Revenger

80

Mark Adams walked up to the lectern holding a piece of paper which he carefully smoothed out in front of him as he looked around the room. He cleared his throat and began to read. ‘Last night, following a very successful political meeting, I went out to dinner with my wife, Nicki, my campaign manager, Robbie Bell, and a political consultant of impeccable personal and professional reputation, with whom I was discussing various aspects of my campaign strategy. The consultant, who is female, had mentioned to me that her partner had served in the British armed forces. As a former military man myself, I said that he was welcome to join us for dinner. She called him and he met us at the restaurant.

‘The gentleman arrived wearing a long brown suede jacket, a black quilted waistcoat and dark-blue jeans.’

Those words sent a palpable surge of energy through the room. Everyone knew immediately that this wasn’t just a publicity stunt by an unscrupulous politician. It could be a genuine, major story.

Adams felt the change in the air as he went on, ‘My guest was about six feet tall, slim build, with short dark hair. As you will gather, this precisely matches the police description of the so-called Second Man. During the meal, he and I had a conversation, in the course of which he mentioned that he had been having a drink earlier that evening with a former comrade who had been in the Royal Marines. I must stress that I had no knowledge at that time of the events now known as the Lion Market Massacre. As I am sure you will understand, my attention had been entirely devoted to the speech I was giving. So I did not then understand the significance of what I am now telling you.

‘As the meal wore on Mr Bell noticed small dark marks or stains on my guest’s jacket. Again, he had no reason to think that there was any significance to them. But early this morning, Mr Bell and I both saw the pictures released by the police of the man they were looking for. We immediately realized that the safety of the public and the obligation on all of us as citizens to assist the ongoing investigation both demanded that we should inform the police of our suspicions, which we then did.’

Adams folded his script up again and said, ‘I will take a few questions now.’ A forest of hands went up and he pointed at one reporter: ‘Mary…’ he said.

‘Can you give us some idea of what kind of a man your dinner guest was?’ asked Mary Wainright, a political commentator on the Telegraph. ‘Did he act in any way like a man capable of cold-bloodedly killing around forty of his fellow human beings?’

‘Not in any obvious way,’ Adam replied. ‘To be honest, he seemed like a perfectly decent bloke…’

There was another flurry of action as the phrase, ‘he seemed like a perfectly decent bloke’ was tweeted, texted and emailed around the world.

‘He was intelligent, articulate and had a decent sense of humour. He certainly knew about military matters. I remember we discussed the assassination attempt on me last night, and how he had known — as I had done — that the gun was firing blanks. Now I come to think of it, he actually raised the subject of the riot and its aftermath, but there was nothing at all in his manner to suggest that he was connected to it or to arouse our suspicions. Next question… the gentleman at the back there.’

‘Frank Preston, CNN… I’m finding it hard to believe that a man can kill forty people and then just go out to dinner. Was your guest some kind of psychopath, do you think? Or are we talking about a case of mistaken identity?’

‘I’m not a psychiatrist, Mr Preston, so I can’t give you a diagnosis. But I have been to war as a soldier. So let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, that this really was the Second Man. Within the previous hour or so, he had been involved in an extremely stressful combat situation. A close friend had been killed, and he had used extreme methods to save his own life and those of the other people with him. Well, I’m sure you’ve all seen old war films about pilots coming back to base after a mission. They’ve seen their mates getting shot down, but they don’t sit around moping. That’s not what fighting men do. They go to the pub, have a drink, dance with a pretty girl, sing rowdy songs. They live, Mr Preston. They try to be as alive as possible because they have been surrounded by death… John.’

John Murphy, an ITN reporter, asked, ‘The Prime Minister’s office today issued a statement saying that there was no place for vigilante behaviour in British society. They have described the bombing of the Lion Market as, quote, “a cowardly act that is no better than terrorism”. How do you respond to that?’

‘I say that if there was an act of terrorism, it was carried out by the rioters. They were the ones who planned to take people’s lives, wreck their businesses and disrupt an entire community. From everything that I have heard, what happened in the Lion Market was a spontaneous, unplanned reaction to the threat the people there were facing—’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Adams,’ Murphy interrupted, ‘but how could anyone make a “spontaneous” or “unplanned” bomb?’

‘Well, I could have done it,’ said Adams, provoking an audible gasp from the audience. ‘Any soldier who has served in the special forces or another elite unit could do it, though I’m not going into details in public.

‘As for the Prime Minister, he has a nerve accusing men who’ve fought for this country of cowardice. He may go off to country estates with all his posh pals and blast away at defenceless pheasants. But he’s never had to stand up to anyone who’s shot back. He’s a spoiled, pampered toff, and he’s using these accusations in a blatant attempt to cover up the truth, which is that a terrible event like this would never have happened if the government had given the police the means to crack down hard on the very first riots. But they didn’t. Just like they didn’t deal with the underlying causes of these riots: the broken communities, the racial tension, the deadly effects of alien cultures being introduced into this county… all the things that ordinary people can see all around them every day. And the result is more than fifty people dead in a street in South London.’

Adams had managed to turn the press conference into a miniature version of his rally, getting across the arguments that the riot had silenced last night. Now he just had to drop a final quotable bombshell and go. He gave one of his slow, meaningful scans of the audience and said, ‘I have a message for the Prime Minister, and it is this: the blood of those dead people is not on the hands of the so-called Second Man. It is on your hands. And I will hold you to account.’

Then he leaned a little closer to the microphone, said, ‘Thank you very much,’ and strode briskly from the stage.