There were unopened bottles of red and white wine on the table. Sharpe reached for one and sneered at the label. ‘Cheap plonk. Fancy champagne?’
‘Let’s wait until the guys get here,’ said Shepherd. ‘We can make a show of it.’
Guests were moving into the hall and taking their places. A group headed for the VIP table, including a large black man wearing a floppy pink hat and what appeared to be a black mink coat, and a good-looking black man with a greying moustache, dressed in a sharp suit.
‘That’s John Conteh, isn’t it?’ said Sharpe, nodding at the man with the moustache.
‘Yeah,’ said Shepherd. ‘What is he, sixty? I hope I look that good when I’m sixty.’
‘Do you think he runs marathons with a rucksack of bricks on his back?’
‘I don’t run marathons, you soft bastard.’
The VIP table began to fill up. Sitting next to Conteh was a sharp-faced man in a beige suit. He was talking animatedly to the heavyweight boxer and demonstrating an uppercut to the chin. Like most of the guests on the top table his head was shaved.
Four stunningly pretty black girls, as tall and willowy as supermodels, walked to one table followed by four heavyset men in Italian suits. Shepherd recognised one of the men; he was a well-known drug dealer based in Beckenham, south London. He looked over at Sharpe to see if he’d spotted him and Sharpe nodded.
‘Problem?’ asked Sharpe.
Shepherd shook his head. He’d worked on a case involving the drug dealer but had never met him. Shepherd saw Kettering and Thompson at the doorway but kept his face blank. Edwards and Gracie had never met the two men so they had to wait until they’d been introduced. ‘Here we go,’ he whispered to Sharpe. Then in a louder voice he began telling Sharpe a joke about a one-legged safecracker. He stopped when Kettering and Thompson arrived at their table.
Kettering grinned amiably. ‘You James and Garry?’ he said.
Shepherd stood up. ‘I’m Garry,’ he said, and held out his hand. Kettering shook it. He had a firm grip and Shepherd squeezed back hard.
‘Simon,’ Kettering said. He shook hands with Sharpe, and then introduced Thompson. ‘This is Paul.’ Thompson shook hands with them both and then they took their seats. Kettering sat on Shepherd’s left and Thompson sat between Shepherd and Sharpe. ‘Well, Ian speaks very highly of you two.’ Ian Parton was the cover name that Fenby was using.
‘Yeah, he’s a riot is Ian,’ said Shepherd. ‘He’s not here?’
‘Nah, don’t think he’s much of a boxing fan,’ said Kettering. ‘Football’s his game.’ He winked at Shepherd. ‘You a boxing fan, Garry?’
‘I like a good punch-up,’ said Shepherd. He nodded at Sharpe. ‘James is the pugilist. That accounts for his battered face.’
Sharpe laughed. ‘Yeah, I boxed a bit when I was a kid,’ he said. ‘What brings you down to the Big Smoke?’ he asked Thompson.
‘We’ve got a couple of fighters here,’ said Thompson. ‘We support a youth club in Birmingham and Harry was looking for some fighters who weren’t local so we said we’d bring our boys down.’
‘Harry?’ said Shepherd.
‘Harry’s organised tonight,’ Thompson said. ‘It’s a fundraiser for his club. Next time we have a fundraiser in Birmingham he’ll repay the favour.’
More people were arriving and the room was echoing with conversation and laughter. The guests were mainly men and the few women who were there looked as if they could well be charging by the hour.
Sharpe waved a waiter over. ‘Get me a bottle of Bollinger, will you?’ he said. He pointed at the bottles of wine on the table. ‘I can’t drink this crap.’
Kettering saw what he was doing. ‘What’s the problem, James?’
‘No problem,’ said Sharpe. ‘Just fancy a drop of bubbly. I’ll pay for it.’
‘You bloody won’t,’ said Kettering. ‘Tonight’s on me.’ He pointed a finger at the waiter. ‘What champagne have you got? Got any Cristal?’
‘Bollinger and Moët,’ said the waiter.
‘Two bottles of Bollinger,’ said Kettering. ‘And the bill comes to me, right?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said the waiter, and he headed for the bar.
Two men appeared at their table. Big men with weightlifters’ forearms and bulging necks that suggested years of steroid use. Kettering stood up, walked round the table and hugged them both, then introduced them to Shepherd and Sharpe. ‘Terry and Tony,’ he said. The two men sat down and started chatting to Thompson.
‘They’re brothers,’ Kettering said to Shepherd. ‘Kickboxing champions, both of them.’
‘Who else is on our table?’ asked Shepherd.
‘Couple of pals of Harry’s, and three or four of my mates, assuming they can make it,’ said Kettering. ‘Don’t worry, you’re among friends.’
‘I’m not worried,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’m just not sure it’s the most secure place for a meeting.’
Kettering laughed. ‘We’re just here to watch some boxing and have a bite to eat,’ he said. He leaned towards Shepherd, so close that Shepherd could smell the man’s aftershave, sweet with the scent of lime. ‘The thing is, Garry, we need to trust each other. Am I right? You don’t know us and we don’t know you but this way we get to feel each other out. See how the land lies.’
‘Point taken,’ said Shepherd. ‘But I hope at some point we can talk business.’
Kettering nodded enthusiastically. ‘You can count on it,’ he said.
The waiter returned with two bottles of champagne in individual ice buckets. He was followed by another waiter who was carrying a tray of champagne flutes. The first waiter popped the cork of one of the bottles while his colleague placed the glasses on the table. Two more men arrived at the table: one, obese, in a dark-blue suit, his hands festooned with gold rings, the other tall and thin with a shaved head and a large diamond stud in one ear. Kettering introduced them to everyone else at the table. The fat man was Davie, a scrap-metal merchant; the thin man was Ricky, a property developer.
Once all their glasses were filled, Kettering clinked his against Shepherd’s. ‘Here’s to swimming with bow-legged women,’ he said.
Shepherd sipped his champagne and smacked his lips appreciatively, even though he didn’t really like the taste. ‘I love a drop of bubbly,’ he said.
‘Big fan of Cristal, myself,’ said Kettering.
‘Yeah, you can’t beat Cristal,’ said Shepherd. He raised his glass to Sharpe. ‘Me and James, we knocked back half a case one night, remember?’
‘I remember the bloody hangover, that’s about all,’ laughed Sharpe. He leaned over and clinked his glass against Shepherd’s.
‘Then it couldn’t have been Cristal because you never get a hangover from Cristal,’ said Kettering. ‘You get what you pay for.’ He touched his glass against Shepherd’s again. ‘Anyway, great to finally meet you. Ian tells me good things.’
‘I hope he’s not told you too much,’ said Shepherd. ‘Wouldn’t want my name being taken in vain in Brummie-land.’
The doors to the kitchen burst open and a dozen waiters filed out carrying trays. The first course was a prawn cocktail served in stainless-steel bowls, followed by roast beef, Yorkshire puddings, roast potatoes and vegetables. Kettering made small talk with Shepherd while they ate.
As the plates were being taken away, Kettering ordered another two bottles of champagne, then he patted Shepherd on the arm. ‘You smoke, Garry?’
‘Not really,’ said Shepherd.
Kettering slid a brown leather cigar case from his jacket pocket. ‘I’ve got some nice Cubans.’
‘I’ll take a cigar, yeah,’ said Shepherd.
‘Come on, then. Let’s give dessert a swerve and we’ll have a chat outside.’ He stood up and gestured with his chin at Thompson. Shepherd caught Sharpe’s eye and nodded at the door and the four men threaded their way through the tables to the doorway. They headed along the corridor and over to the pub. ‘Hey, Paul, get us some brandies,�
�� said Kettering. ‘The good stuff.’
Thompson went inside the pub while Kettering handed cigars to Shepherd and Sharpe and then lit them with matches. The three men blew smoke up at the stars.
‘So, Ian says you’re the go-to guys,’ said Kettering.
Shepherd leaned towards Kettering and lowered his voice. ‘What is it you want?’
Kettering looked around, then bent his head towards Shepherd. ‘AK-47s. Can you get them?’
‘I can get you anything, mate. The question is, have you got the money?’
‘We’ve got money,’ said Kettering. ‘Money isn’t a problem. So what would an AK-47 cost?’
‘Depends on how many you want,’ said Shepherd.
Kettering shrugged. ‘Forty?’
Shepherd laughed. ‘Forty AK-47s? What are you planning, a war?’ He continued to laugh but his mind was racing because Kettering had caught him by surprise. He had been expecting the man to want to buy two or three, or maybe half a dozen. But forty was a totally different ball game. As he laughed he looked over at Sharpe and could see that his partner’s eyes had also hardened with the realisation that their investigation had moved up to a whole new level.
‘Can you get us forty or not?’ asked Kettering.
Shepherd forced himself to appear relaxed. ‘I can get you four hundred. Give me a month and I could probably get you four thousand.’ He took a pull on his cigar and held the smoke in his mouth rather than inhaling before blowing it out. ‘A grand each. So forty grand.’
‘Pounds?’
Shepherd frowned. ‘Of course, pounds. What do you think I meant? Roubles? Rupees?’
‘A grand each, though,’ said Kettering. ‘That’s more than we thought.’
Thompson returned with four brandy glasses and he handed them out.
‘Garry here says a grand each,’ Kettering said to Thompson.
‘Fuck me,’ said Thompson. ‘That’s about three times what we thought we’d have to pay.’
‘What, Googled it, did you?’ Shepherd chuckled. ‘It’s like buying bubbly, mate. You get what you pay for. If you want Bolly or Cristal you pay top price. If you want a bottle of fizzy white wine then you piss off down to Tesco with a tenner in your hot little hand.’
‘You can get a second-hand Romanian knock-off for a couple of hundred quid,’ said Sharpe. ‘But it won’t be new and you won’t know whether or not it’s going to blow up in your hands. We’ve got the real thing, brand new and still in their boxes, never been fired.’
Shepherd nodded in agreement. ‘We only sell good gear,’ he said. ‘No one has ever complained about our product.’ He sipped his brandy.
‘But a grand,’ said Kettering. ‘That’s steep.’
‘Plus the ammunition,’ said Shepherd.
‘How much?’
‘Again, depends on how much you want. We can do you a good deal if you want to bulk buy.’
‘We do,’ said Thompson. ‘The more the merrier.’
‘And these guns, where do you get them from?’
‘Not thinking about trying to cut out the middleman, are you?’ asked Shepherd. ‘Because that’s a dangerous game to be playing in this business.’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ said Kettering. ‘Jeez, you’re a suspicious bugger. I just meant where do they come from? Russia? China?’ He flicked ash into the street.
‘I wouldn’t sell you a Chinese gun,’ said Shepherd. ‘Pile of crap, they are. As bad as the Romanians. No, mate, we’ve got the Rolls-Royce of the AK. Made in the former Yugoslavia. Serbia. Google the Yugo and you’ll see what I mean. Everybody loves them.’
‘The Yugo’s a car, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah, but I’m sure you’ll be able to tell the difference,’ said Shepherd. ‘Our Yugos are the ones that go bang.’
‘I thought the best AK-47s were the originals, the Russian ones,’ said Thompson.
‘Nah, the Yugo’s better, no question,’ said Shepherd.
‘And you can get us forty?’ asked Kettering.
‘Like I said, forty or four thousand.’
‘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&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.
Ke
ttering 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?’
Shepherd nodded. ‘You love to haggle, don’t you? Okay.’
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.’
False Friends (The 9th Spider Shepherd Thriller) Page 14