Free Spider Shepherd 11 - White Lies by Stephen Leather Page A

companions laughed and Sami scowled. ‘Carry on laughing and I’ll introduce you to the Glasgow handshake.’
    ‘What’s that?’ asked KC.
    ‘Stand up and I’ll show you,’ said Sami. He beckoned at KC. ‘Come on.’
    ‘Stay where you are, KC,’ said Rafiq. ‘It’s a head-butt. Aka a Glasgow kiss.’
    Sami laughed. ‘Damn right,’ he said. He stretched his arms above his head and twisted from side to side. ‘Sitting on the floor wouldn’t be so bad if we at least had cushions. Seriously, I don’t get this sitting on the floor. They did that because they didn’t have furniture. Same as they wiped their arse with their left hand because they didn’t have toilet paper. Now we do have toilet paper that left-hand business is just nonsense.’
    ‘Keep your voice down,’ hissed Rafiq. ‘You don’t want Hammad hearing you talk like that. He’ll have your balls off.’
    ‘He’s right,’ said KC. ‘Remember, this isn’t just about weapons training, it’s about making us good jihadists.’
    ‘And good jihadists wipe their arses with their hands, do they?’ said Sami.
    ‘Seriously, Sami, you need to be careful,’ whispered Rafiq. ‘These guys don’t fuck about.’
    Sami opened his mouth as if he was about to argue, but then he shrugged and sat down again.
    KC reached for his tea and leaned towards Rafiq. ‘This is the real thing, isn’t it?’ he said.
    Rafiq chuckled. ‘You think this is a game, brother?’
    ‘You know what I mean,’ said KC. ‘I spent years planning stuff, stuff that would never happen. Crazy stuff.’
    ‘Like what?’
    ‘You know. Checking the internet to see how to make ricin, that poison stuff. And botulism, from mussels.’
    Rafiq frowned and massaged his forearm. ‘Muscles?’ He knew exactly what KC meant but sometimes it was better to play stupid because that tended to encourage people to talk. His MI6 handler had taught him that.
    ‘Nah, the shellfish. You can bury them in the ground and they go off and they produce botulism. One drop can kill like a million people or something. We tried it but couldn’t get it to work.’ He laughed. ‘We tried to test it on a cat and the thing went ballistic, biting and scratching.’ He shook his head, still laughing. ‘My mate almost lost an eye. Cats can fight, I tell you.’ He popped a piece of meat into his mouth. ‘I drew up a list of kaffirs I wanted to kill. Cameron, Beckham, Prince Harry, had all their pictures on the walls of my bedroom. My mum got a bit worried, thought maybe I was getting a thing for older white guys.’
    ‘Beckham?’
    KC shrugged. ‘I hate the twat, him and that stick insect wife of his.’
    ‘Yeah, but a footballer, KC? Come on. Politicians, sure. And I get the point of random kaffirs. But targeting the former England captain, that’s bizarre.’
    ‘If you want to talk about bizarre, what about the Father Ted guy?’ said Sami.
    ‘Father Ted?’ repeated Rafiq.
    ‘The guy that wrote the Father Ted thing. Irish but he lives in London. He took the piss out of Bin Laden after the Americans murdered him. You didn’t hear about that?’
    Rafiq shook his head.
    ‘He wrote the
IT Crowd
thing as well,’ said Labib. ‘Bloody hilarious that was.’
    ‘Yeah, well, he tweeted that Bin Laden was a big fan of one of his shows and that he was watching an episode when the Americans killed him. Took the piss out of the Sheikh something rotten. Seemed to think it was funny. There was a piece in the
Guardian
with him laughing about it. Me and a group of brothers went down to London. Turns out he’d moved to Norwich but we found where he lived and we were already to make a YouTube video of us cutting his head off when I got the call.’
    ‘The call?’
    ‘A friend of a friend of a friend pulled me to one side and told me that I was wasting my time, that no one would care about a dead comedy writer. That’s when I started on this path.’ Sami picked up another piece of meat and chewed on it.