‘Music to my ears. Just got in a nice shipment of Israeli surface-to-air missile launchers, brand new in their crates. Do you a good price. Or maybe you’re after another aircraft, like last time?’

Ben remembered last time well. On that occasion, when his son Jude had got into trouble off the coast of east Africa, Ben and Jeff Dekker had ended up having to buy a Russian military seaplane to go and rescue him. It had drained most of the cash in the Le Val bank account.

‘Nothing like that this time. Just a phone number.’

‘You’re breaking my heart,’ Chimp rasped sourly. ‘Whose?’

Ben asked, ‘You remember an SRR colonel by the name of Bartholomew Montgomery?’ SRR was the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, which had been formed many years earlier to support other UK Special Forces units in counterterrorism. ‘He retired a long time ago. Must be well over eighty now. I’m hoping he’s still alive.’

‘You don’t mean Mad Monty, do you?’

‘Mad Monty,’ Ben repeated. ‘The very man.’

‘Jesus wept. What the fuck d’you want to talk to that batty old duffer for?’

‘Can you get me the number or not?’

‘I can talk to a guy who’s mates with a guy who knows another guy who might be able to get hold of it. But it’s going out of my way, you know?’

‘Just get it, Chalmers.’ Ben ended the call.

Grace commented, ‘That’s one way to ask for a favour.’

‘He’ll call back,’ Ben said. ‘Because he knows what I’ll do to him if he doesn’t.’

‘You seem to know a lot of very strange folks,’ Grace said. ‘Do I dare to ask why they call this person Mad Monty?’

‘Because he had a habit of believing things that nobody else wanted to believe,’ Ben said. ‘Maybe because he was way ahead of the curve. Or maybe because he really was crazy.’

Only time would tell. While he was waiting for the call back, Ben unloaded, stripped, cleaned, reassembled the pistol he’d taken from the dead man, then reloaded it and put it in his bag with the shotgun. Next he grabbed the roll of black tape from inside the bag and went out to the car. Grace followed him outside and stood leaning against the open doorway, warming her hands on her mug of tea as she watched him start tearing off two-inch strips of tape and sticking them over the bullet holes in the Mercedes’ bodywork. Black on black; from a few feet away, if you squinted a little, they weren’t too noticeable. There wasn’t much he could do about the cracked screen, except hope he didn’t get pulled over for it by some overzealous traffic copper.

‘I count six holes,’ she said.

‘Seven,’ he replied, pointing out the one she’d missed.

‘Hmm. Now I get why the car rental companies don’t like you.’