Tom Cain - Assassin

The kid’s head nodded frantically.

‘Undo the chain, then place it on the ground beside you.’

The order was obeyed. Carver slid his foot across and shifted the chain out of the kid’s reach.

‘Now stand up slowly, nice and easy, no sudden movements.’

He waited while the order was obeyed.

‘Turn around and face me… Now, your keys, please. And again, easy does it.’

Holding his gun in his right hand, Carver took the keys in his left and shoved them into a trouser pocket. The kid began to tremble, his panicked eyes focused upwards at the gun pointing directly at the middle of his forehead. He was trying to grow a beard, Carver saw: little more than a dusting of mouse-brown hair across cheeks still not completely clear of teenage acne.

‘Please, don’t kill me,’ he begged, his voice little more than a whimper.

‘I don’t plan to,’ said Carver, darting a quick glance back down the path. It was clear. They hadn’t yet tracked him down. ‘Not if you do exactly as you’re told.’

‘Sure, sure,’ said the kid. ‘Anything.’

‘OK, then, take off the jacket and put it next to the helmet. I’m putting my gun away now.’

The kid was half turned away from Carver, leaving the jacket on his moped. Carver saw the tension ease from his shoulders as he realized the gun was no longer aimed at him. And it was then, at that brief moment of relaxation, that Carver grabbed the scrawny young man and spun him round, kept him moving across the narrow path and flung him into the water. It was hardly any drop, but the slick marble stonework would make it impossible for the kid to climb back ashore. He’d have to swim round to the front of the building, and that would give Carver all the time he needed.

He looked at the kid, who was treading water and looking at him with an expression that had changed from fear to indignation.

‘I’m taking your bike,’ said Carver. ‘But I’m not going far. Go to Aker Brygge. Your bike will be there. I won’t.’

Carver went back to the moped, put on the jacket and the helmet, turned on the engine, and moved away. He was thinking about the ferry that had just set sail. That was his way out of Oslo. And he’d worked out how to get on it.

‘What now?’ Police Superintendent Ole Ravnsborg, senior duty officer at the Oslo police headquarters in Hammersborggata, just a short way away from the site of the explosion, looked up at the young officer standing nervously in front of him holding two sheets of paper.

‘We just had a tip-off, sir. About the bomb at the King Haakon.’

Ravnsborg was as big and shaggy as a dog with a cask of brandy round its neck. He emitted a rumbling, disgruntled growl and his massive shoulders seemed to slump even lower in his chair.

‘Put it on the pile,’ he muttered, ‘with all the other crazies.’

The youngster stood his ground. ‘I think this one might be different, sir,’ he insisted. ‘They gave us specific names of the bomber, and two associates. There’s even a photograph, taken at the hotel, exactly when the bomb went off.’

Ravnsborg gave a little wave of the fingers, as if summoning a waiter. ‘Give it here,’ he said, taking the paper. A hush seemed to fall on the crowded incident room as the hurriedly assembled investigation team – an ad hoc mix of officers on duty at the time of the blast and other detectives hauled back to HQ as and when they could be tracked down – waited to see what their leader would make of this new information.

Ravnsborg read the email and looked at the photograph, scratching his head through a mat of tousled, dirty-blond hair as he did so. Though his body – a little soft around the edges now, but still possessing vast reserves of strength, like a weightlifter retired from competition – was virtually motionless, his mind was darting from one subject to another with a gymnast’s agility.

The bomb had come as a total, devastating surprise. There had been no threat from a terrorist group, nor any warning from the nation’s intelligence service, or its anti-terrorism unit. The city’s police, fire and medical services were stretched to their utmost just coping with the immediate aftermath of the blast in the vicinity of the King Haakon Hotel. He had no officers to spare for a wild-goose chase, looking for a man who was either an innocent irrelevance or a calculating killer with an escape route planned as meticulously as the attack itself. There had not yet been time or enough available manpower to interview hotel staff. Nor was there, as yet, any forensic evidence linking the explosion to the hotel’s internal phone system.

To cap it all, Ravnsborg was profoundly suspicious of the tip-off itself. It had been given anonymously, but who would do such a thing, and to what end? It was, he supposed, possible that the bomber had been sold out by his own people. But, if so, he would surely in turn give up the men who had betrayed him. Perhaps it was a rival group, wanting to undermine its competitors, or a foreign spy, determined to preserve his anonymity. Ravnsborg did not like any of these explanations. Yet he could not afford to ignore a lead as good as this, either.

He looked up to see every eye in the room trained upon him.

‘Berg, Dalen,’ he snapped. ‘Go to the Gabelshus Hotel. It’s in Skillebekk. Pick up a guest, an American, name of Madeleine Cross. Also a friend of hers, one of ours, Thor Larsson. Bring them here. Tell them they are wanted for questioning in connection with tonight’s bomb attack. They are witnesses, not suspects, at this point, but that may change. Don’t let her get away with any crap about calling the American embassy. Just bring them here as fast as you can. Go.’

As the two detectives left the room, Ravnsborg was firing off more orders. All police and security staff were told to be on the lookout for a male, aged thirty-five to forty, six feet tall, dark hair, British, going by the name of Carver.

‘Do we have an eye colour?’ one of his men asked.

Ravnsborg looked mournfully down at the photograph, which lit Carver in a blaze of flash. ‘Red,’ he said, then, ‘That was a joke.’

There was a nervous ripple of forced laughter. Another order was given to make the picture available to TV stations, along with the information that Mr Carver was wanted for questioning by police so that he could be eliminated from their enquiries.

All the time, phones around the office were ringing constantly with updates from the bomb-site, questions from reporters, interruptions from politicians wanting to get in on the act. Ravnsborg had just finished a short, infuriating conversation with the National Police Commissioner, who had simultaneously wished him luck, promised him promotion if the investigation should turn out well, and assured him of a swift relocation to the furthest, coldest reaches of the nation if it did not, when the young policeman approached his desk again.

‘You again,’ Ravnsborg sighed. ‘What do you want?’

‘You’re not going to believe it, sir. But all hell has broken loose down at the opera house.’

Carver rode the moped at walking pace along the broad esplanade that ran between the fancy food and drink joints and the sea. There was something for everyone down here: steakhouses, pizza parlours, gourmet French and specialist seafood. All the restaurants supplied huge fleece blankets so that customers could sit outside and still keep snug. But there were no cosy couples sharing blankets and stealing kisses. Wherever he looked, Carver saw people huddled round radios and phone-screens, taking in the latest news from the bombing. Some of the restaurants had set up TVs in their dining-rooms, as if admitting that no one would be interested in anything else tonight.