Assassin (26 page)

Hirst fell silent as he took in the scene in the cabin.

‘This ship’s got to have a life-raft,’ said Carver. ‘Find it. Launch it. And get the lads together. We’re scuttling the ship.’

‘But, boss, the cocaine … it’s worth millions …’

‘Makes no difference. Customs are only going to burn it anyway.’

Hirst gave a shrug of his shoulders and left the cabin, shouting orders as he walked up on to the deck. Now Carver was on the radio, talking to the helicopter pilot.

‘We found the cocaine. Two crew, both dead. Bad news is, they stuffed the ship with enough C4 to sink the
Titanic
. I don’t know if they managed to set the fuses before we hit them and I’m not waiting to find out. Nor should you. Get well out of range. We’re going to abandon ship and take the life-raft. We’ll give it the standard thirty minutes. If she blows, you can come and pick us up. If she doesn’t, we’ll get back on board. Got that? Over.’

‘Absolutely. Have a jolly cruise. Out.’

No one would question the story. Drug-smugglers routinely scuttled their boats if they thought they were going to get caught. That way they destroyed the evidence, and when they were found floating on a raft maritime law defined them as rescued sailors, not suspected criminals, so no charges could be pressed.

‘What are you waiting for?’ Carver snapped at Tyzack. ‘I thought I told you to sink this boat?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well, get on with it. The sooner you do it, the less distance you’ll have to swim to reach the life-raft.’

‘You’re not waiting?’

‘You heard what I told the man. The ship could explode at any moment. I can’t risk the safety of my men, can I? And you, Lieutenant, can’t risk this ship not sinking. Can you?’

Carver did not wait for an answer before he left the cabin. It took Tyzack several minutes to set the charges and open the seacocks. By the time he dived over the side, into the cold, choppy waters of the Bay of Biscay, Carver and the other men in the life-raft were barely visible in the distance. He was still swimming when the
Maid of Dumfries
exploded and sank to the bottom of the sea.

‘Oh I see, you were doing me a favour, were you?’ Tyzack sneered. ‘And I’m the amateur, am I? But even I know that a true fighting man doesn’t let his brother warriors down. That’s why I was willing to let the matter rest. All right, so you humiliated me in front of the men and risked my life making me set up the charges and swim to the boat. But never mind, I’d have let bygones be bygones. But no, you felt obliged to deliver a full report to Trench. And that meant he was obliged to have a court martial. He didn’t want to, but you left him no alternative. Trench told me that in a letter. I’ve still got it. He even said he’d put in a good word for me with my old man …’

‘Did he really?’ Carver gave a weary, humourless laugh. ‘Sounds like Trench. Hope you didn’t believe him.’

‘Didn’t make any difference either way. My dear old daddy just did what he’d always done. He got out his horsewhip and thrashed me … rather like I’ve thrashed you, actually. I always thought to myself I’d pass on the favour one day, so that’s one resolution kept. My mother, of course, just stood there, doing nothing, just fiddling with her pearl necklace while he beat the hell out of me. I should have killed him then, of course. I don’t know why I didn’t, because I was more than strong enough, but I … I …’ Tyzack sighed. ‘For some reason I couldn’t fight back. Why was that, do you suppose? I just stood there and took my beating like a man. That was my father’s great phrase: Take it like a man. Oh well, I made him take it a few years later. I thought about my darling parents and made an executive decision. I had to let them go.’

‘You killed them?’ asked Carver.

‘No, I sent them on holiday to Barbados. Oh, for goodness’ sake, do I have to spell it out?’

‘I just wanted to make sure. And by the way, in case you’ve ever wondered what happened to Trench, he tried to have me eliminated, but I got to him first.’

‘Really?’ asked Tyzack, genuinely interested. ‘What did you do to him?’

‘I fired a flare gun into his face at point-blank range and turned him into a human torch.’

A smile crossed Tyzack’s face. ‘And you loved it, didn’t you? I can tell.’

‘Yes, I admit, that one did give me a certain satisfaction. So there have been times when I’ve gone too far. Innocent people have died. But if you think that makes me anything at all like you, you’re wrong. I may cross the line, but you don’t even know the line is there.’

Tyzack laughed. ‘Do you have any idea how absurd you sound, giving me your little lectures?’

Carver cracked a battered smile. There was something he needed to know from Tyzack. This might be the chance to get it.

‘You think I’m absurd? You spend years obsessing about the harm I’m supposed to have done to you. And all the while, you know what? You never even crossed my mind. Not once. I just didn’t give a toss. Why would I care about a loser like you?’

Tyzack’s jaw tightened. His breathing became heavier. The mask was cracking again as he fought to contain the rising tide of rage.

At last, after everything he’d been through, Carver had pushed Tyzack to the brink. Come on, he thought. Spit it out. Tell me just how great you are.

‘You really shouldn’t say things like that,’ rasped Tyzack. ‘You should know by now what I can do. Just look at yourself. You’re a murder suspect in three different countries. Your friends don’t want anything more to do with you. You’re hanging by the neck from a bloody great rubber band, like a Thunderbird puppet gone spastic … I put you there, and I’m going to leave you there. And while you’re busy dying, I am going to …’

Yes, yes! the voice in Carver’s head was shouting. What are you going to do?

Tyzack stopped dead. A smile crossed his face, his air of superiority suddenly restored.

‘Oh, very good,’ he said, as though he had been able to hear the screaming in Carver’s brain. ‘You nearly had me there. Almost got me to spill the beans about … the big one. Well, I’ve changed my mind. I think it’s more amusing to leave you in suspense.’

Tyzack glanced at the cord from which Carver was hanging. ‘No pun intended,’ he added. ‘Don’t worry, though, you will be kept fully in touch with my success, and your failure, as it all unfolds. Watch!’

He removed a remote control from his trouser pocket and aimed it at the nearest television, which sprang into life, as did all the other sets ringing Carver. They were all tuned to the BBC News channel.

‘Well, I thought that was only right, don’t you think? Mother country and all that. Still, I think it could be a bit louder. I wouldn’t want you to miss anything.’

He pressed the volume control and suddenly Carver was assaulted on all sides by a voice promoting a forthcoming
Hardtalk
interview with an Israeli politician. Wherever Carver turned, he couldn’t escape the screens, all carefully positioned just beyond his reach.

‘Excellent,’ said Tyzack, raising his voice above the television babble. ‘But I do think that you need to be taught one last lesson before I go. I’ve done my best, but I fear you’ve failed to grasp some of what I’ve been trying to teach you. I suspect you’re not very bright, to be honest. Our relative positions still don’t seem clear to you. So let me explain. I’ve beaten you once …’ Tyzack picked up the cane and walked up to Carver’s chair.

Carver couldn’t help it. He flinched. That was all the encouragement Tyzack needed.

‘… I …’ He swung the cane, hitting the arms that Carver raised in a desperate bid to protect himself.

‘… can …’ Carver had bent forward, leaving the raw, hamburger meat of his back exposed. So that’s where Tyzack aimed the second blow.

‘… do it …’ As Carver howled in pain, Tyzack kicked the chair away again, swinging the cane at him and grinning in delight as his desperate attempts to escape only forced him to the limit of the cord’s tolerance, gagging him and forcing him back within Tyzack’s range as he shouted, ‘… again!’

The last blow hit Carver just below the diaphragm, doubling him up, and then jerking him back up again as the cord rebounded, a wounded marionette at the mercy of a sadistic puppet-master.

Tyzack stepped back and examined his handiwork. Carver’s refusal to accept his version of events had angered and frustrated him, but he had exacted a more than satisfactory price. He was going to have to leave soon. Visar wanted him working on the Bristol job and he couldn’t afford to disappoint the Albanian.

He took another look at Carver, who was scrabbling around, trying to reach his chair, which was lying on its back, several feet away from him. Tyzack walked round the barn until he was standing right by the chair, paying very close attention as Carver - now apparently oblivious of his presence - fought the choking power of the cord.

Yes, Tyzack thought. It would be hard and it would hurt a very great deal, but Carver would get the chair. And if he had the chair he could live - or exist at any rate - for a few more days, being driven mad by the pain of his back, the choking frustration of his collar and lead and the unstinting blare of the TV sets. That was perfect. And so, feeling happier than he had done in years, Damon Tyzack walked out of the barn, leaving Carver to his pathetic struggles and padlocking the door behind him.

Hans and Gudrun List were ardent ramblers, still blessed with wiry physiques and tanned limbs despite being well into their sixties. Natives of Salzburg, Austria, they had grown up striding across the spectacular alpine landscape that surrounds their home town. Now they were walking across southern Scandinavia, from Stockholm to Oslo, enjoying the perfect weather of early summer and the rural scenery as they made good progress along the northern shore of Tvillingtjenn lake, just a couple of hours’ walk from the Swedish border. Above all the Lists took pleasure in the peace and solitude; the cool, muffled calm soothed them as they walked between the trees along the water’s edge.

And then the silence was shattered by a terrible howl of pain, a scream so primal that it might have come from an animal. ‘What was that?’ Hans asked. But the question was superfluous. The Lists both knew at once that this was the sound of a man in agony.

‘It came from over there,’ said Gudrun, pointing away from the lakeshore into the trees.

They took a few more tentative paces into the woods, torn between the desire to help a fellow-human and the fear of whoever, or whatever, had ripped that terrible sound from his body. Then another scream rang out, more raggedly this time, as though the man’s vocal cords no longer had the power to communicate his suffering.

‘Look,’ said Hans, pointing ahead of them. ‘Over there.’

Gudrun saw it now: a small wooden building, a barn perhaps, or a garage. It looked drab and nondescript, apart from an incongruously bright pair of green doors, whose colour was echoed on the gable-ends of the roof. The fact that they could see the barn made the Lists themselves feel exposed. They retreated back down the path as a third scream, weaker again, seemed to call them, wordlessly pleading for their help.

‘We must do something,’ Gudrun insisted, waving her husband forward as she crept back towards the building, leaving the path and moving from the cover of one tree to another. They came to a halt behind the trunk of an ancient spruce and peered ahead of them. When what sounded like a very loud TV set was switched on they looked at one another in confusion. Then, a minute or two later, both flinched as the green doors opened and a man appeared, his head topped with a shock of fiery red hair. He turned back to lock the doors, then walked away from the barn. As they watched him go, the Lists realized that there was another, bigger building behind the barn, more like a chalet or farmhouse. More men emerged from it and followed the red-headed man as he kept walking. Silence fell for a while and then the thunderous racket of a powerful engine started up. There was a rise in pitch as it got up to speed, followed by a clatter of rotor-blades and then a helicopter rose from the forest and roared away over the trees towards the east.

As the sound of the chopper disappeared in the distance, the Lists turned to one another.

‘He’s still in there; we must do something,’ Gudrun insisted.

‘But if he is there, then surely there will still be someone in the main house. They would not just leave him.’

‘Unless he is dead. We should go and look, to make sure.’

‘Why, what good could we do? My dearest, this is a matter for the police.’

‘But that poor man …’

‘Exactly. Think about what they did to him. They could do it to us, too. Come, we must hurry away … Come on!’

Neither of the Lists’ phones could get a signal where they were. It took another half an hour of brisk walking, every so often breaking into an undignified jog, before they were able to get through to the Norwegian emergency number, 112, and report what they had heard and seen.

The case was assigned to the nearest police station at Bjorkelangen, seven miles away. The inspector on duty there was about to send a car to investigate when he recalled one of the alerts that had been sent from Oslo in the hours after that terrible hotel bombing: something about a helicopter that had been seen over the opera house. Maybe this was the same chopper? It was a long shot, but it never hurt to be over-careful. And if he did happen to have found it, well, that might help him get a big-city posting.