‘A Gurkha never dies,’ Ganju said now. ‘He just moves on and comes back as something else.’
‘Your grandfather will probably come back as a tank,’ said Ollie.
Ganju smiled at this, then said: ‘There’s a job, isn’t there?’
It took Steve ten minutes to run through the mission. As he spoke, Ganju listened thoughtfully, sipping on the cup of jasmine tea he’d poured himself. At the end, there was only one question. ‘Can we be certain that Newton’s brother will still co-operate after all these years?’
Steve paused. The same question had been worrying him.
‘It’s war,’ he said flatly. ‘Nothing’s certain. But the odds are good enough for me.’
‘Then I’m in,’ said Ganju. ‘Anything’s better than sitting around in this empty house wondering where my grandfather has got to.’
‘Good man,’ said Ollie.
Next, Steve and Ollie took the rental car up towards Worpledon, a small village close to Woking. It was past nine by the time they arrived at David Mallet’s house, but he seemed happy enough with the interruption. His wife Sandy was busy getting the twins to bed: in those circumstances, any excuse to get out of the house was a good one, he remarked as he got in a round of drinks in the local pub. It was getting on for a year now since they had seen David, not since they’d brought him back from Afghanistan just about in one piece.
‘Christ, mate, I think you looked better out on the front line,’ Ollie commented.
David took a sip of his pint. ‘I think I’d got more sleep as well,’ he said. ‘I mean, have you ever heard twins screaming their lungs out?’
‘Something like a Challenger at full blast?’ said Steve.
David nodded. ‘But noisier.’
Steve grinned. ‘There’s a job - but I can’t exactly promise you peace and quiet.’
David listened intently. He already had two kids from his first marriage, two teenage boys, both at public school, with the fees going up by 10 per cent a year. His ex, Laura, was always hassling him for more money, and now he had the twins to take care of as well. Even the half million they’d taken away from the Afghanistan mission hadn’t put the guy in the black. ‘The thing is, boys, I’m broke,’ said David.
He started to explain.
Of the half million he’d brought back from the last job, £350,000 had gone straight to Laura: he still owed her that from the divorce settlement. The school fees had eaten their way through another fifty grand, and that was just for one year. He’d spent fifty or sixty in the last year just looking after Sandy and the twins, and the taxman had run away with the rest. ‘I tell you, I don’t know how a man’s meant to support a family, the amount of money everything costs these days.’
‘There’s a job,’ said Steve.
David drained his pint. ‘I don’t care how risky it is,’ he said. ‘Just get me on the plane. I need the money.’
Steve glanced down at the number plate attached to the sky-blue Jaguar E-type. G-SPOT, it read. ‘Christ!’ he exclaimed. ‘Who the hell put that there? It’s the tackiest thing I’ve ever seen.’
‘Customer’s orders,’ said his Uncle Ken, who’d been minding the garage whilst Steve was away for a few days. ‘A football agent from up in Cheshire, and you know what that mob are like. They don’t really do sophistication, especially when it comes to women.’
‘Bloody waste of a good Jag . . .’
‘The bloke is paying full whack for the motor, Steve, and that means he can paint it yellow with purple stripes if he wants to. It’s just business.’
‘At least it’s not an Aston Martin,’ sighed Steve. ‘I’m not exactly a religious man, but there are some limits to the amount of sacrilege I’m prepared to tolerate. And putting tack like that on a DB5 would be a step too far.’
Grabbing himself a coffee, he stepped into the back office. Ever since he’d been a boy, it had always been Steve’s plan to buy out his Uncle Ken’s share in West & Hallam, a dealer ship in vintage British cars based in Leicestershire. Messing around in the garage with old Jaguars, Aston Martins and Austin Healeys was his passion: one reason why he’d left the Regiment was to make enough money to buy his share in the business, and he was only ever going to do that as a mercenary. With the money from Afghanistan, he’d bought a stake in the garage, as well as buying himself a small cottage on the outskirts of the town to live in. But the stock - three E-types, two of the Jag Mark II, three DB5s and a pair of Austin Healey 3000s - wasn’t shifting.