Revenger

62

As Carver turned into Brewer Street he saw the light of an ambulance up the road. It was parked beneath a neon sign saying ‘Soho Gold — Home of the Golden Girls’, and the rear doors were opened in readiness for a patient. A knot of people were clustered on the pavement, some in anoraks and overcoats, others in their clubbing outfits. Heavyset men in black suits were running in and out of the club, talking into headsets, their composure shattered, panic setting in.

A couple were taking advantage of the chaos to sneak a crafty cigarette: a man in a suit and a young brunette wearing no more than lingerie, with the man’s overcoat draped across her shoulders. She had to be one of the famous Golden Girls. When Carver went up to them he realized that she had been crying.

‘What’s happening?’ he asked.

‘It’s the geezer that runs the place…’ said the man.

‘Danny,’ the girl added, with a sniff.

‘Yeah, Danny… well, he’s gone and had a heart attack. That’s what I heard, anyway. Someone told me he was dead.’

‘Don’t say that!’ cried the girl, feebly batting him with the back of her hand.

‘I’m sorry, love, but he’s gone all right… Look.’

Bodyguards were forcing a way through the crowd as two paramedics brought a stretcher on a gurney out of the door of the club. Underneath a blanket, the outline of a human body could be made out. The blanket covered its head.

The girl put a hand to her mouth, her eyes wide, then she sucked hard on her cigarette, shaking from shock as much as the cold night air. ‘I don’t believe it,’ she said, starting to cry again. ‘Poor Danny…’

‘I don’t believe it,’ Carver said to himself, feeling sick to his stomach as he saw his great scheme for uncovering the brains behind the riot falling apart before his eyes.

The girl misunderstood his disbelief. ‘I know,’ she sniffed. ‘He was so full of life. I can’t believe it, neither.’

The man put an arm round her shoulder and said, ‘Don’t worry… Look, why don’t I get you a nice cup of tea, eh? That’ll make you feel better.’ He turned to look at Carver and winked, as if to say, ‘I’m in here.’

Carver thought about the kind of man that Danny Cropper must have been. He’d run a strip joint, selling female flesh. He’d been an equal-opportunity exploiter, of course, because he’d traded male muscle, too. But he hadn’t made the men who worked for him sell their naked bodies the way the women had to do. And though he might have screwed the men over metaphorically, he hadn’t done it literally, as he surely had with any girl who’d wanted to be golden. Then again, a half-decent stripper in Soho Gold probably earned more than ninety-five per cent of the British population did, so that might explain why one of them would cry at Cropper’s demise.

It had to be a hit, Carver thought. Adams, or someone around him, was cleaning up, breaking all the connections between themselves and the riot. So what had the killer used? Ideally, it would be something whose effects weren’t immediately obvious. That way there was time to get away before anyone knew that anything was wrong. And using something that hit the heart was a smart move, too. Cropper was ex-forces, so the chances were he smoked. It was a certainty that he liked a drink or two. And he wouldn’t be the kind of man who ate a lot of salad, either. Carver imagined a burly Para, going to seed, maybe in his early forties, making his legitimate money running a strip joint. He was a heart attack waiting to happen. On this night, of all nights, with every morgue in central London filled with bomb- and gunshot-victims, no one was going to have the time or the inclination to do a post-mortem on Danny Cropper. So no one would even think of looking for a killer.

But there had been a killer, and a good one too. Whoever did this wasn’t your common-or-garden hitman, walking through a crowded nightclub with a gun in his hand. This was someone who could pass the guards on the door, get close enough to Cropper to slip him the poison and then get out unobserved. And that meant a serious, high-end professional.

At which point two further thoughts occurred to Carver. The first was that anyone who wanted rid of Danny Cropper would soon work out they had to get rid of him, too. And the second was that poison was often considered a woman’s weapon.