The Circus

by James Craig

  Shit happens.

  Life goes on.

  No one really gives a fuck.

  After an eternity of staring into his greasy black coffee, Hall looked up, clearing his throat. ‘So what happens now?’

  Carlyle finished his espresso. It was disgusting. What he really wanted, he decided, was a large glass of Jameson’s, or maybe more. His gaze lingered on Willy’s Saloon Bar, the Irish pub across the road, before returning to Hall. ‘Now,’ he sighed, ‘we have to find out who did this.’

  Leaning across the table, Hall placed a hand on the inspector’s forearm. ‘Make sure you do. And then, let me know.’

  ‘Of course,’ Carlyle nodded.

  ‘And I will kill the fucker.’

  The inspector really did need that drink. ‘I didn’t know Maude for very long,’ he said finally, ‘but I really enjoyed working with her. She had great energy and charm, and she was an excellent police officer.’ Looking round, he realized that Hall wasn’t listening to him. He was busy typing a text message on his mobile.

  ‘I’ve got to go and see Maude’s mum,’ he said, hitting the send button. Pulling a pen from his jacket pocket, he scribbled down a mobile phone number on a napkin and handed it to Carlyle. ‘Let me know when I can see my daughter.’ Slowly getting to his feet, he looked down on the inspector, his expression more detached than grim. ‘And remember what I said.’

  ‘Mister . . .’

  Carlyle looked up from his papers to see a blonde girl in a red Michael Jackson T-shirt, green bikini bottoms and a pair of brown cowboy boots standing at his table with an impatient look on her face. ‘Pardon?’

  She began waving a pint glass in front of his face. The glass was empty apart from a couple of pound coins and a fifty-pence piece, which rattled about noisily. ‘Put some money in the glass and I will do a dance.’ She gestured with the glass towards the tiny stage that had been raised maybe eight inches off the floor at the far end of the room. In the middle of the stage was a pole. Another girl, in a grubby yellow evening dress, was giving it a clean ahead of the next performance with some Cif anti-bacterial spray and a rag.

  ‘A pound,’ the girl repeated. He guessed that her accent was West Country, or maybe Welsh.

  Embracing the warm, comforting buzz of the whiskey, Carlyle looked around the bar. The lunchtime rush was over and the only other patron he could see was an old guy sitting at a nearby table with his head stuck in the Racing Post.

  ‘I don’t want to watch a dance.’

  The girl shook the glass angrily. ‘It’s only a pound, you cheap git.’

  With a sigh, Carlyle brought out his warrant card and waved it at the girl. ‘Fuck off and leave me alone.’

  Muttering to herself, she turned and stalked off, wiggling her ample rear as she did so. If you’re going to make it as a stripper, Carlyle thought to himself, you’ll have to work on that arse. Finishing his drink, he returned to the stack of papers that Fiona Singleton had given to him earlier in the day. Delving back into the Rosanna Snowdon case offered him some kind of excuse for delaying his return to Maude Hall’s flat, and he was more than happy to accept it.

  On top of the pile was one of the stories that had been printed out from the BBC website. At the top, in red pen, was written LC?

  LC – that was fairly straightforward since Rosanna had presented a television show called London Crime. Presumably she had been considering this as a potential item at the time of her death.

  The inspector began reading further.

  The article was the best part of three years old. It concerned the unsolved murder of a private investigator called Anton Fox. The inspector thought about that for a moment, but the name didn’t ring any bells. Apparently, five years ago, Mr Fox had been found in the car park of a West London pub with an axe in his head. The vague suggestion in this BBC piece was that Fox had been chasing down alleged police corruption. However, no one had ever been brought to trial.

  Reading the story, Carlyle had the frustrating sense of lots of pieces of unconnected information floating round in his brain. He knew that somehow he had to try and find a common thread that would pull everything together.

  And then he reached the crucial paragraph.

  There it was, also ringed in red pen – the name of Fox’s employer at the time of his untimely demise: Wickford Associates.

  Wickford Associates.

  Carlyle smiled.

  Wickford fucking Associates.

  It was time to give Charlie Ross a call.

  Without warning, Spandau Ballet’s ‘True’ started blaring from the speakers above the bar. The girl in the cowboy boots skipped on to the stage, the Jacko T-shirt now discarded to reveal a pair of nipple tassels attached to her over-inflated breasts. As she reached for the sparkling pole, the grandad did not look up from his form guide. Scooping up his papers, Carlyle got to his feet and jogged to the door.

  ‘The shit I have to put up with . . .’

  It’s not just me then, Carlyle thought happily.

  Carole Simpson read aloud from the report in the evening paper. ‘Scotland Yard revealed that a detective sergeant was demoted to constable, and three constables were formally reprimanded for having taken, quote, “an overly aggressive approach to stopping a suspect with unauthorized equipment”, unquote.’

  The inspector frowned. He liked to think he was up on the latest in MPS crime-fighting techniques, but this particular fiasco had passed him by. ‘What does that mean?’

  Simpson flashed him the photo accompanying the story. ‘Officers attacked a guy’s Mini with baseball bats. In the middle of the rush hour! And they bloody filmed it, of course, so it’s all over the sodding internet.’

  Despite everything, Carlyle couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Why?’

  ‘Despite a three-year, two-million-pound investigation that involved – amongst other things – bugging Southfield police station to listen in on their private conversations, we never actually got to the bottom of that,’ Simpson grumped.

  ‘Surprise, surprise.’

  ‘Anyway, that’s done. Now we have other things to worry about.’ Closing the newspaper, Simpson folded it in half and dropped it into the cardboard box sitting on the floor by Carlyle’s desk that served as a waste-bin. ‘I understand that you spoke to Maude Hall’s father?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Carlyle glanced at his watch. ‘He should have formally identified the body by now.’

  The look on the Commander’s face – a mixture of sadness and concern – was deeply unsettling. Carlyle found her anger much easier to deal with. ‘I truly hope, John, that you didn’t do anything that contributed to the poor girl getting killed.’

  Sitting back in his chair, Carlyle lifted his gaze to the ceiling, but said nothing.

  ‘The investigation into Hall’s killing has to be fast and flawless. We simply cannot drop the ball on this.’ Simpson mentioned the name of a DI – some woman whom Carlyle had never heard of. ‘She is in charge now, and whatever it needs, she gets. Make sure you provide every possible cooperation, while staying well out of the way.’

  ‘Sure,’ Carlyle nodded vigorously. Standard operating procedure dictated that he couldn’t be seen to take part in the investigation because of a potential conflict of interest. But reading between the lines, Simpson was giving him the green light to get on with finding Hall’s killer. ‘With the Mosman thing out of the way, I can clear the decks.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Simpson asked sharply.

  Carlyle paused. Maybe he was misreading the signals, after all? What the hell. He ploughed on regardless. ‘Well, with Zoe Mosman murdered, I think we’ve reached a dead end.’

  ‘Don’t give me that crap,’ Simpson snorted. ‘Whoever put a bomb under Horatio Mosman, it wasn’t his bloody mother.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Carlyle shrugged. ‘Not everyone is naturally cut out to be a parent.’

  ‘Now is simply not the time for any of your juvenile humour, John.’ Simpson looked like she wanted to reach
over and give him a good hard slap. ‘How many times do I have to tell you that the Mosman case is your priority? Why do you never bloody listen? Why can you never just focus on the cases you’ve been given rather than running off elsewhere like an incontinent puppy?’

  Now might not be the best time to mention Rosanna Snowdon and Anton Fox either, Carlyle thought, stifling a nervous laugh. ‘An incontinent puppy?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ He held up a hand. ‘We’re on the case.’

  ‘Good,’ said Simpson sternly. ‘Get on with it or I’ll go and get one of those baseball bats out of the Evidence Room and beat you round the head with it.’

  Gripping his pint of London Pride so tightly that it felt as if the glass might disintegrate, Charlie Ross tried to remember the last time he’d felt this angry. Probably not since his second wife had run off with one of the neighbours. In the event, that had turned out to be a blessing in disguise. This, however, was a total car crash, pure and simple.

  The temptation to take his glass and smash it into Trevor Miller’s stupid mug was almost overwhelming. The boy had always been a liability – all the way back to the miners’ strike when he attacked that woman. How Miller had ever made it through the door of Downing Street would forever be one of life’s great mysteries.

  It’s your own bloody fault, Charlie reproached himself. When Miller had come to him with the idea for Wickford Associates, he should have known that it was always going to go tits-up. At the time, however, he had been happy enough to come along for the ride.

  ‘So what are we going to do now?’ Miller asked, hiding behind his bottle of Mexican lager.

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ Charlie hissed. The pub, a dive off the Gray’s Inn Road, was largely empty but there was no harm in being paranoid.

  Miller adopted an appropriate whisper. ‘What do you think?’ His face had the worried look of a ten year old who’d been caught stealing sweets from his local newsagent. A monster ten year old, but a little kid all the same. ‘Is it all going to blow over?’

  It was questions like these that had left Charlie tossing and turning all night. At his age, sleep was hard enough at the best of times. At the moment, he couldn’t be getting more than a couple of hours a night. He felt weary to his bones.

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  Having reached no kind of conclusion, Charlie just shrugged. ‘Well,’ he murmured, ‘I don’t see what else we can do except press on with the current plan.’

  THIRTY-SIX

  ‘Have you ever heard of a guy called Anton Fox?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Carlyle said. ‘He was a private investigator who got murdered in a pub car park.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Dominic Silver yawned. Nine-thirty in the morning was still a bit early for him, given the nocturnal company he kept.

  ‘You need some coffee?’

  ‘Peppermint tea is fine.’ Sitting in a Dean Street café, they were comparing notes. ‘The Fox case remains open, as you are doubtless aware – you being a police inspector and all.’

  Carlyle scowled; he was in no mood to have his leg pulled. ‘All right, all right, get on with it.’

  ‘Okay.’ Dom placed his cup on the table and spread his arms wide. ‘Gideon tracked down Bella Fox, Anton’s sister. That didn’t take him long.’

  Carlyle nodded: they both knew that Gideon Spanner was extremely efficient and totally reliable.

  ‘She’s a teacher, living in Southend.’

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘I went to see her last night.’

  ‘You know,’ Carlyle laughed, ‘you might make a decent copper yet.’

  ‘Wish I could say the same for you, sunshine,’ Dom grinned. ‘Anyway, Bella says that, just before he was killed, Anton was convinced he was being targeted by the Sunday Witness. He told her that they had him under surveillance.’

  ‘But wasn’t he working for them?’ Carlyle frowned. ‘Indirectly, I mean, through Wickford Associates?’

  ‘Yeah. This is where it all gets rather messy. What I think happened is that Anton, off his own bat, had been chasing down evidence of police corruption: officers taking backhanders from journalists in exchange for information and also for phone numbers that could be hacked.’

  ‘A bit close to home,’ Carlyle mused.

  ‘For sure,’ Dom agreed. ‘Of course, if he did have evidence, the irony was that the only thing he could usefully do with such information was to give it to someone else in the press.’

  And that someone would doubtless be Rosanna Snowdon, Carlyle thought, and her London Crime show. He felt a jolt of adrenalin; things were finally falling into place.

  ‘But that meant that Anton was going up against both his employer and the company’s number-one client.’

  ‘So they killed him?’ Carlyle still wasn’t convinced.

  Dom shrugged. ‘He went to the Princess Ottoline pub in Hammersmith to meet a contact, and ended up with a terminal headache.’

  The inspector let out a long breath. ‘It’s all speculation.’

  ‘Absolutely. But you know Trevor Miller. You know Charlie Ross. Both of them are nasty bastards in the extreme. They had stumbled into a nice little business and wouldn’t want anyone to mess it up.’

  Carlyle let his gaze lose focus as he stared out of the window, realizing that they still had a way to go to join all the dots. He thought of Anton Fox, Rosanna Snowdon and Maude Hall. ‘Do you think he could have killed them all?’ he asked, keeping his voice low.

  ‘Trevor?’ Dom wrinkled his nose. ‘Why not? That fucking idiot is capable of anything – anything stupid, that is.’

  ‘Fu-uck! What a mess.’

  ‘Yes, but you might be able to get your man.’

  ‘How?’

  Dom took another mouthful of tea. ‘I would lean on Simon Shelbourne.’

  ‘The Commissioner’s PR man?’

  Dom nodded. ‘Before he became Editor of the Sunday Witness, he covered the crime beat for the paper. Bella says that he was close to Anton. She says that Shelbourne promised Anton fifty grand for some big story just before he died.’

  ‘What story?’ Carlyle demanded.

  ‘Dunno. What I do know, however, is that our Mr Shelbourne has been interviewed by Operation Redhead officers . . . twice.’

  The inspector smacked his head. ‘Fuck’s sake!’ Bloody Chief Inspector Russell Meyer, why hadn’t he mentioned any of this?

  ‘Both times,’ Dom continued, ‘he denied having any contact with Fox.’

  ‘So why do you think I would be able to get any more out of him?’

  ‘Shelbourne is weak,’ Dom continued, ‘both physically and mentally. I could get Gideon to have a word with him. He’d crumble in less than five minutes. Tell you whatever you want.’

  ‘Mm.’ Carlyle had to admit, the idea had much to commend it. As he contemplated Gideon getting to work on the ex-Editor, his phone started vibrating. ‘Hold that thought. In the meantime, keep on digging. See what else you can find out.’

  ‘Inspector?’ said a familiar gravelly voice. ‘It’s Charlie Ross.’

  ‘Charlie.’ Carlyle shot a glance at Dom.

  ‘Are you busy?’

  ‘I’m always busy. What can I do for you?’

  ‘I was wondering if we could meet up.’

  On his way to see Charlie Ross, Carlyle took a detour in order to drop in at the Holborn police station on Lamb’s Conduit Street. He wanted to speak to Susan Phillips. In the event, he had to wait more than half an hour before the pathologist made an appearance. Sweeping through the reception at a clip, she headed straight for the entrance door, signalling with the slightest nod of her head that he should follow. Carlyle chased after her, but she was going at such a pace that they were halfway towards Coram’s Fields before he caught up.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Phillips snapped, not slowing down.

  ‘Nice to see you, too,’ Carlyle quipped.

  ‘John, now is really not th
e time.’ Skipping out in front of a taxi, she crossed Great Ormond Street and dived into the Starbucks on the corner, leaving him still standing on the kerbside. By the time he made it inside, she had already ordered a double espresso and a latte and was paying for them with her credit card. ‘Get a seat. I’ll bring the coffees.’

  Stepping back outside, the inspector grabbed a small table that had just been vacated by a couple of tired-looking hospital workers. From his seat, he watched her through the window, chewing nervously on her thumb as she waited for their order. Given that Phillips was just about the most laid-back colleague Carlyle had ever known, it was clear that something must be up.

  Sitting back in his chair, Carlyle placed his hands behind his head and smiled to himself.

  If something was up, that meant they must have found important new evidence.

  ‘Just don’t ask me anything about Maude Hall.’ Phillips took a mouthful of her latte as soon as she had handed Carlyle his espresso.

  ‘Thanks.’ The last thing the inspector needed was more caffeine, so he placed the small paper cup carefully on the table without taking a sip.

  ‘Because I know that it’s not even your case,’ said Phillips, lowering herself into the other chair.

  ‘No,’ he had to agree.

  ‘Not that you’ve ever let minor details like that stop you in the past.’

  Carlyle held up a hand. ‘It’s just the way I am, sorry.’ He knew Phillips well enough. Despite the complaining, she would tell him what was going on in her own time.

  ‘Yes, well . . .’ Phillips looked around, before leaning across the table, tension etched on her face.

  Fuck me, Carlyle thought, I’ve just walked into a John le Carré novel.

  ‘The shit has really hit the fan on this one,’ she whispered.

  Or maybe not. Le Carré’s characters always spoke so much more eloquently. All that public school and Oxbridge education; money well spent. He tried not to laugh at his own musings.