Revenger

65

A tramp was sitting by a street corner, wide awake, watching Carver run down the street. The tramp held out his hand for money and called out, ‘Spare us a quid, guv.’

Carver had no intention of stopping until he saw the green military jungle hat the tramp was wearing. It had a floppy brim that cast a shadow over his face.

‘I’ll give you twenty for the hat,’ he said.

The tramp looked at him. Anyone willing to make an offer like that was clearly either mad or desperate enough to go higher. ‘Fifty,’ he said.

Carver got out his wallet and held out two twenty-pound notes. ‘Forty, or I take it for free.’

The tramp grabbed the notes from Carver’s hand and gave him the hat in exchange. It was filthy, greasy and it stank, but Carver didn’t care. His most easily identifiable item of clothing had gone and his face was half-hidden by the hat. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

He walked down Carnaby Street, past all the closed-down boutiques that had once catered to the tourists who weren’t coming to Britain — or anywhere else — any more. So now what? The police had his face, but they hadn’t put a name to it yet, and he didn’t think they’d find it too easy to do that. There weren’t too many people who knew Carver’s full identity — not unless Grantham gave him up, but that wasn’t going to happen any time soon. Grantham didn’t want him sitting in a police cell any more than he did: they both had too much to lose. If anything, Grantham’d want to help him get out.

There was that little shit from Number 10, Cameron Young. He wouldn’t do anything public: he had almost as much to lose as Grantham if Carver started spilling the dirt. But they’d never exactly been best buddies, and Young was just the kind of creep who’d enjoy getting his own back by grassing Carver up anonymously. And what about Adams and Bell? They didn’t know his surname, and they’d have to think very carefully before they did anything. Adams would be admitting that he’d had dinner with the Second Man… Shit! The restaurant staff — they could put him at Adams’s table. That would lead the police to Adams, who would have to cooperate, and even if he didn’t have Carver’s name, he had Alix’s and the address of the hotel where she was staying.

Carver had to call her, warn her, tell her to get out right away.

Alix was anything but weak. She didn’t cry easily, or give in to despair, or let herself be overcome by regrets. But there were exceptions to every rule, and tonight was one of them.

She wept because she hated seeing Carver go and she couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that she would never see him again. She couldn’t bear the thought of this ‘accident’ he was going to arrange. The whole point of his accidents was that people died. How was he planning to get out alive? And she bitterly regretted that she hadn’t told Carver about the baby. She hadn’t wanted to burden him, not when he had so many other things, including his own survival, to think about. But if he’d known, surely he’d have abandoned his attempt to find out what had happened tonight and stayed with her instead. He’d have found a way to get them out: him, her and their child. Or maybe she’d just have been a burden to him. Perhaps the best thing to do was concentrate on herself and the child. Hadn’t he said that the further she was from him the safer she’d be?

Alix was just going round in circles, getting nowhere, and she had to get some rest. So she turned off her phone and told the hotel switchboard that she didn’t want to be disturbed under any circumstances. Then she curled herself up, her posture as foetal as the baby inside her, and waited for sleep to take her.

No matter how many times he called Alix’s number, or how hard he argued with the hotel operator, Carver couldn’t get through. In the end he left a simple message. ‘Switch to Plan B. Text me your location. Just make sure I’m the only one who can understand it. And, yeah… I love you.’

Carver kept hitting brick walls. He could feel the presence of the mind behind the riot: simultaneously invisible and yet so close he could almost touch it. Cropper was dead and the links in the chain were broken, but there had to be another way of finding the answer. So now, as he walked through the filthy heart of London, his head down to keep his face away from the cameras, Carver was working out his next move.