38

Cardiff Gate Services, M4, Wales

At that exact same moment, Carver, too, was hitching a ride. He’d woken at 6.15 a.m. and pulled open the window to see a grey, but dry morning. He’d showered, dressed and had a full English breakfast before heading out into the car park a minute before seven. The Audi was waiting for him. He tapped on the passenger window and it slid down to reveal the lightly tanned face of a man in his early thirties, whose cheerful smile and upper-class accent were in sharp contrast to the steely look in his eyes. Carver knew that look. He saw it in the mirror on a regular basis. The only difference was that his eyes were green and his stare — when he chose to use it — was, if anything, even steelier and colder than the one now appraising him.

‘You Tyrrell?’ Carver asked.

‘Ah, you must be Jenkins.’

‘That’s right, Andy Jenkins.’

‘Then you’d better climb aboard.’

Carver got in the back of the car. He was dimly aware of suppressed laughter from the massive, shadowy figure in the driver’s seat.

‘Something amusing you?’ Tyrrell asked.

‘Bollocks he’s called Andy Jenkins, boss,’ the driver replied in a South London voice. ‘His name is Pablo Jackson… isn’t it?’

Carver laughed. ‘Not for a while… How are you, Snoopy?’

‘That’ll be Company Sergeant Major Schultz to you, boss. I’m a warrant officer these days. Gone up in the world.’

‘You know each other?’ Tyrrell asked, his curiosity piqued in particular by Schultz calling the newcomer ‘boss’, the special forces equivalent to ‘sir’.

‘You could say that,’ Carver replied. ‘We served together, a long time ago.’

‘He’s one of us, boss,’ Schultz told Tyrrell. ‘And one of the best, too.’

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