The girl smiled and nodded then walked round to the window.
The guard slid it up and leaned out of the opening to get the fullest possible view of every inch of the woman in front of him. He was not disappointed. Putting on his most charming, debonair smile, he said, ‘How can I help you, Miss?’
His pal was standing just behind him, peering over his shoulder to get a good look, too.
The girl gave a coy, embarrassed smile. ‘We’re lost.’ She giggled.
‘Ahh…’ said the guard, nodding, his suspicions confirmed. ‘So where is your destination?’
‘Coronation Road,’ she said. ‘I have the address in my bag. Wait a moment.’
She was carrying a small gold sequinned clutch-bag. She opened it, rummaged inside and pulled out a Walther TPH pistol, a ‘pocket-gun’ barely five inches long that fires just six. 22 calibre rounds.
The party girl used four of them to put a pair of head-shots into the guard closest to her, then shifted her aim and put two more in the one behind. From the first shot to the last took less than three seconds.
The only entrance to the guardhouse was at the back, on the far side of the gate. So the woman kicked off her shoes, pushed the first guard’s dead body out of the opening and clambered through the window.
The. 22 is a very neat bullet. Being such a small calibre, and especially when fired from a gun as modest as the TPH, it lacks the power to pass right through a human skull and instead ricochets around the brain. This causes appalling damage to the victim while avoiding the mess of bone, brain and blood-spatter caused by a through-and-through round. There was thus no obvious carnage for the woman to step through on her way to the guardhouse control panel. Not that she would have been put off if there had been. She had seen a great deal worse in her time.
She turned off all the alarm systems and opened the gate. The other five passengers got out of the limo, taking care to shut the doors silently behind them, and slipped through the gate, which closed behind them. The limo gently eased into motion and drove away. Then the road was silent again. As silent as the grave.
58
Carver had read a magazine story once about Ike and Tina Turner. Back in the late sixties, they bought a big mansion in LA and did it up in the kind of style Ike felt was appropriate for a legendary soulman and his red-hot wife. A guy from their record company came over one day. Ike told him the decorations had cost seventy thousand dollars, serious money back then. The guy replied, ‘You mean you can actually spend seventy grand in Woolworths?’
The Gushungos’ Hong Kong residence reminded Carver of that story. He was led down a hall floored with polished black marble tiles. They were edged in white and laid in diagonal lines, so that the white edges joined together to form a diamond-shaped pattern that criss-crossed the floor. Some kind of optical illusion made it look as though the white lines were raised from the black tiles, so that he constantly felt like he was just about to trip over them. Two glossy ceramic tigers, as tall as Carver’s waist, sat on either side of the door, each baring its teeth and waving a claw in his direction. The walls were decorated with a paper that featured a swirling metallic silver pattern on a black velveteen background. Maybe it was the other way round. Maybe the black velveteen was the pattern. It was hard to tell, and Carver didn’t bother to look closely enough to find out. He didn’t want to risk getting a headache. He just looked dead ahead and thought about Jesus.
On the right-hand side of the hall, a staircase led upstairs to the bedrooms and bathrooms, and down to the servants’ quarters. The main living room, however, was at the back of the building, looking out across a valley towards a jagged line of steep, thickly wooded hills. The land between Kowloon and Tai Po was mostly set aside as parkland, a rural oasis in the heart of the city-state, and the Gushungos’ villa took full advantage of the stunning views.
The inside of the living room was spectacular too, in its own absurdly gaudy way. The floor tiles were the same as the hall, but the paper switched to a burnished gold colour. Carver looked to his right and saw a life-size double portrait of Henderson and Faith Gushungo, posing in their wedding clothes in front of an impossibly lush landscape of African savannah, teeming with wild animals of every kind – the kind, for example, that no longer existed in the arid wastelands of Malemba. The artist had taken about thirty years off the President’s age and turned his skin the purple-black colour of an aubergine. He was standing with his shoulders squared, staring manfully into the distance, while his beautiful, submissive bride gazed up at him with adoring cow eyes.
Beneath the painting was a sofa strewn with richly patterned silk cushions. Its vivid purple-leather upholstery almost matched the mauve curtains draped on either side of the floor-to-ceiling windows on the far side of the room. The rest of the armchairs in the room were bright scarlet, and the light fittings were all gold-plated, as was the frame of the glass-topped coffee table, littered with copies of Vogue and Architectural Digest, that stood in front of the sofa. The other paintings scattered around the walls made the one of the Gushungos look like a masterpiece of aristocratic portraiture by Gainsborough.
At the far end of the room stood a bar with a white marble top. Beneath it, the side of the bar had been divided into three panels. The outer edge of each panel was black. The inner heart of it was bright pillar-box red. The two colours were divided by a rectangle of white beading. The style was Nazi Nouveau.
‘Do you have a cross?’ Mabeki asked him.
‘Of course.’
Carver reached into his briefcase and took out his crucifix. He regretted now buying one with Jesus hanging on the cross. It made him feel like he was being watched.
‘Put it on here,’ said Mabeki, patting the bar counter. ‘Your colleague, Gibson, uses this as the altar.’
‘Does he really?’ said Carver. Either Gibson was too saintly to notice his physical surroundings, or he was taking the piss.
There was an ashtray sitting on the bar just a few inches from the cross, filled with lipstick-ringed cigarette butts.
‘Could you move that, please?’ Carver asked.
Mabeki gave him a bleak, spidery stare, then clapped his hands and shouted a few words in a language Carver could not understand. One of the bodyguards came in, was treated to a sharp burst of spittle-flecked orders, grabbed the ashtray and disappeared into another room. A few seconds later he was back again, this time with a colleague, to move the coffee table out of the way. More commands were issued. The two men hurried away and reappeared once more carrying two ornate gilt dining chairs, which were placed about six feet from the bar, facing the cross.
‘The President and the First Lady will take communion sitting on these chairs. The President’s health makes it difficult for him to kneel. Other members of the household will kneel in a row behind them.’
‘Will you be joining us, Mr…? I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.’
‘Mabeki. And no, I will not be taking part in this ridiculous charade.’ He came right up to Carver, standing over him. Then he twisted his body so that his face was thrust towards Carver’s, almost daring Carver to look away from the mangled wreckage of his scarred skin, twisted lips and glistening gums. ‘Do I look like I should believe in a just and merciful God?’
It suddenly struck Carver just how all-consuming Mabeki’s hunger for power must be, that he would choose to remain the way he was, with the effect that he caused, rather than have the surgery that could have repaired the worst, at least, of the damage. Mabeki actually wanted to look that deformed, that repellent. To him it was a source of strength.
‘Well,’ Carver replied, hoping that his face conveyed a suitable look of understanding and concern, ‘it is not for us to judge God’s purpose in afflicting us as he sometimes does. But you may be sure that he has one, and that it is filled with love and compassion for you.’
He ended with his face wreathed in a smug, patronizing smile and watched as Mabeki struggled to control the rage that constantly festered within him.
‘Believe that if you like, Reverend. I do not. And if God exists, let him prove me wrong.’
‘God does not have to prove anything, Mr Mabeki.’
Mabeki gave a dismissive grunt then took a pace back, breaking the tension between them. He took one last look at Carver – a man assessing the threat posed by another.
