Carver

65

Wednesday, 29 June

Putney, London SW15

It was past 11.00 a.m. before Carver got the call from Grantham. ‘We got everything you asked for. The van’s a white Transit, with “McNulty Brothers Builders” written on the side. It’s parked on the rooftop level of the Putney Exchange multi-storey car park, in the far south-west corner. The door’s unlocked. The keys are in the plastic B amp;Q bag in the passenger-side footwell. So’s that Krakatoa thing you asked for. The rest of the kit’s in the back of the van. Leave your car as near as you can with the keys in the ignition. We’ll have someone waiting to take it away.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Don’t thank me, Carver. You’re still screwed if this doesn’t work.’

‘What else is new?’

Carver hung up and immediately put in a call to Schultz, telling him to meet by the van in exactly one hour’s time. Then he texted Alix: ‘On my way. Keep me posted.’

A minute later he got her reply: ‘Latest update. Standing in bra and panties, deciding what dress to wear. Want to look my best for you, haha!’

Carver laughed. ‘Dress code update,’ he texted. ‘U will be thrown out of Wim if turn up in bra and knickers. But would not be thrown out of my bed.’

Alix wrote again. ‘Down boy!! Gotta go xxx’

Carver grinned, then closed the window. There was nothing wrong with having a few jokes before you went into action. But it was time for the laughing to stop.

It took forty-eight minutes to make his way in the Audi through heavy South London traffic to the Putney Exchange Shopping Centre. He wound his way up through the multi-storey car park to the open expanse of the rooftop level. The van was exactly where Grantham had promised it would be. Carver found an empty space nearby and left the keys as Grantham had told him to do. He had barely got to the door of the Transit when he heard an engine start up behind him, and seconds later the Audi was driving past on its way to the exit.

He opened the Transit’s passenger door. The B amp;Q bag was sitting on the floor in front of the passenger seat. Carver reached in, picked the bag up and looked inside. Aside from the keys it contained a couple of plastic garden pegs linked by a short length of green nylon twine; a thin disc of copper about 15 cm in diameter, beaten into a shallow cone; a packet of Polyfilla that had been opened and then resealed with a bright yellow plastic clip; and a series of grey plastic components. These comprised a short, open-ended tube whose diameter was a fraction greater than that of the copper disc; a couple of locking rings, similarly sized; a plastic disc, again as wide as the cylinder, to which a tightly looped length of electrical wire was attached; and four rigid plastic sticks, each about 30 cm in length. Anyone looking into the bag would assume that they all fitted together to form some kind of plumbing device.

Carver cast his eye over it all, muttered, ‘Good,’ to himself, then closed the passenger door again and walked around to the back of the van. He opened up the rear cargo-bay doors just enough for him to see inside, without enabling anyone else to glimpse what was there. This time his reaction was a little more effusive: a broad smile and a murmured, ‘Excellent.’

He closed the doors and made his way to the driver’s seat. Two minutes later there was a rap on the window. Schultz and Cripps were standing outside. Carver lowered the window, then handed them the B amp;Q plastic bag. ‘There you go.’

Schultz looked inside and grinned broadly. ‘Lovely jubbly,’ he said. He and Cripps walked back to their car, an old Mazda 626 saloon. Carver rolled up the van’s window and started the engine. Two minutes later they were all on their way.

Meanwhile, on the crowded approaches to Putney Bridge, the Chinese agents trailing the silver Audi were asking themselves why it was heading north, back over the river towards Central London, in the opposite direction to Wimbledon. It was only when they were on the bridge itself and able to accelerate enough to bring their car alongside the Audi that they realized Carver was no longer at the wheel. The string of obscenities that followed was equalled only by Derek Choi’s fury when the news was relayed to him.

It took Choi several minutes to obtain the latest tracking data for Carver’s phone signal. That, at least, was moving in the right direction. So his destination had not changed, even if his method of transport had. And once he got to Wimbledon, there were only a limited number of gates by which he could enter. Choi calmed himself. Nothing had really changed. Carver was still on course for his death.