Assassin

82

There were thousands of cars all over south London that looked just like the ten-year-old Vauxhall Corsa parked across from Selsey's house, a little way down the road. Its body was bulked up by body panels and flared arches intended to give a small, harmless car the appearance of a serious muscle machine, as if it had been given a course of fibre-glass steroids. The windows were blacked out, and the muffler had been removed from the exhaust in an attempt to give the engine an intimidating roar, over which the thumping bass of the oversized sound system could clearly be heard.

There were countless men who looked just like the one who got out of the car and leaned against the bonnet, drinking from a can of Stella. The close-cropped hair, Fred Perry shirt, faded jeans, chunky gold jewellery and extravagant tattoos weren't exactly an original style statement.

From the bedroom window of Bill Selsey's house, the man could clearly be seen as he finished his beer, threw it into the gutter and reached into the car for another can.

'What's he doing there?' asked one of the men observing him.

'Dunno. Think it's worth going down and having a word?'

'Not yet. No need to draw attention to ourselves unless it's absolutely necessary.'

'Oh, hang on, I think we just got our answer.'

'Bloody hell, that's a terrifying sight.'

Raifa Ademovic was walking down the road. The baby-carriage was gone and she'd changed since her last appearance. Her hair had been pulled into a tight pony-tail, a proper Croydon face-lift. Her face was adorned with heavy scarlet lipstick, false eyelashes and dangling gipsy earrings and her body was clad in a stretchy black nylon boob tube, a microscopic leopard-skin mini-skirt and teetering white plastic heels.

'No wonder the poor bastard needs a couple of beers first,' the MI6 officer went on as Raifa reached Ron Geary, who did not bother to get up off the bonnet to greet her. She threw her fag-end on the pavement and ground it under her shoe. He chucked his can away. She leaned over him and they kissed. He groped her backside. Then they disappeared into the car.

'And people say romance is dead.'

'You know, that was the bird who walked by earlier with the pram,' said the other officer.

'So she's left one brat and gone out to make another. That's nice.'

'Not necessarily. She could be an au pair.'

'Illegal, I bet.'

'Either way she'll be living off benefits. Him too, most likely.'

The car started rocking.

'Our taxes are paying for that.'

'I know, makes you sick.' Inside the car Raifa Ademovic was sitting in the passenger seat, her legs pressed against the floor, pushing back and forth to make the car move. Between pushes, she leaned forward and spat the taste of Geary's lager out of her mouth. If it had been any other woman gobbing in his motor, Geary might have given her a slap, but he knew better than to get into a fight with that mad Bosnian bitch. He also had a job to do. He got on the phone to Tyzack.

'No movement, boss. They're all still in there. What d'you want us to do?'

'Give the lovely Raifa a good seeing-to, why don't you?' Tyzack replied mockingly. 'But be quick about it. I'm on my way.' Bill Selsey was having dinner with his wife, sitting at the kitchen table. His desperate attempts to make conversation had come to nothing. Now they were left in silence, just the scraping of the cutlery against a china plate as Carolyn Selsey pushed her food around, trying to work up the appetite to put some of it in her mouth. She managed a couple of desultory mouthfuls before she gave up the struggle. Then she looked at the stranger sitting in the chair where the husband she'd thought she knew once used to sit and asked, 'What have you done?' And then again, her voice half stifled by unshed tears: 'What have you done?' 'For Chrissakes, don't you have a siren or something?'

Carver was humming with frustrated energy, grateful of the seatbelt that kept him pinned down and stopped him bouncing off the walls of Jack Grantham's Jag. They were trying to cut south-east across London, but every short burst of progress was brought to a grinding halt by a jam at a set of lights, a bus taking an age to set down and pick up its passengers, or any one of the countless delays and obstructions a crowded city can provide.

'No, I don't,' Grantham replied. 'See, we're meant to be the Secret Service. That means we don't want people to know we're around. Sirens, flashing lights – that would pretty much wreck it, don't you think?'

'Ha-bloody-ha… He's coming. I know he is…' Carver screwed up his face. 'Bloody hell, my back hurts.' He shuffled in his seat trying to find a comfortable position.

'Take a couple of painkillers, maybe they'll calm you down.'

'You got any guns in this car?'

'One. Mine.'

'Can I have it?'

'Piss off.'

Carver leaned forward, peering through the traffic as though he could will a path through the wall of vehicles. 'Come on,' he said. 'Come on…' Damon Tyzack had made quick progress round London on the M25 and was now on the A2, coming back into the city, heading for Lee station and the Selseys' house. He put in a call to Ron Geary. 'Any developments?'

'No, boss. No one's gone in or out.'

Tyzack laughed. 'Oh dear, did Raifa say no?'

'No, boss, I meant the house.'

'Oh for God's sake, Geary, where's your sense of humour?' Tyzack sighed and ended the call.

His driver leaned back, half turned his head and spoke over his shoulder. 'So Ron didn't get any joy, then?' He cackled with laughter.

'I'm not sure I'd describe an act of sexual congress with Raifa Ademovic as joyous, exactly,' Tyzack dryly observed.

'Yeah, know what you mean. She's a fucking loony, that woman.'

'Precisely… That's what I like about her.' Tyzack put on a baseball cap and pushed the peak down over his face to hide it from any traffic cameras. 'Pull up, the next chance you get,' he said. 'We'll be there soon. I want to move up front.'

He got back on the line to Geary. 'Check your weapons, and be ready to move on my signal. Won't be long now.'

Then he took out his own gun and racked the slide. He had a round in the chamber. He was ready to go. From the house the watchers saw the front window of the Corsa descend a fraction. A red-nailed hand appeared and threw out a cigarette, and then the window closed again.

'That's the bloody limit, the post-coital ciggy… I could bloody use a cigarette myself.'

'You can't, it's illegal.'

'What?'

'We're working, right? So this house is now a place of work. That means no one can smoke here. Not even Selsey.'

'Sod him, it's me I'm thinking about.'

'Well, the law says you can't smoke.'

'And this is the country I risk my life to defend… unbelievable.' Just past New Cross, with darkness finally falling at the end of the long summer evening, the traffic began to thin. A new spirit of urgency seemed to get into Grantham and he started driving more aggressively, flashing his lights at the oncoming traffic as he raced down the wrong lane, overtaking anyone who looked likely to impede him. He ran a red light. He cut up a truck on a roundabout, earning a blast of the trucker's horn and a V-sign out of the cab.

'That's more like it,' said Carver.

Grantham was doing close to sixty as he raced down Lee High Road, slowed briefly to turn right, across the oncoming traffic, into Burnt Ash Road, then hit the gas again.

Three blocks down, Grantham swung right again, ignoring the white Transit van waiting to turn into the same side road and getting an angry flash of the Transit's beams in his face, briefly dazzling him. The Jag screeched to a halt by Selsey's house. Grantham and Carver got out.

Grantham walked up to another parked car, a Ford Mondeo, and leaned down by the window to talk to the MI6 officer inside. Carver stayed where he was and looked up and down the road. As he did, the white van came towards him, slowed briefly opposite the house, then sped up again and moved away down the street. Carver watched it go. Something nagged at him, an instinct that told him Tyzack had been in the van.

'Grantham!' he shouted. 'Give me your keys!'

Grantham looked up from the Mondeo. 'Why?'

'That van! Tyzack was in it. I'm sure.'

Grantham stood up, shaking his head. He looked at Carver and started walking back towards him, just as the lights on the Corsa came on, its engine started and it too pulled out into the road and drove away.

'This is getting out of hand,' Grantham said when he'd reached Carver. 'You're jumping at shadows.' There was something close to sympathy in his voice as he went on, 'Look, I understand. You've had a hell of a time and he's given you a proper beating. I'm not surprised you're traumatized, but you've got to calm down. There's been no communication between Tyzack and Selsey and nothing's happened apart from a couple of chavs having a shag in a parked car.'

Grantham put a hand on Carver's shoulder and looked him in the eye. 'Tell me, honestly, are you sure about this whole US President business? Because I've gone a long way out on a limb for you and I don't want it cut out from under me.'

Carver closed his eyes. For a second he felt almost overcome by a wave of exhaustion. Maybe Grantham was right.

No… he wasn't going to give in now. He hadn't imagined what Tyzack had said, and he knew, in his bones, what it meant.

'Don't worry,' Carver said. 'I'm fine. And I'm right about Tyzack. I'm sure of it.'

'All right, I believe you. But I still don't think you're doing anyone any good charging round London chasing paranoid delusions. I'm going to check in with the people here, make sure everything's good, then I'm taking you back into town. We'll get you a hotel room. And then I want you to rest. The President lands in approximately thirty-six hours and I need you fighting fit by then.'

It was only a couple of hours later, as he was lying in bed, on the cusp between wakefulness and sleep, that an image flashed into Carver's head. It was the man in the passenger seat of the white van, driving past Selsey's house. He'd been looking into his glove compartment, so Carver hadn't seen his face. But he had seen the cap and he'd recognized the badge: the New York Yankees. He'd seen the same badge, the same cap somewhere else: outside the hot-dog stand in Cascade, Idaho… the creep who'd walked across to chat up Maddy.

Carver opened his eyes and looked up at the ceiling as he whispered two words to himself: 'Damon Tyzack.'