Kettering held out his glass and the three other men followed suit. ‘Pleasure doing business with you,’ he said.
‘The pleasure’s all ours,’ said Sharpe. They clinked glasses and drank.
‘You can get anything, can you?’ asked Kettering.
‘Pretty much,’ said Shepherd. ‘I sold a couple of tanks once.’
Kettering laughed. ‘A tank I don’t need, but I could do with bulletproof vests.’
‘That’s easy enough,’ said Shepherd. ‘Let me come back to you with a price. What sort do you want?’
‘What are the options?’
‘Depends on what sort of protection you want. They go from cheaper ones that will stop a.22 and not much else, right up to vests with steel plates that’ll stop a.45 at point-blank range.’
‘Yeah, the full Monty,’ said Kettering. ‘That’s what we need.’
‘No problem,’ said Shepherd.
‘And what about grenades?’
Shepherd stiffened and Sharpe’s mouth opened in surprise.
‘What?’ said Sharpe.
‘Grenades,’ said Thompson. He looked over his shoulder to check that no one could overhear their conversation. ‘Can you get us some?’
‘What the hell do you want with grenades?’ asked Sharpe.
‘What’s it to you?’ snapped Thompson.
‘James means it’s a bit unusual, that’s all,’ said Shepherd. ‘We don’t get much call for grenades. They’re a bit. . specialist.’
‘But you can get them, right?’ asked Kettering. ‘We’ll pay good money.’
‘I’ll talk to some people, see what I can do,’ said Shepherd. ‘And you’re talking fragmentation grenades, right? You don’t mean smoke grenades or flash-bangs?’
‘Yeah, the real thing is what we want,’ said Kettering. ‘And about the guns. We’re going to need a test fire.’
‘We can arrange that,’ said Shepherd.
‘Up near us?’ said Kettering. ‘I want to bring a couple of guys with us, just to show what we’re buying.’
‘Just make sure they’re people you can trust,’ said Shepherd. ‘And we’ll need to arrange the venue. We’ll pick you up and take you to wherever we do it.’
‘You don’t trust us?’ said Thompson.
‘I don’t trust anybody,’ said Shepherd. ‘If I get caught with a boot full of AK-47s then I’m banged up for ten years. So forgive me if I’m careful.’
‘I get it,’ said Kettering. ‘But no one is going to screw you over. We want those guns.’
‘How long after the test fire will you have the forty?’ asked Thompson.
Shepherd looked at Sharpe. ‘A week?’
‘A week to ten days,’ said Sharpe. ‘We can cover it from stock in the warehouse but I’ll need to arrange a cover consignment.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Kettering.
‘We put the guns in the base of a container, but we have to fill the container with a legitimate cargo. Fruit or veg is the best. Ideally we have the van in a convoy of legit trucks. Soon as we have a delivery date we’ll let you know.’
‘And you’ll deliver them to us in Birmingham?’
‘We’ll arrange a drop-off wherever you want, but again we won’t tell you until the last moment. You check the guns, we check the cash, and Bob’s your father’s brother.’
‘So we’ve got a deal?’ asked Kettering.
Shepherd nodded. ‘Looks like it.’
Kettering beamed. He clinked his glass against Shepherd’s again and finished his brandy. ‘Let’s get back inside and watch the boxing,’ he said.
Shepherd waited until he was back in his Hampstead flat before phoning Hargrove. ‘It’s on,’ he said. ‘We’ve agreed a price and they want a test fire.’
‘Well done,’ said Hargrove.
‘The thing is, they want forty AK-47s and a stack of ammo. And hand grenades.’
‘Hand grenades?’
‘Yeah. How do we want to play this?’
‘Did they say what they want with grenades?’
‘Said it wasn’t our business, which is probably right. We’re arms dealers so why the hell would we care what they’re going to do with them?’
‘Ray didn’t say anything about grenades,’ said Hargrove. ‘And he didn’t say anything about forty AK-47s. What are they planning, a war?’
‘I don’t think Ray’s fully in the loop,’ said Shepherd. ‘If he was they’d have had him along tonight. They want assault rifles, bulletproof vests and grenades. I tried asking him why they wanted that much ordnance but they didn’t say and I didn’t want to push it because it was our first meeting.’
‘Did you get a read on them?’
‘Kettering’s not a nutter, that’s for sure. I wouldn’t have marked him down as a criminal. Looks more like an estate agent. Clean cut, bit of a Jack the Lad, maybe. Thompson’s a bit harder but even so I wouldn’t have thought he’d be the type to go on a murder spree.’
‘Could it be racial?’
Shepherd sighed. ‘I really don’t know what’s going on in their heads,’ he said. ‘At one point Thompson went over and had his photograph taken next to John Conteh. And one of the boxers they brought down from Birmingham was a Jamaican lad. If they’re racists they’re doing a bloody good job of hiding it.’