Revenger

20

The longer Mark Adams spoke, the angrier Kieron Sproles became. He could feel his guts tying themselves in knots as Adams kept blathering his mindless, meaningless slogans. ‘You, me, all the people who are sick of seeing our country falling apart around our ears… We’re going to get UPP on our feet, roll UPP our sleeves, and get this great nation moving on UPP in the world again!’

They were cheering, the idiots. Couldn’t they see he was lying? Couldn’t they recognize bullshit when they smelled it? Well, he’d had enough. Adams had come right to the front of the stage. He was standing almost close enough for Sproles to reach out and touch. Except that he wasn’t going to touch him, he had something else in mind.

Kieron Sproles reached into his jacket.

He pulled out the Glock.

He pointed it.

And at the very moment that the woman next to him noticed what was in his hand and screamed out, ‘Gun!’

He fired.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Carver shouted as he heard the shot and saw Adams fall to the floor.

Nicki Adams screamed — a wail of animal pain as she saw her man go down.

‘Bloody hell,’ said Cameron Young, almost casually, as if he were far too sophisticated a player to be shocked by anything.

Kieron Sproles kept firing.

All around him there was total panic as people tried to get away from the gun.

The security men in their fluorescent yellow waistcoats were all cowering behind the barrier that separated the crowd from the stage. No way were they going to charge an armed man.

And then Mark Adams got to his feet. Even as Sproles was blasting the last two shots in his magazine, Adams was standing, stock still, in front of him. And then, when the trigger clicked on an empty magazine, Adams walked very calmly to the edge of the stage. He stepped over to the barrier until he was right opposite the gunman, who was standing motionless, looking dazed, as though his brain had been emptied like his gun.

Adams held out his right hand. ‘Give me the gun,’ he said, very calmly, and because he was wearing a radio mike, the whole hall heard him.

All the people who had been rushing for the exits stopped and turned, staring back at the stage or up at the images on the video screens as Adams repeated, ‘I said, “Give me the gun.”’

There was a hypnotic certainty about the way he spoke. He had not raised his voice at all, but somehow he conveyed the message that his command was essentially a statement of fact. The gun would be handed over. No alternative possibility existed.

Kieron Sproles felt exhausted. The nervous energy that had sustained him through the past few days and sleepless nights had fled from his body, and the gun seemed to weigh so much that he couldn’t even hold it up any more. His right arm just hung limply at his side. It was almost a relief to do what Adams asked and hand over the Glock. Once he did the last shred of strength left him, and by the time the security men came to carry him away he was slumped, barely conscious, in his seat, and had no desire at all to resist.

Nicki Adams was in Alix’s arms, sobbing helplessly, unable to comprehend the evidence of her own eyes. Her husband had been shot dead. Then he had risen up without a scratch on him. It was all too much to take in.

‘It’s got to be a set-up,’ said Cameron Young, and not only did the two men in that Downing Street office agree with him, so did a host of bloggers and tweeters. Soon the arguments were raging back and forth between Adams’s supporters — for whom this was one more example of their idol’s heroism — and cynical critics who saw anything between a cheap stunt and a full-blown fascist conspiracy.

Donny Bakunin hadn’t been aware of anything that had happened at the O2. He’d been picked up by one of the garbage trucks on the Wandsworth Road as it made its way towards Netherton Street. They were only a couple of hundred metres away now. He spoke into his earpiece. ‘Five minutes. Get ready.’

At the bar of the Dutchman’s Head, Schultz had broken off negotiations with the barmaid and was frowning at the screen, trying to work out what the hell was going on. Carver laughed to himself as he lifted his glass in an ironic toast. ‘Nice one, you jammy bastard,’ he said to himself. He’d just worked out how Adams had done it.