Then, as the paramedics left the room, Grantham turned back towards the bed, assumed the cheerful demeanour of a drinks-party host greeting his guests, and said, ‘Good afternoon, doctor, my name’s Grantham. I work for the Secret Intelligence Service.’
‘Good afternoon, Mr Grantham,’ replied the doctor. ‘I’m Assim. Hmm
… your face seems familiar. There was some publicity at the time of your appointment, I believe.’
Grantham grimaced. ‘Yes, we’re not as secret as we used to be… More’s the pity.’
Assim frowned inquisitively at the man who had risen to his feet from the second chair, and was now standing at the foot of the bed, tugging nervously at his moustache. ‘And you must be…?’
‘Cameron Young. I work for the Prime Minister. Look, can we get on with this, please? I need to report back to Number 10 as soon as possible.’
‘This is Carver,’ said Grantham, paying no apparent attention to Young as he completed the introductions.
‘So what is your position?’ Assim asked, shaking Carver’s hand.
‘Self-employed,’ Carver replied. ‘A private contractor, you might say.’
‘I see,’ said Assim. ‘And you are responsible for the fact that Mr Zorn is with us here this afternoon?’
‘Yes, he’s here because of me,’ said Carver. ‘But he isn’t Malachi Zorn.’
77
Dr Assim looked puzzled. A slow, sly grin spread across Grantham’s face. And the tension on Cameron Young’s face was replaced by a look of appalled surprise.
‘What the bloody hell do you mean? Of course it’s Malachi Zorn. Just look at him!’ Young exclaimed.
‘All right,’ said Carver, ‘I will.’
He went to the side of the bed. ‘Malachi Zorn is five feet ten inches tall and weighs around a hundred and seventy-five pounds. Looks about right, wouldn’t you say? He has dark-blond hair: check. He has hazel eyes.’ Carver reached over and lifted an eyelid to reveal a sightless eye. ‘Check. His facial features look remarkably like these ones here.’
‘Yes, because he’s Malachi bloody Zorn!’ Young interrupted.
‘Except,’ Carver continued, unperturbed, ‘that Malachi Zorn is a lifelong bachelor. He’s never even got engaged, still less married. That means he’s never worn a ring on his wedding finger. So how do you explain this?’
Carver lifted up the body’s left hand and separated the fourth finger from the others. ‘Look,’ he said.
‘Look at what?’ asked Young. ‘It’s a finger, what’s the big deal?’
‘Look at the colour of the skin, just here, at the base of the finger. It’s paler than the rest, like skin that’s been covered for years by a ring. And if you look very closely, you’ll see that the skin is slightly indented, which is what happens when you wear a ring for a long time. Now, the skin is beginning to get some colour, and the indent is much less than it would have been when the ring was first removed, so I’m guessing it’s been a couple of months since he took it off. But even so, this man was married. So he can’t be Malachi Zorn.’
‘That’s it?’ asked Young incredulously. ‘That’s your entire reason for thinking this isn’t Zorn? I never heard anything so ridiculous! The whole point of this lunatic exercise was to strike back at Malachi Zorn because — or so you claimed, Grantham — he was a mass-murderer who had wreaked appalling damage on the UK economy. And now you’re telling me that we got the wrong man?’
‘I’m not telling you that,’ said Carver. ‘I got the right man. Well, the man I meant to get, anyway. Could you examine his face, please, doctor? Look out for signs of recent plastic surgery.’
Assim glanced around, seeking confirmation. ‘Go ahead,’ Grantham said.
The doctor stooped over the head of the supposed Malachi Zorn, and ran his fingers along the hairline, around the right temple, parting the first few strands of hair to reveal the skin beneath. ‘Hmm… very interesting,’ he murmured to himself. He turned on the reading light above the bed to give himself more light. ‘Yes, there is clearly some scarring here,’ he said. ‘And it would be consistent with a temporal incision for an endoscopic rhytidectomy. That’s to say: a mid-face lift.’
Assim leaned back a fraction, turned his head slightly to one side, and narrowed his eyes, focusing on the man’s nose. He took a tissue from a box beside the bed and rubbed it along an area of the bridge of the nose that had not been spattered with blood. ‘Concealer,’ he said, lifting the tissue to reveal a smear of flesh-coloured make- up. Then he looked again, moving his head to view the nose from a series of different angles before pressing his fingers delicately on the area that he had been examining.
‘There’s some very slight residual swelling, as one might expect from surgery carried out four or five months ago,’ Assim said. ‘It’s barely perceptible and the discolouration is very slight, and easily covered up with a minimal amount of make-up. But it’s certainly there.’
He turned the head to one side and looked behind an ear and underneath the jaw, on both occasions wiping the concealer away to reveal faint scars. ‘Yes, there’s no doubt that this man has undergone a number of surgical procedures. I’d need to X-ray him, of course, to be completely certain. But I would not be surprised to find evidence of work on his jawbone, his chin, the bossing of his skull, his cheekbones and even the orbital rims around his eyes. In each case it would have been possible to reduce the mass of the bone by shaving or grinding it, or to augment and/or reshape a particular bone with fillers and implants of various kinds. Wait a moment…’
Assim took a look at the crown of the man’s head. ‘Yes, he’s had some hair transplantation, too. It’s really first-class work, so it’s as imperceptible as one can get. But it’s there all right. You might want to get a dentist to take a look at the teeth, too. It’s not my field, of course, but given what else has been done to this man, it’s reasonable to assume that his teeth were included in the overall makeover.’
‘Are you telling me that this man, whoever he is, has been given the face of Malachi Zorn?’ Young asked.
‘I suppose I am, yes,’ Assim replied.
Young glared indignantly at Grantham and Carver. ‘And you didn’t see fit to tell me about this deception?’
‘It would only have confused matters,’ Grantham said. ‘“Let’s kill the bad guy” might not be a politically acceptable plan, but at least it’s a simple one.’
‘Zorn has informers everywhere,’ Carver added. ‘It wouldn’t have bothered him at all if he’d known that the government was helping me kill him, in the belief that the target was genuine. In fact, he’d have been delighted. It would make his death official, which is exactly what he wanted. But if he’d known we’d discovered he was using a double, that would have changed everything.’
Young ran a hand through his hair and gave a baffled sigh. ‘I’m sorry. Why would it change things?’
‘Because Zorn wants the world to think he is dead. But if the victim is just someone who looks very much like Zorn, and we know it, that’s no good to him.’
‘Yes, but why is it so important to him to be dead?’
‘Because dead men can’t be tried for killing hundreds of people or stealing billions of dollars and pounds. Cops don’t chase dead men. Angry billionaires who’ve just been massively ripped off don’t hire hit men to go after corpses. Dead men are safe.’
‘Ah, yes… I see,’ said Young. ‘So now what?’
‘Well, the first thing to do is to switch on the television,’ Grantham said.
The set flickered back to life. It was tuned to Sky News. A banner was rolling across the bottom of the screen. It read, ‘Breaking news: billionaire financier Zorn believed dead in South London attack.’
‘Excellent,’ said Grantham. ‘Time to send in the troops.’ He took his mobile phone out of his pocket, pressed a button and said, ‘You’re on.’ Then he looked around the room at the other three men and said, ‘Have I forgotten anything?’
‘Yes,’ said Carver, ‘why don’t we wake this poor bastard up?’
