by James Craig
‘Had to blow out the boyfriend for dinner,’ she said, trying to inject a little levity into her voice. ‘These things happen.’
‘Comes with the job,’ Carlyle parroted.
‘Yes, it does,’ Roche said, gazing out of the window in a manner that suggested that the conversation was closed.
Carlyle left Roche to her thoughts and flicked through some football websites on his BlackBerry for a couple of minutes until Myron appeared with his omelette.
Finishing his main course, Carlyle resisted the temptation to order an apple Danish from the selection under the counter and limited himself to a green tea.
‘Still off the coffee, then?’ Roche asked.
‘More or less. Want anything else?’
Roche stopped pushing her half-eaten salad around her plate and sat back in her chair. ‘No. I’m done.’
‘Okay,’ said Carlyle, once the café owner had stalked off with their plates. ‘Let’s compare notes.’
‘Well,’ Roche began, ‘the security guard, Hendricks, seemed to be on the level. There’s nothing complicated about his story: the two guys arrived just before five. They look kosher, he lets them in, and then all hell breaks loose. Once he started having his asthma attack, all he was worried about was continuing to breathe. The moment they’d left, he went to grab his inhaler and just waited for the police to arrive.’
A thought popped into Carlyle’s head. ‘Why did the call come in to us, rather than West End Central?’
‘It’s closed.’
‘Closed?’
‘Yeah,’ Roche said. ‘It closed at the end of last month. It’s supposed to be being refurbished, but there’s a rumour that it might not reopen, in order to save money.’
‘Better that than losing jobs,’ Carlyle murmured. There were seven police stations in Westminster; West End Central, in Savile Row, was one of the smaller ones. Over the years, several others had closed as operations had been centralized and uniformed coppers spent less time pounding the beat. It was the same all across London, just the way of the world.
‘Anyway,’ Roche continued, ‘the alarm was supposed to go to Belgravia, but for some reason it came to us.’ She watched as Myron arrived with Carlyle’s tea. Placing the mug carefully on the table, along with the bill, the owner once again retreated behind his counter. ‘I think he wants to get home,’ Roche said, reaching into her bag for her purse.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Carlyle, picking up the bill. ‘I’ll get this.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course,’ he told her, digging into his jacket pocket for his wallet. ‘It’s the least I can do for dragging you out here and making you miss your date.’ Dropping a tenner and a fiver onto the table, he gulped down half his tea and jumped to his feet, nodding his thanks to Myron. The Ukrainian gave him a weary smile in reply and came out from behind the counter to unlock the door.
‘Thank you,’ Roche told him, hoisting her bag over her shoulder and following Carlyle out.
Standing on the pavement, Carlyle was torn between turning right and making the short walk through the piazza to his flat, or left and back to the station.
Roche, shivering in the cold night air, made her decision first. ‘I’m going to call it a day,’ she said.
‘Which way are you going?’ Carlyle asked.
‘I’ll get the Central line at Holborn.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You can walk me home and I’ll tell you about my conversation with Luckman.’ Just then, he felt his mobile vibrate in his pocket. Assuming it was Helen, he checked the number. 901. It was his answerphone. A message appeared, telling him he had four missed calls. ‘Shit!’ Carlyle gestured at the screen, which shone brightly in the gloom. ‘How can that happen?’ he moaned. ‘We sat in the café. No one rang me. How can I have missed four bloody calls?’
Roche tutted sympathetically.
The phone started ringing again. ‘For fuck’s sake!’
‘Work?’
Carlyle nodded, hitting the receive button. ‘Yes?’
‘Inspector? It’s the desk here.’
‘Yes?’ said Carlyle, already waving goodnight to Roche. Changing direction, he set off wearily in the direction of Bedford Street.
‘There is someone here who is demanding to speak to you, sir.’
EIGHT
As Carlyle approached the front desk, the night sergeant gave him a look that he couldn’t decipher until the woman talking on the phone turned round. If the look on her face said that she was less than impressed, Carlyle’s reaction was rather different. Dressed in what at first glance looked like a black leather cat-suit and biker boots, she was tall, easily a couple of inches taller than he was, and slim, with her blonde hair cut in an expensive-looking bob. Her face was classically beautiful and he doubted if she could have yet reached thirty. Still talking on the phone while she watched him gawp, an elbow propped casually on the desk, her blue eyes sparkled with mischief. Taking it all in, Carlyle’s first thought was that she looked like Cameron Diaz’s little sister or, rather, Cameron Diaz’s hotter little sister.
‘Look, I’ve got to go. The help has arrived. Ciao.’ The woman poked a finger at her iPhone and stepped away from the desk. ‘Inspector Carlyle?’
Temporarily dazed, Carlyle had to think about that one for a moment. ‘Er,’ he stammered, ‘yes.’
The woman did not offer her hand. ‘I am Katrin Lagerbäck, the owner of St James’s Diamonds. I wondered if we could talk about today’s . . . events.’ Her English was perfect and betrayed no obvious accent, but it was clear that she wasn’t a local.
Carlyle tried to regain his composure. ‘Thank you for coming to see me.’ Glancing around, he was aware that they – that she – was quickly attracting a crowd among the officers on duty, as well as the members of the public waiting to be seen. ‘Please,’ he said, leading her deeper into the station. ‘Come this way.’
He showed her into a meeting room on the third floor. Dropping her bag on the table, Katrin Lagerbäck pulled out a seat and sat down. He could see now that she wasn’t wearing a cat-suit but rather a matching leather jacket and trousers ensemble. Carlyle had never seen the attraction of leather trousers. To his mind, only Jim Morrison had been able to carry them off and even then it seemed a pretty much borderline thing. Lagerbäck unzipped the jacket and Carlyle was disappointed to find a very prim white blouse beneath, with just a single button undone at the neck.
‘Inspector?’
‘Yes?’
‘I was wondering,’ Lagerbäck said, the amused smirk on her face growing bigger by the second, ‘if you could give me a report on what’s happening.’
‘Of course.’ Clicking back into work mode, Carlyle remembered that he had still to update Dugdale. If it had been Simpson, he would have put it off until tomorrow; with the new Commander, however, he knew that such tardiness would be somewhat impolitic. He replaced the Dugdale note near the top of his mental ‘to do’ list’ as he locked onto Lagerbäck’s gaze and gave her some good eye-contact.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘the situation is like this. We responded to the alarm going off at St James’s Diamonds in approximately six minutes’ – this was important as he had checked the store’s security plan and the police were expected under the terms of the insurance arrangements to respond within eight minutes – ‘and found that the robbers had fled, apparently taking a member of staff as a hostage.’
‘That poor woman,’ Lagerbäck said, with no feeling whatsoever.
You might have Cameron Diaz’s looks, Carlyle thought, but you certainly don’t have her acting skills.
‘The search for them is extensive and continuing,’ Carlyle went on. ‘Meanwhile, our forensic analysts have been going over the crime scene in great detail and we have been speaking to the other members of staff.’
‘I hear that the store manager . . . lost control of himself.’ She tossed him a look that perfectly balanced amusement and disgust.
Doubting that Lagerbäc
k was the easiest of employers, Carlyle felt obliged to jump to the unfortunate Luckman’s defence. ‘Your staff were subjected to a terrible ordeal,’ he said. ‘We have every reason to believe that they genuinely feared for their lives. In that situation, such a reaction is perfectly understandable.’
‘Huh,’ she snorted, playing with the strap on her bag. ‘Whatever happened, I would not disgrace myself like that.’
Carlyle was bemused by her focus on such an irrelevant detail. ‘What would be helpful,’ he said, trying to move the conversation along, ‘is whether you have any thoughts about who might have carried out the robbery.’
‘No,’ she said sharply. ‘None at all.’ Seeing his interest in the speed of her response, she added, ‘As you can imagine, I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the last few hours. Obviously, any luxury goods store is a potential target, but,’ she shrugged, ‘as to why us specifically? And why now? I simply do not know.’
‘Okay.’ Carlyle stifled a yawn, happy at the thought of at least getting her out of the station in a fairly short order. ‘One of my colleagues will come and take a formal statement in the next day or so, and I will let you know of any developments.’
‘Good.’ Unzipping the breast pocket of her jacket, Lagerbäck pulled out a business card and handed it to Carlyle. ‘You can get me on any of these numbers.’ Pushing back her chair, she got to her feet. ‘I am a very easy woman to get hold of.’
Still in his seat, Carlyle looked down the list of two office numbers, three mobiles and two email addresses. ‘Thank you. The other thing that we need is a detailed list of everything that was taken.’
‘Of course,’ she nodded. ‘The insurance company will have it for you first thing in the morning.’
Here we go, bloody insurance companies. He made to stand and felt her hand on his shoulder, keeping him in his chair with some considerable strength. ‘There’s no need to get up, Inspector,’ she purred. ‘I can find my own way out.’
NINE
The young lad looked around to see if anyone was watching. Satisfied that he could proceed undetected, he pulled a half-bottle of Deer Park blended whisky from his jacket pocket, unscrewed the cap and took a cautious slug, grimacing as the cheap Scotch hit the back of his throat. Whisky wasn’t his drink, but the Deer Park had been the first thing to hand when he’d gone into the off-licence on the promenade. He had slipped it into his pocket and walked out while the Asian owner was arguing with a stroppy wino over the price of four cans of Special Brew. It was a piece of cake. He took another long drink. Now the bottle was half-empty and, as well as ill, he felt suitably woozy.
Unsteadily, he got to his feet and moved across to the rail of the Palace Pier. A gust of wind hit him in the face and he shivered in the cold. In the failing light, he looked along the pier to check if anyone was in sight. They weren’t, so he carefully climbed onto the railing. Swinging his legs over the side, he looked down into the darkness and the depth of the sea, and said a small prayer. Then he took a deep breath and jumped.
It took Carlyle the best part of two hours to write up his report. He kept things short and to the point, but still found himself rewriting it twice to make sure that his back was sufficiently covered. Once he was confident that it was as anodyne as possible, he attached the necessary forms to an email and sent it off into cyberspace. As he did so, he felt a familiar sense of unease in his gut. It came not from worries about the case itself but about the politics of the case.
It had taken Carlyle many years, and much goodwill on the Commander’s part, to establish a good working relationship with Simpson. Now she was gone and he was worried that Dugdale might try to use the robbery as an opportunity for payback. The robbers were still on the run, with no expectation that they would be caught, at least not in the next few hours. There was bound to be an issue about the speed and effectiveness of the police cordon, even if that wasn’t necessarily his responsibility. The main worry, however, was the woman. In a sense, it would be a lot easier if Paula Coulter was in on the robbery. Certainly, that would mean less chance of her being found dead by the side of a road somewhere. If that happened, the blame game would go into overdrive.
Sitting in the empty office, he castigated himself for being so self-indulgent. ‘Solve the case,’ he said out loud, getting slowly to his feet, ‘and no one can touch you.’
It was after midnight when he opened the front door to his flat. Taking off his shoes, he stepped into the darkened hallway and closed the door gently behind him. A quick check of the bedrooms told him that Alice and Helen were both asleep and he crept carefully back to the kitchen. Opening the fridge, he pulled out a two-litre bottle of Evian, unscrewed the cap and took a long drink.
‘Ahhh!’
Replacing the cap, he put the bottle back on the shelf inside the door and looked around for something to eat. Seeing nothing in the fridge that took his fancy, he checked out the rest of the kitchen. In the corner, next to the microwave, was a bunch of bananas. Crossing the tiny kitchen floor, he selected the largest banana and snapped it free. Unzipping it, he took a huge bite, gazing out of the kitchen window across the river to the London Eye, lit up in the darkness. When he’d finished, he dropped the skin in the bin beneath the sink. Yawning, he noticed a couple of letters on top of the microwave, one opened, one not. Carlyle made to pick them up then changed his mind. ‘Fuck it,’ he said quietly to himself. ‘It’s nothing that can’t wait until tomorrow.’
After taking a quick shower, he eased himself into bed, careful not to disturb his wife, who was snoring softly, the duvet pulled up under her chin. Lying still, he stared up at the ceiling, trying to make sense of the day. Only too well aware that he had overstepped the mark with the priest McGowan – even if he had told himself it had all been an act – he felt genuine regret for putting Roche in a position where she had to lie in order to cover for her boss. But the feeling was fleeting, quickly overridden by a sense of huge injustice on behalf of the missing boy, Simon Murphy. Carlyle had never met Murphy, and if he ever did, the inspector was fairly sure that he wouldn’t like the kid much. ‘Give me a child until he is seven,’ said the Jesuits, ‘and I will give you the man.’ On that basis, Simon Murphy, who had been abused and ignored for the first twelve years of his life, was pretty much a lost cause. Well, maybe he was – but that didn’t mean his abusers should be allowed a free pass.
Was Father McGowan a Jesuit? Carlyle had no idea. As an avowed atheist, the inspector had no interest in what were really nothing more than fairy stories. As far as he was concerned, people could believe what they liked, as long as they respected the beliefs of others and obeyed the law. In his view, someone’s religion was about as significant as the football team they supported and considerably less interesting.
Somewhere deep in his brain, he recalled another Jesuit motto: Ad majorem Dei Gloriam – ‘for the Greater Glory of God’. There is no fucking God, Carlyle harrumphed silently in the darkness, wishing his brain would switch off and he could get some sleep. And, even if there was, He wouldn’t gain any glory from the buggering of little boys.
TEN
He woke with a start. It was still dark and it took him a moment to focus on the LCD display on the alarm clock, which told him that it was 5.12 a.m. Carlyle looked over at Helen, who was still fast asleep. Yawning, he moved himself cautiously out of the bed and slipped into the bathroom. After a careful shave, he dressed quickly while running through a list of places where he might get some breakfast. At this early hour, Marcello would still be travelling into Town from his North London home, and Il Buffone would not open for another hour or so. However, there was a café at the Embankment end of Villiers Street, next to Charing Cross train station, that stayed open through the night, primarily for taxi drivers and, at weekends, for clubbers waiting for the first train home in the morning. Carlyle had been there a few times; the food was crap, but it would do.
Creeping into the kitchen, he found a pen in one of the drawers and scribbled a brief
note on the back of one of the envelopes on top of the microwave: Sorry I was so late, back early tonight. Give me a call when you get up. X. Propping it up against the remaining bananas, he made his way out.
David Hogg yawned as he watched Boris, his bull-mastiff, race down the shingle of Brighton beach towards the sea. It was not yet 6 a.m. and there was no one else around, which was just the way Hogg liked it. Otherwise, Boris would have to stay on his leash. He was a good-natured animal, but the sight of 140 pounds of dog bearing down on them was enough to give most people the willies.
Covering his eyes against the bright light, Hogg gazed out towards the horizon. It was a beautiful morning, azure sky, bright sunshine but with a fresh, chill edge to the air. All the same, he’d rather be in bed. At the very least, he could do with some breakfast. Off to his right was the pier. If they headed that way, he could pop into Luigi’s café on Old Steine. Looking round, he struggled to pick out the dog against the glare. ‘Boris!’ There was no reply, save for the gentle crashing of the waves against the beach. Grumbling to himself, Hogg began walking towards the water. ‘Boris!’
Twenty yards from the water’s edge, Hogg finally caught sight of the dog. As he got closer, he heard a friendly yelp. Closer still, he saw that the dog was wagging his tail happily, standing over what looked like some kind of package that had been washed up on the beach. Pulling the leash out of his pocket, Hogg reached for the dog – who promptly ran off, in the opposite direction to which he wanted to go.
‘Boris!’ he shouted angrily. ‘Come back here!’ But the bull-mastiff had already raced away further down the beach.
‘Blasted dog!’ Annoyed, Hogg realized that he would have to wait for the animal to come back of his own volition. Meanwhile, he walked down to the water’s edge to inspect the package. Squinting against the sun, he was almost on top of it before he understood what he was looking at. ‘Bloody hell!’ Dropping the dog’s leash at his feet, Hogg fumbled in his pocket for his mobile. Ignoring the barking from down the beach, he quickly dialled 999.