'I had the beret given me in ninety-nine, thought I was the dog's bollocks, and I'd done well. A year later two jumps done they were sending guys off on specialisation courses. You could do signals, anti-tank stuff or mortars, but I was the clever fucker who put a name down for sniping. I already had a marksman's certificate. It seemed a good idea, and would mean status, respect . . . I don't know how, but word got around that I had a conviction, had served a prison sentence, and it set me apart.'

Posie was upstairs with the others. Loy had been down once and stepped awkwardly over Sparky. Jonno had wondered if Posie would cook something for them.

'On the sniping, which we did in the Brecons, I was second in our course. Five more passed and thirteen failed. Our Sunray said I was now one of the most important, influential soldiers in the battalion. I was nearly twenty and starting to believe in myself.'

Jonno could see he was fragile. There had been a reference to the Boss, a woman, who would have known how fragile he was, but he realised that a special trust had been placed in him. The man unburdened himself and Jonno listened.

'I'd done the training. I could shoot whenever I wanted to. I was excused the basic slog of other kids in my intake and was out on hills and moors, or in the broken buildings we used for urban-warfare scenarios. I had my rifle and my sight, and a spotter who was the best friend I ever had. It wrecked me.'

The man shook, and Jonno held him. He couldn't fathom why the Boss had sent Sparky and what use he might be.

12.

'We went to Iraq. You'll not have been there, Jonno.'

He had not been anywhere, before the Villa Paraiso. Nothing in his life had equated with where he was now. He felt gratitude that a man as locked down as Sparky had chosen him as a shoulder, an ear; and was sad that the former soldier was in need of something to lean against and someone to hear him.

'We thought there would be rose petals chucked at us, and big crowds cheering us. We were in the east, along the A6 highway. Do you know that Brit newspaper hacks were shouting, "Foul!" because they reckoned the Yanks had kept all the choice bits, where the action was, for themselves, and that we were on the sidelines? Fat chance of that. All the ragheads were short of was artillery and missiles. Every day we were in big fire fights. Our Sunray said that a sniper was pretty much worth a platoon of thirty squaddies. I lived on rooftops, was on the move, did what I was trained to do was an awkward bastard. My top spotter didn't get the plane with me. He'd broken his ankle on the exercises, bought himself out of the army and gone to his family farm. I went through two or three spotters, and always found fault. Killing came to be a habit.'

Jonno had nowhere better to be, and nothing much to do. He'd slept well, had half reckoned Posie would come back in the night, but she hadn't. The cat had been with him, curled near his stomach, but had gone out at first light when Jonno had stirred. There had been singing in the night, and shouting from the Villa del Aguila.

He and Posie had circled each other in the kitchen, giving way at the sink and the toaster, and beside the fridge. Loy had been at the door, watching them, and had carried the tray upstairs. Later she'd done more washing: she'd put his socks, underwear and Sparky's soiled T-shirt into the machine, then hung them out on the line. Snapper's and Loy's stuff was inside, hooked over the shower rail. Jonno had called Malaga International, explained about their tickets, asked whether they could quit earlier than the reservation. He'd been told to call again in the morning. Now he and Sparky were in the same place as before, at the bottom of the stairs.

'I was shooting at up to half a mile, and they'd given me a stripe, lance corporal. I could shoot anybody I wanted. I'd call back in, give a PID that's Positive Identification and the answer would come back that I was "cleared to engage". Then I'd blow some bastard away young or old, armed or unarmed. If my spotter didn't like it he could go back to flogging his guts out on foot patrol or digging latrines, so they didn't flap their mouths. Some of the ones I wasted were old and unarmed but they had that strut of authority. Within half a mile of me a raghead's walk was enough to send him to Paradise or back to his shit-heap home. I took some out because it was a difficult shot.'

He didn't think it necessary to make small-talk. It wasn't relevant that he'd been nervous about leaving home for the first time to go to college, or that he hadn't slept well on the night before his finals had kicked off. This man had done so much that was beyond any horizon that Jonno knew, but he needed Jonno's grip to counter his trembling.

'I used to keep count like kids playing schoolboy soccer. They can tell you how many goals they've had. I could tell you about them all, the ones where the wind deflection made it difficult, or the heat haze had to be allowed for because of atmosphere density. I was the king, and no one in Bravo Company cared who I killed or why. We hated every last one of them, and the more I slotted the better. And I came home.'

Jonno had done a good bullshit story to the girl at Malaga International: he had a sick relative at home. She'd suggested that an email from the UK consulate would help an emergency application. He'd call her the next day, and the consulate would not be involved.

Sparky's voice was faster, breathier. 'I was the killer and had some stature. It was known that not all my PIDs fitted the bill but nobody lost sleep over it. It was a great sight, seeing a man keel over, sort of crumple, like the strength in his legs was cut. There was a girl, Patricia well, Patsy and her brother was a corporal in our mortar platoon. She had a job in a bank and moved in with me. I used to gel my hair, what there was of it, and it stood up like I'd been shocked. That was the start of "Sparky", and it stuck when I had the lot off. All I wanted to do was get back to sniping. I had to wait two years.'

Loy came down with the tray, looked at Sparky, betrayed nothing.

'I had a new spotter when we went to Helmand, Bent his name was George Bentley. About an hour after we'd arrived it was pretty plain that Helmand and Iraq, al-Amarah, were in different leagues. It was killing for a purpose, which was to stay alive. The more Bent called the targets and I whacked them, the more the rest of the company disliked us.'

Loy had started to wash up.

'He was the best guy I ever had, Bent. Never used two words if one would do the job. Sun didn't worry him, nor the cold, never bellyached about the food. The unit in there before us didn't do sniping and the Tommys Tommy Taliban, with me? had become casual. I shot guys who were laying command wires, handing out weapons, briefing foot-soldiers, the ones who went off for a crap behind a bush, or were using goat-herding as cover for dicking on us that's learning our movement patterns, the routines. Nobody loved us. One morning I dropped a commander. It was a hell of a shot, and everything went mental.'

In the bathroom, Loy took the now dry clothes from the shower rail.

'Each time I'd fired and hit, they'd retaliate. They had heavy machine-guns and mortars, and good enough fieldcraft to come close and use the RPGs. Our guys thought that them getting it was down to me, because I aggravated them, and I'd tell them to fuck off and do their own job. I was accused of putting the lives of the unit at greater risk, of only being interested in making a name of myself. We had IEDs all round the positions.'

Loy had folded his own clothes and Snapper's. He came over and dumped Sparky's in his lap. Jonno thought they reckoned upstairs that the man tasked to protect them had copped out.

'We had casualties, a couple in boxes going home, four with wounds, and I was blamed. My sniping had done it. Open hostility to me and Bent, and too many IEDs to be cleared. I kept hitting the bastards. I'd go and hunker with Bent on top of a hill, look down, do the PID and shoot. Look into their faces, see their eyes, do an evaluation, like tossing a coin for life or death. I'd kept the count going and we were four days from handing over the territory . . . We were coming back in one evening, half-light, and a section had gone out to meet us and bring us past maize fields. It happened.'

Jonno held tight to a hand.

'There was a flash and a hell of a noise. Everybody was shouting and some were screaming. I was at the back because no one wanted to be close to me, but Bent was ahead. He died. Another guy was nineteen and he died too. Two more were injured. One had lost his sight and his right arm would go, the other his lower legs. I'd fired once that day and had wasted a hairy bastard I reckoned was dicking. I never fired again.'

Jonno folded Sparky's clothes neatly.

'I was responsible. If I hadn't been "celeb-chasing", they said, Tommy's reaction wouldn't have been so in our faces. You see, Jonno, squaddies aren't only interested in winning but also in the quiet life, and getting home with their tackle still in place. The padre must have heard because he found me the first time I was in bits. He said it wasn't my fault, I'd done nothing to blame myself for . . . What did he know? I came home with Bent. I did Wootton Bassett, and old men shook my hand because I still wore the kit from Helmand. What did they know? I was wrecked.'

Jonno gave the clothes to Sparky, eased himself up, then went into the kitchen the draining-board was spotless from Loy's efforts and out into the garden. He didn't know what he could have said. The quiet hit him. The singing and shouting were long over.

It was the third pint of water that Pavel Ivanov had drunk. Through the night, he had drunk beer, then brandy a bottle to himself and enough neat vodka to flatten him . . . he reached the bed because Marko and Alex had carried him there. His head hurt.

He stood on the paving stones at the back of the villa where he could see up the garden and beyond the wood hut and the chipper parked nearby to the face of the mountain that lowered above him.

They had shouted and sung 'Nacionalna Himna', the Serbian anthem, and the songs of the gulags, blatnyak, which lodged at the heart of criminal folklore in Russia. They had sung with each other and in competition. He had performed the Balkan song and they had tried in Russian. They had drunk slivovicz, which they could buy in the mini-mart by the police station. And they had shouted at each other, demanding more bottles, more toasts. Later there had been music from Belgrade alternating with the best of St Petersburg, and they had danced, fallen, danced some more and collapsed. Cigars had been smoked. It had been like old times.

If the women had been there it would not have happened.

If the women had been there, the man who had reneged on a deal and had insulted Ivanov by offering himself as an employee would not have been taken to the chipper. At the end, he had not looked them in the face but had closed his eyes when they lifted him. At the height of the binge they had imitated the noise the skull had made the crack, splinter and crunch: a high point.

He belched. The dog came from the house and lay close to him. He couldn't see the place from the back of the villa. Had Pavel Ivanov lurched to the front of the Villa del Aguila, stood on the far side of the swimming-pool and looked to the west, he would have seen a sheer escarpment and a bluff with a ledge. Ivanov, Marko and Alex knew the routes away from the property if a crisis threatened, and supplies were kept in two places so that the fugitives would have money and identity. Alex had carried the bags up and spilled the contents on to that flat rock. The gulls had found what he'd left and would clear the place, leave some shoe leather and a mangled wristwatch.

That afternoon they had turned their backs on the new world of cleaned money, investments and deals. They all felt the better for a killing and a binge, and the ache in their heads was a small price to pay. He ruffled the fur at the dog's neck.

After many months, he could walk tall again. He blinked against the sun, then laughed softly. They had been nervous of, almost cowed by, the arrival of the man who had once served the organ of State Security.

Last night Marko had yelled, 'I tell you, we'll take no shit from that man when he comes!'

'We haven't answered it.'

'Because we can't.' It was rare for his master sergeant to snap at the Major.

'Did they buy the Gecko?'

The warrant officer said that they had all been there when the boy's gear was tipped out: there had been nothing of value, nothing to show he had taken money.

'Why would he have done it? I treated him well.'

They had been driven to a meeting and sat outside a white-daubed stone house. They had declined water. Inside, the host and his associates fucking tribesmen, evil-looking devils pondered the figures the Major had offered for a transhipment that would bring the pastes and powders originating in Latin America across the desert to the coast. There were, it had been emphasised, Customs, police, politicians and tax gatherers to be paid off.

They threw his questions back at him.

'You hit him.'

'You accused him of stealing.'

'You took your whore's side.'

'We held him and you hurt him.'

The Major frowned. 'We found the earrings. I made it up to him.'

'You hit him.'

'You didn't apologise.'

'He was only the Gecko it wasn't important.' The Major spat.

The argument ended. The Major couldn't stop. The future for him was bigger deals and more expensive killings. The Gecko had confused him. He had been kind, had sympathised about the chest cold, and the blows had not been brutal. The Major would never retire, as the Tractor had. He would never be a man once admired and now despised.

Were his men loyal? He didn't know. Could they be bought? No leader ever knew, but they all searched the faces and watched for signs. Many times he had heard it said when a big man was killed that, in death, his face was frozen in an expression of acute surprise.

'Excuse me.'

Jonno started.

For a big man, Snapper moved like a feather. Jonno had been miles away concocting more lies for the girl at Malaga International and hadn't heard him come out of the bedroom, cross the landing, come down the stairs and stop behind him.

'Can I pass, please?'

He twisted and made space. Snapper went across the hall, down the corridor and into the bathroom. Jonno could choose between peace and goodwill or a fight. He was still mulling it over when Snapper flushed the toilet, washed his hands and came out. He stood in front of Jonno and waited for him to swivel.

He said, 'Take your time, Jonno, because you're on holiday. Don't worry about the man who has a job to do. I'm only a low-life cop, who sits on his backside most of the day and doesn't stop graffiti getting sprayed on walls round your mum's home. I'm not like you, Jonno, clever and educated, holding down a top-rank employment opportunity I couldn't do it, haven't the brains. You're a big cheese at work stands to reason because otherwise you'd have no call to be treating us like inferior low-life. Want to hear about me, what I go to work with?'

He had spoken easily, the venom hidden.

'I have a Thermos with tea in it, and a plastic bottle to piss into I wash it out at night. I have a bib, one of the utilities electricity, water or gas. I can walk up a street in it, have a look at a suspect's home and nobody'll bat an eyelid. Or I can do a leaflet drop for a carpet sale or a warehouse clearance, which might spark a doorstep gossip with someone about the neighbours, who's at home and where an army veteran might live because they're good for us. I've always a dog lead with me a man holding a lead looks about and whistles because he's lost his pooch. It's a good one actually, there are plenty of good ones. They work well for an ignorant man who never went to college.'

Jonno sat still.

'I'll tell you a bit more, Jonno, about what works for the dull ones who never reached college. I was watching a man who was so smart he did all his business meetings when he was jogging in a park, south-east London. The others had to jog with him and there was no way we could bug him on the move. He was a clever chap and would have thought himself streets ahead of me. I saw that each week, after he'd jogged, he flopped on to the same bench. So did the others. We bugged the bench and had the conviction: conspiracy to import class A. Fifteen years. Little things . . . You can't put a woman in an electrician's van, but you can put one in a car in a supermarket car park.'

He moved, the bare minimum.

'Of course we're going to be seen, but we mustn't be noticed. A big man walks down a street and he's a likely target for surveillance, so an associate follows him but hangs back. Between the two of them is the tail. If he makes what we call a "wake", like a boat does, he's shown out ordinary people stare at him. I come into people's homes, drink what they bring me and eat their biscuits. It's the sort of job that people do when they don't have a university education. Please, Jonno, shift a bit more so I can pass without belting your face.'

Jonno gave a little smile. 'In your line of duty, Snapper, have you ever been hurt?'

'Others have. Luckily, I haven't.'

'Do you know what I think?'

'Enlighten me.'

'It's a game to you.'

'That's insulting and displays surprising ignorance. Don't take it out on me because your lady dumped you.'

'I still think it's a game. No doubt it justifies the budget.'

He was slapped. His face stung and his eyes welled. He was jolted back across the width of the step. Snapper went past him.

He called up the stairs, 'Your target, what's he done?'

'An agent UK citizen was tracking him. He and his chums hammered the agent senseless, then killed him. They played football with the agent's head. The agent had a security case on a chain from his wrist. To get it, they sawed his hand off, alive or dead, we don't know.'

'Nobody told me.'

'Why should they? Take a soccer ball next door and see if they want a kick-around with you.'

The door closed upstairs. Jonno dropped his head to his knees.

Kenny had stayed back with the vehicle, but Dottie went with her. They were escorted by an RAF officer.

The aircraft was being refuelled, and the crew gave her the eye: a woman without makeup or jewellery, in a black suit and flat shoes. The 'mouse' at her side wore a grey trouser suit and a blouse buttoned to the throat. The officer had come to them, announced the arrival of a cargo item in Winnie Monks's name and asked its status, as far as Customs were concerned. She had told him, with a sweet smile, that the package was 'none of your fucking business' and that she would collect it. Kenny had followed the Land Rover, and had stopped at the edge of the apron.

The officer frowned. 'I'm a little concerned, Miss Monks, on this matter of Customs and-'

'Just look the other way and count to ten.' She walked past him and up to the crew. 'I'm Winnie Monks.'

An eye lowered would have noted the absence of a ring on the appropriate finger. 'Good to see you, Miss Monks.'

'You have an item for me. Thank you for the prompt delivery.'

The pilot said, 'We wagered it might be flowers ordered by the governor's wife, or that they were running short of gin in the Residence. Has either of us won?'

'What's the description on the manifest?'

'Machine parts.'

'Then machine parts it is. Sorry and all that. Just pop your money in the poor box.'

She'd grinned and the pilot had gestured to a crewman to bring the package to her.

'I didn't think, Miss Monks, that the dear old UK was up to this sort of thing, these days. Are we?'

A little mischief played at her mouth. 'What's "this sort of thing" when it's at home?'

'Diverting military aircraft a thousand miles, and having good reason to.'

'Without machine parts, young man, we all seize up. Enjoy the rest of your flight.'

It was brought to her. Dottie had her arms out for it. The loadmaster hesitated, as if it might be too heavy for her. She gestured that she could manage it. Winnie was handed the docket and signed it with a flourish. They walked away. All eyes would have followed them on the package that was now on Dottie's shoulder. It was, of course, almost a capital offence to load an item on to a service flight and not declare that it contained live ammunition. The escort officer would have helped but was edged aside.