being much the smaller, lighter man, was the first to fall into a coma. Gryffud was able to look imploringly at Kremer and gasp, ‘What have you …?’ before he passed out. Both were dead by the time Kremer had driven out of the parking lot.
It was now 10.36 a.m.
49
* * *
Rosconway
CARVER PULLED INTO the deserted farmyard just before 10.37 a.m., a little under three minutes before Dave Smethurst’s home-made launchers were due to fire their shells at the oil refinery.
On the way in he passed a long, low brick shed. There was a gaping hole in its roof, about a metre square, as though a meteorite or a cannonball had fallen from the sky and punched its way through the slates. Directly opposite him stood the remains of a traditional farmhouse, flanked on either side by stables, sheds, a small piggery and a large barn. He got out of the car without any great sense of urgency. He didn’t seriously expect, let alone fear, that he would find anything. He just wanted to get a sense of what might be possible. And it was good, too, to get away from the farcical chaos and disorganization of events at the refinery and go somewhere quiet and peaceful where he could think undisturbed.
He looked around the yard. As his eyes came to rest on the barn, he had to squint into the sun, which was shining directly at him. So it took him a couple of seconds to register that the object just visible inside the derelict building was the front end of a vehicle: a van, by the looks of it. Carver frowned and strode across the yard towards the barn. As he got closer, he could see that it was an old Toyota Hiace camper van.
Carver’s immediate reaction was embarrassment: he’d stumbled into a place where some holidaymakers were trying to find themselves a little privacy. Maybe he should let them enjoy it. Then he thought, ‘Who wants to go on holiday in the shadow of an oil refinery?’ The number plates caught his eye: they couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven years old. But the van looked less up to date: a late-eighties model, even. No innocent holidaymaker drove a car with false plates.
Now, suddenly, he felt the first small shots of adrenalin coursing through him, tightening his stomach and sharpening his reflexes as he approached the van. The interior was dark, the curtains of the side windows drawn. There was no noise or any other sign of life. Carver walked around to the rear of the vehicle. Something caught his eye. He stepped closer and tilted his head to one side as he looked along the vertical line between the door and the body-panel. It had been welded shut.
Carver had told Tyrrell he’d call if he found anything suspicious. This certainly qualified. He pulled out his phone, pressed the number, and then waited frustratedly as the rings at the far end went unanswered. Carver could imagine the rising noise-levels at the refinery. He could hear helicopters getting closer. The VIPs were on their way. When the voicemail came on he said, ‘This is Carver. Call me. I’ve found something you should see.’
Ninety seconds had passed since Carver had driven into the farmyard.
It was clear to him now that there was something in the van that someone did not want discovered. He wasn’t going to wait around for backup before he found out what it was. He ran back to the Audi, opened the boot, and pulled up the felt lining to reveal the spare wheel. In the middle of the wheel a plastic tray held the tools needed to put it on the car, including a tyre iron. Carver picked this up and went back to the barn.
He was sprinting now, driven by an instinct that something was badly, urgently wrong.
Inside the van, the timer had run down to twenty seconds, and counting …
Carver dashed up to the van and smashed the tyre iron against one of the side windows. The effect was minimal, just a small crack in the glass. He swung his arm again, putting all his strength into it, then repeated the blow again and again, battering the toughened glass until it first cracked into a spider’s web of fracture lines, and then, at last, a hole appeared.
Carver needed to make it bigger, and the small head of the tyre iron wasn’t up to that job. He used his own elbow, jabbing