Live Fire by Stephen Leather

right,’ said Shepherd. ‘But, like I said, it’s complicated.’
    Shepherd dropped Liam at school on Friday morning, making a point to use the BMW X3. He grinned when he saw some of Liam’s friends gazing admiringly at it and decided his son wouldn’t be asking for an electric car again anytime soon. He drove to the house of his in-laws, just ten minutes from the school. He parked in the empty driveway of the neat semi, the lovingly tended garden putting his own to shame.
    Moira had the front door open for him as soon as he was walking towards the house. ‘Daniel, so lovely to see you,’ she said. ‘Until you phoned I didn’t even know you were back.’
    Only his mother-in-law could pay him a compliment and make him feel guilty at the same time. And only his mother-in-law called him by his full name. ‘Is Tom at work?’ he asked.
    ‘He makes it a point always to be first in at the bank,’ said Moira. ‘He has done for the past twenty-three years and I don’t see him changing now. Tea?’ She air-kissed both his cheeks and he caught the scent of the perfume she had worn ever since the first time he’d met her, sixteen years ago. Tom and Moira were creatures of habit. ‘Go through to the sitting room, Daniel,’ she said, closing the front door.
    Shepherd went in and sat down on one of the overstuffed sofas. In the days when their daughter had been alive, there had been dozens of photographs of Sue on the mantelpiece and on the bookcase next to it. Now there were just two, at opposite ends of the mantelpiece, one of her aged twelve in her school uniform, and another of her holding Liam, a few hours after she’d given birth. There were no photographs of Shepherd, but he wasn’t offended that the wedding photographs had been moved. Sue was their child, Liam was their grandchild, and Shepherd wasn’t a blood relation. And now that she was dead, there was no point in making the room a mausoleum to her. They were the two best pictures they had of her – it was just the luck of the draw that Shepherd wasn’t in either. He smiled at the photograph of Sue and Liam. Tom was a keen amateur photographer and he’d fussed like an old lady as he’d taken the pictures, but his pickiness had paid off. Sue’s maternal pride poured out of the image, and he’d managed to catch the newborn with his eyes open, an expression of wonder on his face as he stared up at his mother. Shepherd felt tears well in his eyes and he blinked them away. It was almost five years since Sue had died in a senseless car accident but there hadn’t been a day when he hadn’t missed her.
    He heard Moira walking down the hallway and brushed his eyes with the back of his hand. He was wearing a broad smile when she appeared at the door with a tray of tea. She placed it on the ornate coffee-table, and he poured a little milk into the delicate china cups. Moira always insisted on the milk going in first as she’d once read that that was the way the Royal Family took theirs.
    ‘You said Katra was going back to Slovenia?’ she said.
    ‘She only told me yesterday,’ said Shepherd. ‘Her father’s sick so she’s flying back as soon as she can get a ticket and I’m off to Thailand tomorrow. I’m sorry to spring this on you, Moira, but can Liam stay with you and Tom until I get back?’
    ‘Of course he can,’ said Moira. ‘You don’t have to ask, you know that. We’d love to have him. We haven’t changed his room since he was last here. In fact, there’s still some of his PlayStation games up there.’
    ‘It’s Xbox now,’ said Shepherd. ‘He’s moved on.’
    ‘How long will you be away?’ she asked. She sipped her tea, her little finger crooked.
    ‘It’s open-ended,’ said Shepherd. ‘A few weeks. Maybe more.’
    ‘You’re spending too much time away from the boy,’ admonished Moira. ‘It was bad enough when Sue was here but, if anything, you’re spending even less time with Liam than you were before . . .’ She