by James Craig
‘Even so, I need to get up to speed with what it is you – we – do.’
Mottram’s espresso appeared and he took a noisy sip. ‘We do lots of things,’ he said airily. ‘Cars, property, natural resources – it’s a real old-fashioned conglomerate. We even own a football club.’
Holyrod made a face. ‘Football’s not really my thing.’
‘You surprise me.’
‘Why?’
‘You know what they say,’ Dino smiled. ‘Sport is really nothing more than war without the shooting.’
‘And what,’ Holyrod said, ‘is the point of that?’
Dino gave him a quizzical look. ‘So you’re really not into sport?’
Holyrod pondered the question for a moment. ‘I’ll watch a bit of rugby now and again, maybe go to Twickenham for the odd international, but I can’t say that I follow football. It is all so totally . . . base.’
‘Don’t worry, I won’t make you go to any of the games.’ Dino sighed. ‘We’re not having a great season. Then again, we rarely do. What we do have, though, is Gavin Swann.’
Even the Mayor couldn’t have gone through life without coming across Swann, a regular on the front pages of the tabloids for reasons that had nothing to do with his sporting prowess. ‘Now him,’ Holyrod nodded, eager to show willing to his new boss, ‘I have heard of. More for what he’s got up to off the pitch, though.’
Dino smiled wanly. ‘He seems to have put the gambling and prostitutes behind him and have become a proper family man – or he will be soon. Now all he needs to do is score some goals. Apparently, he has helped sell almost half a million replica shirts in the last couple of years. And when he is not fit enough to play, which is fairly often, we can always pack him off to Taiwan or Singapore to open another of our themed restaurants.’
‘Do you – we – make any money out of it all?’ Holyrod asked.
‘Some. Not as much as we should. Swann’s agent bleeds us dry. He agreed a new contract less than a year ago and already wants to renegotiate. Every time he does that, he raises the bar for all the others. It’s a never-ending cycle.’
Holyrod frowned. ‘Why don’t you just tell him to get lost?’
‘If only it were that easy. Agents are a real pain in the arse. They contribute to football’s prune-juice effect – the money comes in at the top and goes straight out of the bottom. We manage to grab some of it on the way down, but only a little.’
‘So why not just sell the club?’
Dino smiled ruefully. ‘Two reasons. First, and most important, we’d lose a packet. We paid far too much for the bloody thing in the first place, I’m ashamed to say.’
‘And the second?’
‘The second is that if we hold on long enough, we might make a packet. Hope springs eternal.’
That doesn’t seem like much of a plan, Holyrod thought.
‘People are always saying the bubble is going to burst, but the whole thing just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Compare Gavin Swann with the Queen,’ Dino continued. ‘Twenty-five years ago, the Queen’s Christmas Day speech was watched by twenty-eight million people in the UK. This Christmas she’ll be lucky to get a quarter of that. And the only way for the Royals is down. Even the new lot. Mark my words, in a few years they wouldn’t even be able to get their own reality TV show. We make a few of those as well, by the way.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah. Nothing you’ve ever heard of. Hell, nothing I’ve ever heard of. Anyway, as I was saying, as the Royals have fallen, football has risen: more than twenty-three million people in Britain saw Gavin break his foot at the last World Cup – at two o’clock in the morning!’ Dino’s eyes misted over. ‘It is a monster that generates unbelievable wealth . . . and we can grab a piece of it.’
We’ll see, thought Holyrod.
‘It would help if – off the pitch, at least – Gavin were a bit more like David Beckham and a bit less like Diego Maradona.’
‘Mm,’ said Holyrod, not really sure what Dino meant.
‘Anyway,’ Dino continued, ‘it’s probably best not to spend too much time thinking about it all or it will drive you round the bend. In terms of the numbers, sport is only a small part of our Group. There are lots of things in the portfolio that are currently more lucrative – and less likely to make you want to blow your brains out. I’ll arrange some kind of induction.’
‘That would be great.’ Glancing at his watch, Holyrod got to his feet. ‘Thank you for an excellent lunch. Let’s hope we can build on all your good work.’
Dino Mottram showed no sign of wanting to move from where he was. ‘I’m sure,’ he said, looking up at his newest recruit, ‘that we are going to go and do great things together.’
‘Fantastic!’
‘And more importantly,’ Dino added, with a cheeky glint in his eye, ‘make some serious amounts of cash.’
THREE
‘Can I touch it?’
‘What?’
‘Is it real?’
Scowling, Sergeant Alison Roche looked down at the boy who had sidled up to her at the Eurostar terminal in London’s St Pancras station. He was a scruffy-looking kid but well dressed; maybe ten or eleven with frizzy hair and a cheeky expression on his face.
‘I am Sidney,’ he told her.
Looking the kid up and down, Roche said nothing. He was wearing a pristine pair of blue and white Adidas sneakers, a pair of baggy stonewashed jeans and a grey T-shirt with a picture of a Dalek on it in red, under the legend EXTERMINATE. In his left hand was a half-eaten king-size Mars Bar.
‘That’s my name,’ the boy persisted. His English was precise but with a clear trace of an accent. Presumably, he was French.
Roche cleared her throat. ‘Go away,’ she growled.
Standing his ground, Sidney looked thoughtfully at the Heckler & Koch MP5 in Roche’s hands, waiting for another question to pop into his head. ‘Have you ever fired it?’ he asked finally.
Roche felt an overwhelming urge to give him a hard slap round the back of the head. Instead, she took a deep breath. ‘Bugger off!’
‘Have you?’ Sidney persisted.
‘Of course I’ve fired it, you stupid little sod,’ she hissed. ‘Now clear off.’ Thoroughly exasperated, she scanned the heaving station concourse, looking for any sign of someone who was responsible for this annoying kid. People were rushing around in all directions – the usual frenetic scene you got at any mainline terminus – but no one seemed to be looking for Sidney. Bloody parents, Roche thought with the righteous anger of someone who had never had any offspring of their own. They shouldn’t be allowed to have children if they can’t look after them.
Sidney stuck the last of the Mars Bar into his mouth before extending an arm and letting the wrapper flutter to the floor.
Roche gestured angrily at the litter with the toe of her boot. ‘Pick that up!’
Happy to have gotten a rise out of the female copper, the kid grinned, revealing a mouth full of chocolate and caramel. ‘Are you going to arrest me?’ he asked, making no move to pick up his rubbish.
No, thought Roche, but a bullet in the foot might encourage you to lose the attitude. Subconsciously checking that the safety on the Heckler & Koch MP5 was on, she felt her finger tighten around the trigger and realized that she’d been holding her breath. Exhaling at length, she took a step away from the boy. Get a grip, she told herself. Shaking out some of the tension in her shoulders, she made a mental note not to recall this little episode the next time she was called for a session with the departmental shrink. Suddenly, she saw a middle-aged woman in a paisley kaftan waddle towards them, a look of concern etched into her face.
About fucking time.
‘Sidney,’ the woman squawked, ‘viens ici!’
‘Maman . . .’ the boy sighed, slumping his shoulders in the exasperated fashion of children the world over.
The woman grabbed her child by the arm and pulled him towards her with a force that seemed to Roche somewhat excessive. Catc
hing the mother’s eye, Roche saw a look of horror cross her pudgy face. ‘Attention, chéri,’ she whispered theatrically. ‘Elle est armée.’
‘I know,’ Sidney said in English. He beamed. ‘It’s cool.’
‘Tu m’emmerdes à la fin, Sidney.’ The woman dragged him away, Roche glaring at her as she went. If she didn’t like the son, she liked the mother even less. We’re supposed to be here to protect you, she reflected, and you look at us like we’re shit. Bending down, she picked up the discarded Mars Bar wrapper and tossed it on to a nearby café table.
Sitting at the table, Commissaire de Police Jean-Pierre Grumbach sipped his espresso and gave her a rueful shrug. ‘Another happy member of the public goes about her business.’
Roche felt like screaming. She was more than ten hours into a fourteen-hour shift, and for almost all of that time she had been babysitting the Frenchman and his colleague, Lieutenant Ginette Vincendeau, along with their prisoner, a sallow youth called Alain Costello. ‘In France,’ she replied stiffly, ‘I suppose the police are universally loved?’
‘No, no.’ Shaking his head, Grumbach sat back in his metal chair. He was a tall, elegant man, with a thick head of grey hair and laughter lines around his eyes, which looked good on his tanned face. In a black, single-breasted Christian Dior suit and a crisp white shirt, open at the neck, he looked less like a policeman than some kind of high-end businessman. Irritatingly, he had been hitting on her all day. Roche might have been more receptive to his flirting if it wasn’t for the fact that it was so shameless – that, and the fact that they were still on the clock. ‘There it is just the same. They need us, but they hate us. Or, at least, they want us kept out of sight, along with the bad guys.’
‘It’s true,’ Vincendeau nodded. Slumped over a cappuccino, she sat opposite Grumbach; a short, dark woman, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. Her SIG Pro SP2009 was clearly visible, peeking out from a shoulder-holster under her leather jacket. ‘But people in England are still not so used to seeing cops with guns.’
‘They should be by now,’ Roche shrugged. ‘We’re at airports, stations, even shopping centres. SO15 patrol the streets every day.’
‘That’s one thing I didn’t understand,’ Vincendeau said, gesturing at her prisoner. ‘Why did the Counter Terrorism Command Unit grab this one?’
‘The whole thing was a big mistake,’ Grumbach said, reaching across the table and gently punching Alain Costello on the shoulder. ‘They picked him up by accident. Funny, huh?’
Costello grunted but didn’t look up from the game – which Roche recognized as Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories – that he was playing on his PSP console. In handcuffs.
Roche felt embarrassment mingle with her frustration. It was true that the whole thing had been a bit of a cock-up. If SO15 hadn’t mistaken Costello for a suspected North African terrorist by the name of Mehdi Zerdab, Roche would have had nothing to do with him. As it turned out, he was only a low-level drug dealer, albeit high on the wanted list of the Préfecture de Police. To be fair, it was a relatively easy mistake to have made. The distinction between drug smugglers and terrorists was becoming more blurred all the time. In the last month alone, SO15 had seized seven machine guns and more than a dozen automatic pistols from terror suspects with well-documented connections to the illegal drugs industry. It was a symbiotic relationship that both sides were increasingly happy to exploit: the terrorist groups gained cash and the traffickers, protection. Smugglers carrying cannabis, cocaine, ecstasy and heroin were known to transport weapons on behalf of their business partners.
Forty-eight hours earlier, following a tip-off, SO15 had picked Costello up in a raid on a Brixton flat. The place was supposed to be home to a terrorist cell. Instead of the anticipated haul of Jihadi propaganda and homemade explosives, however, the police found twelve kilos of cocaine, twenty thousand Euros in cash – and Costello. The little runt had been caught trying to flee through a bedroom window, having stopped to rescue his games console on the way.
They removed him to Stockwell Road police station for processing. Deprived of his games console, Costello refused to say a word, declining even to ask for a lawyer. However, once his fingerprints had been fed into the Interpol database, the authorities found more than enough information to be going on with. Given there were three warrants out for his arrest in France (one for attempted murder), plus two in Belgium and one in Holland, there was clearly going to be a queue of people waiting to take him off SO15’s hands.
Less than two hours later, Grumbach and Vincendeau had been dispatched from Paris to take him home to the cell waiting for him in the Maison d’Arrêt de la Santé in the 14th arrondissement.
‘Why do you let him play that?’ Roche asked, keen to change the subject.
‘Keeps him quiet,’ Vincendeau sighed. ‘Just like taking your kid on a trip.’
Bored with the conversation, Roche watched Sidney and his mother return to their place in the queue for the next train to Paris. She glanced up at the departures board above their heads. It told her that Eurostar 9042 to Gare du Nord should be boarding in about twenty minutes. Departure: 16.52. Surely it was time to be making a move.
Grumbach followed Roche’s gaze. ‘Don’t worry,’ he smiled, placing a hand on her forearm. ‘We’ve got plenty of time.’
‘She’s right,’ said Vincendeau gruffly. ‘Allez! Let’s get going.’ Getting to her feet, she scanned the lines of passengers waiting to go through passport control and scowled. ‘We should never have come this way anyway. All this “hiding in plain sight” business of yours, Jean-Pierre.’ She shot Roche a knowing look and raised her eyebrows.
‘We’re not hiding,’ Grumbach objected, gesturing at his demitasse. ‘I just wanted to have a decent cup of coffee before we get on the damn train.’
FOUR
When Carlyle finally got home, Helen was in the bath, the remnants of a Big Blue seaweed ball from Lush fizzing about in the water. Giving her a kiss on the forehead, he quickly pulled off his clothes and joined her in the warm, salty water. Splashing his face, he leaned back against the taps and smiled.
Looking at her, his mind flashed back to their recent health scare. Helen had been identified as a possible carrier of a faulty gene called BRCA2, which meant an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer. For several weeks, their lives had been turned upside down. Then the test came back negative and the whole thing disappeared in an instant. How different would life have been, if the result had been positive? He quickly shook the thought from his brain. They’d had a lucky break; it was pointless to brood on it. Life had almost instantly returned to normal, and now, it was as if the whole drama had never happened.
He shifted in the water, trying to get comfortable.
‘Hey, if you’re going to annoy me, you can get right back out again.’
‘You didn’t get my message then?’ Carlyle asked, changing the subject.
‘No. Why?’
‘Bomb scare.’ Remembering that Alice was out for the night, he felt a tiny tingle of anticipation. ‘Harry downstairs thought that Osama bin Laden was trying to take him out. He really is beginning to lose his marbles.’
Helen’s eyes widened. ‘What?’
Carlyle explained what had happened. ‘Literally, the Bomb Disposal guys ran all the way up to the tenth floor to find Harry holding a box of Jim Reeves CDs and a biography of Harold Macmillan. They were not best pleased.’
‘I bet they weren’t,’ Helen laughed, carefully getting to her feet.
He watched the water drip off her buttocks. ‘They wanted to arrest him for wasting police time.’
‘That seems a bit much,’ she said, wrapping a towel tightly around her waist.
‘I made them see sense in the end.’
‘Well done.’ Helen stepped out of the bath and reached for a second towel, draping it over her shoulders. ‘Seeing as we have some time to ourselves, I thought we might go and see a film tonight – unless you have other ideas?’
Carlyle just grinned.
She blushed slightly. ‘John!’
‘A film would be great,’ he said, pulling out the plug.
‘Come on then. There’s something on at the Renoir that I thought we could go and see. It starts in forty-five minutes. Maybe get a bite to eat afterwards.’
‘Sounds good.’ Standing up, he made a grab for her towel. ‘That gives us plenty of time for what I had in mind.’
Watching the two French officers head slowly towards the first-class barrier with their prisoner, Roche tried to shake the stiffness out of her legs, gaining only momentary relief. Sniffing her shirt, she caught a whiff of the accumulated body odour and let out a little groan. When she got home she was going to have a long, hot bath and a glass or three of chilled Sauvignon Blanc. Then she might put on one of the anti-stress DVDs that everyone in SO15 had been given by the Met’s Chief Medical Officer.
Closing her eyes for a nanosecond she pictured herself in the perfumed water. It was a reverie that was over before it had begun. First came the sound of gunfire, rapid and precise: one, two, three. It sounded like a handgun of some description.
Roche opened her eyes and tried to focus.
Then the screaming started.
People were fleeing in all directions, the panic so loud that she almost couldn’t make out the next shots: four, five, six.
The radio clipped to the breast pocket of her jacket exploded with the chatter of competing voices.
A woman with an outsized paper cup walked straight into her, sending a caramel latte all down the front of Roche’s uniform. Without saying anything, Roche pushed her out of the way. Raising the MP5 to her shoulder, she began walking steadily towards the gunfire.
Breathe. Just breathe. Fucking breathe! Roche shook her head angrily.
‘Stop talking to yourself,’ she hissed. Her heart felt as if it were about to jackhammer out of her sodden shirt.
