like that,’ he said. The net curtains twitched again but he ignored them.

‘I can do what I want,’ said Talovic. ‘You think I am scared of you? You’re nothing to me. You’re not even shit on my shoe.’ He stabbed his finger at Shepherd’s face but Shepherd grabbed his wrist and held it firm. He stared at Talovic, and as he looked into the man’s eyes he realised there was no point in saying anything to him. Talovic was beyond reason. He wanted to hit the man, to scream at him to leave his family alone, that Katra was his au pair and not his wife, and that if he went anywhere near her or Liam then Shepherd would kill him, but he knew that the words would have no effect on a man like Talovic.

Talovic pulled his hand away. ‘You tell the police it was nothing to do with my boy, or you’ll wish you were dead,’ he said.

Shepherd narrowed his eyes but said nothing.

‘You think you’re a hard man, do you?’ asked Talovic. ‘You don’t know what hard is. You don’t scare a man by staring at him, you scare him by destroying the things he loves.’ He spat at Shepherd – phlegm splattered across his cheek – then went back into his house and slammed the door.

Shepherd walked quickly to his car. He kept a small pack of tissues in the glove compartment and used one to clean his face. He folded the tissue carefully, wrapped it in a second, and placed it in the glove compartment. He drove home. Katra was still in the kitchen. Shepherd asked her to make him a coffee, then fished two Ziploc bags from one of the kitchen cupboards and took them to the car. He used one of the bags to cover his hand as he collected the tissue from the glove compartment and placed it in the second bag. Then he took the bagged tissue back into the house and put it into his desk in the sitting room.

When he went back into the kitchen Katra was peeling potatoes. ‘Is everything all right?’ she asked, clearly worried.

‘Everything’s fine. Are you coming to watch Liam play football?’

‘Of course,’ she said. Lady ran over to her, tail wagging, as if she knew that a trip was on the cards.

Shepherd took his coffee into the sitting room. He sat down on the sofa and called Steve Renshaw, one of SOCA’s best biometric laboratory officers. He was based at SOCA’s forensics lab in Tamworth, fourteen miles north-east of Birmingham. Their paths had crossed on several high-profile SOCA cases and Shepherd had been impressed with the scientist’s professionalism. He apologised for bothering Renshaw at the weekend.

‘No problem. I’m in the lab,’ said Renshaw. ‘We’re backed up like you wouldn’t believe. I’m doing twelve-hour shifts during the week just to stand still, and this is my third weekend in a row. Still, can’t complain – the overtime’s paying for my new conservatory.’

‘Too busy to do me a favour?’ asked Shepherd.

‘Never too busy to help you, Spider,’ said Renshaw. ‘Ask and ye shall receive.’

‘If I send you a saliva sample can you do me a DNA analysis on it?’

‘No problem.’

‘Then run it through as many DNA databases as you can, especially Europol?’

‘Ask me something difficult,’ said Renshaw. ‘Might take a day or two. Are you in a rush?’

‘A day or two will be fine, thanks.’

‘Have you got a case number?’

‘It’s not a case yet. This is more by way of an investigation,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’ll courier it to you.’

‘Okay, but just so you know that the evidence won’t be any good in court down the line, there’ll be no chain of custody.’

‘It won’t be evidence, Steve,’ promised Shepherd. ‘I just need to know who this guy is, if he’s in the system or not. If it’s any help he’s a Bosnian, but now he’s got British citizenship.’

‘I’ll see what I can come up with,’ said Renshaw. ‘Gotta go. I’ve got three million quid in fifty-pound notes to fingerprint.’

Shepherd thanked him and ended the call. He rang a local courier company but their phone went unanswered. At the second number he tried he spoke to a woman, who said she would have the package collected before noon. Shepherd wrote Renshaw’s name and address on a large manila envelope and put the Ziploc bag inside. He left it on the hall table with his Visa card and went into the kitchen. Katra was now cutting up the potatoes and dropping them into a pan of water. ‘I’m doing shepherd’s pie for dinner,’ she said.

‘With real shepherds?’

‘No, with . . .’ she began, then realised he was joking. ‘You’re teasing me.’ She stopped cutting the potatoes and looked at him with a worried frown. ‘Is everything okay with that man?’

‘I think so,’ said Shepherd, hoping he sounded more confident than he felt. ‘Just make sure you keep the doors and windows locked at night. And set the burglar alarm.’

‘Do you think he might do something?’ She brushed a lock of hair away from her eyes with the back of her hand.

‘People who make threats usually don’t carry them out,’ he said, and knew that much was true. ‘He’s just angry, that’s all. He wants to blame someone for what his son did and it’s easier for him to blame me than it is to blame himself. He knows I know about him now so he’d be really stupid to do anything else.’ He looked at his wristwatch. ‘I’m going for a run,’ he said. ‘I’ve left a package and my credit card in the hall. A courier should be coming for it some time this morning.’

He went back upstairs, changed into his running gear and collected his rucksack from the cupboard. He ran for the best part of an hour, hard and fast, and most of the time he thought about Talovic and what he was going to do about him.

It was Thursday when Renshaw got back to Shepherd with the results of the DNA analysis. Shepherd was just getting out of the van in the Paddington Green car park and asked him to hold while he walked over to his bike. The rest of the team followed Fogg inside. Shepherd put the phone to his ear. ‘Sorry, Steve, bit hectic at the moment,’ he said.

‘I know what you mean,’ said Renshaw. ‘I’ve been snowed under myself.’

Shepherd looked at his watch. It was just after seven. ‘Are you still in the lab?’

‘We never close,’ said Renshaw. ‘Now, that sample you sent me. I got a match through the Europol database.’

‘Excellent,’ said Shepherd.

‘I don’t know who told you he’s Bosnian but the guy is Imer Lekstakaj. He’s an Albanian, wanted for rape and murder.’

‘No way,’ said Shepherd.

‘Is that bad news?’ asked Renshaw.

‘It’s . . .’ Shepherd exhaled deeply. ‘It’s unbelievable,’ he said. Lekstakaj had obviously been allowed into the country without the most basic checks being carried out. Every day Shepherd had phoned home first thing in the morning and last thing at night to check that Katra and Liam were okay, and as nothing untoward had happened he’d started to think that perhaps the threat had passed, but clearly Lekstakaj was more than just an angry parent.

‘There’s no doubt,’ said Renshaw. ‘Odds are the usual one in eight billion.’

‘Can you send me the file?’

‘I’d rather not, unless you make an official request. I’d need a SOCA case number.’

‘It’s not at that stage,’ said Shepherd.

‘I can give you details over the phone,’ said Renshaw. ‘He’s a nasty piece of work. The girls he raped were under age. One was twelve, the other fifteen. The twelve-year-old was scarred for life. He slashed her face with a box-cutter. When her father found out he confronted Lekstakaj and Lekstakaj shot him. The father lived long enough to tell the Albanian cops what had happened. Lekstakaj went on the run but raped again. This time he killed her afterwards but he didn’t use a condom either time so they have his DNA on file. That was back in 1994. The Albanian cops have been after him since then but they don’t know where he is now. Have you got a pen?’

Shepherd smiled. ‘Just tell me, Steve, my memory’s pretty good,’ he said.

Shepherd got back to his house in Kilburn just after seven o’clock on Friday evening. It had been a tough week and he was dog tired but he wanted to get back to Hereford so he took a quick shower, gulped down a mug of black coffee and picked up his BMW X3. He was just leaving London when his mobile rang. It was Katra and he took the call on hands-free. ‘Dan . . .’ she said, and started crying.

‘What? What is it?’ asked Shepherd.

‘It’s Lady,’ she said. ‘She’s dead.’

Shepherd braked to avoid a cyclist, an overweight woman who was wobbling from side to side as she tried to build up speed. ‘What happened?’ The woman swore at him as he drove by, her face contorted into a snarl.

‘The vet says she ate something she shouldn’t have, but we didn’t see her eating anything, Dan. She just got sick and started foaming at the mouth. We took her to the vet but she died.’

‘I’m sorry, Katra. Did the vet say what it was?’

‘She said she didn’t know but she said she could do an autopsy tomorrow and find out. Do you think we should do that?’

‘Sure – we have to find out what happened. How’s Liam taking it?’

‘Oh, Dan, he’s so upset. We came back from the vet and he went upstairs to his bedroom. He was crying, I think.’

‘Get him for me, Katra, I’ll talk to him.’

‘He’s locked the door,’ said Katra. ‘He won’t open it.’

‘Okay, I’ll call his mobile. I’m driving back now so I’ll be there in a few hours. About midnight, probably. And listen, Katra, I need you to make sure all the doors and windows are locked.’

‘It’s that man, isn’t it? Peter’s father?’

‘Let’s wait until I’m home and we’ll talk about it then,’ said Shepherd. He ended the call and tapped out Liam’s number. The phone rang out but Liam didn’t answer. Shepherd called Katra and asked her to go upstairs and tell Liam to answer his phone. He waited two minutes and called again. This time Liam answered. ‘Liam, I’m so sorry about what happened,’ said Shepherd.

‘It was horrible, Dad, she was in so much pain.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘She’d eaten something but I didn’t give her anything, just a dog treat. She hadn’t had her supper because we give her supper when we’re eating.’

‘We’ll get another dog,’ said Shepherd. He braked as he approached traffic-lights on red.

‘I don’t want another dog!’ snapped Liam. ‘I want Lady!’

Shepherd grimaced. He’d said the wrong thing. ‘I know, I know . . . I’m sorry.’