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a short, stocky man in a hoodie, his head down as he spoke into a mobile phone; the other was of the same man but wearing a Chelsea shirt and climbing into the back of a large Mercedes. ‘This is Wiil Waal, or “Crazy Boy”. His real name, in as much as Somalis have real names, is Simeon Khalid.’ She put down a close-up of the man’s face. ‘He’s twenty-four but looks older.’
    Button slid out another photograph and pointed at a mugshot of a black man in his forties, his face pockmarked with old acne scars, his nose squashed flat against his face. ‘This is his elder brother, Abshir. He was taken by security forces in northern Somalia in 2010 and is behind bars awaiting trial. He was one of the founders of the new wave of Somali pirates, a particularly nasty piece of work, and an Islamic fundamentalist. He’s worth in excess of twenty million dollars but the US have got most of it. The Treasury Department targeted him a while back and have been freezing his assets wherever they can find them. The family business was taken over by one of Crazy Boy’s uncles.’
    She put two more photographs on the table, surveillance pictures of a group of half a dozen hard-faced men in a skiff, AK-47s slung over their shoulders. She tapped the face of one of the men, in his late forties with two gold front teeth and a thick scar across his chin. ‘This is the uncle. He runs things out in Somalia but since Abshir was taken into custody Crazy Boy has been pulling the strings from here. The uncle’s name is Blue.’
    ‘Blue?’
    Button shrugged. ‘Somalis are big on nicknames. His has something to do with his skin colour being so black that he’s gone beyond black and blue. I think you’ve got to be Somali to get it. Anyway, so far as we know, he doesn’t do anything without checking with Crazy Boy first. We think Crazy Boy plans the operations, funds them, then repatriates the profits and washes them through his businesses here.’ She gestured at the surveillance photographs of Crazy Boy. ‘He came to the UK about four years ago. And you’ll like this, he lives in Ealing. Not far from your old house.’
    ‘Small world,’ said Shepherd. ‘Why Ealing?’
    ‘There’s a very large Somali population there now, and in Southall. It probably has something to do with the proximity to Heathrow.’
    ‘The airport?’
    ‘More specifically, the khat leaves that Somalis like to chew. It has to be eaten fresh and there are supplies coming in every day to Heathrow. Ealing is close to the airport so the Somalis there are guaranteed the freshest leaves. The fresher they are the better the buzz, apparently.’
    ‘And this khat isn’t illegal?’
    Button shook her head. ‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘It is in some countries but not in the UK. The principal ingredient is an amphetamine-like stimulant and the World Health Organisation has classified it as a drug of abuse. You’ll see Somalis chewing it as naturally as smoking a cigarette.’
    ‘I don’t remember seeing that many Somalis when I lived in Ealing.’
    ‘There’s been a huge increase in the last few years, but even so they tend to keep to themselves. The women are at home most of the time and the men go to their own social clubs. They don’t mix much. The number of Somalis in the area has probably trebled since you moved to Hereford.’ She tapped the photograph. ‘Crazy Boy has the brains of the family, it seems. He bought himself passage across Europe and into the UK, slipped through in the back of a truck from Calais with half a dozen genuine asylum seekers.’
    ‘And got asylum, presumably.’
    ‘He was on track,’ said Button. ‘He had false papers and a top immigration lawyer.’
    ‘But Five must have known who he was, right?’
    ‘Not then,’ said Button. ‘He came in under the radar. We knew that he’d left Somalia but no one knew where he’d gone. And to be honest, even if we had known there wouldn’t have been much we could have done. We didn’t