‘Because they think if they scare people enough they’ll get what they want.’
‘But what do they want?’
Shepherd sat down at the kitchen table opposite Liam. ‘Okay, part of it is about Iraq. You know we went to war against Iraq?’
‘Yes.’
‘And our soldiers are still there, with American and Australian soldiers – soldiers from all over the world.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, some people don’t want the soldiers to be in Iraq. They want them to leave. And they think that if they scare people enough, the governments will tell their soldiers to leave.’
‘But the people they killed aren’t soldiers.’
‘That’s right.’
‘It’s not fair.’
Liam was right. But much of what went on in the world had nothing to do with fairness. Shepherd had seen that at first hand as an SAS trooper in Afghanistan and every day on the streets as a police officer. ‘It’s easier to kill members of the public than it is to kill soldiers,’ he said.
‘Because they don’t have guns?’
‘Partly. And partly because ordinary people don’t expect to be attacked. Soldiers and policemen do.’
‘Are we okay in London?’ asked Liam. ‘They won’t do anything here again, will they?’
Shepherd had always tried to be truthful with his son. He’d never been the sort of parent who perpetuated the myths of the Tooth Fairy and Father Christmas. He was happy to go along with Sue when she’d slipped a pound coin under Liam’s pillow in exchange for a milk tooth, but he’d always felt uncomfortable when she’d pretended that the Christmas presents had come from a man in a red suit who’d crawled down the chimney. When Liam was seven, he’d come home from school one day and said he’d been told by a classmate that Father Christmas wasn’t real. Sue had said that Santa Claus was hard at work with the elves at the North Pole. She’d turned to Shepherd for support, but he had pulled a face and walked away. A lie was a lie, and he’d promised himself that he would never lie to his family. His entire undercover life was spent lying, and he didn’t want to bring it home with him, even if it meant bursting the occasional bubble. ‘They might try,’ he said. ‘They’re bad men and they do bad things. But there’s a lot of people working to stop them. And the chance of you or me or anyone we know being hurt is so small that you mustn’t worry about it.’
There were two solemn newsreaders on screen, a pretty blonde girl and a man in his late forties, hair greying at the temples. Both had perfect teeth and a movie-star tan. The man was recapping earlier terrorist incidents – Madrid, Bali, New York.
‘But if they did do something, people would die, wouldn’t they?’
Katra stirred Liam’s eggs and cheese. The toaster pinged, and she pulled out the toast.
‘Maybe,’ said Shepherd, ‘but we can’t let that worry us. If we’re scared all the time the terrorists have won. That’s what they want, to scare us. So if we aren’t scared, they can’t win.’
‘But you’re going to help catch them, aren’t you?’
‘I’m going to try.’
‘And they’ll go to prison, right?’
‘Sure.’
‘And you’ll get a medal?’
Shepherd laughed. ‘Maybe.’
There were more images on the screen. A Sydney hospital with ambulances unloading the injured. A voiceover saying that at least a hundred people had been killed but that the final death toll was likely to be much higher. Shepherd wondered what sort of men would set off a bomb to kill civilians. He could understand combat: man against man, weapon against weapon. Terrible things happened in wars, but it was always soldier against soldier. He’d killed in combat, but the men who had died might just as easily have killed him. He’d been shot, too, taken a sniper’s bullet in the shoulder in Afghanistan and only survived because of the skill of an SAS medic and the fact that a chopper had been nearby. Shepherd felt no hatred for the guy who’d shot him: Shepherd had been doing his job and so had the sniper. Shepherd had been trained in the use of explosives, but only in military situations. He knew how to place a shaped charge to destroy a bridge or bring down a building, and he knew how to handle grenades. But if he had ever been ordered to plant a bomb that served no purpose other than to kill civilians, he would have refused, no matter what the circumstances.
Katra put down a plate of scrambled eggs and cheese on toast in front of Liam and he attacked it enthusiastically. ‘Chew it properly,’ said Shepherd.
‘It’s scrambled eggs,’ said Liam. ‘You can’t chew scrambled eggs.’
‘And don’t talk with your mouth full.’
‘What would you like, Dan?’ asked Katra.
‘Just toast, please,’ said Shepherd. The newsreaders were back on screen. The woman was talking via a video link to a so-called terrorism expert, a balding, bespectacled academic in a turtleneck sweater who was trying to explain the aims and objectives of the various Muslim extremist groups around the world. To Shepherd, it was obvious: they wanted to kill as many Westerners as possible. They wanted to provoke a backlash against Muslims so that they could point the finger at the West and say, ‘See? We told you they hated us.’ The West was in an impossible situation. If it did nothing, the deaths would continue. But in invading Iraq, in locking people up without trial, it was playing into the hands of the enemy. It was a no-win situation for which Shepherd had no solution. That was for the politicians to work out. Shepherd was a policeman: his job was to uphold law and order. It was for politicians to solve the insoluble, but most of those he saw on television didn’t have the intellectual skills necessary to programme a video recorder, never mind broker a peace with Islamic fundamentalists.
Shepherd scowled at the academic’s woolly language and even woollier thinking. He seemed to have no clearer understanding of the aims of al-Qaeda than Shepherd did. What did al-Qaeda want? The dismantling of Israel? Death to all infidels? A world of Muslims? All women covered from head to foot in black and walking ten steps behind their men? If that was their aim, there would be no negotiating with them. And if negotiations were pointless, what then?
Katra put a plate of buttered toast in front of him. ‘You look very serious,’ she said.
Shepherd smiled up at her. ‘Busy week,’ he said.
‘Can we watch cartoons?’ asked Liam.
Shepherd pushed the remote control across the table to him. ‘Watch whatever you want,’ he said.
Liam flicked through the channels and stopped at a cartoon. Roadrunner was doing what he did best, running through the desert. A gleeful Wile E. Coyote was unwrapping an Acme bomb, a black sphere with a long fuse and ‘ BOMB ’ written on the side. Shepherd drank some coffee and wondered when bombs had stopped being funny. ‘I’ve got to make a phone call,’ he said and picked up a piece of toast. ‘I’ll be upstairs. You two stay down here, okay? I don’t want to be disturbed.’
Liam nodded, his eyes on the television.
‘It’s a work call,’ Shepherd said to Katra. ‘I’ll only be a few minutes.’
Shepherd went upstairs to his bedroom and took the Tony Corke mobile out of his bedside cabinet. He checked the call register. They hadn’t rung back and there were no texts.
Shepherd pressed ‘redial’. The call was answered on the third ring. ‘Who are you?’ said an Asian voice. Shepherd was fairly sure it was the second man he’d spoken to the last time he’d called. ‘I can’t deal with someone I don’t know. You could be the police.’
‘If you really thought I was a cop, you wouldn’t be talking to me at all. Now, do you want these cans or not?’
‘They are my property.’
‘So, let me ask you a question,’ said Shepherd. ‘Who am I talking to?’
‘You don’t need to know my name,’ said the man. ‘I want what belongs to me.’
‘So now it’s “I”, is it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Yesterday it was “we”. Today it’s “I”. Am I talking to you or am I talking to a group?’
‘You’re talking to me.’