by James Craig
‘Easily.’ Helen had just found an episode of Argentina’s Next Top Model on some obscure satellite channel. Their time for talking was over.
‘Talk about the rich getting even richer.’
Opening the brochure, Carlyle perused the text: Buckingham Palace is furnished and decorated with priceless works of art from the Royal Collection.
He glanced over at his wife, who was engrossed in watching some girl in a bikini and biker boots being abused by an overly butch photographer in the middle of some desert. ‘Do they really need our money too?’
‘What?’ Helen didn’t look up.
Sighing, he read on. Buckingham Palace has 775 rooms, with 19 State Rooms, 52 Royal and guest bedrooms, 188 staff bedrooms and 78 bathrooms. More than 50,000 people visit each year as guests to banquets, receptions and Garden Parties.
The inspector felt annoyed by the boundless silliness of it all. ‘Have you got a decent hat? If I sort this mess out, maybe we’ll get invited to a Garden Party.’
The girl on the TV was now in tears. She was being asked to pose naked — apart from the boots — in the desert with some kind of snake. It was a big beast, too, maybe a python. Tossing the Official Souvenir Guide on the floor, Carlyle cuddled up to his wife to enjoy the rest of the show.
THIRTEEN
Unleashing his inner eight year old, Simon Merrett swivelled round in his chair to look at the bank of video screens ranged above the desk in front of him. ‘This is like the Starship Enterprise,’ he grinned. ‘How do we get to Warp Factor Ten?’
Marshall Monk felt the pain in his stomach intensify. The General Manager of the London Eye tugged at the collar of his shirt and wondered if he should check the CEOP detective’s ID again. ‘I beg your pardon?’
Rose Scripps gave her colleague a dirty look.
‘What I mean is,’ Merrett said hastily, getting his chair back under control, ‘how are we going to do this?’
Monk looked at the two uniformed policemen standing by the door of the control room, on either side of Sandra Scott. Scott looked her usual bovine self. The only thing that persuaded Monk that this wasn’t some kind of a wind-up was the fact that she had turned up for the start of her shift wearing handcuffs. ‘Well,’ he said nervously, ‘as I understand it, you are looking to apprehend-’
‘Arrest,’ Rose interrupted.
‘Detain,’ Merrett added unhelpfully.
Monk frowned, clearly not interested in their childish semantics. ‘You want to get hold of the gentlemen who have booked a private capsule for the seven-thirty flight.’
Merrett glanced at the piece of paper with the booking details on the table in front of him. ‘SEG Enterprises? Who are they?’
‘I don’t know,’ Monk shrugged. ‘But that was their second booking.’
‘Payment?’ Rose asked.
‘Through a corporate credit card,’ Monk replied. ‘Amex, if I remember correctly.’
‘The contact details are for a serviced office in Mayfair,’ Merrett added, pleased to be able to show off that he had done some homework. ‘SEG have rented space there for almost a year, but no one can ever remember anyone from the company actually turning up there.’ He turned to Monk. ‘So, what happens tonight?’
‘One member of the group will need to check in at the priority check-in desk — the fast track booth — fifteen minutes before the scheduled flight time. Once the whole group is assembled, the capsule host will escort the group through the fast track entrance, thus bypassing the regular queue.’
‘The capsule host?’ Rose asked.
‘Yes.’ Monk smiled, happy to be speaking to this sensible-seeming woman, rather than her juvenile colleague. ‘Every capsule has a host for the thirty-minute flight. The host is compulsory because there needs to be a minimum of three adults, over the age of eighteen, in each capsule.’
Rose looked at Merrett. ‘But on that DVD. .’
Merrett looked over at Sandra Scott, out of earshot, staring at the floor and not showing any apparent interest in their conversation. Someone had doubtless been paid off, which made him wonder about Monk himself. Merrett turned back to Rose. ‘We’ll sort that out later.’ He glanced at the clock above the screens, which showed 6.10 p.m. ‘In the meantime, this is what we’re going to do now. .’
‘My daughter Louise is keen to go up on the Eye,’ Rose said, looking up at the giant wheel in front of them. ‘They went there on a school trip, and she’s hassling me to take her again.’ They were now standing in the standard queue, sandwiched between an aged French couple and a noisy hen party of middle-aged women dressed as cowgirls, and clearly the worse for drink.
‘I’m sure Monk can sort it for you,’ Merrett said, his eyes focused on the fast track check-in booth, twenty yards to his left.
Rose shook her head. ‘No, thanks! I don’t fancy it myself. I don’t like heights at all.’
‘It’s not that high.’ Merrett looked at his watch for the third time in as many minutes. It was 7.11. He wondered if they were going to be stood up. They were only three or four away from the front of the queue now. Behind them, the cowgirls were getting more excited. One of them cheekily pinched Merrett’s backside. ‘Hey!’ He spun round angrily, to be confronted by a pair of bleach-blonde grannies collapsing into a fit of giggles.
‘Look!’ Rose grabbed Merrett’s shoulder and turned him towards her. She was surprised to see that he was blushing. She gestured towards a tall, well-dressed man and a girl handing their fast track tickets over to a waiting host. The pair had their backs to Rose and Merrett and, given the distance, the girl could have been aged anything between eleven to sixteen. ‘What about them?’
‘Worth a look,’ said Merrett, stepping out of the line and moving swiftly towards the newly arrived pair.
‘What’s the matter, love?’ one of the grannies cackled. ‘Worried what we’ll do to you when we get you up in the air?’
‘It isn’t his bum he should be worried about,’ another one shouted. ‘Come back here, lover boy!’
Rose followed after Merrett, who was already five yards in front of her. Up ahead, she could see that the host was still checking their tickets and had not waved the man and the girl through. The Eye host said something into his walkie-talkie, and the well-dressed man turned round with a look of exasperation on his face. Rose stopped and studied his face. The crowds had thinned and, even at this distance, she was relatively sure that he was not the same man they had seen on the DVD. Before she could look away again, he caught her eye. She glanced over at Merrett, who had slowed his pace, trying to work out what was going on. The man followed her gaze and immediately turned back around. Grabbing the girl by the hand, he pulled her away from the booth, and started heading quickly in the direction of Westminster Bridge. The host looked surprised, but said nothing.
‘Hey!’ Merrett started running after the pair, and immediately went sprawling straight over a young boy who had appeared from nowhere, eating a large pink cloud of candyfloss. ‘Shit!’
The boy started crying. Then he realised his candyfloss had landed in a puddle and he started screaming.
Merrett got up gingerly, holding his wrist. A large man with a shaven head and a Chelsea tattoo on his neck grabbed him by the arm. A small, nervous-looking woman, cigarette dangling from her mouth, hovered in the background. ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ the man snarled. ‘Why can’t you watch where you’re fucking going, you stupid wanker?’
‘My arm,’ Merrett winced.
‘I don’t care about your fucking arm,’ the man shouted. ‘You need to apologise to young Didier.’ He gestured at the kid, who was still blubbing for all he was worth. ‘And buy him some more candyfloss. Four bloody quid that cost.’
The boy had stopped crying by now, encouraged by the prospect of reparation. A small crowd had quickly gathered to see if Chelsea Man was going to beat the crap out of his son’s tormentor.
Leaving Merrett to sort himself out, Rose hurried along the Embankment
, scanning the horizon. For a second, she saw their quarry at the top of the steps leading to the bridge above. Upping her pace, she dodged through the tourist throng and headed after them.
Reaching the top of the steps, she was out of breath and panting. She couldn’t remember the last time she had run anywhere, and the burning sensation in her chest was giving way to an urge to be sick. Looking over at Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, she took a couple of deep breaths and waited for the nausea to subside. The sweat running down her back had gone cold, and she shivered. A cyclist flashed past her, inches away from being taken out by a number 12 bus. Two hundred feet up, the quarter bells in the belfry played the Westminster Quarters, signifying it was now 7.15. Of the man and the girl there was no sign.
Allowing her frustration to subside, Rose took her time returning to the Eye. When she finally got there, Chelsea Man and his family were gone. Merrett was sitting on the steps leading to the back entrance of City Hall, having his wrist bandaged by a paramedic from the Cycle Response Unit.
‘Looks like it’s broken,’ Merrett groaned. ‘I’ll need to go and get it X-rayed at St Thomas’s.’ He didn’t look at her or ask about their quarry.
‘Did you get the kid a new stick of candyfloss?’
‘Four bloody quid!’ Merrett whined. ‘I hope the little bugger chokes on it. Where did he come from anyway?’ He ignored the grin on her face. ‘What are you going to do now?’
Rose thought about it for a moment. ‘I’ll check the CCTV and have another word with Mr Monk,’ she said. ‘Then I’ll get back to the office and write up a report.’
Merrett accepted a couple of painkillers from the paramedic and dropped them into his mouth. ‘Leaving out the bit about the kid and the candyfloss.’
Rose patted him gently on the shoulder. ‘Of course.’
Merrett took a swig from a bottle of water to wash the pills down. ‘Thanks.’ He offered her a drink.
Rose shook her head. ‘No, thanks.’
‘I appreciate it,’ Merrett continued. ‘No one likes looking like a dick.’
‘No problem.’ Rose gave him a reassuring smile. ‘These things happen. You go and get your wrist seen to, and we can see where we are in the morning.’
She watched Merrett trudge off, feeling sorry for himself, and then she started off in the opposite direction, heading towards the footbridge over the Thames that would take her to Charing Cross on the north side. From there she could walk back to the office in about fifteen minutes. Approaching the Eye, she passed the fast track ticket booth, which was now empty. The last flight of the day had started and there would be no more customers this evening. On a whim, Rose stepped over to the booth and looked inside. It was empty, apart from a large black refuse sack that had been left, tied at the top, in the back, next to an open bin. She glanced around. There were a couple of staff tidying up litter, getting ready to usher the last visitors off the wheel and then go home for the night. But no one was paying any attention to her. Ducking into the booth, she opened her handbag and pulled out a large pair of tweezers and a small plastic bag that she’d saved from her last trip to Boots. Putting her handbag on the floor, she lifted up the sack, weighing it in her hand. It was full of used tickets, cardboard cups and empty plastic bottles; in short, a lot of crap to have to sort through. Rose sighed; she simply didn’t have the time right now.
Carefully returning the sack to where she had found it, Rose peered into the bin itself. It was empty apart from a couple of tickets. Reaching inside, she pulled out both of them with the tweezers and placed them carefully on the ground. In the poor light, she picked up the first ticket and brought it close to her face. It was for the 7.30 flight, pod 12, in the name of Cunningham. On the back were the terms and conditions of use. Nothing else of any interest. Crumpling the ticket up, she tossed it back into the bin.
The second ticket was also for the 7.30 flight, this time for pod 8. It had the legend SEG Ent. typed in the bottom right-hand corner.
‘Bingo!’ said Rose under her breath.
Dropping the ticket into her plastic bag, she noticed that something had been scribbled on the back. Grabbing it again with the tweezers, she took another look. There was a name and a mobile number.
‘Double bingo,’ she whispered.
FOURTEEN
Standing under the gloomy strip-lighting, Carlyle stared at the three corpses on the table and felt a bit queasy. He now wished that he had delayed his breakfast until after this visit to the East End. Pacing the concrete floor, he rubbed his hands together in a feeble attempt to keep warm. The room was cold, just as cold as it had been in the street outside. The weather had taken a turn for the worse and Carlyle reminded himself again that it was time to deploy the winter wardrobe. He cursed himself for not choosing a heavier overcoat. Through an open door, he could see several young assistants silently going about their business. All of them wore the same uniform of black jeans and a black fleece. None of them came into the room. None of them so much as glanced at him as they went past. Even more gallingly, no one had even offered him a cup of coffee.
Carlyle yawned, noisily.
‘Inspector?’
‘Yes.’ He quickly finished his yawn and turned to face a smiling blonde woman, her hair tied back in a ponytail. About his height, in her late twenties or early thirties, she was wearing jeans and a heavy orange jumper over a grandpa shirt; a pair of thick, black-framed glasses were perched on the top of her head. ‘John Carlyle, from the Charing Cross station.’
He extended a hand and she shook it limply.
‘Fiona Allcock.’
‘Thank you for seeing me.’
‘Not a problem,’ she smiled. ‘Thank you for coming to the studio.’ She gestured towards the table. ‘Do you like my birds?’
‘Well. .’ Carlyle forced himself not to take another peek. He didn’t like dead things. And, as a London boy through and through, he thought animals were best suited to the countryside. ‘What are they?’
‘Sparrows.’ Allcock stepped over to the table and picked up one of the birds, placing it face up in the palm of her hand. She lifted the bird towards Carlyle and two little dead eyes stared up at him. He swallowed uncomfortably. ‘We got sent these little beauties from Lincolnshire only yesterday.’
‘What will you do with them?’ he asked, although he was not interested in the slightest.
‘One of my assistants will skin the creatures today,’ Allcock said, placing the dead bird back on the table along with its two chums. ‘It’s like removing the skin from a chicken before you cook it.’
‘I see.’ Carlyle, who had never skinned a chicken in his life, nodded wisely.
‘Once that is done, the muscle fibres and bones are measured and posed,’ she continued, reciting what was clearly a practised monologue. ‘The carcass is then moulded in plaster and we make a final polyurethane mannequin. The skin is tanned and then fitted to the mannequin. Finally we add glass eyes and put it in a display.’
‘Interesting.’
‘These little ones are already sold.’ Allcock perched herself on the edge of the table. ‘They are going to a collector in Bristol.’
Despite himself, Carlyle was curious. ‘And how much will they cost?’
‘The final display will cost?8,500, plus vat.’
Eight grand? ‘Interesting,’ he repeated politely.
She gave him a suspicious look and slipped back into salesperson mode. ‘Of course, what you’ve got to remember is that you are looking at weeks and weeks of work. It’s a highly skilled professional job.’
‘And you have many takers?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she beamed. ‘Taxidermy is really fashionable at the moment. We’re rushed off our feet.’
‘I won’t keep you long, then,’ Carlyle said briskly. ‘I wondered if I could have a quick word with you about Joe Dalton.’
‘Ah yes, Joe.’ She folded her arms and stared into the middle distance.
‘I know that you already spoke to t
he officers who investigated his death,’ he said gently, ‘and I really don’t want to go over old ground, but I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.’ He had read her statement in the original report; it had been perfunctory in the extreme.
‘Of course,’ she nodded. ‘Are you reopening the investigation?’
‘No, but there may be a connection with something else that I am looking into.’
‘Oh?’ She studied him carefully. ‘How so?’
Carlyle smiled. ‘That’s what I’m trying to work out. Do you happen to know why Joe decided to kill himself?’
‘No, not really.’ She sighed, staring at the floor. ‘Joe could always be a bit up and down. I saw him about a week before he died; I remember that he was rather gloomy but nothing off the scale.’ She shrugged. ‘I could put up with it, in small doses.’
‘He was your boyfriend?’
She grinned. ‘He was a boyfriend, Inspector. I liked Joe a lot, but he wasn’t the love of my life or anything like that.’
Carlyle felt himself redden slightly, but kept going. ‘Did he see your relationship differently? Is that what pushed him over the edge?’
She glanced at the dead birds, as if for inspiration. ‘I don’t think so. It was more than just a casual thing, but neither of us was prevented from seeing other people.’
‘How did you meet?’
‘At some party a few years ago. I remember he was quite a novelty. You don’t meet many policemen in my social circle.’
‘I suppose not.’
‘No offence.’
‘Of course not,’ he smiled. ‘I know exactly what you mean. I don’t meet many taxidermists in my social circle. So. .’
‘Yes?’
‘What was the connection? What was a copper like Joe Dalton doing hanging out with the beautiful people of the arts set?’
Allcock didn’t rise to the bait. ‘It’s not so surprising really. We work-’ she corrected herself, ‘he worked for similar people.’
‘What kind of people?’