‘I want you to have it,’ Cavalier said. ‘You’ve gone beyond the call of duty tonight.’

Pringle eyed the money, looked at Haut and waved it away.

‘Nah,’ Pringle said, ‘I think you should take it. You’ve earned it.’

‘No, mate, there’s about four thousand,’ Cavalier said and with a cool smile added, ‘Grave diggers are very hard to find these days. It’s a dying art.’

The others chuckled. Pringle pocketed the money.

They dug to about six feet. It took just short of an hour, with Cavalier relieving each man every ten minutes.

‘That’s deep enough,’ Cavalier said, shovelling the charred remains of the personal effects into the hole. The three men took the bodies and the plastic matting from the van, laid them in the grave and then shovelled the sand back on top of them.

Haut bent to one knee and said a silent prayer.

‘What did you pray?’ Pringle asked as they returned to the van.

‘I commended the bastards to God, for him to judge.’

‘Did you throw in something for me, good Reverend?’ Cavalier asked, as they drove off.

‘Of course,’ Haut said. ‘I thanked the Lord for sending me a guardian angel.’

The other two looked at Haut, expecting a smile. But his expression was serious.

In the slow drive back to Haut’s home, Pringle said, ‘Funny you talk about a guardian angel. That bloke Cavalier I mentioned saved my life. One hundred candidates were competing for a few spots in an SAS intake at Albany, Western Australia. He was well ahead of the pack after a run and a swim. I was coming second but cramped in the water. A helicopter turned a spotlight on me. My pack was weighing me down and I couldn’t remove it. Cavalier spotted me, swam to me and hauled me out of the drink. I was unconscious but was told later how he performed CPR and revived me.’

‘When was this?’ Haut asked.

‘Back in the seventies,’ Pringle said. ‘The irony is, I was selected for the SAS in a second trial a year later. Cavalier was by far the smartest candidate in that first trial, and the fittest. He won every single fitness and intelligence test. But he didn’t make the cut.’

‘Why?’ Haut asked.

‘He had a ruptured Achilles.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘He went into journalism. He’s written some books.’

‘Poor fellow,’ Cavalier mumbled.

‘You’ve got a double,’ Pringle said to Cavalier. ‘But of course that was so long ago. Cavalier had a six-pack abdomen. He’d be around sixty now. You look in very good shape. But you’re younger, right?’

‘Thank you,’ Cavalier said. ‘Philately will get you a nice stamp album.’