Carver - By Tom Cain Page 0,115

long to be reassured that everything was in order. The XM-25 Punisher grenade launcher that he had gone to such trouble to steal in Afghanistan had made it all the way to the City of London in one piece. It wouldn’t be long now before he found out just how good it really was. First, though, there was one other piece of business to attend to.

He put the Punisher back in the flight-case, closing the top. Then he picked up the Glock and held it down behind his back as he returned to the conference room.

‘Hello!’ said the receptionist cheerfully as she saw him come back in. ‘You were gone a long time. You must have been nervous! Well, there’s no need to worry. Mr Bandekar’s a charming gentleman. Can I get you some tea?’

‘Cheers, that would be great, yeah.’

She got up from behind her desk, and as she did Braddock shot her twice: one bullet in the body, and then another at point-blank range to the head before she had a chance to scream.

The suppressor was very effective, but there’s no such thing as a total silencer. So Braddock needed to move quickly now, before anyone worked out what was happening. He went straight to the door to the inner office, opened it, and shot the interviewee in the back of his head, blowing a chunk of his brains out through his forehead and on to the desk behind which Bandekar was desperately trying to heave his massive bulk to his feet.

‘You’ll need more than two, big boy,’ said Braddock. So he used four bullets on the portly Indian. Then he went to the window and drew the blind, repeating the process with the conference room windows. He did not turn the lights on, so the room was in semidarkness as he dragged the three corpses behind the display panels. It was more to get them out of the way than to hide them; the thick trails of blood smeared across the carpet were like arrows leading the eye to the bodies’ locations.

Braddock was sweaty, panting and irritable by the time he’d finished shifting Bandekar. He took a minute to cool down mentally as well as emotionally before he returned to the storeroom, collected the Punisher and went back to the office. Lifting the blind and peering out, he could see five huge, brightly lit windows across the way. Not long to go now.

87

* * *

GINGER STERNBERG WAS not the kind of woman who is easily impressed, but even she had to admit that the Goldsmiths’ Hall was a spectacularly appropriate location for a gathering of the very rich. It was right in the heart of the City of London, less than half a mile from the Bank of England, and even closer to the Stock Exchange and St Paul’s Cathedral. The main entrance was flanked on either side by massive classical columns that rose the full height of the building. Once inside, she came to a hall whose panelled walls and coffered ceiling were entirely covered in green, grey and white marble. Directly in front of her, a magnificent staircase rose in a single flight of a dozen wide steps before splitting in two to form a shallow Y.

Ahead of her, Ginger heard a woman with a grating New York accent whining at her fat, balding ape of a husband, ‘Hey, Morty, I want stairs just like this in our next place.’

‘Whatever you want, Charl, whatever you want,’ he replied, humouring her.

Ginger wondered what Mort would be getting his mistress while his wife spent her time redecorating: not marble staircases, that was for sure.

A stream of guests were making their way up to the party itself: the men formally dressed in smart suits, the women dazzling in couture dresses and sparkling jewels. Ginger ignored the men and concentrated on her female competition, instantly noting those who were even remotely worthy of her attention, and grading their dresses, accessories, hair, faces and figures. It was an automatic reflex, combining natural feminine curiosity with professional scrutiny: when you had been trained to seduce men for a living, you very soon learned to determine who might beat you to your target. Tonight, of course, her task was very different. But even so, it gave her pleasure to scan the parade of rich men’s wives, scattered with the occasional famous face, and know that she could still do battle with any of them. Her hair was blonde for the night. Her dress