by James Craig
‘As far as we know,’ Carlyle pointed out.
‘As far as we know,’ Helen reluctantly agreed. ‘But the only time she could have done anything like that is when she was with that bloody Stuart.’
‘You were the one who said he was a nice boy.’
She gave him a punch on the arm for being such a smug bastard.
‘I guess young Stuart won’t be coming round to dinner until this is all sorted out, then?’
Helen gave him a sheepish look. ‘I think dinner is off for the foreseeable future. I spoke to his mother . . .’
Uh, oh, Carlyle thought.
‘The stupid bitch wouldn’t have anything to do with it,’ Helen told him. ‘She just didn’t want to know.’
Carlyle’s heart sank. ‘What did you say to her?’
‘I told her that Alice had been caught with her son’s dope and had been suspended from school.’
‘But you don’t know that it was his dope.’
‘Where else could she have got it from?’
Carlyle closed his eyes and began rubbing his temples.
‘To listen to Julie Wark, you’d think Stuart was training for the priesthood.’ Helen adopted a whiny, girly voice. ‘ “My son wouldn’t do that kind of thing. He doesn’t know anything about drugs.” ’
‘I’m going to run a bath,’ said Carlyle. ‘Let me talk to Alice in the morning, then we can worry about what to say to the school. Then we can worry about Mrs Wark.’
By the time he finished his bath, Helen was sitting in bed, doing a Sudoku puzzle in the evening paper. He slipped under the duvet and gave her a kiss on the cheek.
‘I went to see my mother,’ he told her. ‘She only reckons she’s got a new boyfriend.’
‘Bloody hell, that was quick!’ Helen tentatively wrote a number in one of the boxes.
‘She’s driving me round the bend.’
His wife smiled at him over her reading glasses. ‘That’s what mothers do. Who is he?’
‘Who?’
‘The boyfriend.’
Carlyle stretched out. ‘Dunno.’
‘What?’ Helen gave him a gentle thwack with the paper. ‘Did you even ask?’
‘No.’
‘For God’s sake, John,’ she sighed. ‘Sometimes you are just so clueless it’s not true.’
‘Dad’ll be beside himself.’
‘He should have thought about that before he shagged the woman next door.’
‘That was thirty years ago! Jesus.’
Helen tossed the paper onto the floor and put her pen on the bedside table. ‘Well, they’re having to deal with it now.’
‘I suppose so.’
She carefully removed her glasses and placed them next to the pen. ‘I wonder what Lorna’s new man is like?’
‘I don’t want to bloody know,’ Carlyle said grumpily.
‘Come on,’ she said kindly, ‘you have to be grown up about this.’
I don’t know about that, Carlyle thought.
‘Anyway,’ said Helen, switching out the light, ‘if your mother’s happy, that’s got to be a good thing.’
‘But what about my dad?’
‘Well, we’ll just have to find someone for him, too.’
FIFTY-SEVEN
Alice slid into the back booth at Il Buffone and gave Carlyle a cheeky grin. ‘So is this me getting a monster bollocking?’
Marcello, hovering in front of the Gaggia coffee machine, laughed out loud.
God give me strength, Carlyle thought. Glancing at the AC Milan team on the wall above Alice’s head, searching for inspiration, he was disappointed to see that the new poster was already grubby and torn. Someone had even scribbled over Fabio Capello’s face.
‘I know,’ said Marcello, arriving at the table with a double macchiato for Carlyle and a hot chocolate for Alice. He gestured at the poster with his chin. ‘It’s a bloody shame.’
‘I’ll speak to Alison,’ Carlyle replied, ‘see if she can get a new one.’
‘Who’s Alison?’ Alice asked.
‘Sergeant Roche. She’s working with me at the station.’
‘Is she Joe’s replacement?’
Carlyle looked at Marcello, who just shrugged. ‘Yes.’
Alice bent down and took a slurp of her hot chocolate. ‘It must be a real bummer, getting shot like that.’
Carlyle was stunned by her apparent insouciance.
‘What would you like to eat?’ Marcello said quickly.
‘I’ll have some toast with honey, please, Marcello,’ she said brightly.
‘The usual,’ said Carlyle.
‘Coming right up.’ Marcello shuffled back behind the counter.
‘So,’ said Alice, taking another sip from her glass, ‘let’s get it over with.’
‘Don’t give me that attitude,’ Carlyle growled. He lifted the demitasse to his lips and drained the coffee in one. ‘Just tell me what happened.’
‘It was a fair cop,’ Alice sniggered.
‘I know that,’ Carlyle grinned, ‘but where did the dope come from?’
‘It wasn’t mine,’ she said hastily, stirring the remains of her hot chocolate with a spoon. ‘I don’t do drugs.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ Carlyle observed testily.
‘I was just holding it for someone.’
‘Who?’ he asked a bit too eagerly. ‘Stuart?’
‘No,’ she frowned. ‘It’s got nothing to do with him.’
‘Well, you’d better explain that to your mother. She’s got him firmly in her sights.’
‘She should mind her own bloody business!’ Alice complained.
‘She’s your mother,’ Carlyle responded, ‘so this is her business. Mine too.’
All he got by way of reply was a pout. As the silence started to lengthen, Marcello appeared with Alice’s toast and a huge raisin Danish for Carlyle, along with a second macchiato. For a couple of minutes, they focused on eating.
‘You know,’ said Carlyle, after swallowing the last of his pastry, ‘this is a serious business.’
Munching her toast, Alice eyed him doubtfully.
Carlyle grinned. ‘I have to go and see the bloody Headmaster tomorrow!’
‘Really?’ Alice giggled, propelling a mouthful of crumbs across the table.
‘It’s the first time I’ve been called in to see the Head since . . . oh, I dunno, something like 1979.’ He gave her a wink. ‘I was busted for drugs, too.’
Alice’s eyes grew wide. ‘Really?’
‘ ’Fraid so,’ Carlyle said. ‘I was a bit older than you, but not much. I got done for selling half a gram of speed to Kenny Morris from 5C.’ Carlyle tutted in mock amusement. ‘I was suspended for a fortnight.’
‘Wow!’
Carlyle shook his head at the memory. ‘And then the little bastard never paid me.’
‘Ha!’
He leaned over and kissed his daughter on the forehead. ‘There’s nothing new under the sun, sweetheart.’ While that last statement may well have been true, the rest of his story was a complete fabrication. The young Carlyle had never been a playground dope dealer. Kenny Morris did exist though; he had had his nose broken and his head held down a flushing toilet after stealing a tenner from Carlyle’s school bag. After the subsequent investigation, Carlyle was sent home for a week.
‘You did drugs?’
‘A little – for a while. Speed mainly. Dope wasn’t my thing.’
‘And Mum?’
‘Not as far as I know.’
‘Did you like it?’
Carlyle shrugged. ‘Speed was okay. It wasn’t that big a deal. It’s like most things, you grow out of it.’
Alice finished her toast. ‘I don’t do drugs.’
‘So where did the cannabis come from?’
‘Skunk.’
‘What?’
‘It was skunk.’
‘Whatever,’ Carlyle persisted, ‘where did it come from?’
Alice gave him a long hard look. In that moment,
she looked so like her mother that he found it impossible not to smile.
‘Patricia Fine,’ she said finally.
Carlyle affected insouciance. ‘Who’s she?’
Alice sighed. ‘She’s two years above me. I just did it as a favour.’
‘Why did she want you to look after it for her?’
‘I don’t know,’ Alice hissed. ‘Stop being such a bloody policeman.’ She tried to slide out of the booth, but Carlyle put a hand on her arm.
‘Okay, okay,’ he said, ‘no more questions. I will go and take my punishment from the Headmaster. And I’ll get your mother to apologize to Stuart and his mum.’
‘I wouldn’t worry about that,’ Alice told him. ‘His mum can be a bit stuck-up. Stuart thought it was funny that they’d been arguing about it.’
‘Anyway,’ Carlyle said wearily, ‘I’ll get it sorted. Just don’t do anything like this again.’
FIFTY-EIGHT
Following all the domestic dramas, it was a blessed relief to get back to the station. After arriving at Charing Cross, Carlyle spent a happy hour reading the newspaper and surfing the internet for football gossip and other such chat. He was on his second cup of coffee by the time Roche arrived, grim-faced.
‘What’s the matter?’ Carlyle asked.
‘Nothing,’ she replied unconvincingly.
Suit yourself, Carlyle thought. ‘I need to speak to Ronan. What’s he up to this morning?’
‘No idea,’ she said sharply, before stalking off in the direction of the coffee machine.
‘I’ll have an espresso,’ Carlyle shouted after her.
‘Get it yourself,’ was the terse reply.
Okay, he shrugged, I will. Putting on the cheeriest expression he could manage, Carlyle followed her across the room. When he was halfway there, he stopped and watched in amusement as she jabbed a succession of buttons, then gave the machine a good slap.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ She gave the machine another slap, then a kick for good measure. As he reached her side, Carlyle saw the Out of Order notice flash across the small display screen.
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s go out somewhere. That stuff’s shit anyway.’
Sitting in Starbucks on St Martin’s Lane, Carlyle sipped a double espresso and was happy to watch the world go by. He ignored his colleague as she gloomily drank her latte and picked at an orange and lemon muffin. Across the road, he noticed a pretty girl walk into the Garden Hotel and wondered what had happened to Sylvia Swain. The Canadian journalist appeared to have vanished off the face of the earth: there was no record of her having left the country, and a phone call to her editor had simply elicited a gruff response that she was ‘on assignment and not contactable’. Fucking Canadians, Carlyle thought. What a Mickey Mouse country. However, he realized that it wasn’t worth starting an international row to try and track her down. What with his confrontation with the Israeli Ambassador, he was doing enough for the UK’s international relations already.
Swain, whoever she was, was a minor player in this little drama. The inspector would be perfectly happy if she never resurfaced.
‘The fucking bastard!’
Carlyle was shaken out of his thoughts by Roche’s sudden outburst.
‘Pardon?’
‘The bastard was shagging his sister-in-law.’
Carlyle frowned. Had he missed something? What the hell was she talking about?
She looked at him like he was terminally stupid. ‘DI fucking Ronan. I caught him fucking his bastard sister-in-law – in our bed.’
Ronan, Carlyle thought, you dirty dog. Returning his gaze to the window, he tried not to grin and said nothing.
‘He’s been banging her for months, apparently. The little bitch is only nineteen.’
‘I see,’ was all Carlyle could think of by way of reply.
‘I could have killed the little shit.’
‘But you didn’t?’
‘What?’ Roche gave him a funny look. ‘No, no.’ She laughed. ‘I did put the P30 to his head, though.’
‘A measured response,’ Carlyle acknowledged. He casually wondered if brandishing a Heckler & Koch P30 in front of his parents might help bring them to their senses. Somehow, he doubted it.
‘His skinny little girlfriend pissed herself when I flicked the safety.’
‘Literally?’
‘Yeah.’ Roche was grinning widely now.
And they send me to the shrink, Carlyle thought to himself.
‘I thought Dave was going to shit himself.’
‘David,’ Carlyle corrected her.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. Do you need some time off?’
‘Nah.’ She shook her head. ‘I’ve already moved out.’
‘Okay.’
‘I’m staying with a friend until I find somewhere permanent. In the meantime, I just want to get on with things.’
‘Very sensible.’
‘I’m not the kind to mope about.’
‘Good,’ Carlyle smiled. He realized that he was beginning to really like Alison Roche. She was shaping up to be a worthy successor to Joe Szyszkowski. Just as long as he never gave her cause to pull a gun on him. Draining the final drops from his cup, he stood up. ‘Come on.’
Roche grabbed her bag and got to her feet. ‘Where are we going?’
‘You’ll see.’
Hilary Waxman gritted her teeth and forced something approaching a smile onto her lips.
‘Inspector . . .’
‘Carlyle.’
‘Inspector Carlyle, this is harassment. I have already lodged an official protest with the Foreign Office and I will be pressing them to take this up with your superiors at the earliest opportunity.’
Sitting forward in his chair, Carlyle smiled at Roche and Waxman in turn. ‘This is hardly harassment, Ambassador,’ he said evenly. ‘We are pursuing our legitimate enquiries and we are respectfully requesting your assistance.’
‘Mr Lieberman is not here,’ Waxman snapped. ‘As I told you, I am not apprised of his movements and you have no jurisdiction inside my Embassy.’
Bowing his head, Carlyle pressed his hands together, as if in prayer. ‘On this occasion, we are not here in connection with Mr Lieberman.’ Pulling a small brown envelope out of the inside pocket of his jacket, he dropped it on the table.
‘What is that?’ Waxman asked, making no effort to pick it up.
‘It’s a warrant for your arrest,’ Roche said quietly.
Waxman snorted with laughter as she stared at the two police officers in front of her. ‘Don’t be preposterous.’
‘Hilary Waxman,’ Carlyle said tonelessly, ‘you are under arrest for the non-payment of fines totalling one million, two hundred and fifty-six thousand, three hundred and twelve pounds and forty-seven pence.’
‘That,’ Roche chipped in, ‘accounts for the unpaid parking tickets run up by diplomatic staff working here at the Embassy, additional penalties and accumulated interest. The figure is only up to date as of last month, so it may have edged up a little.’
Waxman smacked a fist down on her desk. ‘You have got to be kidding.’
‘We’ll take a cheque,’ Carlyle smirked.
‘Get out of my office this instant.’ Waxman pounded a buzzer on her desk.
‘Have it your way,’ Carlyle sighed. Getting to his feet, he pulled a pair of handcuffs from his pocket and quickly moved round behind the desk.
‘Get your hands off me!’ Waxman shrieked, as Carlyle tried to pull her to her feet. Grunting with the effort, he signalled to Roche to give him a hand. Together, they finally managed to wrestle her far enough out of the chair for Carlyle to snap on the cuffs.
‘Where are you taking her?’ Daniel, the lackey, had appeared in the doorway. Unable to make sense of the scene in front of him, he looked like he was about to cry.
‘I don’t know yet,’ Carlyle lied. ‘She’ll be allowed her phone call in due course.’
‘You know what to do,’ Waxman hissed to he
r aide, as she was hustled away. ‘Get this sorted immediately!’
FIFTY-NINE
Standing at the bar of the Stern Arms, David Ronan started on his second bottle of Estrella Damm and idly watched one of the club’s strippers mechanically going through her routine for the benefit of a scanty, post-lunch crowd.
‘Hey, there.’
Ronan turned to meet the gaze of Suzie Perrin, aka ‘Starburst’, one of the Stern’s regular performers. Young-looking, with a pageboy haircut and cheeky grin, Ronan knew that Suzie could easily clear a couple of hundred quid in one lunchtime session. Most of it, however, immediately disappeared up her nose, just like the cash he gave her from the ‘confidential informer’ budget, in exchange for a regular bunk-up in one of the pub’s private rooms.
‘How’s it going?’ he asked.
‘It’s going,’ she sighed. ‘Wanna buy me a drink?’
Ronan peeked at the sheer black basque visible under her barely tied robe. ‘Yeah, okay.’
Almost instantly, the barman placed a bottle of Spanish beer in her hand. ‘Cheers,’ she smiled, taking a long drink.
Ronan watched the other stripper complete her act. ‘Who’s she?’
‘New girl,’ Suzie said, finishing her beer and smacking the empty bottle down on the table. ‘Don’t know her name. Why? D’ya fancy her?’
‘Nah,’ said Ronan, shaking his head. ‘Just wondering.’
‘She won’t last,’ Suzie said, without malice. ‘She just hasn’t got what it takes.’
And what would that be, Ronan wondered ironically; the ability to stay coked out of your head twenty-four hours a day while flashing your arsehole at the world? ‘Are you on next?’ he asked.
Suzie scanned the room. ‘For this lot? Nah, not worth it. I’d barely make a tenner.’ She gave him her trademark impish smile. ‘Tell you what, though, come upstairs and I’ll give you a special show.’
Ronan thought about that for perhaps a nanosecond, trying to conceal the fact that his crotch had already decided for him. ‘Oh, all right then,’ he grinned, ‘you’ve talked me into it.’
On the second floor, Ronan nodded to Steve, one of the club’s bouncers, as he walked past the No physical contact allowed sign and down a corridor which had three doors on each side.
‘Take the left on the end,’ Suzie directed him.
