Assassin (27 page)

He got on the line to Oslo right away.

Damon Tyzack’s helicopter was over the Swedish border within three minutes of take-off. It swung south, flying low over the hilly, lake-strewn landscape of Varmland. The scenery there is some of the finest in Sweden, but Tyzack had no interest in enjoying the view. He was too busy checking his watch and urging his pilot to squeeze every last knot out of his machine. Thinking about the task that lay ahead of him, he didn’t see himself coming back to Norway any time soon. So he wouldn’t get the chance of one last heart-to-heart with Carver. That was a pity. On the other hand, there was the consolation that Carver would die horribly, all alone, after long pain-filled days in which he’d have nothing else to think about but how much he’d fucked up. By now, he’d probably worked out who’d really shopped him. He’d be tormented by the loss of his best mate and his woman and he’d be all alone with the cuts on his back going septic, the pain in his neck getting worse and worse and not even a drop of water to drink without putting himself through hell.

Tyzack laughed aloud at the thought of such a satisfying revenge. He felt it was a good sign. Things were moving his way. Now he just had to hit the ultimate target for any assassin: Mr President himself. If he pulled that job off, he would not only have destroyed Carver but utterly overshadowed him.

He’d got a text from one of Visar’s people. The goods had been procured and conversion was taking place, it said. Excellent.

Foster Lafferty was with him in the helicopter. ‘I’ve got a job for you,’ Tyzack said. ‘It means going back to Bradford, having another pow-pow with the Pakis.’

‘You want me to smack ‘em around again?’ Lafferty asked.

‘On the contrary, I want you all to become the very best of friends. Tell the Pakis they can have their tarts back. But I need something from them in return …’

The helicopter landed half an hour later in a field north of Gothenburg. A car was waiting for him there. It would take him the four hundred miles down the Swedish west coast to Malmo, across to Denmark on the Oresund bridge and tunnel, and then west to a private airfield close to the North Sea coast. From there he and his men would be flown to a similar field in northern England, their route carefully planned to avoid airspace controlled by the National Air Traffic Service.

He didn’t have any worries about getting into the country undetected. England’s immigration and border controls were a joke. He got illegals in every day of the week. He could get himself in easily enough.

Jack Grantham had wondered how he was going to play this policeman, Ravnsborg, and how much he would reveal to him about Carver. Would he, for example, show Ravnsborg the texts? They were clearly important, even crucial evidence that suggested very clearly that Carver had been duped. On the other hand, they were bound to make any detective ask the obvious question: ‘Why did he send them to you?’

‘Let’s just say we know one another,’ Grantham replied, when Ravnsborg did, indeed, ask precisely that.

‘He works for you, does he, at the … Foreign Office?’

There was a half-smile on Ravnsborg’s weary face as he spoke. Grantham got the impression that the big, sleepy Norwegian was enjoying the break in the grinding, relentless pressure of coping with a major disaster. It struck Grantham that this was a man he could have a drink with, or fight alongside and know that his back was covered: a man he could trust. And trust was not one of Jack Grantham’s natural emotions.

‘No, Carver’s not an employee of Her Majesty’s Government,’ he replied. ‘But he has carried out a couple of assignments, unpaid … favours, if you like. Big favours.’

‘And in your estimation, Mr Grantham, is he a man who would blow up the King Haakon Hotel?’

‘He’s not a man who’d get caught blowing it up.’

Ravnsborg chuckled. ‘Quite … And we have yet to determine that Carver was the man who we believe planted the bomb at the hotel yesterday afternoon. Of course, even if he were not, that might only tell us that more than one man was involved in the plot. I know only two things for sure. First, that Carver’s call triggered the bomb. That has now been confirmed. And second, that he is capable of killing, because he attacked and killed three men last night.’

‘Sounds like him,’ Grantham agreed.

‘On the other hand,’ Ravnsborg continued, ‘these text messages tally exactly with what other witnesses have described … You can assure me, I take it, that you did not send them to him yourself?’

‘Would I be here if I had?’

‘You might, I suppose, but I am too exhausted at the moment to work out why. Tell me, do you know this man?’

Grantham got up and walked round to Ravnsborg’s side of the desk. A series of shots of Damon Tyzack appeared on the policeman’s computer.

‘Doesn’t ring any bells,’ said Grantham. ‘Bluetooth them to my phone and I’ll send them back to London. We’ll see if anyone can put a name to the face.’

‘At the Foreign Office?’

‘I was thinking the Home Office, actually.’

Grantham would normally have sent the picture-files straight to Bill Selsey, but that hardly seemed wise under the present circumstances; and if he could not be trusted, the whole department was compromised. Grantham sent them to a different agency altogether.

Then he murmured, ‘Hang on,’ to Ravnsborg and hit a number on his speed-dial.

‘Agatha,’ he said when he got through. ‘Jack Grantham here. Look, I wonder if you could do me a favour …’

Dame Agatha Bewley, the newly appointed head of the British Security Service, or MI5, was several rungs up the Whitehall ladder from Grantham, but the two of them had worked together in the past. They had history, and shared secrets, particularly where Samuel Carver was concerned. So it was as much out of self-protection as any collegial feeling towards a brother officer that she listened to what Grantham had to say and replied, ‘Of course, I quite understand. Don’t worry. I’ll set the wheels in motion right away.’

In Oslo, Ravnsborg waited patiently until Grantham had finished his call.

‘So … you think Carver has been framed, correct?’ he finally asked.

Grantham nodded.

‘Me, too. This is a problem, because he is a convenient, obviously guilty man, and I have everyone up to the Prime Minister telling me to arrest him so that he can be convicted as soon as possible and the public can feel safe again. But it seems to me that they would be safer if the right man were in prison. Excuse me …’

His phone had started ringing. Ravnsborg took the call. At first he said nothing beyond a few grunts of acknowledgement and understanding before firing a series of short, incisive questions in Norwegian. He wrote something down on a pad in front of him. Then, with his pen still hovering over the paper, he asked another couple of questions, evidently checking that he had written down the details of what he had been told correctly. When he put the phone back down, he looked up at Grantham.

‘I was about to tell you, before that call, that we had lost track of Mr Carver. Last night, his movements were traced right up to the point where he attempted to board a ferry bound for Denmark. A passenger on that ferry, who had stepped outside for a smoke, saw him being lifted from the water by a helicopter. Well, I think we know now where that helicopter took him. And if the reports are correct, he is still there. A man with red hair was also spotted at the same location. That is the good news.’

‘And the bad news?’

Ravnsborg ran his hands through his hair, leaving it even more dishevelled. He sighed like a man who was way past the end of his tether. ‘The bad news,’ he said, ‘is that your Mr Carver may very well be dead.’

As soon as Bill Selsey got to work and realized that Grantham had scurried off to Oslo, he knew that it was time to make his move. The head of SIS, Sir Mostyn Green, had been chosen more for his willingness to tell the Prime Minister precisely what he wanted to hear than any great gift for intelligence. Selsey had been among those appalled by the way Green had been parachuted into Vauxhall Cross over the heads of men and women far better qualified for his position. Now, though, he was delighted that his boss was a political crawler, who dreaded public embarrassment above all else.

Selsey put himself through to Green’s gatekeeper, a junior toadie built in his master’s image.

‘Morning, Jason, can you squeeze me in with Sir Mostyn for a few minutes, soon as poss? Something’s come up.’

‘I’m afraid he’s tied up all morning. He’s got the Foreign Secretary at eleven, and then they’re both attending a JIC meeting. Is it urgent?’

‘Well, it’s an internal matter. Pretty delicate, actually,’ Selsey replied in the confidential tone of a man about to pass on a particularly juicy piece of gossip. He had always known, as a matter of principle, that knowledge was power. Now he understood that power first hand.

‘It’s Grantham,’ Selsey went on. ‘He flew to Oslo this morning. He’s gone to meet a chap called Samuel Carver.’

It took a second for the penny to drop.

‘What, the one who’s wanted for that hotel bombing?’

‘Precisely.’

‘But why would Grantham … ? Oh Lord, are you suggesting that the Service might be exposed to some kind of embarrassment?’

‘Exactly, that’s what’s causing me concern. I can’t go into details now, but Jack and Carver go back a while. They’ve got form. That’s why I need to see Sir Mostyn.’

‘In that case, I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Thanks, Jason. Knew you’d understand.’

Madeleine Cross put a hand on the basin and leaned towards the bathroom mirror. God, she looked wrecked.

She hadn’t slept a wink. The whole night had crawled by with the same thoughts going round and round her brain without her coming to any conclusions: always the same questions, but never with any answers. She wished she knew where Carver was and whether he was alive or dead. She wished, too, that she knew who Carver was: the man she’d thought she could love, or the vicious killer she’d heard described on CNN. She kept going back to that moment at the ranch, when she’d felt his hands grip her body tight and watched him struggle to overcome his desire: he’d never been more attractive to her than at the precise instant he let her go. But against that proof of self-restraint and consideration she thought of the brutal efficiency with which he’d dispatched the two rednecks in that roadhouse south of Cascade. The man who had done that might just be capable of bombing a hotel without even losing sleep. And yet she still heard Ole Ravnsborg’s voice in her head, asking, ‘What if he is an innocent man who has himself been used?’

When the morning came, she hauled herself off to the bathroom and stood under a blistering hot shower until the fatigue and stiffness had melted from her neck and shoulders. Then she yanked the control to the far side of the dial and made herself stay there under the blast of freezing water. Now, as she stood by the basin and dabbed a concealer wand at the sacks under her eyes, her mind at last reached a point of clarity and the answers she was seeking seemed to fall into place like the tumblers of a lock.

It was just a matter of getting enough evidence to convince Ravnsborg that her answers were right. And to do that, the first thing she needed was a chat with the future Mrs Larsson. Time they had a good girl-talk.

* * *

The hotel was surrounded by TV crews and reporters. Maddy had to persuade the management to smuggle her out of the rear service exit like a scandal-ridden celebrity. She dashed to a waiting taxi and was driven up through hills dotted with smart suburban homes to the Holmenkollen Chapel, a starkly beautiful construction of black-stained wood topped with heavy wooden crosses.

‘What do you think?’ asked Thor Larsson, who met her outside the entrance.

‘About this place?’ she replied, looking up at the looming silhouette of the chapel set against the pale blue sky. ‘I think it looks like a cross between a church and a haunted house. Or do you mean: what do I think about being here, at this damn rehearsal? Because, honestly, I don’t know how you can go ahead with a wedding, after last night.’

‘You think we should cancel it?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, don’t you? Ten people died last night. We were there. Oh, and your best man is accused of the crime.’

‘Ten people will die on the roads in this country over the next two or three days. Ten people die on a good day in Iraq. Should we cancel everything for them too?’

‘But we were there.’

‘Yes, we were having dinner in the cafe. But we didn’t make the bombs go off. And what about Karin? Am I supposed to tell her: Sorry, darling, you’ll have to send all your family and friends a thousand kilometres back to Narvik because some guy let off a bomb? It doesn’t make sense.’

There was a tension in Larsson’s voice, a desperation almost, which was out of keeping with everything Sam had told her about his laid-back personality; everything she had seen herself at the airport and over dinner. She wondered if the person he was really trying to persuade was himself.

‘What about Carver?’ she asked as they walked into the chapel.

‘Do you think he was responsible for what happened?’ Larsson replied.

‘No … no, I don’t. I can’t.’

‘OK. But if we cancelled, that would be like an admission that we were linked to the guilty man. We can’t do that to him.’