‘Aye. At night, in a jungle, blindfolded.’

‘I don’t understand, Mr Carr. Why at night, in a jungle, blindfolded?’

‘Sorry,’ said Carr. ‘Sense of humour trying to kick in. Basically, yes, I would. I’d recognise him anywhere.’

34.

AT AROUND THAT moment, the little green RIB finally came ashore, guided by a Garmin GPS device to a rocky beach on the western end of the Al Hoceima National Park, a remote and empty swathe of northern Morocco which was forested with thuja cypresses, and criss-crossed by dirt tracks.

His dark eyes flashing, Argun Shishani and the surviving shooter – Abdullah el Haloui, in his Manchester United shirt – hustled the three women onto the shallow beach and up into the cover of the trees.

‘Lie down!’ snapped Shishani. ‘Face the ground.’

‘No, please,’ said one of them, but when el Haloui raised his shortened AK they meekly complied.

‘Now be quiet,’ snapped the Chechen.

He cocked his head on one side, listening.

Nothing but crickets, and the rustling of the trees overhead.

He nodded, satisfied. ‘Wait here,’ he said, to his comrade. He nodded toward the water. ‘I have to speak to him.’

With his strange, lopsided walk, Shishani hurried back down to the inflatable, where the boatman, his face weathered by sixty years of sun and salt spray, was in the process of refuelling the engine from a jerry can.

‘Malik, my friend,’ said Shishani. ‘I have a gift for you.’

‘It’s not necessary, saheb,’ said Malik, with an open smile. ‘I am just happy to do my duty.’

‘But it is necessary,’ said Shishani, and as he walked towards the other man he reached into the bag over his shoulder.

When he was six feet away, he pulled out a pistol – an FNP, loaded with .45 ACP subsonic rounds – and an angular Osprey suppressor.

Malik’s eyes widened as he saw the weapon. ‘What are you doing?’ he said, nervously.

‘I’m putting this suppressor on this pistol,’ said Shishani.

‘But why?’

Shishani didn’t answer for a couple of seconds, but continued screwing the suppressor onto the FNP.

Then he said, ‘Because although Al Hoceima is a desolate place I cannot discount the possibility that there may be someone nearby, and I don’t want them to hear this.’

And, with that, he raised the weapon and shot the boatman twice in the chest.

Suppressors do not ‘silence’ gunfire, but the right equipment does greatly reduce the report, and subsonic rounds have none of the crack caused by a faster bullet as it breaks the sound barrier: the noise of the shots, and the brittle, metallic sound of the moving parts in action, was lost in the humid breeze.

Malik fell backwards into the shallows with a splash and there he lay, eyes and mouth open, his breathing laboured, the water lapping over him, a red cloud forming on either side.

His pupils tracked Shishani as he stepped forward into the water.

The dying man tried to speak, but produced only guttural sounds.