Shepherd made himself a coffee before sitting down in front of the television and calling Major Allan Gannon, his former commanding officer in the SAS and a long-time friend.
‘Spider, how the hell are you?’ said the Major.
‘All good, Boss. Can you talk?’
‘The hind legs off a donkey. Where are you?’
‘London. You?’
‘Locked up in Stirling Lines,’ said the Major, referring to the SAS headquarters at Credenhill in Herefordshire.
‘I need a favour,’ said Shepherd, and he ran through the undercover operation that Hargrove was planning.
‘AK-47s aren’t a problem; we’ve stacks of them here. But if you’re playing at arms dealer why not go for the Yugo AK?’
‘You’ve got some?’
The Yugo AK was manufactured by Zastava Arms, a Serbian company, and was the Yugoslavian People’s Army’s assault rifle of choice before the country was ripped apart by civil war. It was a good weapon and many soldiers thought it superior to the Russian Kalashnikov.
‘Loads,’ said the Major. ‘We use it all the time in exercises. I’m pretty sure we’ve even got a few of the crates they came in.’
‘That would work,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’ll run it by Hargrove, see if we can just use them. It’ll make our cover seem more authentic.’
‘Damn right. There’s a fair number of Yugos knocking around the UK. Former Serbian military types have been selling them to gang bangers. I tell you what, Spider, I’ve got some Zastava M88 pistols too.’
‘Better and better,’ said Shepherd. ‘And there’s no problem you loaning them to us?’
‘I’ll sign it off as an exercise,’ said the Major. ‘You can pick them up from here, can you?’
‘Sounds like a plan,’ said Shepherd.
‘Let me know when you want them,’ said the Major. ‘Be good to have a chat. I’ve been hearing some very interesting stories about you.’
‘My ears are burning.’
‘They should be.’
‘So how are your studies, Manraj?’ asked Chaudhry’s father as he dropped down on to the sofa and stretched out his legs. His fiftieth birthday was fast approaching but he looked a good ten years younger, with not a single grey hair and only a few laughter lines at the corners of his eyes. He was a keen squash player, had been for more than thirty years, and it showed in his lean physique. On more than a few occasions people had assumed that he was Chaudhry’s elder brother rather than his father.
It was Saturday afternoon and Chaudhry had cycled from Stoke Newington to his parents’ house, a neat four-bedroom detached house in Stanmore. It was the house that he’d been brought up in and as he looked around it he felt as if he’d never left. At the far end of the room was the piano on which he and his brother had practised for half an hour every night; through the French windows he could see the garden where his father had taught him the finer points of spin bowling; he knew that at the top of the stairs was his bedroom, pretty much exactly as it was the day he’d left to go to university three years earlier. Leaving home had been symbolic rather than a necessity. He could have commuted back and forth from Stanmore but Chaudhry had wanted to be independent; plus, he’d become bored with life in the suburbs. His elder brother had studied for his degree at Exeter so it hadn’t been too much of a struggle to persuade his parents to allow him to rent a place in Stoke Newington.
‘It’s getting harder, but you know what med school is like,’ said Chaudhry. His father was an oncologist at Watford General Hospital, and had been since before Chaudhry was born. ‘Third year was much better because we had the attachments, so you actually got to deal with patients. The fourth year is all bookwork and the supervised research project. It’s a grind.’
His father nodded sympathetically. ‘It’s a grind all right, but we all go through it. Just take it one day at a time. Once it’s done and you’ve passed the exams you get your degree and then you can really start to learn about medicine.’
‘Fourth year’s the worst, right?’
‘Every year’s tough, Manraj; they’re just tough in different ways. But it’s when you start working as a junior doctor that the pressure really starts.’
‘The killing season, they call it at King’s.’
‘They call it that everywhere,’ said his father. ‘Just don’t ever let the patients hear you say that.’ He smiled over at his son. ‘I’m really proud of you, Manraj. I hope you know that.’
Chaudhry nodded. He knew. And he could see it in his father’s eyes.
‘So, are you seeing anyone?’
Chaudhry frowned, not understanding what his father meant, then realisation dawned and he groaned. ‘Dad. . Please. .’
‘I’m your father and you’re my only unmarried son, so I’m entitled to ask.’
‘You have only two sons and Akram got married last year.’
‘I’m not getting any younger and I’d like to be able-bodied enough to play cricket with my grandchildren.’
Chaudhry laughed and slapped his own thigh. ‘You’re crazy. Now you want me to be a father and I haven’t even graduated. What’s the rush?’
‘There’s no rush, it’s just that I’ve found what I think might be the perfect girl for you.’
‘Say what?’
His father looked at him over the top of his spectacles. ‘What’s the problem? I thought you’d be pleased.’
‘You thought I’d be happy because you’re fixing up an arranged marriage for me?’
‘Who said anything about marriage? I was at an NHS conference last week and I met up with an old friend who works as a cardiologist in Glasgow. He was talking about his daughter — she’s a second-year microbiology student at UCL — and I mentioned you were at King’s. .’
‘And the next thing you know you’ve got us married off. Dad, I’m more than capable of finding my own girlfriend.’
‘Which is why I asked you if you were seeing anyone.’ He pushed his spectacles higher up his nose. ‘Her name’s Jamila, and she’s from a very good family. According to her father, she hasn’t had a steady boyfriend. He was very impressed to hear that you’re at King’s.’
‘You didn’t show him my CV, did you?’
‘I might have mentioned a few of the highlights, yes. Look, no pressure, but why don’t you at least get in touch, maybe ask her out?’
‘It’s not going to be one of those chaperoned things, is it? With half the family tagging along?’
His father laughed. ‘What century do you think you’re living in?’ he said. ‘She’s on Facebook. She’s been told to expect you to ask to be a Facebook friend, to chat online for a while and see if you get on.’
‘You’ve already told her about me?’
‘Her father has, yes.’
‘How long have you been planning this?’
‘We’re not planning anything. I told you, I met her father at a conference and we got talking. You can at least get in touch on Facebook, can’t you? I don’t want her father to think that we’re snubbing her.’
Chaudhry sighed. ‘Okay, I suppose I can do that.’
‘Manraj, there’s no pressure here, really. There’s no need to make a big thing about it. It’s not like when your mum and I were introduced. Back then they almost put a gun to my head.’
‘Seriously?’
His father laughed again. ‘Of course not seriously,’ he said. ‘But I was left in no doubt that I’d need a pretty good reason to turn her down. Things were very different back then and most marriages were arranged.’
‘And you were okay with that?’
‘Your grandfather is a pussycat these days, but thirty years ago he was as tough as they come. He was born in Pakistan, remember. Or British India, as it was then. He came over with nothing and it wasn’t like it is now, with benefits and handouts. The people in his village paid for him to come to the UK and when I was old enough to marry it was time for him to pay the piper.’
Chaudhry leaned forward. ‘You never told me this before.’
His father shrugged. ‘That’s the way it worked. Your mother’s grandparents helped pay for my father to come to this country. I had citizenship so if I married her then her parents and her grandparents could come too. Which is what happened, of course. Our marriage helped their family, and that was only fair because they’d helped my father.’