Soft Target by Stephen Leather

for the superintendent to continue. Spectators cheered as a bald,
    burly player ran a good fifty yards down the pitch and hurled himself between the posts. The referee's whistle blew long and hard.
    'He runs a sideline in protection rackets but that's a hangover from his old days. Now he leaves that pretty much up to one of his heavies, Eddie Anderson. His nightclubs are busy, but they're money-laundering set-ups more than anything.'
    And a source of eager young girls, Angie had said. The woman scorned. The woman whose life was about to change for ever, and not for the better, thought Shepherd.
    'Kerr's father was an old-school villain, Billy Kerr. Armed robber who got involved in the drugs trade in the late eighties.
    Got shot on the Costa del Crime a few years back.
    Professional hit, but there was never anyone in the frame for it.'
    'So Charlie's following in his father's footsteps?'
    'Seems that way. But he's self-made. He was only a teenager when his dad was killed. He was living with his mother. She and Kerr had separated not long after he was born and Kerr had almost no hand in raising him. Must have been in his genes.' Play started again on the pitch. 'This could be a godsend, Spider.'
    'Maybe,' said Shepherd.
    'We've got her on tape, conspiracy to murder. If she turns up with the cash tomorrow, that's the icing on the cake. If we offer her a way out, there's a good chance she'll take it.'
    'She's scared to death of him.'
    'She doesn't have a choice,' said Hargrove. 'No real choice,
    anyway. If she goes down he'll know exactly what she was planning. He might decide that life behind bars is punishment enough, but a guy with his resources can have someone killed in prison just as easily as on the outside. If she gives evidence against him, though, he'll be the one behind bars.'
    'Yeah, but she's not stupid. She'll know that just because he's banged up doesn't mean he can't have her killed,' said Shepherd.
    'So she's damned if she does and damned if she doesn't,'
    said Hargrove. 'At least we can offer her protection. A new identity. The works.'
    'Plus she gets to keep his money?'
    'Anything that's not confiscated as the proceeds of crime,'
    agreed Hargrove. 'That's got to sound more attractive than life behind bars.'
    Shepherd stretched out his legs. If it had been a simple matter of offering Angie Kerr the choice of two evils, there would have been no need to give him the files on her husband.
    Hargrove obviously wanted him to make the approach.
    'We'll only get one shot,' said Shepherd. 'If she turns us down, Kerr will know we're on to him and go to ground.'
    'Which means we're no worse off than we are now,' said Hargrove.
    'And we've no idea how much she knows about her husband's operation.'
    'Exactly,' said Hargrove.
    'Which is where I come in?'
    Hargrove looked at Shepherd. 'Are you okay about this?'
    'It's messy,' said Shepherd, 'getting close to the wife to get to the husband.'
    'No one's asking you to get into bed with her, Spider,' said the superintendent. 'Just find out how much she knows about his business. It could be that he keeps her in the dark, in which case she's no use to us.'
    'And we charge her with conspiracy anyway? Even though there's a good chance he'll have her killed?'
    'She's the one who's hired a killer. We can't let her walk just because her husband's a villain.'
    'A drugs baron who knocks her around, who terrorises her and screws anything in a short skirt?'
    The superintendent raised an eyebrow quizzically. 'You're not going soft on me, are you?'
    'It's not about being soft. It's about justice. You're saying that if we can't put him away, even though he's a grade-A villain, we'll make do with wifey.'
    'If you feel that strongly about it, make sure there's enough to put him away. And if wifey helps, wifey walks. Look,
    there's a whole series of imponderables we have to nail down.
    We have to find out how much she knows about Kerr's wrongdoing,
    then see if she's prepared to give evidence