Free Spider Shepherd 10 - True Colours by Stephen Leather

of Alex Harper. Everyone calls him Lex. He was a Para with me in Afghanistan. He was my spotter for a while.’
    ‘Spotter?’
    ‘I did a bit of sniping and you always need a spotter, someone who watches your back, helps ID targets, checks the wind and stuff. Sniping’s a two-man game and Lex was my number two. Bloody good, he was. Pulled my nuts out of the fire a few times.’
    ‘I’m sensing a but, here.’
    Shepherd laughed. ‘Yeah, a lot’s changed in ten years, that’s for sure,’ he said. ‘He’s left the army and lives out in Thailand now.’
    ‘Ah, the Land of Smiles,’ said Sharpe.
    ‘Yeah, well, turns out it’s a small world. He knows the Moore brothers and he’s in the same line of work.’
    ‘Armed robbery?’
    Shepherd nodded. ‘Yeah, he left the army and did a few banks. I think in his mind he was a sort of Robin Hood, told me that it was a way of getting back at the banks because of what they did to the country.’
    ‘That’s logical for you.’
    ‘In a crazy way he made sense,’ said Shepherd. ‘The banks screwed the economy, the MoD has to get rid of men to save money, Lex loses his job, so Lex hits back at the banks.’ He shrugged. ‘Sort of made sense at the time.’
    ‘He hurt anyone?’
    ‘Doesn’t seem to have done,’ said Shepherd. ‘You know that the key to successful blagging is shock and awe. It’s a bit like being an armed cop – if you get to the stage where you actually have to pull the trigger, you’ve pretty much failed.’ He swirled his whiskey and soda around his glass. ‘Anyway, he’s moved on now. Drugs. The big league.’
    Sharpe grimaced. ‘That’s not good,’ he said.
    ‘You’re telling me.’
    ‘You need to watch yourself, Spider. Seriously.’
    ‘I know, I know.’
    ‘I mean it. If you get caught in bed with a drugs dealer your feet won’t touch the ground.’
    Shepherd put up his hand dismissively. ‘I’m not stupid, Razor.’
    ‘Never said you were, but you sometimes have a blind spot where friends are concerned. You can cut people too much slack, you know? I get that he was a Para, I get that he saved your bacon in Afghanistan.’ He realised what he had said and laughed. ‘Ha ha, bacon in a Muslim country. Not much chance of that.’
    ‘Very funny, Razor. Hilarious. I sense another racism and diversity course on the horizon.’
    ‘OK, dietary humour aside, people change. And if you get caught passing confidential information to a drugs dealer, you’re screwed and you’re screwed big-time.’
    ‘I hear you. I’ll be careful. And whatever happens, you know your name won’t be mentioned.’
    ‘Just be careful,’ said Sharpe. ‘So what do you need?’
    ‘Lex is clever, he knows how to keep off the grid. There’s nothing on him on the Five databases, I’ve already checked, but I don’t want to go on to the PNC, so can you do that for me? Then maybe reach out to Intel and to Drugs? See what, if anything, is known. He was in Spain for a while, but now he’s based in Thailand. He’s super-careful about CCTV and communications, so he might have been lucky.’
    ‘I’ll check,’ said Sharpe.
    Shepherd took his wallet and slipped a piece of paper across the table. ‘I got some basic info from his army record,’ he said.
    Sharpe picked up the piece of paper, folded it, and slid it into his pocket. ‘This Lex was a friend of the Paras who were killed?’
    Shepherd nodded. ‘Yeah. In fact, if I hadn’t warned him not to go with them, he’d probably be dead now too.’
    ‘So he’s out for revenge, too?’
    Shepherd nodded again. ‘Yeah.’
    ‘So why not just let him have what intel we get and leave it up to him? Keep yourself out of it.’
    Shepherd sighed. ‘It’s not as easy as that.’
    ‘It never is,’ said Sharpe.

AFGHANISTAN, 2002
    L ittle Lailuna loved to sing, but singing was forbidden by the Taliban. Afghanis had kept caged birds from time immemorial but they were now banned, for the beauty of their song and