Carver sc-5

by Tom Cain

  Carver raised his hands palms out, appeasingly.

  ‘S’all right,’ he said. ‘We’ll be moving along. D’you happen to know the way to Centre Court?’ He grinned stupidly. ‘We have ama-a-azing seats.’

  ‘That’s the way out, mate,’ said one of the players in an Aussie accent, pointing at a door on the far side of the room. ‘Up the stairs. Out the door at the top. You’ll be right opposite the court. Time to go.’

  ‘But you can stay,’ said the other player, giving Alix a cheeky grin.

  She gave him a withering stare.

  Carver took her hand and said, ‘Come on, darling. I need another drink.’

  They followed the tennis-player’s instructions and found themselves back out on St Mary’s Walk, just another couple in the crowd. It took a few minutes to make their way round to the debenture holders’ entrance.

  ‘I’ll see you later,’ Alix said, giving Carver’s arm a squeeze.

  ‘I’ll call you,’ he said.

  Carver followed her as she went off towards Zorn’s seats. Ahmad Razzaq was still there. Dmytryk Azarov was still there.

  Malachi Zorn, however, was gone.

  74

  Carver ran like hell, racing back down the stairs, out of Centre Court and back across the Tea Lawn to the nearest exit gate. As he came out on to Church Road he heard police sirens in the distance, but getting louder. By now the carnage in the tunnel must have been discovered. He could imagine the panic as Wimbledon’s officials tried to work out how to respond. Should they carry on as normal, with the possibility of a gunman on the loose, or terminate proceedings for the day, risking panic as tens of thousands of fearful spectators tried to leave the grounds?

  Not his problem. And at least it would keep the police fully occupied while he got on with his business. If he could get on with it.

  He speed-dialled Schultz as he ran across Church Road between the crawling lines of departing spectators and homeward-bound commuters and dashed into the car park.

  ‘Any sign of Zorn?’

  ‘No, boss.’

  ‘Let me know if you see anything.’

  ‘Haven’t you got him in view?’

  ‘Lost him… long story.’

  The fractional silence before Schultz next spoke was enough to tell Carver how unimpressed the big sergeant major was by that news. ‘So what do you want us to do?’

  ‘Nothing. Just keep your eyes open. The moment you see anything, let me know.’

  ‘Right, boss.’

  Carver could see his Transit up ahead. But there was no sign of Zorn’s Bentley. ‘What’s the traffic like there?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s moving,’ said Schultz. ‘I mean, it’s not going quick, but it’s moving.’

  ‘Shit.’ He didn’t want Zorn in a moving vehicle. He wanted him stuck in a traffic jam, going nowhere.

  ‘OK. Keep this line open. If you see anything, shout.’

  Carver did a quick calculation. From the moment he met Alix outside Centre Court to the time he saw Zorn’s empty seat couldn’t have been more than five minutes. Unless Zorn had decided to leave at the precise moment Alix saw the Chinese, he was unlikely to have had more than a two- or three-minute head start. Unlike Carver, he would not have run to his car. Nor could Zorn have done what Carver did next.

  He opened up the rear doors of the Transit and leapt up into the cargo bay. A Honda CRF250X trailbike, a skinny, long-limbed red whippet of a machine capable of racing over virtually any terrain, from the wilderness to the urban jungle, was standing there with a helmet hung from its handlebars. A gun was clipped to its body, just ahead of where Carver’s right knee would be resting. A grenade was clipped to the left.

  Carver pulled on the helmet, released the clips that held the bike to the floor of the van, pressed the ignition button, and drove the bike straight out the back of the van. Its shock-absorbers easily handled the impact as it landed on the grass outside, and then it spun on a sixpence as Carver pointed it towards the direction in which his quarry was travelling. But he didn’t head for the car park exit on to Church Road. Instead he revved the engine to a furiously loud chainsaw buzz as he steered between the lines of parked vehicles, racing over the grass, dodging pedestrians, squeezing so tightly between cars that his handlebars seemed to brush the paint-work on either side; all the time following the line of the road and keeping one eye out for any sign of Malachi Zorn.

  Next door to the debenture holders’ car park was an area given over to the marquees used for corporate hospitality. Carver kept going, ignoring the outraged shouts of drunken businessmen as the nimble Honda zipped between the huge white tents. A man in a waiter’s uniform emerged from one of them, pushing a trolley laden with crates of empty wine bottles. He looked up in wide-eyed terror as Carver bore down on him, and let go of the trolley, which tipped over, spilling crates and bottles across Carver’s path. He slalomed and skidded through the sudden avalanche of glass and plastic, fighting to retain control as the rear wheel spun against the grass, before rocketing forward again as it regained traction.

  He passed the last tent and headed into another one of the giant car parks, turning towards the exit this time and riding past a line of cars patiently waiting to leave, before forcing his way through the exit and left on to the road. As he passed the end of the tournament grounds, the road rose again up towards St Mary’s Church. The traffic was beginning to move a little faster. Carver swept past the church on to a road that ran between ranks of large suburban houses — hiding behind high brick walls, thick shrubs and trees, as if concealing their cosy, complacent prosperity from the passing hordes. He peered ahead, trying to spot the dove-grey Bentley. No joy. Then he heard a voice in his ear: ‘I’ve got visual contact, boss. He’s turning into Southside Common. Got to be less than two hundred metres away from me, maybe one fifty. What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Let him get closer. Jam the road. Then wait for my signal. On my way…’

  ‘Got it, boss.’

  By Carver’s reckoning he was about four hundred metres from the turn into Southside Common. He needed to be there fast: fifteen seconds, twenty at most. He upped his pace still further, running flat out between the lines of traffic. Up ahead a bus had stopped, blocking the cars behind it and bringing the traffic to a crawl. Carver didn’t hesitate. He mounted the opposite pavement and kept moving, dodging metal bollards, waste-paper bins and another bus stop, muttering, ‘Sorry,’ as a mother pushing a stroller screamed and scrambled herself and her baby out of his way. On the far side of the bus the road was a little clearer, and Carver swung back down on to the tarmac. The houses on either side of the road were getting much smaller: little terraced cottages with lines of shops, galleries and estate agents scattered between them. He swung right, across a mini-roundabout and on to the crowded high street of Wimbledon Village, cutting up a yummy mummy in a BMW X5 and receiving a loud blare of the horn in exchange.

  Almost there. He could yet make it. But only if Schultz and his mate did their bit.

  75

  Schultz spoke to Cripps. ‘You hear that, Kev? Get to work, son. Just act like a twat. Shouldn’t be difficult.’

  ‘Ha-ha! I’m on it.’

  Southside Common is a two-way street. For much of its length parking is allowed on either one or the other side of the road, but never both. So the traffic is inevitably slowed somewhat, as it has to swing first one way and then the other to get round the parked cars which form a series of bottlenecks. Cripps was halfway along one of these bottlenecks. And now he was going to put a cork in it.

  Cripps looked in his rear-view mirror at the line of traffic coming towards him from behind. He could just see the Bentley, five cars back.

  Another line of traffic was coming towards him in the opposite direction, slowing down to allow for the narrowed road where Cripps and the other cars were parked.

  There were no obvious gaps in either line.

  Cripps started his engine and signalled right. Without waiting for an
y response, he then swung the Mazda out into the traffic. The two cars nearest him slammed on their brakes. They came to a halt, barely a hand’s breath away from either side of Cripps, who had now got his car almost broadside across the road. The cars behind them braked, bumped into one another, blew their horns and flashed their lights. In a matter of a few seconds, a calm and steady flow of traffic had been reduced to chaos. Cripps grinned sheepishly at the drivers on either side of him and mouthed the word, ‘Sorr-eee…’ Then he put the car into reverse and attempted a three-point turn. Except that the road was too narrow and the cars around him too close to allow it.

  So now he started shuffling the car back and forth, nodding idiotically at the driver in the car closest to him, who was screaming, ‘Turn the fucking wheel!’ through his windscreen and miming extravagant turning gestures. Cripps just ignored him, shuffling his car back and forth so that neither he nor anyone else could get anywhere.

  In the Bentley, the chauffeur turned round to Malachi Zorn and said, ‘Sorry about this, sir. Some idiot’s trying to turn round in the middle of the road. Shouldn’t be long, and we’ll be on our way.’

  Carver sped past dinky little restaurants for ladies who lunched, and fancy fashion boutiques for those who shopped. He ignored two red lights on pedestrian crossings and left a trail of startled, angry citizens in his wake. Up ahead he saw the Wimbledon war memorial, an obelisk topped by a cross that stood by the left-hand turn on to Southside Common. A line of cars was waiting to make the turn, but no one was moving. The traffic had come to a grinding halt. Carver kept going past the cars, barely slowing at all. He bore left past the memorial. The common was almost upon him. Time to get things moving.

  One of the drivers being blocked by Kevin Cripps had got out of his car, and was walking angrily towards the Mazda. Cripps watched him come, smiling at the thought of the shock the man would get if he tried to pick a fight. Then he heard a voice in his ear.

  ‘This is Carver. Move!’

  Now Cripps turned the wheel. In a couple of seconds he had floored the gas, turned hard right, and was racing away down the road, missing Carver by millimetres as he came the other way, gunning his bike down the middle of the road.

  Schultz narrowed his eyes as the traffic started to move. In his hand he held a detonator switch, connected to the wire that led to the Krakatoa. One car came past the empty space where the Mazda had been. Then two… three… four… now he could see the Bentley. It was nosing forward cautiously, the chauffeur conscious of both the bulk and value of the car he was driving. The last thing he wanted to do was scratch the bodywork.

  Now the Bentley was almost filling Schultz’s line of sight.

  Schultz pressed the switch.

  The high-explosive powder blew, destroying the grey plastic canister. At the same time, the intensely focused heat and power of the blast worked a terrible magic on the copper disc, transforming it into a slug of near-molten metal that speared through the air and hit the front of the Bentley with the force of an artillery shell. It punched a hole the size of a fist in the car’s side-panel, then smashed into the engine with a brutal power that instantly reduced a marvel of precision engineering to mere shrapnel and scrap metal.

  The shock waves from the blast ripped through the car, shattering every window.

  The Bentley was stopped dead in its tracks. The car behind ran straight into it, causing a slow-motion pile-up as it, too, was rear-ended. The cars coming the other way had also stopped again, to the sound of more screeching brakes and crashing metalwork.

  Schultz gave a nod of appreciation at the effect of his work. Then he got up from the park bench and calmly walked away. As he went he switched calls to another line.

  ‘Ambulance,’ he said. ‘Now.’

  *

  Carver reached down and released the gun that was clipped to the side of his bike. His eyes were fixed on the Bentley just a few metres away. The chauffeur was slumped over the wheel, unconscious, but there was movement in the back of the car. Carver slowed, then braked to a halt as he came alongside the Bentley’s passenger compartment. He could see Zorn quite clearly through the shattered window. He looked dazed, but he was pulling himself together, shuffling along the rear seat, reaching for the door handle, trying to get out of the car. Carver stuck his gun-hand through the window. He took careful, considered aim. And then, as Zorn shouted, ‘Please! No! Don’t!’ he fired.

  And then, for good measure, he unclipped the grenade, pulled the pin and threw that in as well.

  The bright yellow emergency ambulance had been waiting at the far end of Murray Road, about five hundred metres from the crash. The moment the driver got the signal from Schultz, he turned on the siren and flashing blue lights and sped away up the road, across the Ridgeway towards Southside Common. Estimated time of arrival: a little over thirty seconds.

  Carver had the bike moving before the grenade blew. The blast went off behind him as he gunned the bike across the road, between the trees that bordered the common and on to the open grassland beyond. The terrain was made for a trailbike, and the Honda sped away with the enthusiasm of a racehorse given its head and pointed at the finishing line.

  For a good fifteen seconds, no one dared get out of their cars. Then the first door opened and a balding middle-aged man climbed out. Tentatively, looking from side to side as if he feared some new threat might suddenly appear, he made his way towards the crippled Bentley. With nervous darts of his head he looked at the mangled bonnet and engine compartment, and the driver still motionless at the wheel. He bent down to peer at the back passenger seats. He took one look at the blood-drenched body and the gore that the grenade had spattered all over the creamy leather seats. And then he wrenched his body to one side, bent almost double and threw up all over the road.

  The man was still standing by the Bentley, dazed by the shock of what he had seen, when the ambulance arrived. He was ushered to one side by paramedics, who immediately forced their way into the car and removed Zorn’s inert, blood-soaked body, placing it on a stretcher and wheeling it to the ambulance. The driver came next.

  The paramedics worked very fast. They did not seem to be too interested in the finer points of patient care. They just got the two victims into the back of their ambulance as quickly as possible and then set off again — lights flashing, siren wailing — so that they had been and gone within little more than a minute of the crash taking place. By the time the fire and police teams got there, the car was empty.

  Malachi Zorn had just vanished from the face of the earth.

  76

  Parkview Hospital, Wimbledon

  Under any normal circumstances, the victim of a violent, potentially fatal attack on Southside Common would be taken three miles across the South London suburbs to St George’s Hospital, Tooting. A teaching hospital that has won national awards for its standards of care, St George’s has an accident and emergency department that sees around a hundred thousand patients a year. It is open every hour of every day, has a resuscitation area for critically injured patients, and is staffed by four consultants, forty junior doctors and around fifty nursing staff. But when the ambulance carrying Malachi Zorn raced away from the scene of the assassination attempt, it did not drive east towards that waiting A amp; E. Instead it double-backed across Wimbledon Common, before turning north and then dashing less than a mile towards a smaller, private hospital that had no emergency facilities at all. It did, however, boast a much more significant speciality: extreme discretion. And in the case of Malachi Zorn, a billionaire financier attacked by an impromptu black ops team unofficially commissioned by Her Majesty’s government, privacy and silence were far more significant priorities than quality of treatment.

  By the time that the ambulance drove through the hospital entrance and into a forecourt hidden from inquisitive passing eyes by a tall, thick hedge, Carver had already arrived, parked his bike and was waiting to greet it. He followed the paramedics as they rolled the gurney carrying Zorn’s blood-soaked
body across the tarmac, past the plain-clothed policemen standing guard by the front door, and into the hospital itself. There was no one at all in the reception area, except for a single doctor. He was dressed in a suit, rather than scrubs, and he was not waiting to carry out a swift examination of his patient’s injuries, as one might have expected in a case of this kind. There was no attempt to administer drugs and fluids or blast the motionless figure back to life with shocks from defibrillator pads. Instead he just raised the blanket that had been covering Zorn’s face, gave a quick, brisk, businesslike nod and said. ‘Take him to Room 68, top floor,’ before following the gurney, the paramedics and Carver into the lift.

  The atmosphere was oddly calm as they rose three floors to the top of the building, just the usual mix of self-conscious silence and uneasy attempts to avoid one another’s eyes. Then the doors opened, and the doctor stepped out first with a brisk ‘This way,’ as he strode away down the corridor. Room 68 was at the end, occupying one corner of the building. It had that three-star-hotel look so beloved by private hospitals: all pastel walls and patterned curtains, with two visitors’ chairs and a flat-screen TV on the wall opposite the bed. The chairs were occupied, and the TV was on as Zorn was rolled into the room, lifted off the gurney and placed upon the bed, still in his bloodied clothes, uncovered by any blanket.

  ‘Ah,’ said Jack Grantham, switching off the TV and getting to his feet, ‘the moment of truth.’

  He stepped close to Carver, and in little more than a whisper said, ‘Six bodies in a tunnel underneath Centre Court, and a home-made bazooka disturbing the peace of the leafy, Tory-voting suburbs. That’s a bit extreme, don’t you think? Even by your standards.’

  Then, as the paramedics left the room, Grantham turned back towards the bed, assumed the cheerful demeanour of a drinks-party host greeting his guests, and said, ‘Good afternoon, doctor, my name’s Grantham. I work for the Secret Intelligence Service.’