Revenger

50

Carver kept thinking about the girl. The sound of her calling out, ‘Ricky!’ clung to him like a song he couldn’t get out of his head. He’d spent most of his professional life bringing death to other people and risking it himself. He’d become adept at distancing himself from uncomfortable, unnecessary emotions. But tonight, when all he’d wanted was a quiet drink with an old mate, he’d ended up doing things which had taken him to a dark and bitter place. And now he was having a hard time getting out of that place. He was stuck in a bad dream, and he couldn’t seem to wake up.

‘Get a fucking grip,’ he muttered to himself as he made his way to the restaurant entrance. There were armed guards outside it, just as there had been at the hotel. Carver had to wait before his name was confirmed as one of Mr Adams’s guests, and even then he didn’t get in without passing through a scanner. These days, everywhere was an airport. He got in the lift that would take him up to the dining room and felt an unexpected sense of confinement, of claustrophobia.

At the top there was a reception desk where he gave his name and a waiter was summoned to direct him to Mark Adams’s table. The room was laid out beneath the soaring roof of the old market hall, with glazed walls and a huge fan window — whose panes of glass were held within an intricate iron tracery. It was a typically Victorian cathedral of commerce, and the men and women who were tucking into the menu of hearty British foods — from Dorset crabs and Skye scallops to Hereford beef and Hampshire pheasant — had a Dickensian air about them, too: the rich filling their faces and calling for more claret and ale while the poor descended into squalor all around them.

The sight of Alix raised his spirits. He kissed her on the cheek as he was taking his place, then managed polite, confident smiles as she said, ‘This is my partner, Sam,’ and introduced him in turn to Adams, his wife, whose name went in one ear and out the other, and some guy who worked for Adams: black suit, shaven head — looked like the creepy butler in The Rocky Horror Show. Carver didn’t even hear his name, still less remember it. Not a good sign.

‘I ordered for you,’ Alix said. ‘Baked crab to start with, and then the steak. I hope that’s all right.’

‘Thanks, that sounds fine.’

‘So, did you see the speech?’ Alix asked, knowing that was what Adams would most want to know.

‘Not all of it. But I did catch the assassination attempt. Very impressive…’ Carver laughed. To his surprise something genuinely funny had occurred to him.

‘What’s the joke?’ Adams asked.

‘I was just thinking of a mate of mine. We were having a pint while the speech was on and he, ah…’ Carver stopped himself before he said ‘was’. ‘He’s a big fan of yours but the exact words he used were, “Typical fucking glory boy.”’

The women looked startled by Carver’s rudeness. The shaven-headed guy gave a sly, private smile. Adams just laughed.

‘Was this mate of yours another bootneck, by any chance?’

‘We were proud to serve together in the Royal Marines, if that’s what you mean,’ said Carver, with exaggerated formality. He was beginning to feel a bit more like himself again. Schultz would’ve had a good laugh if he’d known that Adams had been told exactly what he’d thought of his military record.

‘And he somehow failed to hold the Paratroop Regiment in the respect which it certainly deserves… how odd,’ Adams replied, knowing full well that the Marines and Paras despised one another, and enjoying the old soldiers’ banter. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said, catching sight of Carver’s glass. ‘You’ve not been given a drink. Here, have a drop of this: not a bad claret, if you like that sort of thing.’

It was a Château Daugay 2000, a Grand Cru St Émilion, and it hit Carver’s palate with an earthy, almost excremental funkiness that gave way to warm, rich, dark fruits that belonged to a different, better world than the one he’d been dragged into that night. ‘God, that’s good.’ He sighed. ‘Thanks. I really needed that.’

‘Bad day?’ Adams asked.

‘Something like that. Not as bad as yours might have been, though… if that shooter at the O2 had been armed with an actual gun.’

‘Ah…’ Adams took a drink of his own, keeping his eyes on Carver all the while, sizing him up. ‘All right then, how did I know?’

‘Well, my first guess was that you didn’t hear the bullet in the air…’

‘That could have been a possibility.’ Adams turned towards Alix, the polite host, not wanting the women to be excluded from the conversation. ‘You see, the thing is, Alix, that a bullet travels faster than sound, so you actually hear the bullet going by before you hear the shot itself…’

‘Really? How fascinating,’ she said sweetly, thinking that it was probably best not to mention the two men she had shot dead on the night she first met Carver, or the third she’d killed less than a week after that.

The men, meanwhile, were continuing with their conversational game, each enjoying the attempt to get one up on the other.

‘But you were standing too close to the gun to be able to notice that,’ Carver continued. ‘The time difference would have been milliseconds.’

Adams smiled. He swirled his wine round the bottom of his glass. ‘So what was it?’

‘Well, I’m guessing that the gun looked, felt and sounded exactly like a normal one, except for one thing.’

Another, broader smile. ‘Which was…?’

‘The colour… orange, perhaps. That’s bright enough that you couldn’t miss it…’

‘And it’s also the colour that current gun regulations specify for replica weapons that are capable of firing blanks. Well done.’ Adams raised his glass in salute, then continued, ‘The gun was a replica Glock and it was, as you say, perfect in every respect except for resembling a tangerine. But that’s actually not the main reason I was certain I was safe. You see, I knew the man holding it.’

‘What?’ asked Alix. ‘You mean this was all a set-up?

‘Good lord, no… His name’s Kieron Sproles. He’s a constituent of mine, and I knew he wasn’t trying to kill me. This was the proverbial cry for help — my help, to be precise. See, the daft bugger thinks I’m somehow responsible for the fact that the council aren’t giving his mum proper care. She’s got Alzheimer’s, poor old dear. I keep telling him, if the council aren’t looking after her, then he should leave me alone and go and complain to them…’

Adams was a politician with a taste for speechmaking, a natural raconteur and a middle-aged man with a lot of red wine inside him. The combination made him loquacious. ‘I’ve written to the council and the local paper highlighting the issue. I’ve done the whole number about why are they cutting back on care for vulnerable old folk when they’re still advertising in the bloody Guardian for strategy implementation officers, tasked with coordinating effective monitoring of equal-opportunity policy delivery, or some such politically correct bollocks… Excuse my language, love, but this kind of nonsense really gets on my tits.’

Carver wasn’t in a mood to listen to a politician doing his man-of-the-people routine, this one in particular. Luckily the first course arrived and the conversation switched to inconsequential chit-chat as the five diners concentrated on their food. More wine was ordered, the main courses were consumed, and still nothing at all was said about the riot. Surely they must have heard about it? The cabbie who’d brought Carver to the restaurant had had his radio tuned to a phone-in. The original subject of the show had been Mark Adams, but Netherton Street was the only thing on any of the callers’ minds. So why had no one even mentioned it here?

Carver waited until everyone had ordered their coffees and desserts and then asked, ‘So what do you think about this riot in South London tonight?’

Adams looked blank. ‘What riot?’ he asked.

Either the guy was an Oscar-worthy actor, or he genuinely didn’t know.

‘Haven’t you heard? They were talking about it on the radio on the cab-ride over here. Apparently it was total mayhem. Shops and restaurants looted. Buildings set on fire.’

‘Isn’t that typical?’ Nicki Adams snapped. ‘Don’t tell me — the police did nothing to stop it.’

‘Of course not, darling,’ said Adams.

Carver went on: ‘They couldn’t get there in time. And I haven’t come to the worst bit. Several people were shot dead…’

‘That’s terrible!’ Alix exclaimed.

‘And there was some kind of explosion. Thirty, maybe even forty people were killed in it. It’s the only thing anybody’s talking about.’

With every word that Carver said the shaven-headed guy’s face had grown more tense, his jaw more clenched, his complexion paler. He was obviously furious, and it was clear to Carver that he had known all about the riot but had chosen not to inform his boss. Why? Was he trying to avoid, or at least postpone, the bollocking he’d get when Adams realized that the whole thing had spiralled out of control and made an irrelevance of the O2 event? Or was the riot his baby, something he’d planned behind Adams’s back?

‘This is appalling, simply appalling,’ Adams said, and once again his reaction seemed entirely genuine. He turned to the shaven-headed guy. ‘So, Robbie, how do you think we should respond?’

‘The first priority has to be to put your speech back on the news-lists,’ Robbie said. ‘Then—’

‘Don’t be so bloody ridiculous,’ Adams interrupted him. ‘If this is true, if all these people have lost their lives, then they are the first priority. And that means catching the people who did this.’

‘Well, let’s not rush to any hasty judgements. We need to be in possession of the full facts before we decide on our strategy.’

‘Well, we’d better get in possession bloody fast then, hadn’t we?’ Adams gave an apologetic look at his guests. ‘I’m sorry, Alexandra, Sam… I’m sure you’ll understand that we have to cut dinner short. Another time, perhaps…’

As Carver escorted Alix out of the restaurant he couldn’t help thinking that he’d met his fair share of megalomaniacs, murderers, fanatics and psychopaths in his time. And whatever else he might be, Mark Adams did not seem anything at all like any of them.