Carver - By Tom Cain Page 0,73

didn’t I?’

Charlene looked at her husband appraisingly. ‘He made us a lot, huh? Millions?’

‘Tens of millions, baby!’

She reached down and started undoing the knot of the towelling belt that was holding her husband’s robe together. ‘Well, in that case, sweetie, why don’t I just blow you?’

55

* * *

Rosconway

THE CABINET OFFICE staff had arranged for a St John Ambulance crew to be present at the conference, just in case anyone tripped over a pipe, or was taken ill. Somehow they had survived the blast with their vehicle intact. But Carver only had to take one look at the chalk-white skin and dazed eyes of the amateur volunteers to know that they were too traumatized by the overwhelming violence that they had just witnessed to be of any help. It made little difference: he and Schultz knew enough about basic battlefield medicine to tend to Nikki Wilkins’s immediate needs. They climbed up into the ambulance and commandeered the splints, bandages and morphine shots they needed to stabilize her broken leg and head injury, and reduce the pain of the wounds. Then they carried Wilkins, still unconscious, back to the Audi, laid her out along the rear seat, and strapped her in as best they could.

‘Drive,’ said Carver. ‘Head for Pembroke. There’s got to be a hospital there.’

They were less than a mile down the road, still travelling beneath a pall of smoke that was spreading across the sky as far as the eye could see, before Carver had gone online and found both the location of the South Pembrokeshire Hospital and directions for getting there. He was about to offer Schultz his condolences for Tyrrell’s loss – nothing too overwrought, just a simple acknowledgement that a good man had gone – when the phone rang. It was Grantham. His first words were: ‘You’re alive.’

‘Don’t sound so disappointed,’ Carver replied.

‘You know, for once, I might actually be pleased to hear your voice,’ said Grantham. ‘So what the hell just happened?’

‘Someone stuck a dozen home-made mortar barrel tubes in an old Hiace van, loaded them with explosive shells, and blew the shit out of an entire refinery. And I should have stopped them.’

‘How?’

‘I wasn’t at the refinery when the shells hit. I was at the launch site.’

‘What do you mean? Had you found out what was happening?’

‘No, I’d worked out what might happen. I didn’t think there’d actually be anything there.’

‘Well, that’s as clear as mud.’

‘Sorry …’ It struck Carver that he might not be as out of it as that St John Ambulance crew, but his mind was still reeling as it struggled to process what he had just experienced. It was time he pulled himself together.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Here’s how it was done. The van that contained the mortars was parked inside an old barn, at a deserted farmyard about a kilometre from the refinery. The weapon was set to a timer, along with some kind of incendiary device – petrol by the smell of it. The moment the mortars fired, the van was burned out, removing all trace of the people who’d driven it or worked on the weapon. This was a professional job, straight out of the old IRA manual.’

‘Really? You think there were Paddies involved?’

‘Maybe … but it could just as easily have been one of ours. Anyone who served in Ulster during the Troubles, or even did bomb disposal work on this side of the Irish Sea, would have seen things like this.’

‘But how could they have known about the conference today?’

Carver thought for a moment: no, it was out of the question. ‘They couldn’t,’ he said, definitively. ‘Look, this was a totally last-minute event. No one had any warning. That’s why it was such a dog’s breakfast. The organization, the security, the media coverage – it was all a total joke. But this attack was the exact opposite. It was very carefully calculated. Whoever hit the refinery had every single one of those launcher tubes calibrated to the last millimetre, the last bloody fraction of a degree. Each of those things hit a target. And making the launch tubes, the framework to hold them, all the projectiles … getting hold of the explosives … no, there wasn’t anything last-minute about that. I’d say weeks of preparation, even months, went into this.’

‘So what are you saying – that it was just a bloody coincidence? I’m not buying that.’

‘Why not? Stranger things have happened. But even if it was a coincidence that the attack and the conference were