Live Fire by Stephen Leather Page B

it,’ said Shepherd. ‘I could, I suppose, but it wouldn’t be as challenging as what I’m doing now.’
    ‘There are times, Daniel,’ she said frostily, ‘when you have to put your family above yourself, and that’s all there is to it.’ She forced a smile. ‘I sound like a nagging old woman, but I do know what I’m talking about,’ she said, her eyes on the photographs. ‘Tom and I have lost Sue, but nothing can ever take away the memories we have. And, Daniel, I have a lifetime of memories.’ She turned to Shepherd again. ‘Tom and I were with her for every important event in her life when she was a child. I saw her take her first steps, heard her say her first words. I saw Tom teach her to ride her bike. I was there the first time she took her horse over a jump.’
    ‘I get it, Moira.’
    ‘Do you, Daniel? Are you sure? Because I want you to think about the memories you have of your son. It seems to me that at the moment most of them consist of you saying goodbye to Liam or apologising for being away.’
    Shepherd didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything he could say because, for the third time, he knew that his mother-in-law was right.
    Paul Bradshaw was not a fan of sports but he enjoyed squash. It required fitness, but playing well depended as much on intellect as it did on the ability to run around the court. It was all about angles and strategy, about putting the ball in a place where your opponent couldn’t reach it. It was like chess, and the really great players were the ones who could look several strokes ahead. Bradshaw wasn’t a great player but he was the best at his university where he was captain of the team. Thursday night was practice night and as usual he played for a full three hours and never lost a game.
    Bradshaw showered and changed, then went with his team to the student bar and drank pints of orange juice with lemonade as they downed lager. Bradshaw was a good Muslim and he never touched alcohol. It hadn’t always been like that. As a teenager he had spent his evenings in the pubs of Bradford, drinking with his friends, talking about football, girls and television. As a soldier he’d been part of an even harder drinking culture, where a night on the town meant half a dozen pints of lager at least. But as a Muslim he allowed no alcohol to touch his lips.
    He felt no great affection for his teammates but it was important to be seen as sociable. Loners attracted attention. So he laughed at their inane jokes and listened to their boring stories, and at just before ten o’clock he headed home. His bedsitter was a short walk from the student bar but he used several routes and varied them at random. As he walked he checked reflections in windows and car mirrors and memorised the numberplates of vehicles that passed him. He used counter-surveillance as a matter of course, even though he had no reason to expect that anyone was following him. From the moment he had decided to embrace jihad , Bradshaw had acted as if he was on the Government’s most-wanted list. He assumed he was under surveillance and that his every move was being watched, his every phone conversation listened to.
    He saw the white Transit van heading down the road towards him and his eyes flicked to the numberplate. He heard a rapid footfall behind him and glanced over his shoulder. It was a jogger in a university sweatshirt, an iPod clipped to the waistband of his shorts. Bradshaw turned back. The van had stopped and a man was getting out of the passenger side, a baseball cap pulled low over his face. Bradshaw frowned. There were no shops in the street, no reason for the van to be unloading. The man pulled open its side door then something hit Bradshaw hard on the back of his head. He stumbled forward and the man grabbed his arm. The jogger pushed him in the small of the back, a canvas bag was forced over his head and he was dragged into the van. The last thing he heard was the door being slammed and someone