An unlikely mercenary

So he was an unlikely candidate for any army, let alone a life as an arms dealer and contract killer.

But as a new TV documentary reveals, that was to be his fate - ending in his violent death at the age of 31 after he executed a Zagreb gangster.

Cappiau's extraordinary story came to light after his childhood best friend, Ronnie Beacon, decided to investigate what drove him into a life of violence. The pair had been inseparable at grammar school, playing rugby and going on holiday to Spain together.

They met at Maidstone Grammar School in the mid-Eighties. Cappiau lived in a large bungalow in Wrotham with his mother Jan, stepfather Arthur - a company director of a London printing firm - and younger sister Sam.

But within a few years of the schoolboys' meeting, Marty Cappiau would be sucked into a world of bloody sectarianism.

Mr Beacon, 33, has produced a Channel 4 documentary, A Murder Between Friends, in which he charts Cappiau's life and death.

Mr Beacon, who grew up in Headcorn, near his friend, said: "When I met him at school at 14 he had a lot of energy and seemed to be very successful with girls. He was a charismatic person.

"He could hold his own at rugby but was not the sort to get into fights.

"He was very close to his family. It was one of those houses where the parents are always throwing parties. We used to serve the drinks together. They were a typical, middle-class, fairly well-off family."

With his eye on the world of fashion, Cappiau worked as a shoe salesman in Paris after leaving school at 17. He was of Belgian origin and when he visited the country to see his father's family he was discovered to be a national, arrested and made to do military service.

He enjoyed the army and, after befriending Croatian nationalists in southern France, he enlisted for their struggling army in war-torn Yugoslavia in the early Nineties. The documentary's director, Nick Hornby, said: "None of his old schoolteachers or friends suspected he could live this life. It is like something from a Frederick Forsyth novel."

By the age of 26, Cappiau had gone into business as an international arms dealer and lived with his wife in an upmarket home on the Croatian Riviera, having illegally bought weapons from abroad during the arms embargo in the region. He also become an assassin for the nationalist cause, shooting at least one man dead in a Croatian bar in

He risked his life by fighting in the Congo, but his swindling of £670,000 from the notoriously violent Chechens in an arms deal seemed foolhardy.

They did not catch up with him. But two years ago he was killed after shooting mafia boss Vjeko Slisko dead in broad daylight in a Zagreb square.

It was a contract killing. He fired six bullets into Slisko, but as a security guard pinned him to the ground, the gangster's henchman seized his chance and shot Cappiau in the head. He died in hospital two days later.

It emerged that he had been paid £60,000 to kill Slisko and had been told - incorrectly - that he was a Serb.

Cappiau's mother knew some details of her son's violent life, but believes he was trying to escape from it. The killing may even have been meant as his last assignment.

She said: "He thought there were people who should not exist on this earth - that the law did not deal with them and somebody had to." Former associates insisted that Cappiau killed for the nationalist cause rather than profit, while the documentary claims official papers link high-ranking Croatian officials to his shooting of the mafia boss.

Cappiau's Croatian-born first wife would not speak about him, and his second - a Dutchwoman - killed herself after his death.

Mr Beacon said: "I was amazed what had happened to him since we were at school. I knew he had gone to Croatia and fought in the military, but this was just mad.

"I see his death as a tragedy. But I think he lived the life he wanted to live."

A Murder Between Friends will be screened on Channel 4 at 7.30pm on 29 August.