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brisk delivery that Trev wasn’t simply going to bimble along to Father Mart’s kitchen and share our plate of Hobnobs.
    ‘When?’
    ‘As soon as possible.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘He’s calling later. He’ll let us know.’
    I necked some of my brew and munched a biscuit. ‘Any other clues?’
    ‘Things aren’t good at Credenhill.’
    ‘Trev doesn’t have anything to do with Credenhill any more. As far as I know. He left the Regiment about twenty seconds after I did.’
    ‘He does now. There was an accident. An incident. Call it what you will. In the CQB Rooms. One of the lads took a bullet.’
    I shrugged. ‘Sad. But not a first.’
    The Counter Terrorist Team refined their covert entry and hostage rescue techniques in the Close Quarter Battle Rooms – which meant live firing as well as showing off your favourite moves from the martial-arts catalogue. These places had targets and rubber-coated walls to absorb the rounds, and could be adapted to cater for almost any scenario – fast rope, heli drop, you name it.
    It wasn’t somewhere you just minced around in designer headphones and a pair of orange Oakleys, loosing off a few shots with a Desert Eagle to impress the chicks. We trained and trained and trained there, with flashbangs and all sorts of shit, in every conceivable environment. We’d be in blindingly bright light one minute and total darkness the next, and a lot of the time the ‘enemy’ was shooting back.
    I’d been on the team the day Prince Charles and Princess Di came by for a demo and one of the lads accidentally set fire to her hair. Ever since the Gulf, the Big Dogs had given themselves hernias trying to stuff the Special Forces genie back into the bottle. But that was easier said than done. The invitations for day visits, dinners in the mess with sports personalities and benefactors – even the media – still muddied the waters.
    At the same time, all serving members of the Special Air Service now fell under the thirty-year rule, and you couldn’t even mention their presence in hi-vis conflicts without having your bollocks chopped off. I’d heard that the new director of Special Forces, Major General Steele, was so determined to reinstate the invisibility cloak that he’d threatened to do the operation personally, with a rusty razor blade.
    Father Mart didn’t seem sure when Trev’s call would come through, so I scribbled my iPhone number on his notepad and said I’d head down to Hereford and see if they had a vacant room at the Green Dragon, maybe knock on Trev’s front door.
    That was when I knew this thing was really serious. He gripped my arm with surprising force and told me that Trevor wasn’t at home, and not to go anywhere near Hereford for the time being – at least, not until he had had a chance to put me in the picture.
    We were outside, admiring the pattern of frost on his potting shed, when his phone rang. Father Mart dashed back into the house and picked up. Steve Jobs hadn’t changed his life: he still put his trust in Bakelite and circular dials. And God, of course, but they probably contacted each other direct.
    He emerged about thirty seconds later. Trev obviously hadn’t been in the mood for a chat. ‘The Bolthole. Tomorrow at fifteen hundred. He said you’d know what that meant.’
    ‘Nothing else? Should I be wearing a red carnation?’
    At last, a wry little smile flitted across his face. ‘He said you should wait there until he decides it’s safe to make contact. And don’t bring your Porsche, or your telephone.’
    I couldn’t stop myself laughing. ‘My telephone ?’

3
    The Bolthole had probably saved our lives, back in the day. I visualized the route I’d take to get there as Father Mart rustled up whatever was in the oven. I was a lot better at sorting myself out in advance, these days, than I had been then.
    Trev and I had done a lot of our training for Winter Selection in the Black Mountains. The idea had been to sharpen up our endurance,