by Cain, Tom
‘You gotta be kidding me. Peck and the two women were already dead when my men got there.’
‘Then there won’t be any difficulty proving that your weapons weren’t responsible. In the meantime, please just think of the Special Relationship and let our police do their job.’
‘Special Relationship my ass,’ said John D. Giammetti.
And so Carver had the CIA to thank for the fact that he had already driven to the discreet, private mews where Cripps had rented a garage for the day and, unobserved by any cameras, moved Grantham from the Range Rover to the old Mazda; taken the Mazda out of the garage; put the Range Rover in its place and then driven away in the Mazda before anyone even began to link the mysterious disappearance of Britain’s top spy to the simultaneous vanishing act performed by the Second Man.
It took time to ascertain that Peck’s car was missing; more time to establish that it was a Range Rover, and still more to get the registration number. Then the car’s journey from Abbey Road to the mews had to be painstakingly pieced together from myriad traffic cameras. The minor residential road off which the mews ran was not fully covered by cameras, so it took time to ascertain that the Range Rover had turned into it but never come out, and then to confirm that it had not been parked on that street and so must have been concealed in the mews.
Even when that had been done, police were obliged to track down the owners of five garages, each of which was advertised on the internet as being available for daily rental. Two were at their properties, one was away on holiday in Miami, a fourth had gone racing at Sandown and the fifth was in hospital having an operation on his gall bladder. Four of them knew nothing about a black Range Rover: the fifth was under anaesthetic.
So then all the garages had to be opened and the Range Rover was found in the garage belonging to the man who’d gone to the races. He had enjoyed a liquid lunch, as plenty do on such occasions, and found it hard to recollect much about the customer who’d rented the garage, except that he’d paid cash for the whole day, up front, and he certainly hadn’t been driving a Range Rover.
‘What was he driving, then?’ the garage owner was asked.
‘I dunno. It was red, I remember that. And old, very old . . . an 02 reg, I think. It was one of those Japanese makes. A Honda, maybe . . . or a Toyota? Basically a bloody boring, old, red Japanese saloon.’
Images were examined from the traffic cameras covering the main roads surrounding the mews during the fifteen minutes after the Range Rover was lost from sight. A number of different cars were found that matched the age, colour and rough description provided by the garage owner. Each car was examined in detail and drivers who were not male, Caucasian and aged thirty-five to fifty-five were discarded. That left three possibles.
The owners of all three cars were contacted. Two were able to vouch for their movements throughout the day. The third was called Kevin Cripps. He was rung on both his home and mobile numbers without success. When the location of his mobile was tracked, however, it was shown to be somewhere in Shoreham-by-Sea. Further investigation revealed that Cripps’s credit card had been used to purchase a railway ticket from Victoria to Shoreham shortly before nine that morning. So he could not possibly have been the driver.
And then an officer carrying out routine checks on all the possible drivers noticed something interesting about Kevin Cripps.
He was a former lance corporal in the Royal Marines.
95
THROUGH ALL THIS time Carver was driving south, first through South London, then the prosperous towns of north-east Surrey, and finally into the Sussex countryside. From time to time there would be a thump from the boot as Grantham tried to make his presence felt, but by and large he was undisturbed.
Carver’s main priority was just holding himself together until he reached his destination. Images of Alix’s mutilated body kept flashing, unbidden, into his mind. Great waves of emotion were rising up inside of him, tearing at his guts, ripping the breath from his lungs and filling his eyes with tears. The slightest thing could set him off: a pretty blonde on the street who just for a fraction of a second reminded him of Alix; a model on a billboard whose smile was a little like hers; a half-heard song from a passing car window. He needed to regain control of his thoughts and emotions, so he made a conscious effort to process the events that had brought him to this particular point. If he could look at the facts objectively, no matter how disturbing they were, perhaps he could come to terms with them.
In trying to save six people from violent attack, he had condemned far more people to death. By refusing to kill a helpless woman who was his enemy, he had condemned the woman he loved. Maybe this was karma: some kind of payback for all the violence and death he had doled out over the years.
Looking back, it seemed to Carver that, for as long as he could remember, he’d spent too much time doing things in which no man with any conscience could possibly take any pleasure. He’d done a lot of harm to an awful lot of people. Of course, it was satisfying to know that the vast majority of them had deserved it. He’d tried to make the world a marginally better or safer place, even if there was always someone else coming down the line determined to make it worse again. And it had been exciting sometimes. Carver was like anyone else who made their living doing something dangerous: he never felt more alive than when he was risking death.
He’d been lucky, too, he couldn’t deny it. He’d put himself in harm’s way time and again, yet somehow the Reaper had never come calling. He’d made a lot of money without ever having to work a regular week, spend all day in an office or grovel to a boss. On balance, as lives went, it hadn’t been a total waste of time.
He wondered, too, about the future. What would happen when a police officer, searching through Trent Peck’s flat, came across the discarded windcheater? Carver was reasonably sure that they would find the head cam. But how long would it take for anyone to work out what it was, still less examine its contents? And then what? The material that first Random and then he had recorded would answer any questions anyone might have about how and why the riot had occurred and what had led to the supermarket massacre. But it would take police officers of extraordinarily strong, incorruptible character to act upon the information revealed in the interrogations of Bakunin and Grantham.
If they decided that the two confessions had been extracted under duress, then the whole thing could be buried and no one would ever know what had really happened. On the other hand, if they had the courage to do their jobs properly, investigate in full and make the findings of their investigations public, the government was doomed. Cameron Young would end up in jail and the Prime Minister would be lucky not to join him. He would, at the very least, suffer lifelong disgrace. But then, inevitably, Mark Adams would triumph at the next election, and Britain would discover, once and for all, whether he was their saviour or their tyrant.
What was for the best? Carver was grateful that it was not his decision to make. He had found out what he wanted to know. He had put the information out there. From now on, it was someone else’s problem.
He passed a road sign that read, ‘Shoreham 6’. Not long now.
At Kennington police station, Keane was trying to make sense of the information she had just been given. She went on her computer and called Shoreham-by-Sea up on a map. She looked at the screen for less than ten seconds.
And then the penny dropped and she realized precisely why the Second Man was meeting Kevin Cripps at that particular seaside town.
96
THE DAY HAD been reasonably fine up to now, but the rain started falling again as Carver turned off the dual carriageway, drove down a narrow, unmarked road, passed a series of warehouses used as office or industrial spaces, and pulled up in a small visitor’s car park outside a building that was a fine example of 1930s Art Deco-inspired modernism. Its lines were sleek. It was painted in pure, simple white, albeit that the purity was somewhat marred by the rust stains, brought on by the salty sea air, that spread from th
e metal fittings attached to the building, like the railings around the top of the walls and the loudspeakers wired to either side.
This was the heart of a facility that was the oldest of its kind in the entire United Kingdom: Shoreham Airport.
Kevin Cripps was waiting to meet him.
‘She’s over there,’ he said, pointing to the ranks of private aircraft lined up on the apron. ‘Second row back, third from the end. I’ve got the key and, oh yeah, here’s the other thing you asked for.’
He handed over a surprisingly insignificant starter key, and a blue object that looked like a car-seat cushion, with a strap at each corner. It was an emergency parachute, designed for aerobatics pilots who found themselves in trouble and needed to bail out, fast.
‘Thanks,’ said Carver. ‘You got the money?’
‘Every penny.’ Cripps grinned. ‘And I even got the car back, and all. Oh, while I remember . . . the way the wind is blowing, you’ll want to use this runway, right here.’ He pointed out across the field to a point just beyond the lines of planes. ‘You’ll be starting at this end, so you shouldn’t have any trouble getting there. Then just turn the plane into the wind, slam on the power and you’re off.’
‘It’s a bit more complicated than that, but thanks. The plane’s ready to go, right?’
‘Absolutely. Had her filled and pre-flight checked by the bloke who sold her. He even gave me a little test flight, just to prove she was in perfect working order, nice little spin round the airfield.’
‘You’d better help me on with this,’ Carver said, holding up the parachute.
Neither man was a qualified pilot, but both had their parachute wings, so Cripps was swift and efficient as he helped Carver into the harness.
The job had just been completed when Carver heard a sound with which he was becoming altogether too familiar: the sirens of approaching police cars.
‘Looks like I’m going to need the car a little bit longer,’ Carver said. ‘Thanks for everything.’ He held out his hand.
Cripps grinned, held out his and was taken completely by surprise when Carver swung his right arm up and hit him hard the special forces way, with the heel of his hand, just to the side of his chin. Cripps reeled with the blow and Carver grabbed his shoulders.
‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘You bought the plane for me in all innocence. You had no idea why I wanted it. When I got here, I attacked you and overpowered you. Like this . . .’
He let go of Cripps’s arms, swung his leg round and tripped him over. Cripps lay sprawled on the ground as Carver got into the car and drove straight at the low metal fence that separated the car park from the apron. The Mazda smashed through it and Carver drove straight towards the nine-year-old Cessna 172 that he had found online that morning and then asked Cripps to buy.
Shoreham is only a very minor airport and on a cold, grey afternoon in November, with the light failing as the rain sets in, traffic is almost non-existent. A single Shell petrol bowser was filling up one of the aircraft about fifty metres from Carver’s craft, but that aside there were no signs of life anywhere.
Apart, that is, from the police cars that could be seen coming through a gate on the very far side of the airfield, racing in Carver’s direction.
He got out of the car, opened the boot and slung Grantham over his shoulder, noticing only too late the damp, acrid wet patch at the front of Grantham’s trousers that was now pressing against the shoulder of Trent Peck’s fancy leather flying jacket. Carver opened the door of the plane and hefted Grantham on to the passenger seat, where he lay, wriggling feebly, until Carver sat him up and strapped him in.
Then he took his place in the pilot’s seat.
Carver had never in his life flown an aircraft. But as the 9/11 bombers had demonstrated, it was possible to do a great deal with an aircraft without qualifying as a pilot. And he didn’t need to do much beyond getting this thing up in the air and pointing it in the right direction.
One of the tasks he had been undertaking as he’d sat in front of his iPad, eating his porridge and chocolate bars, was to look at some of the very many clips on YouTube showing the pre-flight and take-off routines for a Cessna 172, which has been built in greater numbers than any other aircraft on earth. He had also downloaded and worked on a flight simulator. He was pleasantly surprised to discover how similar the imitation had been to the real thing. The instrument panel in front of him was entirely familiar, as was the routine.
He pulled the big red fuel-mixture knob fully out. He pulled the throttle out a little less than a centimeter. He turned the battery and the fuel pump on, let it run for a while, and turned it off again.
Then he turned the key, the engine caught at the first attempt, and the propellor started whirling round in front of him.
Carver pushed the fuel-mixture knob back in, made sure the flaps were up, and moments later the plane was taxiing towards the runway.
Up ahead Carver could see the lights of the police cars cutting across the grass outfield. He presumed they were aiming for the middle of the runway, trying to head him off. They’d probably be trying to radio him, too, telling him to turn off his engine. But the radio wasn’t on, and anyway he didn’t have a headset, so the hell with that.
He had to admit that his steering could do with a little refinement. The plane slewed around the apron like a Saturday-night drunk, but it was only a matter of seconds before he found himself at the start of the runway, pointing directly at the lights of the oncoming cars, and maxing the throttle.
And then he noticed that he didn’t just have cars to worry about. A police helicopter, stationed at the airfield, was rising into the air from an apron to the left of the runway. It hovered for a second, maybe twenty metres above the ground, and then darted to its right.
Now Carver was picking up speed.
The police cars were coming straight at him.
The helicopter was cutting across his path.
Aircraft speed is measured the same way as the speed of ships: in knots. Carver had memorized the take-off speed of a Cessna 172, which was sixty-four knots, or a little less than seventy-five miles per hour. From what he could gather from his research this morning, it took between ten and fifteen seconds for a plane like his to get up to that speed.
He had been heading down the runway for eight seconds. The cars were coming towards him at least as fast as he was heading towards them. Call it an impact speed of a hundred and fifty miles per hour; enough to write off anyone involved in the collision.
If the helicopter were to crash into him in mid-air, everyone in both crafts would certainly be killed, as might anyone caught beneath the falling debris.
The oncoming cars were now so close he was dazzled by their headlights.
The helicopter was buzzing around so insistently its engine was audible over the racket of his own.
Someone had to back down within the next second or they’d all be dead.
And Carver kept going. He didn’t slow down. He didn’t veer off course in any way. Because he knew he had a single decisive tactical advantage over everyone else on or over the airfield.
He really didn’t give a damn if he crashed.
They did. They wanted to go home for their tea that night. That was why the stream of cars divided to the left and right of the Cessna. The helicopter veered away. Carver pulled on the joystick and the plane rose up into the air and headed straight ahead, over the airfield and the town and out across the English Channel beyond.
97
THE AIRSPACE OVER southern England is managed by the London Area Control Centre, at Swanwick, Hants. It handles something in the region of 5,500 flights every single day of the year. Any international flight can only take place after a detailed flight plan has been filed and approved. Any flight without such a plan immediately attracts the attention of the authorities, even if it is, for the time being, heading away from the English mainland. If the pilot does not respond to attempts to make radio contact, then the control ce
ntre contacts the RAF base at Coningsby, Lincolnshire, and declares a ‘QRA situation’.
The acronym stands for Quick Reaction Alert and its immediate effect is to scramble a flight of three Typhoon jets belonging to RAF 3 (Fighter) Squadron. A Typhoon can travel at a top speed of 1,400 miles per hour. The distance between Coningsby and Shoreham-by-Sea, as the crow flies, is a little over two hundred miles. A fighter travelling through congested airspace cannot travel quite as directly as a crow. But even so, it can catch up with a Cessna 172 heading slowly south-west on a bearing straight down the Channel towards the Atlantic Ocean very quickly indeed. Its problem is knowing what to do when it gets there.
The Cessna 172’s standard cruise speed is around a hundred and twenty knots, but Carver had throttled back to less than seventy-five. This had given the RAF pilots a problem. They couldn’t just shoot him down, because he had the Head of the Secret Intelligence Service on board. On the other hand they couldn’t fly alongside him because they simply couldn’t go that slowly without stalling their planes. They were therefore having to loop around him in figures of eight, which was far from ideal when flying in close formation through weather conditions that combined low cloud, high wind, driving rain and appalling visibility.
The rain was beating so hard against the glass the wipers weren’t getting rid of it, just moving it around. Carver’s personal ‘Learn to fly in a day’ campaign hadn’t got as far as finding the heater controls – even if there were any – so he was seriously bloody cold. There was absolutely no way he was ever going to bring the plane in to land. But for all that, the funny thing was, Carver was in pretty good shape.
He felt as though he was, to some degree at least, in control of his own destiny. And in the end, that was probably the best you could hope for.