Deano pointed to a brightly lit compound packed with heavy plant. Having performed a walk-past an hour before and engaged the bored Polish security guard in conversation.

‘All that kit’s his. And all probably bought with dirty money. Must be two or three million quid’s worth.’

Den leaned over the parapet. Looking down at the yellow-painted machinery with a wistful expression.

‘I always wanted to be a digger driver. It was my old man made me put in for the police.’

Deano shook his head. A derisive tone to his reply. ‘Thank fuck for your old man then. You’d had your way, you’d still be driving one of those. Earning next to bugger all and no pension either. Anyway, how long we got?’

Steve looked at his watch. Carefully zeroed against Shaw’s, before they’d parted.

‘Eight minutes. Let’s get set up.’

Getting set up was the work of less than thirty seconds. Unfolding the machine gun’s bipod support. Inserting the first thirty-round magazine and pulling back the cocking handle to chamber the first round. Laying the other four magazines out, ready to use. After which the three men were left looking at each other.

‘You sure I can’t have a go? You know, brass up a few diggers?’

Steve shook his head firmly. ‘It’s not like the movies, Deano. Where explosions are just powder charges and no-one ever gets cut in half by shrapnel.’ Steve adjusted his position, rubbing at a sore knee. ‘Fuck, I’m way too old for this nonsense. Should have brought my garden kneeler. If I let you get behind this thing you could kill some poor bastard just by twitching the wrong way.’

‘You said you killed some blokes in Bosnia. What was it like?’

Both men looked at Den with disbelieving expressions.

‘Fuck me, Den, you must be right up the far end of the spectrum.’ Deano, shaking his head in admonishment. ‘You simply do not ask those sorts of questions, mate.’

‘Yes…’ Steve speaking over Deano. ‘As it happens, I have. Five of them.’

‘You don’t have to—’

‘It’s all right, Den. I’ve been waiting the best part of thirty years to tell someone who wasn’t there about it. You pair of pricks can be my confessors. I was only nineteen at the time. Fresh out of training into Operation Resolute in what used to be called Yugoslavia. A battalion of us, armoured infantry, shoved in between the Croats and Bosnian Muslims. Keeping the peace. It was never as bad as it got for those poor Dutch bastards at Srebrenica, but we had it hard enough. The Croats didn’t like not being able to have their fun with the Muslim civvies, so they took it out on us instead.