‘What, you get them from the factory?’
‘Where I get them from isn’t the issue, mate,’ said Shepherd. ‘The issue is you paying for them.’
‘Cash?’
Shepherd laughed. ‘No, mate, Amex will do nicely.’ His face went hard. ‘Of course, cash. But if you’ve got krugerrands I’ll take them.’
‘Krugerrands?’
‘Gold,’ said Shepherd.
‘We can get the cash,’ said Thompson.
‘Glad to hear it,’ said Shepherd. ‘So we’re agreed on forty? For forty grand?’
Kettering nodded. ‘And the ammo.’
‘I can let you have the ammo for?50 a box.’
‘And how many bullets in a box?’ asked Thompson.
‘We call them rounds,’ said Shepherd. ‘Or cartridges. And there’s a hundred in a box.’
‘So a bullet — I mean a round — costs fifty pence?’
‘I guess you were good at maths at school,’ said Sharpe. He grinned over at Shepherd and they both laughed.
‘Yeah, fifty pence each,’ said Shepherd.
‘That’s bloody expensive,’ said Kettering.
A couple went by, a man in a cashmere coat walking arm in arm with his fur-coat-wearing wife, and the men stopped speaking until the couple were out of earshot.
‘Yeah, well, it’s not as if you can drop into B amp;Q and buy a few boxes, is it?’ said Shepherd. ‘It all has to be brought in from the Continent and there are risks and costs. Plus, you need special rounds, 7.62 by 39 millimetre. They’re not easy to come by in this country. Most of the ammo you’ll be offered is nine mill or.22 so it’s pretty much a seller’s market for the AK-47 ammo.’ He shrugged. ‘You’re welcome to see if anyone else can get you the rounds cheaper but I can tell you now you’ll be wasting your time.’
‘Plus, there are quality-control issues,’ said Sharpe. ‘We’ve got a saying. Guns don’t jam; ammunition jams. It doesn’t matter how good the gun is, if you start using it to fire crap ammo then your weapon is going to jam. And that can ruin your whole day.’
Kettering nodded thoughtfully. ‘We’ll need about twenty thousand rounds,’ he said. ‘So two hundred boxes.’
Shepherd’s jaw dropped. ‘Two hundred boxes? That’s five hundred rounds per gun, right?’
‘Is that a problem?’
Shepherd looked across at Sharpe. The same thought was obviously going through his partner’s mind. Why would anyone want to buy twenty thousand rounds?
‘If you’ve got the ten grand it’s no problem at all.’ Shepherd took a long pull on his cigar.
‘What about a discount?’ asked Thompson.
‘As you’re such a good customer, you can have the ammo for eight grand,’ said Shepherd. ‘We’re looking at a total of forty-eight grand.’
‘How about we split the difference and call it forty-five?’ said Kettering. ‘Seeing as how I’m buying the Bolly?’
‘Forty-five it is,’ said Shepherd. ‘But, mate, what are you going to be doing with twenty thousand rounds?’
‘Self-protection,’ said Kettering.
‘From what? The bloody army?’
‘Look, you said the ammunition was hard to get hold of. I don’t want to be coming back to you for more.’
‘You know the magazine only holds thirty rounds?’ said Sharpe.
‘So?’ said Kettering.
‘Just thought I’d mention it. I mean, twenty thousand rounds is a lot of ammo. Are you planning to fire them at the same time?’
Kettering shrugged. ‘Why?’
‘Because it takes time to reload,’ said Sharpe. ‘You can fire thirty rounds with one pull of the trigger if you’re on fully automatic. Then you’ve got to start slotting in fresh rounds one at a time.’
‘What he means is that if you’re planning to fire off a lot of rounds you’re better off with pre-loaded magazines,’ said Shepherd.
Kettering nodded slowly. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I get it. You mean we put the rounds in magazines and then just shove in a new one when the old one’s empty.’
‘Click, clack,’ said Sharpe. ‘It’s as easy as that.’
‘We can do you polymer magazines at thirty quid a pop,’ said Shepherd.
Kettering looked over at Thompson. Thompson pulled a face.
‘What if we wanted ten magazines for each gun?’ said Kettering.
‘Sure. Four hundred magazines. We can do that.’
‘But that would be twelve grand,’ said Thompson. ‘That’s a bit bloody steep for magazines.’
‘But you can give us a discount, right?’ Kettering said to Shepherd. ‘They’re only plastic.’
‘Polymer,’ said Shepherd. ‘As good as the metal ones and lighter. But that’s what they cost. How about we say four hundred for ten grand? So all in, guns, ammo and clips, fifty-five grand.’
‘Fifty for cash?’ said Kettering.
Shepherd laughed. ‘I already said it was cash or gold,’ he said. ‘Fifty-five is my bottom price. What about handguns? I can get you Zastava pistols from the same source. Easier to conceal than an AK-47.’
‘Don’t really see the point of a handgun,’ said Kettering. ‘Seems to me that if you’re going to be using a gun people need to see it. So the bigger the better.’ He grinned. ‘How about we call it fifty-two grand and I’ll get you some gloves signed by John Conteh?’