Tom Cain - Carver

Carver tried again: ‘Or how about a Pakistani man called Ahmad Razzaq? He’s middle-aged, wears a moustache, quite distinguished-looking. Sometimes calls himself Shafik.’

‘No… I don’t know anyone like that at all.’ She sounded more confident now, as though her ignorance somehow established her innocence.

‘You haven’t even heard their names mentioned by other people… people like Bryn?’

‘No.’

They seemed to have reached a dead end, and Fenwick sensed it, too. ‘Well, that settles it. She can’t help you. I think we should call this a day.’

Carver tried not to let his desperation show. He was sure he was close to a breakthrough, if only he could find the right button to push. Something Bull had said had rung a bell, but he’d missed it, failed to make the right connection. It was there, though, somewhere: he knew it. He fixed an ingratiating smile on his face and spoke to Fenwick and Bull together. ‘Wait, let’s just take it nice and easy… a few simple questions. Nothing to get excited about. Is that all right?’

Fenwick looked at Bull.

She nodded.

He gave Carver a shrug that said, ‘Be my guest.’

‘So… How many of you were there in the group?’ Carver asked.

Bull closed her eyes, picturing her old comrades in her mind. ‘Ahh

… six of us at first, then Dave Smethurst and that Swiss bitch joined

…’

‘Kremer?’ Carver asked, thinking: ‘Her again.’ Bull nodded. Kremer loomed so large in Bull’s memories of the group. Maybe he should stick with Kremer: see where that took him.

‘So when was that?’

‘About four or five months ago, I suppose. Though even then, she was never really part of it like the rest of us. She was always flitting in and out, leading this disgusting, privileged life…’

‘So she’s rich?’ he asked, a bell just starting to ring, very faintly, in the back of his mind.

‘Her family’s stinking rich. That’s what she said, anyway, and the way she behaved, I believed it.’

‘And you people weren’t violent before she arrived, four or five months ago?’

Bull gave a feeble shake of the head, wincing at the effort. ‘No… I mean, we believed in direct action as a way of making our point. But no one ever got hurt. We were just trying to attract people’s attention to what was being done to the planet.’

‘Then along comes Uschi Kremer and says…?’

‘Well, she never said anything to us women. But she was always whispering with Bryn, or taking him off to dinner… I’m sure he slept with her. She was certainly making it very obvious she was available.’

‘So she’s attractive?’ The bell was ringing louder now.

‘If you like that kind of thing. Personally, I think it’s cheap and vulgar. But you know what men are like…’

‘We fall for that kind of thing…’ Carver said, as it all tumbled into place: the woman who could seduce men at will, who’d always been able to make anyone do anything she wanted. Could it really be her?

‘Describe Uschi Kremer,’ he asked.

Bull gave a little ‘Huh!’ of disapproval. ‘Well, she’s older than she likes to admit, that’s for sure. The way she acts, you’d think she was in her early thirties, maybe even her twenties. But if she’s a day under forty, I’d be surprised. If you really look at her, close up, it’s much more obvious.’

Fenwick was leaning forward a little in his seat now, aware that something had changed. There was a new atmosphere of expectation in the room.

Carver already knew the answers when he asked, ‘Height, weight, eyes, hair colour?’

‘Oh, well… she’s a couple of inches taller than me, I suppose, and I’m five foot six. But she’s very slim. If she weighs much more than nine stone I’d be amazed. She’s less than that, even. She’s a redhead, so she’s got that colouring. You know, blue eyes…’

‘Freckled skin?’

Bull started, surprised. ‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘Quite full lips: you know, pouty… sexy…’

Now she gave a puzzled frown. ‘I suppose so, yes, if that’s what you think is sexy. But how do you…?’

Carver raised a finger to his face. ‘A little groove, on the end of her nose… just here?’

‘Yes… yes, that’s right. Do you know her?’ Now Bull was displaying the anxiety of someone who suspects that they may have been the victim of an elaborate practical joke. Fenwick, too, was looking at Carver as if he was trying to spot the trick he was playing.

Carver got out his phone, put the black and white photo of Celina Novak on screen, and held it up so that Bull could see it. ‘Well, you tell me… is this her?’

‘Yes! That’s Uschi all right, though she looks a lot younger there.’

‘Thank you, Deirdre… thank you very much indeed.’

‘Really… have I helped?’

‘Oh yes. A lot.’ Carver nodded at Fenwick. ‘Thanks, doctor. Couldn’t have done it without you.’ He got to his feet. ‘I’ll be on my way,’ he said.

Paxford, Gloucestershire

On the fringes of a village on the northern edge of the Cotswolds, where the last boxy little houses of a newly built estate met the first drab fields of farmland, stood a run-down scrap metal site. Its single-page website was dotted with contemporary, eco-friendly buzzwords like recycling and reclamation. But that didn’t alter the reality of a grimy, litter-strewn graveyard for abandoned cars and piles of metallic junk — from shopping-trolleys to radiators and old library shelves — run by three oil-stained, boilersuited men fuelled by PG Tips and nicotine. None of them were present as Uschi Kremer — alias Magda ‘Ginger’ Sternberg, alias Celina Novak — drove up the dusty lane that led beneath the arch of a long-abandoned railway and turned in through the scrapyard gates, ignoring the sign that said the yard was closed. The two black Range Rovers were waiting for her. Braddock was leaning against one of them, smoking. As she drove up, he threw the cigarette on the floor and ground it under his heel. The driver of the other Range Rover got out and walked towards his boss.

‘This is Turner,’ Braddock said as Ginger emerged from her car.

She did not bother to shake their hands or say hello. ‘There’s no one else here?’ she asked.

‘No. Gone to lunch,’ Braddock replied.

‘And when are they coming back?’

‘When they’ve pissed away the five hundred quid I gave them down the bookies and the pub. We’ve got a while.’

‘OK.’ Ginger looked around the yard, noting the CCTV cameras at the gate and by the front door to the Portakabin that served as an office. ‘What about these?’

‘All off. The video-machine’s not working. Something seems to have gone mysteriously wrong with it.’

‘Good. Then let’s get on.’

She opened up one of the rear doors and pulled away the blanket that had been covering the bodies of Gryffud and Smethurst. Braddock turned away in disgust at the stench that emanated from the corpses. Ginger looked at him contemptuously. ‘Their bowels evacuated at the moment of death,’ she said, speaking with a technician’s precision. ‘A man like you should be used to that.’

‘Shit still stinks, however much you’re used to it,’ he said. Then a thought struck him. ‘I’m not having that fucking smell in my car!’

Ginger looked at him with utter contempt, then gave an impatient sigh. ‘All right, let’s clean it all up.’

There was a standpipe outside the Portakabin, with a bright yellow hose attached to it. Braddock and Turner pulled the two bodies out of Ginger’s BMW, before they and the car’s passenger compartment were drenched with water, rinsing away all the filth. Braddock took a roll of green plastic sheeting out of the back of the Range Rover and cut off a couple of metres of it, which he then laid on the ground. The two men dragged Brynmor Gryffud’s body on to the sheet, then rolled it over twice, so that the body was entirely wrapped in plastic. Braddock used gaffer tape to secure the package, and then he and Ginger hefted the body into the back of one of the Range Rovers.