The Circus

by James Craig

  Phillips gave him a funny look. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ He couldn’t be bothered to explain.

  ‘How’s the family?’

  ‘Fine. You?’

  ‘The usual.’ Phillips shrugged. ‘I’ve been going out with a doctor for a few months.’

  ‘Uh-huh?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She stared off into the middle distance. ‘Nice guy. His ex-wife is a pain in the arse though.’

  ‘Mm.’ Carlyle had little sympathy. If you insisted on making your private life as complicated as possible, aggravation was inevitable.

  Picking up on his obvious lack of interest, Phillips abandoned the topic of her love-life. Stripping off her latex gloves, the pathologist pulled a BlackBerry from the back pocket of her jeans and started typing away on its keyboard with her thumbs. Looking up, she caught the quizzical look on the inspector’s face. ‘It’s a twenty-four-hour tweet,’ she explained. ‘The PR department thought it would be a good idea if we tweeted live from our crime scenes so as to provide the public with some insight into what we do.’

  ‘Sweet Jesus!’ Hands on hips, Carlyle raised his eyes to the heavens.

  ‘You should check it out,’ Phillips grinned. ‘You might learn something. The Twitter handle is @metpolice121. We’ve got more than ten thousand followers.’

  ‘Good for you,’ replied the inspector grumpily.

  ‘Arrived at scene,’ said Phillips, reading aloud from the screen, ‘body to be examined.’

  ‘Very bloody insightful. Can we get on with it now?’

  ‘You’re such a dinosaur, John.’

  That was hardly the worst thing that anyone had ever called him. ‘I’m a dinosaur in a hurry.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ She jerked a thumb at the rear of the truck. ‘Give me half an hour and I’ll be able to offer you some initial thoughts.’

  ‘That would be great.’ He was already heading for the stairs leading to the office. ‘I’ll come back and see you then.’

  London was such a shitty city.

  Shitty.

  There was just no other word for it.

  As an endless procession of grey rainclouds scudded across the sky outside the window of his office on the thirteenth floor of New Scotland Yard, Sir Chester Forsyth-Walker flicked a speck of lint from the lapel of his uniform and let out a heartfelt sigh. Being Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service was no fun at all. Not for the first time, he wondered just how he’d managed to get himself into quite such a pickle.

  Up until four years ago, Sir Chester’s career arc had appeared perfect: the 1980s on Merseyside had been spent working in uniformed policing, road traffic, personnel, Professional Standards and the Control Room; the 1990s took him to Greater Manchester Police, first as a Superintendent and later as Commander of the Wigan Division; then the first decade of the new century saw him move to Lancashire Constabulary as Assistant Chief Constable – with responsibility for Human Resources and Training – before skipping over the Pennines to become Deputy Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, Acting Chief Constable and later full-time Chief Constable.

  The progression had been smooth, effortless, almost trouble-free. He had been well on the way to enjoying a near-perfect career in public service. There had even been a Queen’s Policing Medal in Her Majesty’s New Year’s Honours List, with the promise of more to come if he kept his nose clean.

  And then he’d allowed his head to be turned by a smarmy politician named Christian Holyrod. The mere thought of the Mayor of London now made him grimace. He should have known better! Running the MPS – the Metropolitan Police Service – was a bit like trying to run Tesco after a lifetime of running a corner shop. Sure, it had fast-tracked his knighthood, but he would have got one of those anyway.

  Even in the beginning, Sir Chester wasn’t dumb enough to think he could handle a job like this. But he wasn’t smart enough to say no either. So now, at a time of life when the most taxing part of his job should be giving a speech to the local Rotarians, he instead found himself having to deal with one ridiculous high-profile mess after another.

  Even by the Met’s standards, today’s fiasco was quite something. Only with immense effort did Sir Chester manage to pick up the sheet of white A4 paper on which was typed a summary of the Horatio Mosman case. Good God, he thought sadly, what was going on here? You would never get this kind of nonsense up in Wakefield or Batley. Pining for a return to the real world populated by normal people, he dropped the report back on to his desk and looked up.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well what, sir?’ Despite her best intentions, Commander Carole Simpson couldn’t help but sound snappy. Getting dragged out of bed for a crisis meeting with the Commissioner was never the best way to start your day. She had yet to have any breakfast; it would take a double espresso at least before her mood approached anything resembling decent.

  Sir Chester shifted uneasily in his seat. One of the other things he hated about the Met was the uppity nature of many of the senior officers. Especially the women. Staff in the provinces seemed to find it easier to know their place, and to do what they were told. ‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘we have a child—’

  ‘Teenager,’ Simpson corrected him.

  ‘Young adult,’ giggled Simon Shelbourne, Sir Chester’s Communications Director, who was standing in the corner behind Simpson.

  The Commander turned sideways in her seat, in order to be able to see both men at once. This was her first chance to get a good look at Shelbourne: a weedy-looking guy in a Richard James slate-grey pinstripe suit with a ridiculous lime-green shirt. Although in his mid-thirties, the PR man looked about twelve, with pale blue eyes blinking behind chunky burgundy-coloured spectacles, sandy hair and a chin that looked like it had never seen a five o’clock shadow.

  All the same, the boyish clothes-horse had more than a decade in tabloid journalism behind him, culminating in a year as Editor of the Sunday Witness (dubbed ‘the Sunday Witless’ by rivals). After raising the circulation by more than half a million copies, which was no mean feat in the desperately tough weekend-newspaper market, Shelbourne had surprised colleagues and critics alike by crossing over to the dark side and becoming a PR man. Even more surprising was his choice of new employer. Rather than making a killing working for some American investment firm or Chinese technology company, he had joined the police force, signing on as spinner-in-chief for Sir Chester Forsyth-Walker.

  Amongst other things, Forsyth-Walker’s predecessor as Commissioner, Luke Osgood, had been deemed politically unacceptable and therefore ‘unsafe’ when it came to handling the media. Sir Chester, on the other hand, was expected to keep a low profile and, with Shelbourne’s help, say and do nothing that would contradict or embarrass the Mayor.

  ‘Let’s continue.’ The Commissioner glared at both of them in turn. ‘We have Horatio Mosman, who was murdered by a bomb. And we have Mr . . .’

  ‘Marc Harrington,’ Shelbourne said quietly. ‘Marc with a c. No k.’

  ‘Mr Marc Harrington,’ said Sir Chester, through gritted teeth, ‘no k, who was shot in the face presumably by the same person who later blew up young Horatio.’ He paused, waiting for another interjection. When none was forthcoming, he ploughed on. ‘Needless to say, the media are all over this.’ Shelbourne nodded solemnly. ‘And the good people of London need some reassurance that this . . . this crazy person is going to be caught quickly and with a minimum of fuss.’

  ‘We have a press conference scheduled for an hour’s time,’ volunteered Shelbourne.

  ‘So,’ Sir Chester now gave Commander Simpson his most no-nonsense stare, ‘what have you got for me?’

  Now it was Carole Simpson’s turn to shift in her seat. She picked up the sheet of paper on the Commissioner’s desk. ‘The basics are contained in this initial summary report. Our investigation is currently underway, but it is still at a very early stage. We will begin interviewing the family members later this morning.’

  A grim expression crossed
Sir Chester’s face as a spasm of pain shot across his lower back. Bloody slipped disc. Not that anyone gave him any sympathy. At last he was going into hospital to get it sorted next week. ‘One thing that is not in the report,’ he remarked, once the pain had passed, ‘is why those bomb technicians didn’t manage to stop the bloody thing going off?’

  ‘We won’t be going there in the presser,’ Shelbourne said hastily.

  ‘No, but the bloody journalists will,’ Sir Chester huffed.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Shelbourne reassured him. ‘I will jump in if it gets tricky.’

  Which it will, Simpson decided.

  ‘It’s just us two?’ Sir Chester asked, glancing at Simpson.

  ‘Yes,’ Shelbourne replied. ‘I don’t think we need the Commander to be present at this time.’

  ‘Fine by me,’ said Simpson. She felt more than a little relieved at not having to face the assembled journalists. There had been a time when she liked nothing more than parading in front of the media. Not any longer. Ever since her husband’s conviction for fraud had stopped her career in its tracks, her need for a public profile had evaporated. ‘By the way, Horatio wasn’t blown up by the bomb fastened around his neck,’ she explained. ‘Indeed, there wasn’t a bomb around his neck. There was, however, a bomb that had been placed under the sofa.’

  ‘And how, in the name of God, did we manage to miss that?’ Chester’s face began turning pink. ‘What were your officers doing?’

  ‘They were on the scene merely by accident,’ Simpson said quietly, ‘and tried to assist the victim at great risk to themselves.’

  ‘Didn’t get blown to smithereens though, did they?’

  You make it sound like you wish they had, Simpson thought angrily. ‘This was a terrible act of violence,’ she said, ‘culminating in the tragic loss of a young life. However, we are very fortunate that there were not any more fatalities.’

  ‘That’s great,’ said Shelbourne, scribbling furiously in a spiral notebook. ‘The tragic loss of a young life – we can use that. And add something along the lines of the public can rest assured that we will be devoting all necessary resources to catching the perpetrator – no, the evil perpetrator.’ He grinned at his boss. ‘That’s really all you need to say.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Sir Chester wearily.

  ‘After that, I’ll give them the tip-off hotline number, and then we can quickly move on to the rest of the agenda.’

  The Commissioner groaned. ‘There’s more?’

  ‘Besides the exploding teenager, we’ve got the garlic-bread killer and the feral youths.’

  Simpson raised her eyebrows. ‘Sounds like quite a briefing.’

  Sir Chester shot her a dirty look before returning his attention to his Comms Director. ‘Go on, tell me.’

  ‘Good news and bad news.’ Releasing his inner hack, Shelbourne jumped from foot to foot like an excited five year old with a bursting bladder as he flipped through his notes. ‘Good news,’ he said, finding the right page. ‘Jordan Perry, aged twenty-five, walked into the Elephant and Castle police station and confessed to the murder of his girlfriend, Sally Ellis. Apparently, he stabbed her thirty-eight times after she complained that he had not made garlic bread for tea.’

  Sir Chester cleared his throat. ‘A man who makes the tea?’

  ‘One thing I have learned since I joined the Met,’ Shelbourne beamed, ‘is that real life is stranger than fiction. On being arrested, Mr Perry told officers: “It’s not that I am a horrible person, but shit happens”.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Sir Chester, struggling with the various concepts that had just been raised by this sordid tale of everyday woe.

  ‘Sounds like an episode of EastEnders,’ Simpson observed.

  ‘What?’ The soap opera might have an audience of millions every week, but Sir Chester wasn’t one of them. He genuinely had no idea what his colleague was talking about.

  ‘Nothing.’

  The Commissioner drummed his fingers impatiently on the top of his desk. ‘Simon, why are we featuring this incident?’

  ‘It goes to our anti-domestic violence agenda,’ Shelbourne clarified. ‘Plus, partially at least, it should help offset the bad news.’

  ‘Which is?’ In search of some much-needed divine assistance, Sir Chester lifted his eyes to the heavens.

  ‘Which is the continued fall-out from your remarks about the so-called “feral underclass” blighting the inner city.’

  ‘But they are,’ Sir Chester whined.

  Shelbourne smiled sadly. ‘You are correct, of course, but articulating that view in an uncontrolled environment – that is, by making the observation at the Young Busker of the Year Awards ceremony – was unfortunate.’

  ‘Tsk.’

  ‘And it was unfortunate in the extreme that a bleeding-heart journalist from the Guardian happened to be standing next to you when it slipped out.’

  ‘But some little sod had just put a cobblestone through the window of my Jaguar at the time.’ Sir Chester glanced at Simpson, hoping to elicit a little sympathy but none was forthcoming. ‘My driver got a terrible shock. He was off sick with stress for a week.’

  Poor dear, thought Simpson.

  ‘Even so,’ Shelbourne mused, ‘both the Mayor and the Prime Minister have publicly disowned the term “feral underclass”. You’re on your own, so there will definitely be a question or two on it.’

  ‘Bloody politicians.’

  This time, Simpson nodded sympathetically.

  ‘No matter,’ said Shelbourne cheerily, ‘we’ll take it on the chin. Just say that the time for arguing over words has long gone. What we need now is a big debate across London in terms of how we empower local communities and reduce the fear of crime, especially among young people in the inner city.’

  Wasn’t having a big debate the same as arguing over words? Simpson wondered.

  Clearly unconvinced, Sir Chester clasped his hands together. ‘A big debate?’

  ‘Yes,’ Shelbourne chortled. ‘With a bit of luck, if we have a big enough debate, by the time it’s finished, the Guardian will have gone bust. Those hand-wringing lefties couldn’t find a sustainable business model if it hit them over the head.’

  Sir Chester grunted. He couldn’t care less about the travails of the newspaper industry. ‘And what about our friend Mr Meyer?’

  ‘You know the drill on that one,’ Shelbourne replied. ‘We never comment on Chief Inspector Russell Meyer, or on Operation Redhead.’

  ‘But we’ll get asked about it, nevertheless.’ Feeling a further spasm in his lower back, Sir Chester allowed his eyes to close. Maybe he could wish all his troubles away. That’s what Tanya would tell him to do: sit back, relax, and breathe your troubles away. His wife had been a stress counsellor, back in the days before she enjoyed the honour and privilege of becoming the second Mrs Forsyth-Walker. As such, she was a firm believer in the power of positive thinking.

  Then, again, Tanya had never had to try and run the bloody Met.

  ‘Operation Redhead is completely independent of the MPS,’ Shelbourne parroted, ‘and does not come under your control. We have no particular insights into its operations, and have made it clear from the start that we will never comment on its progress.’

  Keeping his eyes firmly shut, Sir Chester tried to think of something positive.

  ‘Maybe I should get going,’ said Simpson, as she slid out of her chair.

  ‘Just one final thing, Commander.’

  ‘Yes?’

  The Commissioner’s eyes opened slowly. ‘Your man chasing the Mosman bomber . . .’

  Simpson stiffened. ‘What about him?’

  ‘Is he up to it?’

  Stopped in her tracks, the Commander placed a hand on the back of the chair. ‘Inspector Carlyle is a very experienced officer, sir,’ she said quietly. ‘If you look at his track record . . .’

  Another spasm shot through Sir Chester’s abdomen, causing him to wince in pain. As he waited for it to pass, his mood da
rkened even further. ‘I don’t care about his bloody track record,’ he snapped. ‘Even a blind squirrel manages to find the occasional nut.’

  Shelbourne let out a girlish titter.

  ‘What?’ Simpson asked.

  ‘I don’t care about the past,’ Sir Chester grunted. ‘I care about the here and now. Is he going to sort this nonsense out?’

  Simpson nodded. ‘I understand the need for a quick result, sir. Rest assured, the inspector is on top of it.’ Defending her colleague did not come naturally to the Commander. Their relationship had improved considerably over the last couple of years, but Carlyle still made her uneasy. His ability to get results was matched only by his capacity to be immensely annoying and totally unmanageable. Given the circumstances, she knew better than to try and take him off the case now. ‘He handled the situation well, I thought.’

  ‘We can’t afford to wait too long for results.’

  Simpson took a half-step backwards, towards the door. ‘That is well understood. I am sure that Inspector Carlyle will deliver.’

  The Commissioner looked less than convinced. ‘Keep me fully informed, Commander.’

  ‘I will, sir.’

  ‘Good.’ Turning to his PR flunky, Sir Chester ran a hand through his thinning grey hair. ‘I’m all yours, Simon. Will I be doing any television?’

  FOURTEEN

  STREET ENVIRONMENT SERVICES

  Activities: Composting, Education & Awareness, Recycling, Street Cleaning, Waste Collection.

  Our Role: To maintain and improve the street environment for all those who live or work in or visit Camden. We will provide high quality and progressive waste management and recycling, street cleaning and energy management services and promote the importance of looking after the environment now and for the future.

  ‘It’s all glamour, this job,’ Carlyle mumbled to himself as he read the sign next to the door at the top of the stairs. Stepping inside, he nodded at Joe.

  ‘Boss.’

  Carlyle looked his sergeant up and down; saw he was still wearing the same clothes and hadn’t shaved. ‘You look like a man who’s been up all night.’ As the inspector got closer, he realized that his colleague didn’t smell that great either, but for once he was too polite to mention that.