65

As he ran out of the house, Carver pressed ‘send’ on his phone’s text-message screen and sent the ‘OK’ signal to the number he’d been given. It felt like a lie. Yes, the Gushungos were dead. But that was where the good news ended. Everything else was going more pear-shaped by the second.

Outside, the Rolls-Royce was cruising out of the forecourt with none of the frantic speed Carver would have expected from a kidnapper making a getaway. It paused for a second as a small white delivery van covered in Chinese characters pottered past the entrance to the property and drove away down the road. The Rolls moved forward again, still going gently. Even at this sedate pace, however, it would only be a matter of a second or two before Mabeki turned left and followed the little van back down the hill towards the main entrance.

Carver could clearly see Mabeki in the driver’s seat, but there was no sign of Zalika. Either he’d shoved her down out of sight or … No, that wasn’t it. Carver hadn’t heard the sound of two doors closing. The first sound he’d heard had been the lid slamming shut. The bastard had shoved her in the boot. That was why Mabeki was going so gingerly. Any sudden movements and she’d be rattling around in there like a cat in a tumble-dryer. He didn’t want to damage the goods.

Mabeki’s caution gave Carver a fractional window of opportunity. He stood on the top step, just outside the front door, braced his legs and held the bodyguard’s pistol out in front of him in a two-handed grip. It was a Chinese model, with a communist star stamped on the grip: a QSZ-92 with fifteen nine-millimetre rounds in the magazine. The Rolls was side-on to him now – as clear a shot as he would ever have, and as safe as it would ever be. This was his one chance to end it fast.

He aimed. His finger curled round the trigger, gently squeezing it …

Carver put the gun down. Firing a nine-millimetre round at an armoured vehicle was an entirely futile activity. The bodywork was impenetrable. Even the windows would repel a bullet without so much as a scratch. He would achieve nothing except make a lot of noise and attract unwanted attention.

Mabeki knew it, too. He turned his head, leaning forward in his seat and peering out through the passenger window. Then he wrenched his mouth into the closest thing he could manage to a broad grin, gave a brief mocking wave of his hand, and hit the accelerator. The Rolls’s massive 6.7-litre engine did not exactly roar into life. A Rolls-Royce never does anything so crude. But though the noise was not spectacular, the effect certainly was. The massive car leapt forward. An instant later, it had disappeared from sight.

Carver’s instinct was to race to the Honda and give chase right away, but again he resisted the temptation. Instead, he went back into the house, past the two bodies in the hall, and returned to the living room. There, amid the lingering stench of cordite and shit, he gathered up the communion kit and put it back in the leather briefcase. No sense in leaving fingerprint-rich evidence if he didn’t have to.

On the other hand, it did make sense to leave the gun behind where it could mislead police investigators. Carver wiped down the handle and trigger then, holding it by the barrel, his hand covered by a handkerchief, replaced it in the hand of the dead bodyguard. In total, he spent thirty seconds in the room before leaving again. Keeping the handkerchief over his hand, he closed the front door then walked briskly to his car. He got in and placed his briefcase with its flap open in the footwell of the passenger seat. Then he switched applications on his phone and, for the first time all day, gave a silent, heartfelt, entirely genuine prayer of thanks: Zalika’s phone was on, and it was heading steadily up the road away from the estate. For the time being there was no need to panic. He could follow Mabeki at a distance.

Carver went back downhill to the main entrance and drove away. The road was little more than a twisting, narrow country lane, lined on either side by trees and heavy undergrowth, with no traffic to be seen in either direction. When he’d gone about a mile, Carver stopped the car by the side of the road and got out, taking the case with him. He looked around to check that no one could see him, then walked about twenty paces into the woodland and shoved the case into the heart of a large bush. Satisfied that it was completely invisible, he walked back towards the road, paused for a moment to listen for approaching engines, then stepped out on to the tarmac and round to the driver’s side of the car.

He looked at his phone display and frowned. Mabeki had reached the Tolo Highway, but instead of turning right, back towards the city, as Carver had expected, he had turned left and was heading north, towards the Chinese border.

That could complicate things. Suddenly Carver couldn’t afford to be quite so casual. When the Honda pulled away again, he had the accelerator down hard.