Carver

37

Rosconway, Pembrokeshire, Wales

Brynmor Gryffud was at the wheel of the camper van. He drove steadily through the heart of rural Wales, staying well within the speed-limit at all times — with the underpowered Hiace weighed down by its deadly cargo he had little choice in the matter — and reaching the town of Pembroke by 6.00 a.m. From there he headed due west, taking the B4320 towards Angle, a seaside village that is a popular stopping-off point on the spectacular Pembrokeshire Coast Walk that runs around the far south-west corner of Wales. A couple of miles short of Angle Gryffud turned right down a lane towards the village of Rosconway, which had virtually all been demolished, or simply abandoned, when the refinery was built. Only the old parish church still stood intact, as a memento of what had once been a thriving little community. It was now shortly before six thirty.

Just before the lane reached the church Gryffud came to a gate. Beyond it the semi-derelict shells of some old farm buildings stood around a yard, hidden by thick, overgrown hedges from the casual view of any passers-by. The camper van turned off the lane into the old farmyard. Bumping and shaking over the rutted ground, it passed through a gaping hole in the walls of a roofless old barn. As the van entered the barn, moving at little more than a crawl, Smethurst was looking at a GPS location finder, about the size of a stopwatch.

‘Forward about five metres,’ he said, his eyes fixed to the flickering digits on the readout. ‘Left a bit… stop… wait a second.’

Smethurst took another look at the GPS, which also doubled as a compass.

‘Right, we’re on the right spot,’ he said. ‘But we need to line the van up three more degrees to the north-west. Just reverse a fraction, then go forward again, right hand down.’

Gryffud did as he was told.

‘Bollocks!’ Smethurst hissed to himself. ‘That was one degree too much. Try it again, but this time left hand down. Only a fraction, though. That’s all we need.’

The van shifted. Smethurst cursed again, and delivered an even more precise set of instructions. Gryffud did his best to follow them to the last millimetre. Finally Smethurst was satisfied. ‘That’ll do,’ he said. He set the timer to go off in four hours. When that was done he turned to Brynmor Gryffud and said, ‘Right, Taff, time to go.’ It was now 6.41 a.m.

The two men walked out of the farmyard and turned right, back up the lane towards the Angle Road, a distance of about one and a half miles. They walked at a good, hard pace, aiming to arrive at seven o’clock exactly. They had been standing by the roadside for less than a minute when a BMW pulled up next to them. The driver’s window lowered to reveal Uschi Kremer’s smiling face.

‘Hello, boys! Fancy meeting you here!’ she said.