by James Craig
‘She has complained to Commander Dugdale.’
‘About what?’ Carlyle snapped.
‘About your lack of cooperation.’
‘Look, Ambrose,’ Carlyle sighed, ‘I apologize if you’ve been placed in a difficult situation here. I know that you are trying to help me and you have always been very fair in our previous dealings.’
‘Yes.’ For Ambrose, that now sounded like that was a matter of some considerable regret.
‘But you don’t have to get involved this time. I will, of course, cooperate fully and promptly with any IIC and IPCC enquiry. I do, however, expect that my own rights will be respected, along with those of Sergeant Roche.’
‘Of course.’
‘Innocent until proven guilty and all that.’
‘Indeed.’ Ambrose seemed even less sure of that than Carlyle did himself.
‘So give the superintendent my sincere apologies and tell her that I look forward to meeting with her soon.’
‘Okay.’
‘And Ambrose?’
‘Yes?’
‘Thanks again for all your help. I really mean it. But you don’t have to go out on a limb for me.’
‘Just be careful, Inspector. Once these investigations get up a head of steam they can be very difficult to stop.’
‘I will. Thank you.’ He ended the call and turned to face Roche.
The sergeant made no effort to hide the fact that she had been listening intently. ‘More problems?’ she asked.
‘Just the usual,’ Carlyle sighed. Minded to walk back to the station via The Mall, he started walking in the direction of the Queen Victoria Memorial.
Behind him, Roche groaned as her phone started buzzing. The next thing he knew, the handset was flying past his left ear before bouncing off the grass five yards away.
‘Hey!’
‘Sorry.’ Roche held up a hand in apology. Her face was a picture of annoyance. He could almost see the steam coming out of her ears.
‘The bastard!’
Carlyle stepped over to the phone, which had narrowly avoided landing in a fresh-looking pile of dog shit. Wrinkling his nose, he picked it up and moved quickly away. On the screen was a text from ‘Martin’ that simply said: It’s over x
Handing the phone back to his sergeant, he somehow managed to keep his mouth shut.
‘What a total wanker!’ Roche hissed. ‘Imagine dumping someone by fucking text!’
‘That’s men for you,’ Carlyle said, affecting the air of someone who knew what he was talking about.
Roche shook her head.
‘At least he sent you a kiss.’
She shot him an angry look. ‘Don’t try and be fucking funny.’
‘No. Sorry.’ Dropping his gaze to the grass, the chastened look on his face was real; something that he had had ample opportunity to perfect at home over the years.
They resumed walking. ‘It wasn’t like it was working out,’ Roche said after a while. ‘But it’s always better to do the dumping, rather than be dumped.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Carlyle, conscious that he didn’t have much experience of either.
‘And to be dumped by bloody text!’ Holding up the phone, she deleted the message with a flourish. ‘Well, fuck you.’
‘A commendably healthy attitude,’ Carlyle smiled.
He waited until they had almost reached the ICA before returning to work-related matters. ‘Have there been any more developments regarding SO15?’
Roche swerved a dawdling tourist. ‘Not really. I would be interested though. I hear that CTC are investigating the guy in the holdall.’
Carlyle grunted. The ‘guy in the holdall’ was a Secret Intelligence Service officer whose decomposing body had been found a few days earlier in a sports bag in the bath of an expensive Pimlico apartment. The media were, of course, loving it, happily speculating that he had been brutally murdered because of his job. Was the poor victim the first ‘spy’ to be killed in Britain since former KGB man Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned in a sushi bar in Piccadilly? Carlyle knew that the reality was likely to be more mundane – sex, money, whatever. However, Homicide and Serious Crime Command were still having to work with Counter Terrorism Command and domestic intelligence agency MI5 looking over their shoulder. He knew, from personal experience, what a pain in the arse that could be.
Reading the concerned look on his face, Roche gave him a gentle punch on the shoulder. ‘It’s not a done deal,’ she smiled. ‘We can worry about it if it happens.’
He nodded. ‘Fine by me.’
Neatly stacked on his desk at the station were two letters. On top, someone had stuck a Post-it note on which an unknown hand had simply scrawled: call Dugdale. Maybe later, Carlyle thought, picking up the first envelope. It was no great surprise to find that it was a formal notice from the IIC, signed by Buck, informing him of the date of his complaint hearing. Of more interest was the second, from one Jayne Smith, Personnel Administrator, in HR, outlining the redundancy terms that they were prepared to offer him. Carlyle stared at the numbers on the page, trying to work out whether they offered him even the remotest chance of walking away from the Met.
Unable to come up with any conclusions one way or another, he stuffed the letter in his pocket and reached for the desk phone. It was past the time he expected anyone from the Federation to still be in the office and, sure enough, Geoff the Rep’s voicemail kicked in after a few token rings. Carlyle left him a message asking him to call in the morning. Pulling a sheaf of papers out of the top drawer of his desk, he quickly went through his ‘to do’ list on the Leyne killing.
First, he called Phillips. She picked up on the second ring, but it sounded like Carlyle had caught her at a bad moment as she curtly informed him that her report into Leyne’s death had been sent to him the day before.
‘But it’s not on my desk,’ he complained, repaying her irritable tone with interest.
‘That’s because I emailed it to you,’ she sighed. ‘Call me if you’ve got any questions.’
‘Okay,’ he replied. ‘Sorry.’ But she had already hung up on him. With a heavy heart, he switched on his PC. Bitter experience told him that it would take at least five minutes for the thing to warm up, before crashing again almost immediately. After typing in his user name and password, he ignored the somersaulting sand-timer and tried ringing another of Leyne’s former wives.
Sally Jones, wife number two, had a London phone number but wasn’t answering it. Carlyle left a message. Undeterred, he moved swiftly on to number three. Next to Rachel Gilbert’s name was a mobile number which he proceeded to misdial three times. However, when he finally got the number right, the call was picked up instantly.
‘Hi!’ said an impossibly chirpy voice that sounded like it was coming from the middle of a disco. ‘This is Rachel . . .’
Confused, Carlyle frowned. Was this another mother-daughter situation, like his call to LA?
‘Hello?’
‘Is that—’
But the call was terminated before he could get any further.
Cursing, he dialled the number yet again.
‘Hi! This is—’
‘This is Inspector John Carlyle of the Metropolitan Police in London,’ he said quickly and firmly, ‘and I am looking to speak to Rachel Gilbert.’
There was a pause.
‘Hello?’ Carlyle shouted, feeling like an idiot.
‘This is Rachel,’ said a now not so chirpy voice.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Once they had mastered the art of conducting a basic telephone conversation, it was established that Rachel Gilbert was sitting in a bar called Stearn’s in Golden Square, walking distance from the station. Always preferring to do these things face-to-face, Carlyle proposed heading over there straight away. With some reluctance, she agreed.
Ending the call, Carlyle realized that his PC had finally sprung into life. Opening Phillips’ email, he scanned her report. Not surprisingly, the cause of Roger Leyne’s death wa
s given as the two 9mm hollow-point parabellum rounds that had been fired into his chest at close range. It was estimated that Leyne had been face down in his swimming pool for eight or nine hours before Carlyle had found him. The retrograde extrapolation of Leyne’s blood-alcohol content suggested it was approaching 0.20 per cent at the time of his death, representing very serious intoxication. Unless Leyne had developed a very high tolerance for drink, such a high BAC would result in emotional swings, impaired judgement and poor gross motor control. In other words, he was quite an easy target. Phillips had also found traces of cocaine in his bloodstream, but it wasn’t clear if the professor had been partaking immediately before his death. ‘Quite the party animal,’ Carlyle said to himself. Printing off a copy of the report, he stuck it in the inside pocket of his jacket and headed for the door.
Twenty minutes later, he walked into the funky, if largely empty, bar, to be greeted almost immediately by a nervous-looking waif, whose short, pixie haircut only served to accentuate the fact that she looked about twelve years old. She was dressed in black jeans and a Kylie T-shirt. A pair of pink Converse All Stars rounded off the ensemble, further enhancing the childish look.
‘Inspector Carlyle?’
‘Yes.’
Rachel Gilbert offered him a limp hand. ‘I thought it was you. Most of the people who come in here are a lot younger.’
Thanks, thought Carlyle, as he let her usher him to a table near the door.
‘Would you like something to drink?’ she asked. ‘They have the biggest gin collection in the country and the cocktails are great.’
Carlyle took a seat and gestured for her to follow. Thankfully, someone had turned the music off. ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘This shouldn’t take too long.’ He scanned the Stearn’s early-evening crowd, wondering who she was with. ‘Just a couple of quick questions and you can get back to your . . . er . . . friends.’
‘Oh, I’m here working,’ she smiled.
‘Ah, okay.’
‘Just a bit of pocket-money really. And something to do. It gets me out and about and stops me being terminally anti-social.’
‘I see.’
‘So,’ she said pleasantly, ‘what can I do for you?’
‘First of all, please accept my condolences about your former husband.’
Rachel placed her hands in her lap, intertwining the fingers. ‘Thank you,’ she smiled awkwardly. ‘But I have to say that I haven’t really been able to feel anything about Roger’s death.’
This guy really was Mr Popular, Carlyle noted. ‘Why is that?’ he asked gently.
‘The marriage . . . well, it seems like it was decades, hundreds of years ago – another lifetime, in fact.’ She gave him a searching look. ‘I’m twenty-six years old. We married when I was twenty-two and I was twenty-three when I walked out. I haven’t seen him since. The divorce was finalized three days after my twenty-fourth birthday.’ She gazed vacantly into the middle distance. ‘It turned out he had been sleeping with other students all the time we were married.’
‘Professor Leyne didn’t seem to stay married for very long,’ Carlyle commented.
Rachel shrugged. ‘I think his second marriage lasted for a decade or so. I know they had kids. She must have been good at looking the other way.’
‘So he was a serial philanderer?’
She laughed. ‘He was a serial everything . . . Roger thought that everything and everyone that crossed his path had somehow been put on this earth for his benefit.’
‘How did you two meet?’
She sighed so deeply that Carlyle felt a wave of sadness wash over him. ‘I was one of his students. He taught me ethics.’
Carlyle raised an eyebrow.
‘Not an unfamiliar story.’
‘No,’ said Carlyle, not wishing to pry into the prurient details, ‘I suppose not. The question is, why would anyone want to kill him?’
Sticking her elbows on the table, she leaned forward. ‘Surely,’ she said primly, ‘the question is who killed him? And then why?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Presumably,’ Rachel grinned mischievously, ‘you have discovered by now that lots of people may have wanted to kill him. I quite often thought about it myself, when we were together. My inclination would have been to have given him a quick shove down the stairs and hope he ended up with a broken neck.’ She took in the rather bemused look on Carlyle’s face. ‘What are the chances of getting away with that?’
Carlyle shrugged vaguely. Unbidden, his brain summoned up the memory of yet another abused child. This one was called Josie Parrish. It had been a case six or maybe seven years before. Five-year-old Josie had died from head injuries that Carlyle was convinced had been inflicted on her by her stepfather. Both the stepfather and the mother insisted that the child had accidentally fallen. The investigation had dragged on for months before finally coming to court. At the trial, pathologists squabbled publicly over whether Josie had been killed by an ‘accelerated impact’ as a result of being pushed. When the parents had walked out of the Old Bailey, having been acquitted of child cruelty and manslaughter charges, it was one of the worst days of Carlyle’s professional life. ‘It can be hard to prove,’ he admitted.
There was a sparkle in her brown eyes now. ‘Just a harmless little fantasy I used to have from time to time.’
‘Yes.’ Carlyle wondered if Helen ever had similar thoughts about him; surely not?
‘That’s not a crime, is it?’ she asked, and when the inspector shook his head: ‘Just as well. But, to go back to the precise question, I don’t know why someone finally decided to shoot him, or who that someone was, but I do have some ideas.’
Carlyle sat back in his chair and opened his arms wide. ‘Go ahead,’ he said, ‘let’s hear them.’
Daintily sipping his green tea, the inspector yawned as he watched the television news. A spokesman for the Archdiocese of Birmingham was complaining about the ‘draconian’ security plans for the Pope’s visit. Alcohol, barbecues, gazebos and musical instruments were all banned, along with bicycles, whistles, candles and animals.
Gazebos? Carlyle wondered. These guys really know how to have a good time.
Helen wandered in from the kitchen and sat down beside him.
Carlyle gestured at the screen. ‘Have you seen this?’
‘Yeah,’ she grinned, ‘it’s hilarious.’
‘Do you think the Popemobile will be going past here?’
‘Let’s hope not,’ she said. ‘The crowds will be a real pain.’
‘Apparently you have to have a “pilgrim pass” to get into one of his gigs.’
‘You’re kidding!’
Carlyle shrugged. ‘That’s what it says.’
‘Different world,’ Helen murmured.
‘Each to their own.’ Carlyle muted the TV and took another sip of his tea. ‘People can do what they like, as long as they respect the law.’
Helen stretched out on the sofa and placed her head in his lap. ‘So, how is the plan to arrest His Holiness for crimes against humanity going?’
‘It’s not, as far as I know.’
‘It was always a cheap publicity stunt, anyway.’
‘Absolutely. But finding one of the prime movers in the campaign face down in his swimming pool with two bullets in his chest has given people other things to worry about.’
‘Maybe the Pope did it?’
Carlyle laughed. ‘I very much doubt that the Pope has ever heard of Roger Leyne.’
‘No,’ Helen agreed. ‘Anyway, I suppose that murder would be a bit over the top.’
‘Yeah. Abusing little boys is more their thing.’
Helen yawned. ‘So, why do you think that Roger Leyne was shot?’
Carlyle stroked the top of her head, happy to be talking about work rather than . . . other things. On the TV news, they had moved on to a story about flooding in Pakistan – people with real problems. ‘That,’ he said quietly, ‘is a very good question. No one seems to have liked the b
loke, but equally, no one’s claiming to have hated him enough to have actually killed him.’ He recounted his conversation with Rachel Gilbert and her admission that she’d daydreamed about pushing her husband down the stairs.
Helen thought about that for a minute. ‘I would have thought fantasies about killing your spouse are fairly common.’
Carlyle looked down at her. ‘Have you ever thought about pushing me down the stairs?’
A look of mock surprise fell across Helen’s face. ‘Oh no!’ she grinned.
‘Glad to hear it.’
‘I’d never do anything like that. My preference would be to brain you with the frying pan.’
‘Ha bloody ha,’ Carlyle said sourly. ‘Hardly an inspired choice.’
‘It would do for me.’
‘It would be much harder to get away with that, my dear.’
‘Who says I would want to get away with it?’ Helen pushed herself up, giving him a kiss on the cheek as she slipped off the sofa. ‘If I actually did it, I would want everyone to know that it was me.’
Not knowing quite what to make of that, he watched her sashay into the kitchen.
Five minutes later, she returned with a cup of steaming rooibos tea. ‘So what does wife number three think lies behind the slaying of her ex-husband?’ she asked, carefully lowering herself back down onto the sofa.
‘Well,’ Carlyle switched off the television, ‘she says Leyne was fond of recreational drugs, which would tally with the coke that we found in his system. She also says he was a bit of a gambler.’
‘Horses?’
‘No, cards. Apparently he liked poker.’
‘Would that have got him killed?’
‘I’ve no idea. Maybe – if he fell in with the wrong people and had money problems. We’ll have to check it out. I thought I might talk to Dom about it.’ Dom was Dominic Silver, policeman turned drug dealer and longtime family friend. Theirs was a relationship that went back thirty years, to Hendon Police Training College in North London. Once Dom had left the force and changed sides, as it were, the two men had eventually established a workable if often uneasy relationship.