Then We Die

by James Craig

  Hooper heard the click of a safety-catch being released, and did just as he was told. The mobile bounced just once, then landed in the pool of urine that had collected beneath Rollo’s corpse. Hooper raised his gaze to the ceiling. ‘Shit!’

  The muzzle of a semi-automatic was pushed firmly into the nape of his neck. ‘Don’t worry, you won’t be needing that any more.’

  Feeling relatively relaxed about his situation, Hooper didn’t try to look round. He had been threatened before. The worst that was likely to happen to him would be a smack over the head. Drugs were one thing, but very few people indeed had the balls to off a copper. ‘I’m a policeman,’ he said confidently.

  ‘I know,’ said the man behind him, pulling the trigger.

  FORTY-ONE

  Carlyle was in the middle of brushing his teeth when he heard the doorbell ring. Sitting on the toilet, Helen looked up at him expectantly. Carlyle shrugged and continued brushing. Alice was tucked up in bed and the rest of the world could look after itself. Whoever was buzzing them at eleven o’clock at night could sod off.

  A second ring was quickly followed by a third. ‘Go and answer it!’ Helen snapped.

  Grumbling to himself, Carlyle rinsed out his mouth, pulled on a moth-eaten SLF Nobody’s Hero T-shirt and padded down the hallway. Pulling open the front door, he was genuinely shocked to see his boss, Carole Simpson, standing on his doorstep. The smell of whisky on her breath hit him immediately but her eyes looked sharp and focused. Not waiting to be invited in, she marched through the door and headed into the living room. Scratching his head in puzzlement, Carlyle closed the door and followed her.

  ‘How did you get in the building?’

  ‘I hit a few buttons. Someone buzzed me in.’

  Typical, Carlyle thought. So much for having security. ‘Can I get you a cup of tea?’

  Simpson shook her head and lowered herself carefully into an armchair. ‘Sit down, John.’

  Doing as he was told, he waited patiently for her to explain precisely what was going on.

  Simpson waited for several seconds. Finally she announced: ‘Sam Hooper was murdered about two hours ago.’

  Carlyle felt sick to his stomach but said nothing.

  ‘He was killed execution-style, with a bullet to the back of the head.’

  A million thoughts raced through Carlyle’s mind, none of them good.

  ‘Hooper had gone to the home of Rollo Kasabian,’ Simpson continued flatly. ‘It appears that Kasabian had hanged himself. Someone was waiting for Hooper when he found him.’ She stopped, as if inviting Carlyle to speak, but still he said nothing. He knew that his next words would be crucial for his relationship with Simpson. It was vital that he stuck to the truth, but that was not the same as spilling your guts and revealing all of it.

  ‘This will become very nasty,’ Simpson sighed. ‘Tomorrow, you and I will be having a very formal conversation.’

  ‘But tonight?’

  Simpson coughed. ‘There will be no record of what is said now. That is why I came here. No one will ever know that we have even spoken. So, this is your chance to let me know what the hell you’ve been up to.’

  ‘And then?’ Carlyle was conscious of the adrenalin coursing round his body.

  ‘And then we’ll work out the best way to proceed.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He stood up and began to pace the room, his hands thrust into the pockets of his jeans. Helen appeared in the doorway and gave them an enquiring look. Simpson nodded to her but said nothing. Helen retreated, and a few seconds later Carlyle heard the familiar strains of Radio 4 coming from the bedroom. He was a long, long way from that BBC middle-class fantasy land now.

  ‘Hooper called me earlier today,’ he said, turning back to Simpson. ‘We were due to meet at Charing Cross in the morning.’

  ‘What did he want to talk about?’

  Carlyle hesitated, but only for a fraction of a second. ‘A guy called Dominic Silver.’

  Simpson nodded. ‘I’ve heard of him.’

  Oh you have, have you? Carlyle thought. ‘Hooper was trying to get to Silver through Kasabian.’

  Simpson sat back in the armchair and closed her eyes. ‘Maybe a cup of tea would be good. Do you have any peppermint?’

  Carlyle returned from the kitchen with two mugs of peppermint tea. Handing one to Simpson, he took a sip from the other. Finding it too hot, he placed it on the coffee table to cool down.

  Simpson waited for him to sit down. ‘So Dominic Silver gave you Charlotte Gondomar?’

  Carlyle knew that there was no point in trying to fudge it. ‘Yes.’

  She blew on her tea. ‘Why?’

  Carlyle shrugged. While waiting for the kettle to boil, he had been trying to get the answers straight in his head. ‘He saw the chance to do me a favour,’ he said. It was the best he had been able to come up with, at such short notice.

  ‘You guys go back a long way?’

  ‘Yes, all the way back to the beginning. We did our training at Hendon together.’

  ‘Before he left the police force.’

  Obviously, Carlyle thought. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you have maintained a close relationship with a known drug dealer for years,’ her voice hardened, ‘indeed, for decades.’

  ‘Silver has never been convicted of anything,’ Carlyle mumbled.

  Simpson sat up sharply, spilling tea over her coat. ‘Christ!’ She placed the mug on the carpet. ‘For God’s sake, John, do you have a professional death wish?’

  Maybe, thought Carlyle glumly.

  ‘Why did Silver want Gondomar arrested?’

  Carlyle picked up his own mug and took a mouthful of tea. The truth couldn’t carry him any further. ‘We didn’t discuss it.’

  ‘Did you discuss Hooper with Silver?’

  ‘No.’

  Simpson stood up, looking pissed off. ‘You’ll need some rather better answers in the morning,’ she hissed. ‘What happens if it was your mate Silver who had Hooper killed?’

  Good fucking question, Carlyle reckoned. He watched as Simpson let herself out, all hope of developing a credible strategy for the morning disappearing out of the door with her.

  Helen was asleep by the time he went to bed, with thoughts racing endlessly round inside his head. In the darkness of the room, a woman on the radio was burbling away about religious imagery in India. Switching the set off, he crawled wearily into bed, managing to wake his wife as he tried to work his way under the duvet.

  ‘John!’ she complained, turning away from him, ‘it’s very late.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he whispered, giving the duvet another little tug.

  ‘What was all that about, anyway?’ she asked sleepily.

  ‘Nothing really. Just something I need to sort out in the morning.’

  Turning to face him, she draped one arm over his chest and cuddled up to him. ‘If it’s nothing, why the late-night visit?’ Moving her hand to his chest, she noticed the rapid beating of his heart. ‘That doesn’t sound like nothing to me.’

  ‘I’ll sort it in the morning,’ he repeated.

  ‘Okay,’ she yawned.

  Wondering what the hell he was going to do, Carlyle stared up at the ceiling. After a short while, he felt his wife’s warm hand move gently down his body. Slowly and expertly, she eased him towards sleep.

  FORTY-TWO

  Feeling remarkably refreshed after less than five hours’ sleep, Carlyle jogged up the steps of Charing Cross police station just before eight-thirty the next morning, clutching a double espresso in one hand and one of Marcello’s finest Danish pastries in the other. He still didn’t have the remotest clue how he was going to handle the Hooper problem, but at least he had got laid last night, and that always made the world seem a better place.

  Inside the main door, the desk sergeant – a new guy whom he didn’t know but who seemed to recognize Carlyle – eyed the inspector carefully. ‘There’s someone to see you,’ he announced, by way of introduction, ‘down in room B2.�
�� He gestured towards the stairs leading to the basement interview rooms.

  Carlyle’s heart sank. ‘Who?’

  ‘IIC,’ the sergeant replied, before quickly looking down at his paperwork.

  Internal Investigations Command: the perfect way to start the day.

  ‘Great,’ Carlyle said, heading for the stairs.

  Arriving outside the room, he knocked on the door. There was no reply, so he stepped inside. Cold and damp, B2 was one of four essentially identical interview rooms occupying the basement of Charing Cross – a rectangular space, with a striplight on its low ceiling but no windows. Most of the floorspace was taken up by a table, with a couple of chairs on either side. He knew it well, having conducted many of his own interviews there over the years.

  Apart from a briefcase on the table, next to a half-empty cup of steaming coffee, the room was empty. Resisting the urge to snoop inside the case, Carlyle took a seat and began eating his pastry. He was two-thirds of the way through it when the door opened and a large man wearing a grubby pinstripe suit bustled in. Carlyle put the remainder of his Danish down on the table, quickly finished chewing what was in his mouth and swallowed. Getting to his feet, he extended his hand. ‘Ambrose . . .’

  ‘Inspector.’ Ambrose Watson looked at the hand suspiciously, gave it the briefest of shakes and quickly retreated to the opposite side of the table, behind the safety of his briefcase.

  It was chilly in the interview room, but the IIC man was still sweating profusely as he lowered himself into the chair facing Carlyle, carefully checking its robustness before letting it take his full weight. If anything, Watson’s waist had expanded further, and his hair gotten thinner, since their paths had previously crossed, a year or so earlier. On that occasion, the IIC man had been investigating the murder of a policewoman who had been burned alive while she was at home in bed with her girlfriend. Between them, the two officers had more or less worked out what had happened there.

  God, Carlyle asked himself, was that only a year ago? More like eighteen months, he decided as he watched Ambrose pull an A3 pad out of his bag and place it on the desk. At least he had a relationship of sorts with the man, which meant something. He briefly wondered if Simpson had had a hand in Ambrose getting this case. Maybe she was still trying to help him despite her obvious and, he had to admit, well-founded doubts about his possible involvement in Hooper’s murder.

  Once he had finally located a suitable pen and checked that it was working, Ambrose Watson looked up at Carlyle and said, ‘I assume that you know why I’m here?’

  ‘In general.’ Carlyle sat back and stuck the last of his pastry into his mouth. His game plan, such as it was, was to let Ambrose do as much of the talking as possible.

  ‘Well,’ Ambrose cleared his throat, ‘you doubtless know that Sam Hooper was killed last night?’

  ‘Yes,’ Carlyle graciously admitted.

  ‘Good,’ Ambrose replied, relieved to have finally got the interview off the ground. ‘I am interested in his connection with Rollo Kasabian, the fashion designer.’

  ‘Okay,’ Carlyle nodded. Normally, he had no patience with people going round the houses in such a way, but this morning he was quite happy for the IIC man to tiptoe round the main issue for as long as he liked.

  ‘So . . .’ Ambrose paused to scratch somewhere behind his left ear with his pen. ‘What I want to know is . . .’

  ‘Yes?’ Carlyle smiled, helpfulness personified.

  ‘The nature of your connection to Mr Kasabian. And also, what did you talk to Hooper about?’

  Carlyle adopted a look of confusion. ‘Isn’t all that contained in Hooper’s reports?’

  A pained expression spread over Ambrose’s face. ‘There was a bit of a backlog in the inspector’s paperwork, at the time of his death.’

  That’s a result, thought Carlyle. It was the first bit of good news he’d received about Sam bloody Hooper since he had first met the little bugger.

  ‘In fact,’ Ambrose grimaced, ‘there are quite a few things regarding our ex-colleague that are in need of some . . . clarification.’

  ‘Oh, are there?’ Carlyle pulled his chair closer to the table, and sat up straighter. ‘Tell me more.’

  Once they had compared notes, Carlyle was feeling a lot happier about the current situation. Ambrose had unleashed upon him a tale of woe – missing drugs, questionable arrests, dodgy associates and expensive lifestyle choices – that clearly signalled that the IIC now thought it was Sam Hooper who was bent. Whatever Simpson had seemed to think the night before, Carlyle himself felt that he was merely being lined up as a witness to Hooper’s various character defects. Under the circumstances, that was a role he would be more than happy to play.

  However, none of this got him any closer to resolving the issue of Silver’s possible involvement in Hooper’s execution. Not for the first time recently, Dom had loomed large over a conversation in which his name had not even been mentioned. That didn’t mean that he wouldn’t end up on the IIC’s radar sooner rather than later. What it did give him, though, was a bit of time.

  As he left, Ambrose offered a more substantial handshake. ‘Thank you for your time, Inspector,’ he smiled. ‘I’m sure that we will speak again on this.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ Carlyle smiled in return, striving to keep the relief from his voice. ‘Let me know if I can be of any further assistance.’

  ‘I will.’ Ambrose dropped the notepad back into his briefcase and Carlyle was gratified to see that, apart from a single doodle in the top corner, it was as blank as it had been at the beginning of their conversation.

  Just as Carlyle himself was about to get to his feet, there was a knock at the door. ‘Come in,’ he called.

  It opened and a young black WPC popped her head round the door. ‘There’s someone to see you upstairs, Inspector,’ she said.

  ‘Who is it?’ he asked warily.

  ‘Tall bloke, didn’t give a name,’ she replied. ‘He just said that it was very important and, quote, “that you were the most useless bugger he’d ever met when it came to answering your bloody phone” unquote.’

  ‘Fuck!’ Carlyle sighed, his good humour evaporating.

  The WPC gave him a worried look.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘I’ll be up in a minute.’

  Carlyle made his way quickly up the stairs to find Dominic Silver leaning casually on the front desk, chatting away happily to the WPC and the desk sergeant. In no mood for small talk, Carlyle took Dom by the arm and guided him swiftly towards the front door of the police station.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ he hissed through gritted teeth.

  ‘I needed to get hold of you,’ Dom grinned, amused by the inspector’s obvious embarrassment, ‘and, of course, as always, you are not answering your phone.’

  ‘I always answer,’ Carlyle protested, ‘eventually.’ Dom was one of the very few people who knew the number for his private, pay-as-you-go phone: the one that Carlyle used for his more sensitive communications. The problem was that he forgot to answer it, more often than not. ‘Let’s go for a coffee,’ he said, pushing open the door and heading outside.

  ‘Let’s not,’ said Dom, following him down the steps. He pointed to the silver Porsche 911 Turbo parked across the street on a double yellow line. ‘We’re going for a drive. Sol Abramyan has called.’

  ‘Could you contrive to be any more conspicuous?’ Carlyle complained, staring at the hundred-grand motor with dismay.

  Dom rolled his eyes to the heavens. ‘God, you really are a moaner. Most people would kill for a chance to get a ride in a magnificent car like that.’

  ‘When did you become such a flash bastard?’ Carlyle sneered. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a traffic warden approach the Porsche and begin typing the licence-plate number into his handheld computer.

  Dom gave Carlyle a gentle punch on the shoulder. ‘Hey,’ he cried, ‘get him to stop that. I don’t want a ticket!’

  ‘Sorry, sunshin
e,’ Carlyle chuckled, ‘you’re on your own. That’s beyond my jurisdiction. Those guys are a law unto themselves.’

  Dom gestured towards the police station. ‘Do you really want a record of me being here?’

  ‘Fair point,’ Carlyle conceded. Stepping across the road, he flashed his warrant card at the warden and explained that the car was there on police business.

  The traffic warden, a pale-looking man, doubtless a veteran of innumerable kerbside confrontations, listened patiently. ‘I completely understand,’ he smiled, tapping the screen of his computer as he spoke, ‘but the car is illegally parked and you’ve got a ticket.’ Moments later, he handed Carlyle an £80 fixed-penalty notice.

  ‘Fuck!’

  ‘There’s no need for that, sir,’ the warden said testily.

  ‘But I’m a fucking policeman!’

  ‘And this is a police car is it, sir?’

  ‘Well, no,’ Carlyle stammered, ‘but . . .’

  ‘I didn’t think so.’ The traffic warden’s smile became more of a leer. ‘And anyway, no one is above the law, you know.’ His victory complete, he stalked off towards the Strand, in search of his next victim.

  Biting his tongue, Carlyle turned to face Dom, who was standing by the driver’s door.

  ‘Good job!’ Dom shook his head sadly. ‘Well done.’

  ‘At least I bloody tried,’ Carlyle growled, tossing the fine notice at Dom and snatching open the passenger door.

  FORTY-THREE

  Dominic Silver might be sitting behind the wheel of a deluxe driving machine with a top speed of more than 180 miles per hour, but that didn’t mean he could do anything about the routine London traffic. As they edged their way round Trafalgar Square, Carlyle watched a woman on a bicycle wobble nervously past them and brooded on the statistic that traffic in Central London moved at an average speed of just 10 miles per hour, which was about the same speed as the horse-drawn carriages of a century earlier. Personally, he thought 10 miles per hour was an exaggeration, as most of the time it was quicker to walk.

  Beside them, a taxi moved forward in the bus lane, squeezing the space left available for the woman on the bike. For a moment, it looked as if she would fall over onto the bonnet of the Porsche.