Tom Cain - Carver

‘He gave it right back to me to invest in Zorn Global, of course — his own fee and the charity money!’ Zorn replied gleefully. ‘My bet is he was planning to make a huge profit on all of it, give the charity the original five mill, and keep the rest for himself. I’ve already had messages from his lawyers. Sure as shit they want to know how much money there’ll be for the estate.’

Razzaq nodded. ‘Without any doubt that is what they want. So, Orwell helped you get the money. Then you found a way of multiplying it many times over. And by complete chance this turned out to be more successful than even you could have imagined. I am assuming that today’s events have returned a much bigger profit because of the deaths of Orwell and the rest.’

‘That’s a fair assumption, yes.’

‘All right. But it has also caused you a problem which we need to assess. The plan originally called for you to be assassinated prior to the public launch of the fund. Then I would persuade Orwell to host the event in your memory. I say, “persuade” but of course it would have been simple. He would have loved that chance to be the centre of attention.’

‘Oh yes, I can see him now, giving them all his big, fat Nicholas Orwell grin…’ Zorn agreed.

‘And the investors would all come to the Goldsmiths’ Hall pretending that they were doing it in your memory, but in reality because they wanted to know what was going to happen to their money.’

‘Sure… the contracts they signed when they invested their money specified that in the event of my death, they would receive all the money they had invested, plus eighty per cent of any profits. And after Rosconway, they’d all figure that would be eighty per cent of a helluva lot…’

‘So they would come to toast your memory and their even greater good fortune. And we’d kill them all.’ Razzaq stubbed the cigar out in the ashtray by his side, punctuating his words with downward jabs as he said, ‘Every… last… one of them.’ He sat back in his chair and went on, ‘But now Orwell himself is dead. So I ask you, how will any of the investors be persuaded to attend?’

‘Perhaps you could say that you were going to make the big announcement?’ Zorn suggested.

‘Ha! You forget that I know what is going to happen. I am not that foolish a turkey! And that is why I ask you now whether it would not be simpler to cut this whole project short. You already have enough money to last a thousand lifetimes. I assume that you can make sure that your investors never see a penny of it ever again.’

‘Of course. Hell, the damn money doesn’t really exist to begin with. There’s no pile of gold, no giant suitcase of cash. It’s just digits, you know, bits of data that get switched from one server to another. It can vanish into the ether any time.’

‘And so can you,’ said Razzaq. ‘So my advice is, do it now. Disappear. Go. Vanish.’

‘Well, that’s good advice. Don’t get me wrong, Ahmad, I appreciate your concern, and I can see the sense of it.’

‘But…?’

‘But I’m not ready to call it quits. This game has a few more twists and turns just yet. We’re only in the third quarter, and there’s still a lot of time on the clock. I want to see how it plays out.’

Razzaq frowned. ‘So you want to go ahead with our plans? You don’t want me to call Carver off, for example?’

‘No, I don’t. I want him to go ahead and carry out the assassination.’ Zorn emptied his glass, put it down, and then said, ‘Wait till I’m dead. I think the game could look a whole lot better then.’

Wednesday, 29 June

Putney, London SW15

It was past 11.00 a.m. before Carver got the call from Grantham. ‘We got everything you asked for. The van’s a white Transit, with “McNulty Brothers Builders” written on the side. It’s parked on the rooftop level of the Putney Exchange multi-storey car park, in the far south-west corner. The door’s unlocked. The keys are in the plastic B amp;Q bag in the passenger-side footwell. So’s that Krakatoa thing you asked for. The rest of the kit’s in the back of the van. Leave your car as near as you can with the keys in the ignition. We’ll have someone waiting to take it away.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Don’t thank me, Carver. You’re still screwed if this doesn’t work.’

‘What else is new?’

Carver hung up and immediately put in a call to Schultz, telling him to meet by the van in exactly one hour’s time. Then he texted Alix: ‘On my way. Keep me posted.’

A minute later he got her reply: ‘Latest update. Standing in bra and panties, deciding what dress to wear. Want to look my best for you, haha!’

Carver laughed. ‘Dress code update,’ he texted. ‘U will be thrown out of Wim if turn up in bra and knickers. But would not be thrown out of my bed.’

Alix wrote again. ‘Down boy!! Gotta go xxx’

Carver grinned, then closed the window. There was nothing wrong with having a few jokes before you went into action. But it was time for the laughing to stop.

It took forty-eight minutes to make his way in the Audi through heavy South London traffic to the Putney Exchange Shopping Centre. He wound his way up through the multi-storey car park to the open expanse of the rooftop level. The van was exactly where Grantham had promised it would be. Carver found an empty space nearby and left the keys as Grantham had told him to do. He had barely got to the door of the Transit when he heard an engine start up behind him, and seconds later the Audi was driving past on its way to the exit.

He opened the Transit’s passenger door. The B amp;Q bag was sitting on the floor in front of the passenger seat. Carver reached in, picked the bag up and looked inside. Aside from the keys it contained a couple of plastic garden pegs linked by a short length of green nylon twine; a thin disc of copper about 15 cm in diameter, beaten into a shallow cone; a packet of Polyfilla that had been opened and then resealed with a bright yellow plastic clip; and a series of grey plastic components. These comprised a short, open-ended tube whose diameter was a fraction greater than that of the copper disc; a couple of locking rings, similarly sized; a plastic disc, again as wide as the cylinder, to which a tightly looped length of electrical wire was attached; and four rigid plastic sticks, each about 30 cm in length. Anyone looking into the bag would assume that they all fitted together to form some kind of plumbing device.

Carver cast his eye over it all, muttered, ‘Good,’ to himself, then closed the passenger door again and walked around to the back of the van. He opened up the rear cargo-bay doors just enough for him to see inside, without enabling anyone else to glimpse what was there. This time his reaction was a little more effusive: a broad smile and a murmured, ‘Excellent.’

He closed the doors and made his way to the driver’s seat. Two minutes later there was a rap on the window. Schultz and Cripps were standing outside. Carver lowered the window, then handed them the B amp;Q plastic bag. ‘There you go.’

Schultz looked inside and grinned broadly. ‘Lovely jubbly,’ he said. He and Cripps walked back to their car, an old Mazda 626 saloon. Carver rolled up the van’s window and started the engine. Two minutes later they were all on their way.

Meanwhile, on the crowded approaches to Putney Bridge, the Chinese agents trailing the silver Audi were asking themselves why it was heading north, back over the river towards Central London, in the opposite direction to Wimbledon. It was only when they were on the bridge itself and able to accelerate enough to bring their car alongside the Audi that they realized Carver was no longer at the wheel. The string of obscenities that followed was equalled only by Derek Choi’s fury when the news was relayed to him.