Tom Cain - Carver

‘Meanwhile Zorn’s cashing in. He’s got to be. The whole thing was a set-up.’

‘Except for Orwell… how do you explain that? Are you seriously saying Zorn deliberately sacrificed his own right-hand man?’

‘I don’t know,’ Carver admitted. ‘He could have done. The amount of money he stands to make, my guess is he’d do just about anything. But you’re right… I don’t have any concrete link between this and Zorn.’

‘I might be able to help you with that,’ Grantham said. ‘Early this morning, hours before the refinery was hit, someone went to a farmhouse in the middle of Wales, miles from anywhere, and executed four men and a woman. According to the locals, they’d been staying there for the past few days. The police are searching the place now. They’ve found evidence of a bomb-making factory: a couple of kilos of home-made explosives, plus several discarded gas canisters of various sizes, steel girders, welding equipment-’

‘Exactly what you’d need to make the set-up I saw,’ Carver pointed out.

‘Precisely.’

‘But everyone was killed. What good is that?’

‘Not everyone. One of them got away, a woman, name of Deirdre Bull. She tried to make a run for it. Whoever attacked the farmhouse tracked her, shot her, and left her for dead. But she lived. In fact, she’s lying in the intensive care unit at Bronglais General Hospital, Aberystwyth, right now. Oh, and here’s an interesting titbit: when she was rescued she even told the paramedics they had to stop the attack

…’

‘What? She told them about Rosconway?’

‘No such luck. She just mentioned an attack. They thought she meant the one on the farm.’

‘Christ, has she been interviewed yet?’

‘Apparently not. The local coppers have been told she’s not well enough to talk.’

‘Oh, bollocks to that!’

For the first time the hint of a smile entered Grantham’s voice. ‘That’s what I thought, too. Why don’t you get up there, see if you can get in for a word with Ms Bull? Play at being Andy Jenkins, pillar of the MoD, a while longer. I’ll have a word with the local police chief, appeal to his sense of patriotism at a time of national emergency, so you shouldn’t have any trouble from him.’

‘What about the medics?’

‘Oh, just use your natural charm, Carver. How can they resist?’

‘I’d better get going. It’s got to be a two-hour drive to Aberystwyth, minimum.’

‘No need. There’s an airport at Haverfordwest, just the other side of Milford Haven from where you are now. They’ve got a helicopter charter outfit there. Get a chopper, go to the hospital, get Bull to link this to Zorn, and then get back here to London. We need to discuss what to do about Zorn. And speaking of that particular devil, he’s about to make a public statement, live on every TV channel known to mankind. I’d better see what he has to say for himself.’

Carver put away the phone and turned on the car radio, tuning it to Radio 5 Live, and heard the voice of a news reporter saying she was outside the mysterious American billionaire Malachi Zorn’s Surrey mansion, and was expecting him to appear at any moment.

‘Zorn?’ asked Schultz, as they entered the outskirts of Pembroke. ‘Is that the bastard you said was responsible for what just happened?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I’d like to tear that fucker limb from fucking limb.’

Carver looked at Schultz. He’d planned on doing the Zorn job alone. But there was a lot to be said for having the massive SBS man on his side. He thought about his plans and the specific ways in which Schultz might improve them. Yes, it could certainly work.

‘Suppose I helped you do that?’ he asked.

‘You taking the piss, boss?’

‘Never been more serious. Listen, no one knows whether you’re dead or alive right now…’

‘Nah, suppose not.’

‘And it’s going to be days before they work out the final casualty lists. So you could just disappear off the grid, couldn’t you?’

‘The CO’s not going to like that. I’m a company sergeant major. I’m supposed to set an example, do my duty, not piss off on private jollies.’

‘Don’t worry about that. The man I was just talking to is a very influential individual. If I ask him to square it for you, trust me, there won’t be a problem.’

Schultz pulled up at a red light and gave Carver a long, searching look. ‘What exactly was it you said you did for a living, boss?’

‘I didn’t say.’

‘But we’re going after this Zorn geezer?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you know a bloke who can just call up Poole, get my CO on the line, and tell him what to do?’

‘Yes.’

The light turned green and Schultz drove away. ‘And what exactly do you want from me?’

‘Drop the girl at the hospital and get me to the airport at Haverfordwest. Then head for London. Give me a number and I’ll call you. We’ll be doing the job tomorrow. We’re going to need someone else, too, someone we can trust. And I mean, absolutely. One word of this gets out-’

‘Don’t worry, I’ve got the right man. He was in the Service, got out about six months ago. Just about to fuck off to Iraq with one of them Yank security companies.’

‘And he’s good?’

‘One of the best.’

‘Then that’ll do me.’

‘And we’re going to take this Zorn bastard out?’

‘Well, Snoopy,’ said Carver, ‘just you wait and see.’

On the radio the presenter was saying, ‘And now let’s cross back, live, to Surrey, where we are about to hear an official statement from the man who predicted a tragedy like today’s, and who was a close personal friend of the late Nicholas Orwell. I can see on my monitor that the statement is about to begin. So this is Malachi Zorn…’

Wentworth

Malachi Zorn’s PR people had advised him to wait a few hours before he faced the media. It was worth taking time, they said, for their best writers to craft a statement. He had said no. ‘I don’t want a crafted statement. I just want to go out and speak from the heart.’ The PRs had protested, but at the same time, he had seen their minds working out how to use his determination just to go out and speak his mind on behalf of a departed friend as a story in itself. It was a nice human touch: the media would gobble it up. Of course, he’d had hours to contemplate his reaction to Orwell’s likely demise, and months to think about the refinery’s destruction. So there was very little that was spontaneous or off the cuff about what he was going to say. Nor was it an accident that the few rough notes — ‘NB: VICTIMS most important… Nicholas counsellor, contributor, friend… human not financial tragedy… business as usual,’ and so on — scrawled on the sheet of paper in his hand had been written large enough to be picked up by zoom lenses. Even the hesitation with which he opened had been considered in advance.

‘Ahh…’ Zorn grimaced nervously and cleared his throat as he ran his eyes over the crowd of reporters in front of him, hoping to give as many of them as possible the impression that he had looked directly at them. He felt a momentary shock of alarm as the thought struck him that Carver might be out there in the crowd, ready to fire the bullet that would blow his brains out. The image didn’t frighten Zorn. It thrilled him: the shot of physical danger spiced up his financial gamble like a splash of chilli oil. He coughed to hide his excitement, and then began: ‘I want to make a short statement about today’s tragic events at the Rosconway refinery in Wales.’

Zorn looked down at the notes, as if seeing inspiration and reassurance from them, though he knew perfectly well what he was going to say. ‘My first and, ahh, deepest thoughts are for the victims of this terrible atrocity: the dead, the wounded, and all the loved ones who are feeling such loss and anguish at this dark hour. There will be much talk of the political and economic consequences of what has happened, but you know, we must never forget that this is a human tragedy that touches us all.’