Fair Game Read Online Free

the gar decides and what I decide are two different things. You wait until the blood money has been paid and then you and your brothers pick them up and show them what happens to anyone who crosses us. I want them to lose their hands and their feet and their pricks and their heads and I want the pieces fed to dogs. Do you understand?’
    Two Knives grinned and nodded. ‘That’s more like it,’ he said.
    ‘Make sure that no one sees you pick them up, make sure that no one can connect what happens to them to me. But I want them to die screaming and I want to see a video of their last moments.’
    ‘It will be a pleasure,’ said Two Knives.
    Ahead of them was a large Mercedes. The driver already had the door open for Crazy Boy and another of his bodyguards was standing by the front passenger door. Crazy Boy slapped Two Knives on the back and climbed into the car.
    Charlotte Button was sitting at a corner table in a West Belfast pub, wearing a cheap coat and with a half pint of Guinness in front of her. There was a copy of the Belfast Telegraph on the table with a pair of wool gloves and by her feet a Tesco carrier bag filled with provisions.
    Shepherd bought a Jameson’s whiskey with ice and sat down opposite her. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d shop at Tesco,’ he said. ‘I would have you as more of a Waitrose customer.’
    ‘It’s cover,’ she said. She gestured at her coat. ‘I’m trying to blend. You don’t think I’d wear this for any other reason, do you?’
    Shepherd smiled. The coat and the bag of shopping might have been in character but she was too pretty and too well groomed to blend and she was wearing a slim gold watch on her wrist that belied any attempt to pass herself off as a Belfast housewife.
    He sipped his whiskey. ‘I have to leave today,’ he said.
    She slid a sheet of paper across the table. ‘You’re booked on half a dozen flights out of Belfast this evening,’ she said. ‘Or you can drive and take the ferry.’
    ‘The car stays here,’ said Shepherd. ‘And there’s a good chance they’ll be watching the airport and the ferry terminal. I’ll take the train to Dublin and fly from there.’
    ‘I’ll make the reservations,’ she said. ‘I’ll text you the booking references.’
    Shepherd shook his head. ‘I’ve tossed the phone and the Sim card,’ he said. ‘I’ll buy my own ticket.’
    ‘You’re angry,’ she said, and it was a statement and not a question.
    ‘Damn right I’m angry,’ he said. ‘My life is on the line, here, Charlie. Everyone in that warehouse saw me shoot those guys.’
    ‘I know. I’m sorry.’
    ‘This isn’t about apologies, it’s about the mother of all cock-ups. The whole point of me going undercover is that I go in and out with no one knowing what’s happened. I gather intel, but someone else clears up the shit.’
    ‘Spider, you’re not telling me anything that I don’t already know.’
    ‘I think it needs spelling out, Charlie. I shot two members of the Real IRA. They know what I look like.’
    ‘But they don’t know who you are.’
    ‘That’s not the point,’ snapped Shepherd. ‘The point is that they know what I did and if I ever cross paths with them again . . .’ He threw up his hands in disgust. ‘Bloody amateurs.’
    ‘We can make sure that you never work in the Province again.’
    ‘And what if they come looking for me, Charlie? What are you going to do? Put me in the witness protection programme? I spent more than three months in Ireland, I must have been caught a thousand times on CCTV. If they have access to any of the cameras then they’ll have my picture.’
    ‘Your legend was watertight. If they do go looking for you they’ll be looking in the wrong place. They think you’re an American, remember?’
    ‘They’re not stupid, Charlie. They’ll know that the Americans wouldn’t put one of their own people undercover in Northern Ireland.’
    ‘But they won’t know who you are or where to look