Revenger (22 page)

‘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.

51

ROBBIE BELL MADE
his living by watching, assessing and calculating. He’d long ago perfected the art of feigning interest; faking the smile that seems like a response, watching and waiting while other people dug themselves into deeper and deeper holes. And while one part of his mind was occupied with the problem of how to keep Adams from doing anything too stupid before Crewson and his people had come up with a containment plan for the Netherton Street disaster, the other was thinking about Alix Vermulen’s boyfriend, Sam. Something about him wasn’t right.

No, make that lots of things.

For a start, the Vermulen woman had only introduced him as ‘Sam’, no surname. Bell hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, assuming she was just being informal. But on reflection it seemed bizarre for a grown man to sit down to dinner with a senior politician and not give his full name. Most people would want to be remembered by a powerful man who might be the next prime minister. But Sam did not, and that was odd.

Then there was the whole way he’d raised the subject of the riot.
He’d had that ridiculous macho-bullshit conversation with Adams about fake guns and waited until two entire courses had been cleared away – long after it was obvious no one on the table knew about the riot – to mention the minor fact that there were dead bodies littering the streets of South London. By Sam’s own account, he’d heard about it in the cab on the way over. So why wasn’t that the first thing he had mentioned? Why hadn’t his first words been, ‘Have you heard about the riot?’

Next, there was the whole business about his friend – the one who’d called Adams a typical fucking glory boy. (A perfect description, Bell thought. He’d use it too, one day.) Sam had said that he was another Marine, and there’d been the strong hint that they’d both been more than that, which meant special forces. But there was just something about the way Sam had spoken about this man, something, well . . . elegiac, like he was remembering a lost friend. But how could that be? Sam had said that they’d been having a drink together earlier in the evening, watching the beginning of the speech.

And then the penny began to drop and something else struck Robbie Bell. Sam had been wearing a suede jacket – a good one. A man as well-off as he seemed to be would take the trouble to have a jacket like that cleaned on a regular basis. But there had been marks on it, like brown sprinkles . . . or spatters . . .

Bell realized that Nicki Adams was saying something to him. She was asking him when the taxi would arrive to take her home. He looked her, nodded and said, ‘I’ll go and check right away.’ But all he could think was: Crewson needs to know about this.

52

CAMERON YOUNG WAS
a very modern Chief of Staff. He didn’t just have flat-screen TVs tuned to the BBC,
Sky News
, CNN and Al Jazeera, he followed Twitter and a slew of blogs and news-feeds, too. Social media, after all, were frequently faster and more accurate than any other source of information. And they had already begun speculating on who had caused the explosion at the Lion Market, and asking whether one of the people responsible had got away from the scene of the crime. In fact, #whowasthesecondman was the top trending topic among London Twitter users. Young’s latest piece of information, however, had come to him the official old-fashioned way: from the Metropolitan Police Gold Command that had been set up to deal with the disaster under Commander Mary Stamford, a Scotland Yard high-flyer tipped as a future commissioner of the Met.

‘Intriguing information from Netherton Street . . .’ he said to Jack Grantham, whose mouth was full of bacon sandwich. ‘The police found a body they think belongs to one of the men who were helping the occupants of the Lion Market defend themselves
against
the mob. There was no wallet on his body and no other form of identification except for a Royal Marines crest tattooed on to his left shoulder. Apparently he began the night in a local pub. The barmaid says he called himself “Snoopy” when he was chatting her up.’

Grantham’s full mouth made it hard for him to say anything in reply, and he was extremely grateful for that, because that name was one with which he was very familiar. His tongue played around his teeth, extracting bits of sandwich, while he waited to see whether Young would make the connection.

Evidently he hadn’t, because he continued, ‘It’s good news in the short-term, of course. Kills that Adams speech stone-dead. But he’s bound to want to use this going forward. I mean, it’s perfect for his whole law-and-order agenda. We need to have answers when people start asking why the police weren’t able to prevent it. Should we be alarmed, do you think, that an ex-Marine was involved?’

‘Why?’ Grantham replied. ‘From what you say, it sounds as though he died a hero’s death.’

‘I suppose so, though it also makes it sound, somehow, as though military personnel were involved. You know . . . deliberately.’

‘I don’t see that,’ Grantham reassured him. ‘And Adams is hardly likely to pursue that line of attack. He’s ex-military himself. He’s never going to say anything that criticizes our brave boys and girls in uniform.’

‘I suppose not. But I think we’ll have to get a COBRA committee together, first thing in the morning. We need to be seen to be taking this very seriously. Do you want to sit on it?’

‘No, I don’t think so . . . It’s a purely domestic affair. If I turn up, people are going to ask why. And I don’t think either of us wants too many questions at the moment.’

‘Mmm . . . good point. The less said the better, you’re quite right,’ Young agreed. ‘So . . . would you like a drop more coffee? I’ll be mother.’

Grantham nodded and stuck out his mug for Young to pour into.
As he did so he thought about Carver telling him he was planning to have a drink with Schultz while Alix was at the O2. There was no reason for him not to have kept the appointment, in which case it was all but certain that Carver was the Second Man. So now things were about to become a lot more complicated. No one wanted Carver ending up in a police interrogation room. And that meant that Grantham would have to deal with the situation – fast.

53

THEY SAT IN
near-silence on the way back in the cab, with just a few fitful bursts of meaningless conversation. When they got to their room Alix rounded on Carver and said, ‘What haven’t you been telling me?’

He put a finger to his lips and made a silent, ‘Shh . . .’ Then he turned on the TV, switched to a music channel, and turned it up loud. Finally he stood close to Alix and, with the absolute minimum volume required to make himself heard to her said, ‘Can’t be too careful.’

‘So . . .?’ she asked.

Carver grimaced. On the ride from the restaurant he’d been thinking about two things in particular: how to tell Alix, and what to do next. He’d made a lot more progress on the second than the first. But now that it couldn’t be avoided he gave it to her straight. ‘I was at the riot. Snoopy was tied up in it somehow – not sure exactly how. But I think he was there as some kind of spotter for whoever organized the whole thing.’

‘What do you mean? It was a riot. How do you organize that?’

‘Very carefully, professionally, with cut-outs at every level. The question is: who’s behind it? And there’s one obvious candidate . . . literally.’

It took a second for the penny to drop. ‘You mean Adams?’ Alix said.

‘Well, who else stands to gain more from a lawless, violent society? He needs that so he can be the strong man who comes in and cleans it all up . . . which is pretty easy to do if you created it in the first place.’

‘I can see that . . . But he was surprised and shocked when you told him about it. I don’t think he was faking. I don’t think he had any idea.’

‘I know. I got that feeling too. But what if it wasn’t him doing the planning? What if it’s that shaven-headed guy, Robbie, doing all the dirty work, so that his master keeps his hands clean?’

‘Robbie Bell? That makes sense, I suppose. He didn’t look happy when you started talking about the riot . . .’ She paused, associating ideas, realizing she’d been ignoring the obvious issue. ‘The riot . . . what happened?’ She saw something in his face, and there was real worry in her voice as she said, ‘Sam . . . please . . . tell me . . . what happened?’

‘It got out of control. We were in the pub, and I think that was meant to be off-limits. When the rioters piled into the place, Schultz couldn’t believe it. He’d obviously been told he’d be safe there. He wouldn’t have asked me along if he’d thought it would turn nasty. I honestly think he was expecting to have a couple of pints, watch some yobs kicking off, and then go home. Anyway . . .’ He shook his head and sighed. ‘Then it all went crazy. We ended up under siege in this supermarket place. There was an army of them out in the street and they attacked . . . and . . .’

Carver was having a hard time keeping it together.

Alix squeezed his arm and tilted her head so that she was looking directly up into his eyes. ‘It’s all right,’ she murmured. ‘I’m here and I love you.’

He managed a sad smile and then said, ‘Schultz got killed, took a
knife
to the guts, and I . . . well . . . It was the only choice, the only way I could save us all . . .’