Carver

by Tom Cain

  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 & 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.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Grantham,’ replied the doctor. ‘I’m Assim. Hmm … your face seems familiar. There was some publicity at the time of your appointment, I believe.’

  Grantham grimaced. ‘Yes, we’re not as secret as we used to be … More’s the pity.’

  Assim frowned inquisitively at the man who had risen to his feet from the second chair, and was now standing at the foot of the bed, tugging nervously at his moustache. ‘And you must be …?’

  ‘Cameron Young. I work for the Prime Minister. Look, can we get on with this, please? I need to report back to Number 10 as soon as possible.’

  ‘This is Carver,’ said Grantham, paying no apparent attention to Young as he completed the introductions.

  ‘So what is your position?’ Assim asked, shaking Carver’s hand.

  ‘Self-employed,’ Carver replied. ‘A private contractor, you might say.’

  ‘I see,’ said Assim. ‘And you are responsible for the fact that Mr Zorn is with us here this afternoon?’

  ‘Yes, he’s here because of me,’ said Carver. ‘But he isn’t Malachi Zorn.’

  77

  * * *

  DR ASSIM LOOKED puzzled. A slow, sly grin spread across Grantham’s face. And the tension on Cameron Young’s face was replaced by a look of appalled surprise.

  ‘What the bloody hell do you mean? Of course it’s Malachi Zorn. Just look at him!’ Young exclaimed.

  ‘All right,’ said Carver, ‘I will.’

  He went to the side of the bed. ‘Malachi Zorn is five feet ten inches tall and weighs around a hundred and seventy-five pounds. Looks about right, wouldn’t you say? He has dark-blond hair: check. He has hazel eyes.’ Carver reached over and lifted an eyelid to reveal a sightless eye. ‘Check. His facial features look remarkably like these ones here.’

  ‘Yes, because he’s Malachi bloody Zorn!’ Young interrupted.

  ‘Except,’ Carver continued, unperturbed, ‘that Malachi Zorn is a lifelong bachelor. He’s never even got engaged, still less married. That means he’s never worn a ring on his wedding finger. So how do you explain this?’

  Carver lifted up the body’s left hand and separated the fourth finger from the others. ‘Look,’ he said.

  ‘Look at what?’ asked Young. ‘It’s a finger, what’s the big deal?’

  ‘Look at the colour of the skin, just here, at the base of the finger. It’s paler than the rest, like skin that’s been covered for
years by a ring. And if you look very closely, you’ll see that the skin is slightly indented, which is what happens when you wear a ring for a long time. Now, the skin is beginning to get some colour, and the indent is much less than it would have been when the ring was first removed, so I’m guessing it’s been a couple of months since he took it off. But even so, this man was married. So he can’t be Malachi Zorn.’

  ‘That’s it?’ asked Young incredulously. ‘That’s your entire reason for thinking this isn’t Zorn? I never heard anything so ridiculous! The whole point of this lunatic exercise was to strike back at Malachi Zorn because – or so you claimed, Grantham – he was a mass-murderer who had wreaked appalling damage on the UK economy. And now you’re telling me that we got the wrong man?’

  ‘I’m not telling you that,’ said Carver. ‘I got the right man. Well, the man I meant to get, anyway. Could you examine his face, please, doctor? Look out for signs of recent plastic surgery.’

  Assim glanced around, seeking confirmation. ‘Go ahead,’ Grantham said.

  The doctor stooped over the head of the supposed Malachi Zorn, and ran his fingers along the hairline, around the right temple, parting the first few strands of hair to reveal the skin beneath. ‘Hmm … very interesting,’ he murmured to himself. He turned on the reading light above the bed to give himself more light. ‘Yes, there is clearly some scarring here,’ he said. ‘And it would be consistent with a temporal incision for an endoscopic rhytidectomy. That’s to say: a mid-face lift.’

  Assim leaned back a fraction, turned his head slightly to one side, and narrowed his eyes, focusing on the man’s nose. He took a tissue from a box beside the bed and rubbed it along an area of the bridge of the nose that had not been spattered with blood. ‘Concealer,’ he said, lifting the tissue to reveal a smear of flesh-coloured make-up. Then he looked again, moving his head to view the nose from a series of different angles before pressing his fingers delicately on the area that he had been examining.

  ‘There’s some very slight residual swelling, as one might expect from surgery carried out four or five months ago,’ Assim said. ‘It’s barely perceptible and the discolouration is very slight, and easily covered up with a minimal amount of make-up. But it’s certainly there.’

  He turned the head to one side and looked behind an ear and underneath the jaw, on both occasions wiping the concealer away to reveal faint scars. ‘Yes, there’s no doubt that this man has undergone a number of surgical procedures. I’d need to X-ray him, of course, to be completely certain. But I would not be surprised to find evidence of work on his jawbone, his chin, the bossing of his skull, his cheekbones and even the orbital rims around his eyes. In each case it would have been possible to reduce the mass of the bone by shaving or grinding it, or to augment and/or reshape a particular bone with fillers and implants of various kinds. Wait a moment …’

  Assim took a look at the crown of the man’s head. ‘Yes, he’s had some hair transplantation, too. It’s really first-class work, so it’s as imperceptible as one can get. But it’s there all right. You might want to get a dentist to take a look at the teeth, too. It’s not my field, of course, but given what else has been done to this man, it’s reasonable to assume that his teeth were included in the overall makeover.’

  ‘Are you telling me that this man, whoever he is, has been given the face of Malachi Zorn?’ Young asked.

  ‘I suppose I am, yes,’ Assim replied.

  Young glared indignantly at Grantham and Carver. ‘And you didn’t see fit to tell me about this deception?’

  ‘It would only have confused matters,’ Grantham said. ‘“Let’s kill the bad guy” might not be a politically acceptable plan, but at least it’s a simple one.’

  ‘Zorn has informers everywhere,’ Carver added. ‘It wouldn’t have bothered him at all if he’d known that the government was helping me kill him, in the belief that the target was genuine. In fact, he’d have been delighted. It would make his death official, which is exactly what he wanted. But if he’d known we’d discovered he was using a double, that would have changed everything.’

  Young ran a hand through his hair and gave a baffled sigh. ‘I’m sorry. Why would it change things?’

  ‘Because Zorn wants the world to think he is dead. But if the victim is just someone who looks very much like Zorn, and we know it, that’s no good to him.’

  ‘Yes, but why is it so important to him to be dead?’

  ‘Because dead men can’t be tried for killing hundreds of people or stealing billions of dollars and pounds. Cops don’t chase dead men. Angry billionaires who’ve just been massively ripped off don’t hire hit men to go after corpses. Dead men are safe.’

  ‘Ah, yes … I see,’ said Young. ‘So now what?’

  ‘Well, the first thing to do is to switch on the television,’ Grantham said.

  The set flickered back to life. It was tuned to Sky News. A banner was rolling across the bottom of the screen. It read, ‘Breaking news: billionaire financier Zorn believed dead in South London attack.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Grantham. ‘Time to send in the troops.’ He took his mobile phone out of his pocket, pressed a button and said, ‘You’re on.’ Then he looked around the room at the other three men and said, ‘Have I forgotten anything?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Carver, ‘why don’t we wake this poor bastard up?’

  78

  * * *

  Wentworth

  THE BLACK-UNIFORMED SAS men slipped over the walls of Malachi Zorn’s rented mansion like vengeful wraiths. Immediately before the start of the operation they had been informed that Zorn was almost certainly the mastermind behind the refinery attack that had killed the Director of Special Forces. He had been responsible for the sudden death of a man who was not only their ultimate commanding officer, but also a former colonel of the regiment. The eight men assigned to capture Zorn were grimly determined to get him by any means possible. And if he happened to get hurt in the process, so much the better.

  The man on screen was a sports reporter. He spent ten months a year covering the various injuries, transfer deals, disciplinary issues and sexual shenanigans with which Premiership footballers filled their days. For two weeks in midsummer he became an instant expert on tennis, reporting on Wimbledon. But now all hell had broken loose in the streets less than a mile from the tournament, and suddenly he’d swapped thigh strains and broken strings for hard-core news reporting.

  ‘I don’t know if you can see behind me the burned-out remains of the Bentley limousine that is believed to have been carrying the controversial American financier Malachi Zorn,’ he was saying.

  ‘Yes, Barry, we can see it,’ said the newsreader in the studio. ‘But is there any more information about what actually happened here?’

  ‘Yes there is, Kate. This was a very public assassination attempt, carried out in front of lines of cars all stuck in a traffic jam – a jam that may even have been created as a means of trapping Zorn. From what eyewitnesses are saying, a car pulled out into the middle of the road, stopping the traffic in both directions, before suddenly driving away at high speed. Seconds later there was a huge explosion that disabled the Bentley.’

  ‘Was that some kind of mine, like the IEDs we’ve become so familiar with in Afghanistan?’

  ‘Possibly. Some witnesses, however, are describing a rocket or bazooka being fired at the car. All we know for certain is that the Bentley was disabled. Very soon after that, a man approached the stricken car on a motorbike, fired a gun into the passenger compartment and then lobbed a grenade into it. One eyewitness who saw the interior of the car is still too distressed to speak. It’s safe to say it was not a pretty sight.’

  ‘And what about Mr Zorn? Do we know whether he is dead or not?’

  ‘That’s still hard to say, Kate. Certainly it seems very unlikely that anyone could have survived this attack. But he might have had one stroke of luck. A London ambulance was nearby and rushed to the scene. Mr Zorn’s body was taken from
the car and driven away within a minute or so of the incident. It’s thought that his head may have been covered by a blanket, suggesting he was already dead, but I’m getting conflicting reports on that.’

  ‘So where is he now?’

  ‘We’re not sure, Kate. There’s been no word from any of the local hospitals. Meanwhile, in another extraordinary development, rumours are sweeping the tennis world that there has been some sort of incident in the tunnels beneath Centre Court, possibly involving gunfire and multiple fatalities. I have to stress, though, that these are unconfirmed …’

  With a press of a remote control the screen turned to black.

  ‘What do you think? Am I now officially dead?’ asked Malachi Zorn.

  ‘How could you not be?’ Razzaq replied. ‘Carver blew up your car, then used a gun and a grenade to carry out the actual hit.’

  ‘The grenade bothers me,’ Zorn said.

  ‘Why so?’

  ‘If that grenade went off inside the car, how come the ambulance men were able to put the body on a stretcher? It should have been torn to pieces by the blast.’

  Razzaq frowned. ‘True, though a blast can easily be blocked or deflected. A table-leg saved Hitler from von Stauffenberg’s briefcase bomb, after all.’

  ‘I guess,’ said Zorn. ‘But I’ll still be happier when I see some spokesperson standing outside a hospital, saying how tragic it is that I passed away.’

  The SAS team had divided into two four-man patrols, which were now approaching both the front and rear of the building. Surveillance of the property with highly sensitive parabolic microphones and thermal-imaging binoculars had detected the presence of two adult males in the room that Zorn was believed to use as an office. The two men were still in place as the troops reached the building and flattened themselves against the walls. They weren’t going in through any of the mansion’s doors. They didn’t need to. Simultaneously they placed coiled rings of explosive cord, whose blast was tamped and focused by black rubber tubes of water up against the brickwork. The moment the signal was given, the cord would be detonated. Even before the smoke had cleared, the SAS would be in the building and racing towards their quarry.