Revenger (29 page)

67

CARVER SPENT A
couple of hours online, planning his escape strategy. He looked at a specific category of ‘For Sale’ ads, and watched YouTube for more than thirty minutes, taking notes on his phone as he did so. He downloaded and used an iPad app. He made a separate shopping list of items on his phone. As he worked, he ate his chocolate, laying down energy reserves for the day ahead.

Celina Novak had returned to her hotel. In due course she would be given the information she needed to carry out the hit on Carver. He was the prime target: so far as her employer was concerned, Alexandra Petrova Vermulen was a secondary consideration. That was not how Novak saw it, but for now she was willing to bide her time. And so, feeling a relaxed, luxuriant sense of anticipation about the day to come, she enjoyed one of her shortest, but best night’s sleep in a very long while.

At five o’clock in the morning, London time, it was six in Puerto Banus and eight in Moscow. Olga Zhukovskaya had decided that it
was
prudent to put in a call to the FSB, the security service of the Russian Federation that was, to all intents and purposes, the KGB under another, post-Soviet name. A situation had arisen in which one former agent might be killing another. She doubted that would cause any great concern in the FSB headquarters on Lubyanka Square, but it never hurt to make sure. In her time, Zhukovskaya had risen to the position of Deputy Director of the FSB. One of her immediate staff had been an ambitious young officer called Slava Gusev. Recognizing both his talent and his sharp elbows she had given him a series of speedy promotions. Today Gusev was the agency’s Director. He had not forgotten his former mentor, so when Zhukovskaya put in a call to his office he took it. And when she told him what Novak had been commissioned to do, named the targets, and revealed who had ordered the hit, she had his full attention.

‘I must admit that I had underestimated the ferocity of this power-struggle in London,’ Gusev said. ‘Clearly we must commit more resources to monitoring and if possible influencing the situation. For now, though, my only concern lies in the fact that Petrova is now an American citizen, and a very well-connected one at that. She and Carver are personal friends of President Roberts. Do we really want Roberts to think that we were responsible, even at one remove, for their deaths?’

‘I would look at it in another way, Slava,’ Zhukovskaya replied. ‘If they die in London, and their deaths were commissioned by a prominent Englishman, that will anger Roberts even more, driving a wedge between the British and Americans. And how many years have we spent trying to do that?’

‘An excellent point. Very well, then, how do you think we should proceed?’

‘As always, information is power. The more we know, the better we will be able to manipulate events to our advantage. And so, this is what I would propose . . .’

Zhukovskaya laid out a plan that avoided the need for an immediate commitment to any particular course, thereby retaining the
FSB
’s flexibility to respond to changing events and maximize opportunities as they arose. Gusev made a few small adjustments of his own and then declared himself satisfied. Within a matter of minutes the appropriate orders were on their way to the FSB’s London station.

Walcott only realized that he had fallen asleep when his telephone extension rang and he awoke to find that he was slumped on his desk with his head in his arms. He looked at his watch. It was ten to six. He picked up the handset. ‘Uh-huh . . .’

‘Is that Inspector Keane?’

‘Do I sound like a woman to you?’

‘Oh, sorry, well who am I speaking to, then?’

‘Walcott. I’m her DS. How can I help?’

‘Well, I’m calling from the incident line. I was just checking the messages and there’s a guy who says he saw that Second Man bloke yesterday evening. He’s a waiter, and one of his customers exactly matched the description.’

‘Give me his details then, and I’ll get someone to speak to him.’

‘I will . . . but before I do, there’s something else you need to know. The reason the waiter remembered this bloke is because he was sat with someone famous, having dinner.’

‘Famous? What, like a celebrity?’

‘Sort of . . . It was Mark Adams. You know, the politician. The Second Man was his guest at dinner.’

Walcott groaned. That was all he needed – the most controversial politician getting messed up in the investigation. Then a happy thought occurred to him. There was no way he could go charging off after Adams. This was way above his pay-grade. Even Keane wasn’t in any position to haul Adams in for questioning. It would have to go to Commander Stamford at the very least, almost certainly to the Commissioner of the Met, possibly to the Home Secretary himself. And from Stamford on up, none of them would appreciate being woken up just so they could be dumped in the middle of a political shit storm.

He’d wait till Keane got in, tell her and let her deal with it. And having come to that decision, Walcott laid his head back down on his arms. He told himself it was just for a minute or two . . .

68

IT WAS JUST
past six in London. Carver was clear in his mind now about what he had to do to get out, but he needed a little help. There was one man he knew he could count on, an ex-SBS lance-corporal called Kevin Cripps who’d served with Schultz and been tight with him afterwards. It took a while for the call to be answered, and Carver was starting to think that Cripps was off somewhere working as a mercenary or bodyguard when he heard the incoherent grunt of a man woken from a very deep sleep.

‘Morning, Cripps . . . it’s Carver.’

‘Unnhh, morning, boss . . . fuck, me head hurts, and me guts.’

‘Bad night, huh?’

‘You heard about Schultz? Fuckin’ terrible news . . .’

‘Yeah, I know.’

‘Me and some lads went out, give him a proper send-off . . . It was unreal, you know. I only spoke to him yesterday – he said he was having a drink with you, as it happens. S’pose that never happened, right?’

‘No, it did. I saw him . . .’

Carver said nothing, waiting for the penny to drop through the thick alcoholic fog filling Cripps’s head.

‘Oh fuck,’ Cripps groaned. ‘Was you there, with him . . . ?’

‘Yeah, that’s why I was calling.’

‘What happened? I mean, I heard all the bollocks on the news. But what’s the truth?’

‘We were under siege in that supermarket and we did what we had to do to survive.’

‘’Course you did . . . so what happened to Schultz?’

‘He ran out of bullets. There were too many of them and he only had one working arm.’

‘But he went down fighting, yeah?’

‘What do you think?’

‘Right . . . and then you got stuck into the fucking bastards.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Good for you, boss. They killed your mate. You killed them. So . . . what can I do for you?’

‘Do you still have that old Mazda?’

Cripps laughed. ‘Yeah, just about, but it’s well knackered. I mean, it goes all right, but it’s not exactly a luxury ride.’

‘Doesn’t matter. I’ll give you ten grand for it.’

‘That’s a lot more than it’s worth.’

‘The money’s not just for the car. There’s something else I need you to do for me.’

‘What’s that, then?’

‘Shit, shower, shave and put on a proper suit. Then go to Victoria Station and take a train to Shoreham-by-Sea. I need you there by half nine.’

‘What the hell’s in Shoreham-by-Sea?’

It took Carver another ten minutes to tell Cripps what he’d find that was so important in a sleepy little suburb of Brighton, down on the Sussex coast. He talked through the way the financial transaction would work, and what little extras Cripps had to take care of.

Before they hung up, Cripps asked. ‘So where do you want the Mazda?’

‘Anywhere near Victoria will do. Text me the location. Leave the keys in the exhaust and if there’s a ticket to pay, just put that in the glove compartment.’

‘Got it,’ said Cripps. ‘Right then, I’d better get going.’

When the call was over Carver swapped his black body warmer for an old windcheater someone had left on a hook by the front door. It was as miserable and unappealing as everything else in the place: a pallid sky-blue fabric, with a coating of grime that added a depressing grey top note: in short, just the kind of garment a man who looked the way Carver now did would wear. He transferred his wallet, phone and the head cam into its pockets, then screwed up a Tesco shopping bag and shoved that in, too.

He didn’t want to be weighted down by the satchel and its contents, so he reset the iPad to its factory settings, deleting everything on it, wiped it clean of fingerprints and stuck it in a drawer in the kitchen. Satisfied that he had done everything his plans for the day required, he went into the bedroom and, still fully dressed, with the Glock beside him on the bedside table, lay down for an hour’s sleep, his first in almost twenty-four hours. It was a long way from a proper night’s kip, but it would have to do.

Novak was woken at half past six and told to get ready. Carver had been located. His current location would be virtually impossible to penetrate. But plans were underway to force him to move. He would be driven towards her, just as dogs drive game towards the hunters’ waiting guns. It would not be long now.

69

SHORTLY AFTER SEVEN
o’clock Robbie Bell, who had already been up for over an hour, received a call from Hartley Crewson: ‘I presume you’ve seen the police pictures of the Second Man suspect.’

‘Of course,’ Bell replied. ‘And so will everybody who was in that restaurant last night. I can’t believe the police don’t know that he was sitting at dinner with Mark Adams.’

‘Well, we’ve had one stroke of luck. None of the blogs have picked up on it. There’s not even a grainy photo on Twitter.’

‘Then we need to make the first move. We have to be proactive, contact the police ourselves and then go public as soon as possible.’

‘Agreed. Get on to Adams immediately. Explain the situation. Tell him what has to be done, and then do it fast. You have to call the police before they call you.’

‘What’s your view on Sam himself? It sounds like you want him caught.’

‘Absolutely. I was thinking about it overnight. The fact is, we didn’t have any connection with him, and it was pure bad luck he turned up at your dinner table. The sooner he’s in a
police
cell, the sooner the facts can be independently verified.’

‘So you’re not planning anything more, ah . . . drastic, then?’

‘Good Lord, no!’ Crewson exclaimed. ‘What kind of man do you think I am? The last thing we want is for the public to discover that the prime suspect for the Second Man had dinner with Adams, only for him to turn up dead somewhere. Everyone would immediately blame us. Hell, no . . . I don’t want to harm a hair on that man’s head.’

Bell gave himself two minutes to fix a cappuccino before he called Adams. But before the milk had even stopped frothing, Adams was on the line to him.

‘What are we going to do?’ he asked.

Bell did not need to be told what his boss was referring to. ‘Go to the police immediately. Nip any hint of a conspiracy theory in the bud. Just think what it will look like: you having dinner with the Second Man, cracking open bottles of vintage Bordeaux . . . Well, it looks like a celebration, doesn’t it?’

Adams sounded perturbed. ‘I hear what you’re saying, Robbie, but there are just a couple of problems. For one thing, we don’t know for sure that Sam really was the Second Man. He might just bear an unfortunate resemblance to the real one. And then there’s the whole issue of me, an ex-Para, grassing up another old soldier. All those white working-class males you keep telling me we need to get voting for us won’t take kindly to that at all. From what I can see, there are plenty of people who think he was a hero for standing up to the rioters. If a load of them got killed, too bad; they were asking for it. That’s quite a common view, and I have to say I have some sympathy for it.’

‘Fine, then say so at the appropriate time. But right now we can’t afford to be standing up for him. “Let the courts decide” – that has to be our motto.’

‘I tell you what, though,’ mused Adams, conceding defeat. ‘That Alexandra Vermulen was a stunner. I’ll miss the chance of working with her, I must say.’

‘Maybe you can bring her in when you’re the next Prime
Minister
. . . which you won’t be unless I make the call. So, are we agreed?’

‘Yes, I can see you’re right. Make the call.’

Walcott was filling Keane in on the developments of the past few hours while she stood opposite him, chewing on a piece of toast. Once she was up to speed, he could head home for a very badly needed rest, but he’d saved the big news till last. ‘We got a tip-off, a waiter who works at—’

‘Hold on . . .’ Keane held up a hand. The phone had started ringing halfway through Walcott’s last sentence. She answered it and was astounded to hear Robbie Bell, Mark Adams’s campaign manager, telling her that his boss had been joined at dinner last night by a man introduced to him as ‘Sam’ who had looked exactly like the Second Man picture released by the police.

‘What was he doing at Mr Adams’s table?’ Keane asked.

‘He was invited as the partner of a political consultant from America, with whom Mr Adams was discussing the possibility of raising his profile as an internationally respected statesman on that side of the Atlantic.’

‘So who was this “political consultant”, then?’

‘Her name is Alexandra Vermulen, and she’s currently staying at the Hyde Park Palace Hotel. To the best of my knowledge, the man you want is there with her.’

‘That was Mark Adams’s campaign manager,’ Keane told Walcott a few seconds later. ‘Apparently he had dinner with our suspect last night.’

To her surprise, Walcott did not seem fazed by that extraordinary information. ‘I know. There was a witness. But how come Adams is coming straight to us before we’ve even tried to contact him? Suggests he didn’t have anything to do with the riot.’

‘Or he knows we’re going to find out about the dinner anyway, but this’ll make him look good.’