Live Fire by Stephen Leather Page A

couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence and covered her discomfort by taking another sip of tea.
    ‘I’ll make more time for him,’ said Shepherd. ‘It’s been a busy few months.’
    ‘I hate sounding like a broken record, Daniel, I really do. I thought things would improve once you moved back to Hereford but you’re hardly ever here.’
    ‘I’m not sure that’s true,’ protested Shepherd.
    ‘Daniel, you’ve just been away for three weeks, and from what Liam said, you hardly ever phoned him.’
    ‘I was under cover, Moira. And when I did get the chance to call it was usually late at night and I didn’t want to wake him. He isn’t allowed to use his mobile at school . . .’ He tailed off. He was just making excuses. She was right, and so was Liam. Shepherd had been away for three weeks and had probably spoken to his son fewer than half a dozen times.
    ‘Last year you were in Belfast for weeks. You were out in the Middle East before that. You missed Christmas last year and since then you’ve been away – what? Three times? Four? To be honest, half the time we don’t know where you are.’ She put her cup down. ‘I know it’s not my place to nag you but as Liam’s grandmother I do think I have the right to speak up on his behalf. He misses you, Daniel. Justifiably so.’
    ‘I know, Moira, but it’s my job.’
    ‘Then maybe you should think about changing it, taking something that allows you to see more of your son. It’s not just for his sake. You only get one chance to watch them grow, then they’re gone for good. These years you’re missing, you’ll regret them one day.’
    Again, Shepherd knew she was right. But he also knew how much his work meant to him, and that he would never be satisfied with a nine-to-five desk job. It was Sue who had persuaded him to leave the SAS, once she had fallen pregnant. She, too, had insisted that he took a less dangerous job, one that would allow him to spend more time with his family. He’d agreed and opted for the police, but within months of applying he’d been plucked from basic training and put into an elite undercover unit where the work had proven to be every bit as dangerous as his time with Special Forces. Recently he’d moved to the SOCA undercover unit, and because it investigated criminals right across the UK he was away from home for even longer periods than he had been when he was in the army.
    ‘Why on earth are they sending you to Thailand?’ asked Moira.
    ‘Bank robbers,’ he said. ‘They live there but come to the UK to carry out robberies.’
    Moira tutted. ‘With all that’s going wrong in this country, haven’t they got better things to do than send you to Thailand?’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘The car bombs. The bombings on the Tube. These Islamic terrorists. Why aren’t you tracking them down? I really don’t know what the world’s coming to.’
    ‘They rob banks, Moira. They terrorise people.’
    ‘They steal money, that’s what they do. And it seems to me that as a society we worry more about our financial institutions than we do about the people who live here. I heard on the radio last week that MI5 is watching more than a thousand potential terrorists in this country, and that they’re almost all British-born. Is that true?’
    ‘I’m afraid so.’
    ‘And they said that all they can do is watch them, but they can’t even do that properly because they don’t have enough manpower.’
    ‘That’s probably true, too,’ admitted Shepherd.
    ‘They should just put them in prison and have done with it.’
    ‘Moira, you can’t put people in prison until the case against them has been proved in court. And that’s easier said than done.’
    ‘It’d be a lot easier if you weren’t wasting your time in Thailand, that’s for sure.’ Moira added some tea to her cup. ‘Weren’t you going to ask the Regiment if you could rejoin as a member of the training staff?’
    ‘The directing staff, they call