Tyzack stepped back and examined his handiwork. Carver’s refusal to accept his version of events had angered and frustrated him, but he had exacted a more than satisfactory price. He was going to have to leave soon. Visar wanted him working on the Bristol job and he couldn’t afford to disappoint the Albanian.
He took another look at Carver, who was scrabbling around, trying to reach his chair, which was lying on its back, several feet away from him. Tyzack walked round the barn until he was standing right by the chair, paying very close attention as Carver – now apparently oblivious of his presence – fought the choking power of the cord.
Yes, Tyzack thought. It would be hard and it would hurt a very great deal, but Carver would get the chair. And if he had the chair he could live – or exist at any rate – for a few more days, being driven mad by the pain of his back, the choking frustration of his collar and lead and the unstinting blare of the TV sets. That was perfect. And so, feeling happier than he had done in years, Damon Tyzack walked out of the barn, leaving Carver to his pathetic struggles and padlocking the door behind him.
61
Hans and Gudrun List were ardent ramblers, still blessed with wiry physiques and tanned limbs despite being well into their sixties. Natives of Salzburg, Austria, they had grown up striding across the spectacular alpine landscape that surrounds their home town. Now they were walking across southern Scandinavia, from Stockholm to Oslo, enjoying the perfect weather of early summer and the rural scenery as they made good progress along the northern shore of Tvillingtjenn lake, just a couple of hours’ walk from the Swedish border. Above all the Lists took pleasure in the peace and solitude; the cool, muffled calm soothed them as they walked between the trees along the water’s edge.
And then the silence was shattered by a terrible howl of pain, a scream so primal that it might have come from an animal. ‘What was that?’ Hans asked. But the question was superfluous. The Lists both knew at once that this was the sound of a man in agony.
‘It came from over there,’ said Gudrun, pointing away from the lakeshore into the trees.
They took a few more tentative paces into the woods, torn between the desire to help a fellow-human and the fear of whoever, or whatever, had ripped that terrible sound from his body. Then another scream rang out, more raggedly this time, as though the man’s vocal cords no longer had the power to communicate his suffering.
‘Look,’ said Hans, pointing ahead of them. ‘Over there.’
Gudrun saw it now: a small wooden building, a barn perhaps, or a garage. It looked drab and nondescript, apart from an incongruously bright pair of green doors, whose colour was echoed on the gable-ends of the roof. The fact that they could see the barn made the Lists themselves feel exposed. They retreated back down the path as a third scream, weaker again, seemed to call them, wordlessly pleading for their help.
‘We must do something,’ Gudrun insisted, waving her husband forward as she crept back towards the building, leaving the path and moving from the cover of one tree to another. They came to a halt behind the trunk of an ancient spruce and peered ahead of them. When what sounded like a very loud TV set was switched on they looked at one another in confusion. Then, a minute or two later, both flinched as the green doors opened and a man appeared, his head topped with a shock of fiery red hair. He turned back to lock the doors, then walked away from the barn. As they watched him go, the Lists realized that there was another, bigger building behind the barn, more like a chalet or farmhouse. More men emerged from it and followed the red-headed man as he kept walking. Silence fell for a while and then the thunderous racket of a powerful engine started up. There was a rise in pitch as it got up to speed, followed by a clatter of rotor-blades and then a helicopter rose from the forest and roared away over the trees towards the east.
As the sound of the chopper disappeared in the distance, the Lists turned to one another.
‘He’s still in there; we must do something,’ Gudrun insisted.
‘But if he is there, then surely there will still be someone in the main house. They would not just leave him.’
‘Unless he is dead. We should go and look, to make sure.’
‘Why, what good could we do? My dearest, this is a matter for the police.’
‘But that poor man…’
‘Exactly. Think about what they did to him. They could do it to us, too. Come, we must hurry away… Come on!’
Neither of the Lists’ phones could get a signal where they were. It took another half an hour of brisk walking, every so often breaking into an undignified jog, before they were able to get through to the Norwegian emergency number, 112, and report what they had heard and seen.
The case was assigned to the nearest police station at Bjorkelangen, seven miles away. The inspector on duty there was about to send a car to investigate when he recalled one of the alerts that had been sent from Oslo in the hours after that terrible hotel bombing: something about a helicopter that had been seen over the opera house. Maybe this was the same chopper? It was a long shot, but it never hurt to be over-careful. And if he did happen to have found it, well, that might help him get a big-city posting.
He got on the line to Oslo right away.
62
Damon Tyzack’s helicopter was over the Swedish border within three minutes of take-off. It swung south, flying low over the hilly, lake-strewn landscape of Varmland. The scenery there is some of the finest in Sweden, but Tyzack had no interest in enjoying the view. He was too busy checking his watch and urging his pilot to squeeze every last knot out of his machine. Thinking about the task that lay ahead of him, he didn’t see himself coming back to Norway any time soon. So he wouldn’t get the chance of one last heart-to-heart with Carver. That was a pity. On the other hand, there was the consolation that Carver would die horribly, all alone, after long pain- filled days in which he’d have nothing else to think about but how much he’d fucked up. By now, he’d probably worked out who’d really shopped him. He’d be tormented by the loss of his best mate and his woman and he’d be all alone with the cuts on his back going septic, the pain in his neck getting worse and worse and not even a drop of water to drink without putting himself through hell.
Tyzack laughed aloud at the thought of such a satisfying revenge. He felt it was a good sign. Things were moving his way. Now he just had to hit the ultimate target for any assassin: Mr President himself. If he pulled that job off, he would not only have destroyed Carver but utterly overshadowed him.
He’d got a text from one of Visar’s people. The goods had been procured and conversion was taking place, it said. Excellent.
Foster Lafferty was with him in the helicopter. ‘I’ve got a job for you,’ Tyzack said. ‘It means going back to Bradford, having another pow-pow with the Pakis.’
‘You want me to smack ’em around again?’ Lafferty asked.
‘On the contrary, I want you all to become the very best of friends. Tell the Pakis they can have their tarts back. But I need something from them in return…’
The helicopter landed half an hour later in a field north of Gothenburg. A car was waiting for him there. It would take him the four hundred miles down the Swedish west coast to Malmo, across to Denmark on the Oresund bridge and tunnel, and then west to a private airfield close to the North Sea coast. From there he and his men would be flown to a similar field in northern England, their route carefully planned to avoid airspace controlled by the National Air Traffic Service.
He didn’t have any worries about getting into the country undetected. England’s immigration and border controls were a joke. He got illegals in every day of the week. He could get himself in easily enough.
