Carver - By Tom Cain Page 0,81

the pub. We’ve got a while.’

‘OK.’ Ginger looked around the yard, noting the CCTV cameras at the gate and by the front door to the Portakabin that served as an office. ‘What about these?’

‘All off. The video-machine’s not working. Something seems to have gone mysteriously wrong with it.’

‘Good. Then let’s get on.’

She opened up one of the rear doors and pulled away the blanket that had been covering the bodies of Gryffud and Smethurst. Braddock turned away in disgust at the stench that emanated from the corpses. Ginger looked at him contemptuously. ‘Their bowels evacuated at the moment of death,’ she said, speaking with a technician’s precision. ‘A man like you should be used to that.’

‘Shit still stinks, however much you’re used to it,’ he said. Then a thought struck him. ‘I’m not having that fucking smell in my car!’

Ginger looked at him with utter contempt, then gave an impatient sigh. ‘All right, let’s clean it all up.’

There was a standpipe outside the Portakabin, with a bright yellow hose attached to it. Braddock and Turner pulled the two bodies out of Ginger’s BMW, before they and the car’s passenger compartment were drenched with water, rinsing away all the filth. Braddock took a roll of green plastic sheeting out of the back of the Range Rover and cut off a couple of metres of it, which he then laid on the ground. The two men dragged Brynmor Gryffud’s body on to the sheet, then rolled it over twice, so that the body was entirely wrapped in plastic. Braddock used gaffer tape to secure the package, and then he and Ginger hefted the body into the back of one of the Range Rovers.

The process was repeated for Dave Smethurst’s remains.

‘Good thing I’ve got blacked-out windows,’ Braddock said, breathing heavily as he closed the tailgate.

‘If you drive sensibly, there will be no problem,’ said Ginger bluntly, wasting none of her charm on him. ‘You are confident that the bodies will be disposed of securely?’

‘Oh yeah,’ Braddock assured her. ‘This bloke Gryffud was obsessed with the environment, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, he’ll love what’s going to happen to the bodies, then …’

‘Just so long as no trace of them is ever found.’

‘It won’t be, trust me.’

‘Huh … So, now we deal with the car. Can you operate a forklift?’

‘I can’t … but he can.’

Turner got behind the controls of the scrapyard’s forklift. There was a compactor on the far side of the yard. It consisted of two massive steel slabs, supported by hydraulic lifts at either end. The forklift picked up the BMW and carried it across to the compactor. The car was slid on to the bottom slab, side-on, then given another couple of prods with the forklift’s two sharp prongs to make sure it was as far in as possible. Braddock pressed the button that operated the compactor, and the whine of the hydraulics combined with the sound of crumpling metal as the top slab descended with grinding inexorability, reducing the BMW to a mechanical sandwich filling. Braddock pushed another button, the two slabs parted again, and the forklift removed the crushed remains of the car and placed them on a pile of other flattened vehicles.

Ginger watched the proceedings from the passenger seat of the second Range Rover while she made a call to Derek Choi.

‘Do you know any more about the project we discussed?’ he asked.

‘No, I’ve been busy on other affairs.’

‘But you still anticipate activity tomorrow?’

‘I’m sure you heard the speech that our mutual friend made. The original schedule is being maintained, with a higher public profile than ever. So my original estimates still hold true.’

‘I agree. And I will proceed on that basis. Incidentally, your friend Samuel had company last night – a woman, Alexandra Petrova Vermulen. I believe you are old friends.’

Ginger caught the taunting edge to Choi’s voice, and was infuriated to realize that he had succeeded in getting to her. Of course, she did not want Carver. She had only seduced him for professional reasons. It wasn’t personal. So why did it annoy her so much to think of that pathetic little bitch Petrova getting her claws into him?

She had not even mustered a reply when Choi said, ‘Please contact me immediately if you receive any further information. Goodbye.’

Ginger used the five minutes between the end of the call and Turner’s return to the car to refresh her make-up, though she only applied her lipgloss and mascara with a fraction of her full concentration: the rest was devoted to