‘And offer it another go? I like your thinking. But me, I’d be more inclined to stick than twist. Ho survives a second attempt on his life, he’ll start to think he’s special. In which case I might have to kill him myself.’
‘Are you going to take this seriously?’ said Catherine.
‘I’m glad you ask. No, I’m not. Dander, you’re not the best eyewitness in the world, what with being a coked-up idiot with anger management issues, so I don’t think I’m going to be allocating our puny resources on your say-so. Of course, if any of you think I’m making a managerial misstep here, you’re more than welcome to piss off. I don’t want to close down your options or anything.’
‘So we just forget it happened?’ said Catherine.
He sighed. ‘I’m not playing devil’s avocado here. It was almost certainly nothing. Our Roderick, as I’m sure you know, spends half his time fucking up the credit ratings of people who nick his seat on the Tube. Sooner or later he’ll try that on with someone who works out what happened. So yes, he might well end up a smear on a pavement one day, and it’ll be a huge loss to the Kleenex corporation, but meantime let’s not get our knickers in a twist about a badly executed three-point turn.’ He bared his awful teeth in a wide-mouthed grin. ‘Now, I’m an ardent feminist, as you know. But haven’t you girls got better things to worry your little heads about?’
They filed out. Before leaving, Catherine turned. ‘Advocate,’ she said. ‘By the way.’
‘Up your bum,’ said Lamb. ‘As it happens.’
‘Fourteen dead,’ Diana Taverner said. ‘And more to follow.’
‘Any CCTV?’
‘Nothing of immediate use. Too chaotic. We’ll pass it to the sight and sound crew, see what they come up with. And there’ll be citizen journalist stuff, we’ll gather that in too. Christ on a bike, though. Who’d do something like this?’
Whelan raised an eyebrow.
‘Yes, okay, we know who’d do this,’ she said. ‘But why? Random carnage is one thing. But this is like something from
Whelan had returned from Number 10 with prime ministerial outrage echoing in his ears. On the journey back the car had halted momentarily outside a TV showroom, and exactly the way it happened in movies – God, he hated it when that happened – every screen on display was showing the same footage he was watching now: blood and debris and – thankfully muted by distance – the awful screams of the dying. His phone had rung while he’d been stranded there: Claire. His wife. Was he watching this? Yes, he was watching this. She hoped he’d do something, hoped he’d bring this to an end. So much violence, so much horror.
There’d been violence and horror at Abbotsfield too, but she hadn’t called him in the middle of the day to say so. Her shock and disgust had awaited his return, in the small hours. But this – no. This couldn’t wait. She had to tell him now.
He had assured her that all that could be done would be done. That those responsible would swing, though of course not really. But this was the acceptable language of vengeance. You visited your angry fantasies upon the guilty, but in the end settled for whatever the courts handed down.
Now he said, ‘You think it’s the same crew?’
‘Different approach,’ said Lady Di. ‘Different target. Different kind of attack altogether.’
‘I can see that. Everyone can see that. But still. Do you think it’s the same crew?’
She said, ‘If it is, we’re in trouble. Because there’s no way of knowing what they might do next. Random, erratic acts of slaughter don’t make for an MO, which leaves a hole in any profile we build up. Whoever did this used a single pipe bomb. It could as easily be a lone wolf, a disgruntled teenager. But yes, it could be part of a larger campaign, with the differences deliberately built in, to throw up a smokescreen. We’ll know more when the forensics come through.’
Or when someone claims responsibility, Whelan thought.
The footage ended and he folded the laptop shut. Di Taverner walked back round the front of the desk. She didn’t sit. Prowling was more her style: one-to-ones often meant watching her pace a room like a cat mapping out its territory. Which all of this would be, if she had her way. Claude Whelan’s role as First Desk often seemed like a balancing act, and Lady Di – one of a number of so-called equals, all termed Second Desk – was waiting for his fall, not to be ready to catch him, but to be sure that when he hit the ground he never got back on his feet.
Which was why she was his usual sounding board when shit hit the fan. At least when she was there in front of him, he could be sure she wasn’t behind his back.
Besides, she had a wealth of experience of shit hitting fans. In her time, she’d lobbed more of the stuff around than a teenage chimpanzee.
He watched her pace for a while, then said, ‘What do we know about Dennis Gimball?’
