Revenger (21 page)

‘The scenes here are by far the worst that London has seen since the seven-seven bombings in July 2005,’ pronounced a grim-faced brunette with an Irish accent, representing the BBC. ‘Fifty-two people as well as the four bombers died that night, and the final death toll here may be even higher. We know that the staff of an Indian restaurant, the Khyber Star, were massacred, as were several customers at a pub, the Dutchman’s Head. But the worst carnage was reserved for the mini-supermarket behind me, the Lion Market.’

‘It is still not clear precisely what happened here,’ said the man from
Sky News
, his eyes narrowed like a hunter surveying the horizon, his voice clipped and authoritative. ‘But I have been able to piece together some key elements in the story. The rioters made a concerted attack against a small group of people who were taking shelter in the Lion Market. A garbage truck stolen earlier in the evening was rammed into the shop’s security shutters, smashing them. Rioters flooded into the store, and very soon afterwards there was some kind of explosion. At this stage, no one knows precisely what caused it.’

‘Just a few minutes ago, I spoke to one of the policemen at the scene,’ revealed a rosy-cheeked young man from ITN. ‘He told me that when he arrived at the store it was filled with people coughing and vomiting up blood. They were struggling for breath and were clearly in great distress. Some of them, he said, were little more than children. The first ambulances arrived no more than five minutes later. And by then, the policeman said, every single one of those people in the supermarket was dead.’

The BBC woman said, ‘Senior police commanders are genuinely shocked by what has happened here. We have been suffering riots and disorder for so long that we have, perhaps, become numbed by them. But the horror of the Netherton Street killings is so extreme that it is taking us into a whole new realm of violence. And now, back to the studio . . .’

49

CHRYSTAL PRENTICE WAS
sitting in an interview room at Kennington police station, with a female police officer and a cup of hot, sweet tea for company, waiting to be interviewed. She was trying to decide what to say. They were going to expect honest answers, but Snoopy’s mate had helped save their lives. So if he wanted to keep out of all this, she owed it to him to do what he’d asked. And it felt like what Snoopy would have wanted, too. That was the deciding thing, really: what Snoopy would have wanted.

Poor Snoopy. It was all Chrystal could do to stop herself crying at the memory of him lying on that storeroom floor, and equally hard to drive that memory from her mind.

The door opened and as the female PC excused herself and left two other people came in. The first one introduced himself as Detective Sergeant Brian Walcott. He was black, about thirty-five, Chrystal reckoned, dressed in a basic suit and tie and quite fit, really, for a policeman. The second one was a woman. She introduced herself as Detective Inspector Mara Keane, which made her Walcott’s boss, and in her heels she towered over him, though he
wasn
’t exactly short. When Keane spoke her voice was soft and quite low, like a newsreader on the TV: the kind of voice that made you believe whatever it was saying.

‘So, you were working at the Dutchman’s Head . . . what happened?’ Keane said, giving Chrystal a look that was not in any way aggressive, but which still made it plain to the younger woman that she was being sized up, too.

‘Well, I got talking to one of the customers,’ Chrystal began, trying to keep those terrible images away from her mind. ‘He was sitting at the bar, and he said something about being scared of flying, and I said that was, like, well funny,’ cos I am too, terrified.’

‘And this man, was he the one who ended up in the Lion Market with you?’ Keane asked.

Chrystal nodded, trying to hold back the tears.

‘Did he give you his name?’

‘He just said his name was . . .’ Chrystal could feel herself welling up. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. Then she covered her mouth to hide her trembling lips.

‘Take your time,’ said Keane.

Chrystal took a deep breath and said, ‘Snoopy. He said his name was Snoopy.’

‘And this Snoopy, was he drinking alone?’

Chrystal couldn’t quite manage a direct lie. ‘Yeah, well, he must’ve been, mustn’t he? Otherwise he wouldn’t have been talking to me.’

‘I don’t know, you tell me. Was he alone?’

‘Yeah . . . yeah, he was alone.’

Both women knew that wasn’t the truth. Walcott did, too. He wanted to press Chrystal harder, but before he could, Keane changed the subject.

‘So tell me how you got from the pub to the Lion Market.’

Chrystal sighed heavily, as though she’d been holding her breath: maybe she had been, she wasn’t sure. The relief was evident in her voice as she explained how they had left the pub, bumped into the rioters and rescued another woman. She
described
Snoopy firing at the rioters and being hit by one of their bullets before they reached the Lion Market.

Walcott had been asking a lot of the questions: ‘So when you got to the shop, who was there?’

‘Er . . . me, Snoopy, the woman he’d rescued from the car and Maninder and Ajay, obviously,’ cos it’s their shop.’

Now Keane came back into the interview. ‘The woman from the car, that was . . .’ She consulted her notes: ‘Paula Miklosko?’

‘Yeah, Paula, that was her.’

‘And how would you say she was – her physical and mental condition, I mean?’

‘She was well out of it. She’d been punched and that and she was, like, all shaking and in shock.’

‘So how did she get from the car to the Lion Market?’ Keane did not raise her voice at all when she asked the question. She didn’t have to.

Chrystal scrambled for time. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘If she was out of it and in shock, how did she manage to get from the car, where she was rescued, to the shop?’

‘She come with us, didn’t she?’

Keane frowned. ‘So she ran, is that it? She managed to run fast enough not to be caught by this mob . . . even though she was in shock?’

‘Well, we helped her.’

‘You and Snoopy?’

‘Yeah.’

‘At the same time that he was turning round to shoot at people?’

Chrystal hated this. She was trying to do the right thing, but every question just made her dig herself deeper and deeper into trouble. ‘I don’t know! It was mental out there. How am I supposed to remember everything?’

Keane nodded. Again she backed off, like an angler who lets the line run out when the fish has already been hooked. ‘All right, let’s get back to the market. You were there and you were tending to Snoopy’s wounded arm, and there was a big
mob
outside. So then what happened? Did the mob attack?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Were any shots fired at them . . . from inside the shop?’ ‘They might have been, I don’t know.’

Now Walcott intervened again, sounding impatient: ‘Come off it, Chrystal. If a gun goes off in the same room you’re in, you know all about it. Were any shots fired from the shop at the mob outside?’

‘Yeah . . . maybe . . . two or three.’

Keane again: ‘So who fired them?’

‘I don’t know. I wasn’t looking. I was doing Snoopy’s arm.’

‘So he definitely didn’t fire the shots?’

‘Well, no, how could he?’

‘Which means it had to be one of the two Panus.’

‘Well, yeah, maybe . . . Like I said, I didn’t see.’

‘Then what?’

‘Me and Maninder went down to the cellar with Paula.’

‘What happened to the other two: Ajay Panu and Snoopy?’

Keane asked.

‘Snoopy went out the back, in case anyone came in that way.’ Chrystal bit her lip as she felt it start to tremble again.

‘So . . . what about Ajay Panu, where did he go?’

Chrystal gave a helpless shrug of her shoulders. ‘I don’t know. Like I said, I was in the cellar.’

‘Did you at any time see him shoot at anyone?’

‘Ajay?’ Chrystal asked her voice rising in surprise. ‘No! He never!’

‘But he joined you in the cellar – Ajay, I mean . . .’

‘Yeah, he did, right at the end. Just before the explosion.’

‘Tell me about the explosion. Do you know what it was that exploded?’

‘No, it just, like, happened – know what I mean?’

‘Then what did you do?’

‘We just waited, you know, down in the cellar. We were too scared to go upstairs, to be honest.’

‘I understand,’ said DI Keane. ‘So let’s leave it there, shall we?
It
’s getting late and you’ve had a very shocking, traumatic experience. So what I want you to do, Chrystal, is to think about all the things that you and I have discussed. And when you’re feeling better we can talk again. We’ll start with Snoopy’s friend . . . the one who was drinking with him at the pub . . . the one you’ve been trying so hard not to talk about just now.’

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?’