by James Craig
‘Well, it was a long time ago now. She was a perfectly nice woman, but it was just a passing thing. I only saw her for a couple of months, while your mother was up in Scotland. She was never a threat to our marriage, if you know what I mean.’ He paused for a moment, reflecting on what he’d just said, before adding, ‘At least, not as far as I was concerned.’
‘I see,’ Carlyle lied. He took a couple more mouthfuls of lager. What the fuck was the old fella on about?
Alexander finished off his first pint and started on the second. ‘Anyway, she’s dead.’
‘Oh?’ Carlyle mumbled into his glass.
‘About fifteen years ago now. Cancer.’
‘Bummer.’
‘These things happen.’ Alexander shrugged. ‘Your mother and I went to her funeral. It was a horrible day, terrible weather. I remember it quite well, for some reason.’
Carlyle drained the last of his pint. That’s enough, he told himself. You shouldn’t have another.
‘My round,’ said his father, grabbing Carlyle’s glass and heading for the bar.
He was staring into space when Roche appeared at his desk, sipping a mug of black coffee. Still recovering from her run-in with Sylvia Swain, she looked tired and a bit spaced.
‘How’s the head?’ the inspector asked.
‘Not too bad.’ Roche carefully placed a hand on the tender spot behind her left ear, where she had been sandbagged. ‘I got given a dozen stitches and as many painkillers as I can swallow. It’ll be fine.’
‘Shouldn’t you take some time off? Go and let Ronan make a fuss of you?’
Roche grunted something into her coffee. ‘Have you tracked that Canadian bitch down yet?’
‘Not yet.’ After four pints of lager with his father, Carlyle didn’t really feel on top of his game. ‘The hotel room was empty of her stuff. And I haven’t heard anything from Dave – David. He’s trying to track her down.’
‘Good luck with that,’ she scowled. ‘Anyway, you’ve got a message from another woman.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah. Someone called Louisa says you need to give her a call. You have her number apparently.’
Louisa? It took Carlyle a moment to place the name.
‘Turning into a right babe-magnet,’ Roche grinned, ‘aren’t you, Inspector?’
‘Hardly,’ Carlyle sighed, picking up the phone.
FORTY-NINE
The inspector had chosen Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park as the location for the meeting. It was a venue that he had used many times before – one of the few Central London locations where you could hide in plain sight, while also not having to worry about being overlooked by dozens of security cameras. Louisa had wanted to come straight to the station, but Carlyle, conscious of his ‘deal’ with Sol Abramyan, wished to keep his options open. He wanted to find out what Fadi Kashkesh was able to deliver before deciding how best to proceed. Assuming the little bugger turned up at all, of course.
At least on that score he was pleasantly surprised. When the inspector arrived, Fadi was already sitting on a bench next to a fast-food kiosk, staring at his trainers. Next to him sat an unshaven man in a Fila tracksuit. Standing over both of them was Louisa Arbillot, munching on a hotdog.
Leaning on a nearby fence, Carlyle studied the strange trio. He needed a piss but was reluctant to nip to the toilets next to the kiosk in case the two men decided to do a runner. He was fairly confident that he could be back in less than a minute, but still didn’t want to risk it. Waiting for Louisa to finish her snack, he walked over to confront Fadi. ‘So,’ he said, placing a shoe on the bench, ‘are you going to introduce me?’
Fadi looked up at his wife.
Louisa scowled at her estranged husband. ‘For God’s sake,’ she said, ‘how many times do I have to tell you? Here, in England, you help the police.’
Carlyle exchanged a glance with the guy in the tracksuit. The pair of them knew that they were thinking the same thing: Fadi was a very lucky man.
‘Inspector . . .’ Fadi began, as if every word was being torn from his throat, ‘this is Adnan.’
About fucking time, Carlyle thought. He smiled and did a little bow. ‘Good to meet you, Adnan.’
Adnan nodded, but did not say anything.
‘He doesn’t speak any English,’ Louisa interjected, pulling the tab on a can of Coke and drinking down half of it in one go. ‘Only German and Arabic.’
‘Can you translate?’ Carlyle asked her.
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I’ve got a little Spanish but no German. But Fadi can.’
The two men on the bench mumbled something to each other.
‘Adnan is the man you are looking for,’ Fadi said quietly. ‘He is the only one of them that the Israelis have not killed.’
Yet. ‘So why is he still here?’
‘Very good question,’ Louisa interjected, before finishing off her Coke.
More mumbling, rather more animated this time, with some hand-waving and what sounded like cursing to Carlyle.
‘He doesn’t have a passport,’ Fadi said. ‘They took it off him when he arrived. He cannot leave. He is very scared.’
On cue, Adnan nodded and stuck a worried look on his face.
‘He will need to come with me, then,’ said Carlyle. His bladder was demanding that he take a slash right now, and he wanted to get this wrapped up as quickly as possible.
‘What will happen to him?’
‘Well, he won’t get his guns,’ Carlyle said, ‘but he won’t get killed either. So it’s not all bad.’
This time, when Fadi translated, Adnan jumped to his feet. Jabbing Carlyle in the chest with a meaty finger, he began shouting angrily. Amazingly, Louisa had wandered off to buy herself something else to eat from the kiosk.
Carlyle took a step backwards and glanced at Fadi.
‘He says he will be killed if he goes back with you. You will murder him.’
Carlyle held up his hands. ‘I’m not going to kill anyone. I will help him apply for asylum.’ He nodded towards Louisa, who was now returning with a pretzel. ‘You and Louisa will be able to help him too.’
Fadi looked doubtful, even more so at the mention of his wife. But whatever he said had the effect of calming Adnan, who retreated to the bench and sat back down.
‘Thanks for that,’ said Carlyle, still desperate for a pee. Taking his mobile out of his pocket, he said, ‘I just need to make a call, and then we’re good to go.’ Hopping from foot to foot, he watched the last of the pretzel disappear down Louisa’s throat. ‘Keep an eye on these two for a moment,’ he began, striding quickly towards the toilets, ‘while I take a quick leak.’
Shielded from onlookers by a massive oak tree, Richard Assulin slipped on a pair of latex gloves and casually attached the YHM Cobra suppressor to his Glock 19. Clicking off the safety, he turned to Sid Lieberman.
‘Now?’
Lieberman nodded.
‘And the policeman as well?’
Lieberman pulled a face. ‘Up to you. If you can avoid it, fine. But if you have to . . .’
‘Okay.’
Lieberman looked at his watch. ‘You’ve got an hour and a half to get to the airport.’
‘No problem.’
‘See you in Tel Aviv.’ Patting Assulin on the arm, Lieberman ambled away in the direction of the Park Lane underpass.
Running his hand across the top of his shaven head, Assulin counted to five as he watched the military attaché depart the scene. Then, standing up straight, he marched purposefully towards his targets.
* * *
Still feeling hungry, Louisa Arbillot wondered about finishing her fast-food binge with a crêpe and a coffee. She jerked a thumb in the direction of the kiosk. ‘Do you guys want anything?’ Fadi gave her the briefest of glances, shaking his head. Adnan, however, happily overcame both his lack of English and his girth to spring quickly to his feet.
‘Come on,’ Louisa smiled, happy to be able to appeal to at least one man
through his stomach. ‘Let’s see what you want.’
She had almost reached the kiosk when she heard a popping noise, followed closely by another. She turned in time to see Adnan hit the ground. Then, looking past him, she saw her husband lying on his back, staring expressionlessly at the sky. There was a bloody hole right in the centre of his forehead.
‘No!’ Louisa felt a warmth spread across her crotch and trickle down her legs as her bladder failed. ‘Fadi!’ As she staggered towards him, Louisa saw a tall skinny man in a Nirvana T-shirt suddenly step between them. As she got closer, he raised the gun but Louisa kept advancing, with tears streaming down her face.
‘Fils de salope!’ she hissed, even as she took the third round right between the eyes.
‘Aaahhh!’ Carlyle came to the end of a long, satisfying piss. After a quick shake, he zipped himself up. Not bothering to wash his hands, he headed back outside. As he stepped back onto the path, a constable and a WPC from Westminster’s Cycling Squad rode slowly past on their mountain bikes, chatting away. Not the worst job in the world, Carlyle reckoned. He watched as the woman laughed at something her colleague said, then both of them stopped and were looking at something further down the path, hidden behind the kiosk. Almost instantly, the young woman’s head snapped backwards, and she was thrown from her bike. As the PC reached for his radio, he was hit once, twice in the chest and collapsed on top of his bike.
It took Carlyle less than a second to understand what was going on. Another woman had been walking behind the downed police officers, ice cream in hand: as soon as she saw the blood spreading across the concrete, she started screaming her head off. Racing round to the rear of the kiosk, Carlyle almost tripped over the bodies of Louisa Arbillot and Adnan. Kneeling, he quickly confirmed that they were both dead. Not even needing to check on Fadi, he rushed back to inspect the two coppers.
Someone started retching. Looking up, the inspector saw that a crowd was quickly growing. Waving his badge above his head, he screamed at the gawkers to stay back. As the sirens approached from the direction of Oxford Street, he wondered just how the fuck he was going to explain this latest fiasco.
FIFTY
‘Do you want a drink?’ Alison Roche asked.
‘Got any whisky?’
‘Of course not.’
‘In that case, a coffee would be great. The stronger the better.’
He watched Roche disappear inside the empty kiosk and start banging about, trying to work the complicated-looking coffee machine.
‘What happened to the guy serving here?’ Carlyle asked no one in particular.
‘He took two in the head as well,’ David Ronan replied, matter-of-factly.
‘Ah.’ With a terrible sick feeling gnawing at his intestines, Carlyle scanned the scene. A forty-yard stretch of the park on either side of the kiosk had been sealed off. Beyond the police tape, a crowd of maybe 100 people had gathered, swelled by half-a-dozen or so TV crews and a deal more reporters. The satellite trucks illegally parked all along Park Lane had attracted a swarm of traffic wardens, who were happily writing ticket after ticket as excited television producers equally happily ignored them. Somewhere amid the scrum, Commander Simpson was doing a round of interviews, dispensing the usual platitudes, promising that the perpetrators would be brought to justice. As if.
‘Makes a grand total of six,’ Ronan remarked. ‘Four men and two women.’
I can fucking count, Carlyle thought angrily, but he knew that all of his frustration should rightly be directed at himself.
‘Both women and two of the men were taken out with one shot each.’ Ronan gestured over his shoulder. ‘The PC on the bike and the guy in the kiosk were both shot twice.’
‘Eight shots, six bodies. Professional job.’
‘Extremely professional,’ Ronan agreed.
With his hands resting on his hips, Carlyle closed his eyes. Pushing his head back and then down, he tried to halt the progress of the monster migraine relentlessly building at the base of his skull.
‘You were fucking lucky. That was a very good time to go for a leak.’
‘Yeah.’ What was it with him and toilets? Carlyle wondered. Not so long ago he’d survived a bomb blast by going for a timely dump. I must be the only bloke in the world who’s escaped death twice by answering the call of nature. Struck by the stupidity of it all, he started laughing.
‘What’s so funny?’ the detective inspector demanded.
‘Nothing.’ Carlyle opened his eyes and quickly composed himself. ‘I was taking a piss over there,’ he explained, gesturing towards the toilets. ‘I came out, saw the guys on the bikes, saw them get shot . . .’
‘Did you see who did it?’
‘No,’ Carlyle said, ‘the kiosk blocked my line of sight. I came round the back and saw the other three bodies.’
‘And the gunman was already gone?’
I wouldn’t know, Carlyle thought, because I didn’t bloody look. ‘Yes.’
‘We found the gun dumped amongst the rubbish over there.’ Ronan pointed to a waste-bin about five feet away from where Fadi’s corpse lay under a blue plastic sheet.
‘If he dumped it, it will be clean,’ Carlyle sighed.
‘Of course.’
After a short while, Roche returned with three small paper cups, each filled near to the brim with a steaming black oily liquid.
Carlyle took a mouthful and almost had the back of his throat burned off. Once he’d finished coughing, he turned to Roche and smiled grimly. ‘Perfect.’
Ronan sipped his coffee more carefully. ‘Could you maybe have kept us more in the loop on this?’ he asked, raising his eyes from his plastic cup.
They were both studying him. Carlyle took a deep breath and slowly explained the connection to Fadi, via Louisa Arbillot, taking time to work out how he was going to spin himself being the catalyst for a massacre in Hyde bloody Park. ‘I didn’t know for sure that Fadi would turn up,’ he said by way of a conclusion. ‘And I had no idea that he would bring the other guy. Mossad must have already had them under surveillance.’
‘We’ve already identified the guy in the tracksuit as Adnan Al Bzoor,’ said Ronan. ‘A relatively low-level Hamas fixer.’
Carlyle nodded. ‘Fadi told me that he was the last of the cell left in London.’ He aimlessly scanned the middle distance. ‘Job now done for the Israelis. At least that should be the end of it.’
‘Maybe,’ said Ronan doubtfully.
‘We still have to bloody catch them,’ said Roche. ‘Three dead officers . . .’
‘Of course,’ Carlyle nodded. ‘Absolutely.’ The adrenalin was wearing off and he felt a huge weariness descend on his shoulders. He drank the rest of his oily coffee and crushed the cup in his fist. ‘We have to catch them.’ It wasn’t the same as saying they would catch them, but it was the best he could manage.
‘You’ve got a long night ahead of you, then,’ Ronan declared. ‘At this rate, you’ll get your own IPCC team.’
‘IIC too,’ Roche laughed.
‘Great,’ Carlyle replied. Over Roche’s shoulder, he saw Simpson duck under the police tape and head towards them. As she got closer, he could make out the look on her face and knew that he had more immediate things to worry about than any internal investigations.
Carlyle watched Roche and Ronan melt away as the Commander approached. At first, Simpson seemed too angry to speak.
‘You haven’t resigned, then?’ Despite everything, Carlyle couldn’t resist the quip.
‘The way the bodies are piling up,’ she said brusquely, ‘it has been rather hard to find the time.’
Together they turned to watch a trio of ambulances slowly roll up to the police tape, in preparation for the removal of the bodies.
Suddenly solicitous, Simpson eyed Carlyle. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine,’ he said earnestly, before breaking into a grin. ‘It was certainly one of the most memorable pit stops of my life.’
She gently took hold of his arm
. ‘Can you try and be serious for just one minute?’
Hating this kind of lecture, Carlyle took half a step away from her.
‘You have been incredibly, incredibly lucky here today. You can joke about it all you like but no one, least of all you, knows what the psychiatric impact might be.’
Carlyle sighed theatrically, lowering his gaze to the ground.
‘You can continue to work with Ronan,’ Simpson said, ‘but you will have to see a police psychiatrist as a matter of routine.’
‘But last time—’
Simpson raised her hand and cut him off. ‘By “last time”, I presume you are referring to when young Horatio Mosman got blown to kingdom come.’
‘When, once again, I was in the bog, taking a—’
‘Yes, yes,’ she said irritably. ‘I would assume there are shorter odds on winning the lottery. Anyway, the point is I should have sent you to get some help back then. The Federation were very unhappy about the way things were handled. This time, they will insist on counselling for every officer who attends this crime scene, even me. Apart from anything else, it will be necessary for any compensation claim that might be forthcoming.’
‘Compensation?’
‘If you end up wanting to make a claim for stress or emotional damage or something.’
‘Me?’ Carlyle snorted. ‘So you’re worried that I might sue the Met because I didn’t get shot dead?’
‘No, I know that you wouldn’t,’ said Simpson crossly. ‘You are not that kind of officer. But for once, please, just go by the book.’
Carlyle watched as the first of the corpses, the policewoman, was lifted onto a trolley and loaded into the back of an ambulance. ‘Who was she?’ he asked.
‘WPC Karen Abbot,’ said Simpson grimly. ‘Twenty-five. No kids thankfully, but she was engaged. The wedding was due—’
Now it was Carlyle’s turn to raise his hand. ‘Okay, okay. I get the picture.’
Simpson gave him a hard stare.
‘And, yes, I’ll go and see the shrink.’
‘Good,’ said Simpson. ‘I’ll have one turn up at Charing Cross at nine a.m.’
He was about to protest but thought better of it.