Tom Cain: Carver

The Goldsmiths’ hall occupies an entire block of the City of London. Its main entrance is on Foster Lane, and the rear facade, on which can be found the Assay Office, which officially tests and grades the purity of precious metals, backs on to Gutter Lane. Malachi Zorn, however, left the building by a side entrance, which opened on to Gresham Street. He turned right and walked across Gutter Lane and then turned right again into the entrance to the Wax Chandlers’ Hall. This, too, occupies a small block of its own. And its eastern facade runs along Gutter Lane, directly parallel to the rear elevation of the Goldsmiths’ Hall.

Armed spotters from the Anti-Terrorist Squad watched him all the way, noting that his appearance matched that of one of the catering staff assigned to the Zorn Global launch: a Pole by the name of Jerzy Kowalski. They saw him approach the private security guards manning the front door of the Wax Chandlers’ Hall and be granted admission.

‘Typical fucking Pole,’ grumbled one of the spotters. ‘Got a second job tonight.’

‘Good luck to him,’ the man on the other end of the radio link replied. ‘Our kids are too lazy to get off their arses. Not the Poles’ fault if they’re prepared to graft.’

‘Better call it in, anyway.’

They alerted the command centre, but it was purely a formality. The man was leaving the reception. If he’d left anything nasty behind him he wouldn’t have popped next door. He’d have got as far away as possible as fast as he could manage.

Carver couldn’t believe it. One minute he’d been following the waiter across the hall, the next he’d run straight into an impenetrable scrum of people that seemed to have materialized out of nowhere. A legendary supermodel was deep in conversation with the multi-billionaire owner of a Premiership-winning football club, and even in this exalted company their overwhelming combination of celebrity, sex appeal and stupendous wealth was enough to draw a crowd. Carver couldn’t get through the mob, so he’d had to go around it, and by the time he’d done that the waiter had disappeared. He might have stayed in the main body of the hall, but if he had it would be almost impossible to find him. So Carver took a chance and went through the staff exit into the barely controlled chaos required to provide five hundred guests with a constant supply of drinks and canapes. He tried to look through the hubbub for the bespectacled, moustachioed waiter. But the man he was hunting had gone.

A ripple of anticipation spread across the hall. One of Drinkwater’s minders had stepped behind the wheelchair, and was now pushing it across the room towards a stage that had been erected at one end, just in front of the treasure display, while his colleagues marched ahead, clearing the way. The MC for the evening was a famous newsreader. He was picking up a twenty-thousand-pound fee for making a two-minute introduction written for him, he thought, by Zorn’s PR team. In fact it had been composed by the Prime Minister’s speechwriters, and then vetted in painstaking detail by the Attorney General. It was vital that the newsreader’s bland platitudes and insipid jokes contained nothing that might in any way create a legal liability for the government, as and when its deception was revealed. Now the newsreader made his way to the front of the stage, his progress broadcast to the guests by two large screens on either side of the room. He glanced at the autocue to his right, and gave a quick, throat-clearing cough to confirm that his mic was working. Beside him there was a small podium, approached via a ramp and equipped with another mic on a low stand. This was where the man he believed was Malachi Zorn would make his speech.

On the floor of the hall, Ginger looked over the heads of all the shorter, lesser mortals to check the progress of the wheelchair and its entourage. Drinkwater would reach the stage in around a minute, she reckoned. It would then take another minute or so for him to be correctly positioned, and for the mic to be adjusted so that he could speak into it with ease. Ginger allowed another two minutes and thirty seconds for the newsreader’s introduction, and the applause that would certainly follow. All in all, Drinkwater would begin his speech in approximately five minutes.

She took her phone out of her evening bag and sent a three-word text. It read: ‘Go in five.’

She waited for the one-word reply: ‘Roger.’

And then she turned on her heels and made for the exit.

Damn the London traffic! Damn the security controls everywhere! Alix was stressed enough as it was, her emotions torn between her longing to see Carver and anxiety about what might happen if she came face-to-face with Azarov at the reception. She could only hope that the presence of so many other people would force him to control his temper. Just to make matters worse, she was running way late. And then she was literally running, heading down the road in her high heels as she gave up on the logjammed traffic, paid off her taxi-driver, and made a dash for it, praying that her high heels would not give way under her or catch in the gap between two paving stones. Suddenly the lightweight summer jacket and nylon stockings she’d put on in recognition of the chilly weather seemed horribly superfluous, doing nothing but make her hotter and sweatier, and adding to her feeling of physical discomfort and emotional fluster as she arrived — breathless, her chest heaving — at the entrance to Goldsmiths’ Hall. Her invitation was checked, her name ticked off a list, and her body and bag were both scanned before she was allowed into the entrance hall. A uniformed doorman was waiting for her at the foot of the main staircase.

‘The reception is in the Livery Hall on the first floor,’ he said, looking at her with avuncular sympathy. ‘But if madam would like to take advantage of the cloakroom facilities, they are downstairs to your right.’

Alix smiled weakly, and just about managed to say thank you before scurrying away to get rid of her coat and try, if it was remotely possible, to repair the worst of the damage to her face and hair.

‘My God, you look terrible,’ she muttered half a minute later, as she placed her evening bag beside one of the ladies’ room basins and gazed miserably at her reflection in the mirror.

And then behind her she heard an instantly recognizable voice from the past: ‘Oh no, darling, you don’t look terrible. You look much worse than that.’

Alix turned to look straight into the smirking, gloating face of the woman she’d known as Celina Novak. The hair was fake. The eyes wore contact lenses. But Celina could have stuck her head in a paper bag and it wouldn’t have made any difference. Alix would have known her anywhere.

Ginger had been walking past the marble balustrade on the first-floor landing when she had seen Alexandra Petrova come past the guards on the door and make her satisfyingly bedraggled way towards the doorman. Ginger had slipped behind a pillar and watched as the old man had directed Petrova to the cloakrooms. Quite rightly: she could hardly be allowed to show herself in public in that state! Ginger knew that she should content herself with relishing her contemporary’s pathetic decline from a distance, and get out of the building as soon as possible. But as she walked down the staircase the temptation to let Petrova know exactly what she thought of her was irresistible.

Without making a conscious decision about it, she had not walked straight to the front door of the hall. Instead, she’d turned left, towards the stairs that Petrova had taken, and followed her down into the basement. And now, as she looked at her rival standing so despondently in front of the mirror, Ginger was delighted by the instinct that had brought her there. Petrova had long since ceased to be a drab provincial wallflower, but at this one moment she was vulnerable. She was looking anything but her best, while Ginger was resplendent and made all the more beautiful by the triumphant glow that she could almost feel shining from herself.