by James Craig
‘Roche.’
The sergeant instantly recognized the reedy voice of her boss. ‘Sir.’ She turned and watched the Chief Inspector slouch down the corridor. He looked crumpled and not a little careworn. Your uniform could do with a press, she thought, looking him up and down like a mother inspecting the return of her offspring from a particularly hectic day at junior school.
As far as Roche was concerned, the problem with Chief Inspector Will Dick – or rather, one of the many problems with him – was that she just couldn’t take him seriously. The more the man tried to affect gravitas and establish his credentials as the Commanding Officer of SO15, the more the sergeant had him pegged as a complete bluffer. In fairness, he wasn’t the only one; the lack of proper leadership in the unit had been a major concern for Roche almost since her first day in the job. Staff rotated in and out with alarming regularity. After a while, she came to accept it as just one of those things. Thank God the place more or less ran itself.
All thinning hair and beseeching eyes, Dick was the unit’s third CO in as many years. He had arrived in London after a spell running a training college in some provincial police force. His appointment would have been genuinely baffling were it not for the fact that baffling appointments appeared to be the norm in the higher echelons of the Metropolitan Police Force. On a day-to-day basis, Roche worked hard at being phlegmatic. As long as she managed to keep her distance from the hapless Chief Inspector, why should she worry too much about his ineffectiveness? After all, his replacement would doubtless be along soon enough.
All of which made his current unexpected presence at the actual crime scene rather disconcerting. As he came closer, Roche patiently waited for the Chief Inspector to articulate what he wanted from her. When no explanation was forthcoming, she gave him a gentle prompt. ‘What can I do for you, boss?’
A pained expression crossed Dick’s face, as if he was suffering from the after-effects of a dodgy lunchtime curry. ‘Slacking off, Sergeant?’
What? Roche felt herself stiffen. Hardly. ‘No, sir,’ she said evenly. ‘Inspector Craven told me to keep this floor clear.’
‘Good.’ Inspector John Craven was the unit’s second-in-command and just about the only person in the unit prepared to kowtow to Dick. Both divorcés, the two men shared a rather sad enthusiasm for real ales and middle-class sports. To the general amusement of the rank and file, the pair played golf together out at Epping and were rumoured to be planning a hiking holiday in the Alps. All in all, their relationship looked like a fine bromance.
Roche gestured at the ceiling. ‘I think he’s upstairs.’
Dick looked puzzled. ‘Who?’
The man had the attention span of a goldfish. ‘Craven.’ In case you want to get on with your holiday planning, she thought sarkily.
‘Ah yes.’ Dick was a good two inches shorter than his sergeant. Unwilling to acknowledge this by looking her in the eye, he stared at his shoes. With his head bowed, Roche was gratified to see that the bald patch on the crown of his head was becoming more obvious.
‘Can I help you with something?’ she repeated.
‘No,’ Dick said stiffly, ‘not really. I’m just checking up on how things are progressing here. Need to be able to justify the use of the manpower – overtime and all that.’
‘And?’ Roche knew she should keep her mouth shut, but she couldn’t resist putting the little sod on the spot.
‘And what, Sergeant?’
‘How are things progressing, sir?’ she asked sweetly, as if genuinely interested in his answer.
For a couple of moments, the Chief Inspector seemed totally stumped by the question. ‘Satisfactorily,’ he said finally, lifting his gaze towards her ankles.
Roche waited patiently for him to look vaguely in the direction of her face. ‘It’s just that I was wondering,’ she continued, her voice containing just the right tone of innocent curiosity, ‘why exactly are we here?’ She was rewarded with another blank look. ‘I mean, why are we guarding an empty flat?’
‘Counter Terrorism Command has a broad remit,’ Dick replied, adopting the kind of tone you would use when doing community outreach at a sixth-form college or WI group, ‘and don’t forget, three people have died, one of whom was a former colleague.’ For a moment, it looked as though Dick was going to cross himself, but the Chief Inspector thought better of it at the last minute. News of Marvin Taylor’s decapitation had spread like wildfire; the poor man’s identity had been kept from the press so that the family could be informed, but his face would be on every website and TV news show in the next couple of hours. ‘He had a wife and child, so I hear.’ Dick shook his head mournfully. ‘It’s such a sad state of affairs.’
At least I’ve got no one to get too upset, Roche thought, if something like that were to happen to me. Feeling a twinge of discomfort in her lower back, the sergeant grimaced. It was the kind of niggling pain that she experienced more and more often these days. She regularly vowed to go and see someone about it but never managed to get round to it. ‘Yes, but—’
A mobile started ringing in Dick’s pocket. Roche recognized the theme from Mission: Impossible.
Original.
Holding up a hand, the Chief Inspector answered his phone. ‘Yes?’ Then, turning away from the sergeant, he marched back down the corridor without another word.
Rude. ‘I didn’t sign up for SO15 to act as a bloody security guard,’ Roche muttered after him. The truth was, after almost three years in CTC, she struggled to remember why she had wanted to join it in the first place. One thing was for sure, the supposed glamour of working for one of the Metropolitan Police’s elite units had failed to materialize. In a city like London, there just wasn’t enough drama to go round. There were at least half-a-dozen different units chasing after the sexy jobs, which was why you ended up standing in an empty corridor for an entire shift. Days like today left her thinking that it had been more fun being an ordinary plod.
The sergeant was wondering just how much longer she would be left here, guarding precisely fuck-all, when SO15’s newest recruit, a fresh-faced young officer called Oliver Steed, appeared from the nearby stairwell.
‘Ali . . .’ The boy, barely twenty-five, almost blushed as he approached her. It hadn’t escaped Roche’s attention – nor that of the rest of the unit – that Steed fancied her something rotten. Given that her would-be suitor was more than a decade her junior, most people assumed that the sergeant would be flattered by the attention. The reality, however, was that she found his interest embarrassing and annoying in equal measure. Roche had an iron rule: no boyfriends who were on The Job. It was a rule born out of bitter experience: she had learned all about the pitfalls of dating colleagues long before this particular one had finished school.
Roche folded her arms and kept her expression blank. She didn’t want anything in her body language that might give the kid any kind of encouragement. ‘What’s up?’
‘We’ve been told to stand down,’ Steed explained, almost apologetically. ‘Apparently Forensics have finally finished their work inside the building. They’re just about to let the neighbours back into their flats.’
‘Better get out of the way then,’ Roche quipped, ‘before there’s a stampede.’ The building, as far as she could tell, was largely empty. The cheapest apartment went for somewhere north of £2.5 million, and the only people who could afford to buy them could equally afford not to live in them. They no doubt had multiple properties scattered around the globe and used their London bolt holes rarely, if at all.
‘A few of us,’ Steed continued, blushing properly now, ‘are gonna head down the pub after the shift for a few drinks and I was wondering—’
‘Thanks for the offer,’ Roche said curtly, pre-empting his question, ‘but all this standing about doing nothing has done me in. I need a hot bath and a good kip.’
‘Hm.’ Contemplating the prospect of Alison Roche soaking in the bath, Steed blushed a little more.
‘Anyway,’ th
e sergeant concluded, moving swiftly on, ‘if we’re done, I’m outta here. Thanks for letting me know.’ Slipping past the kid, she headed for the stairs. ‘See you later.’
FOUR
I need a coffee. Still feeling rather thick-headed from the night before, the inspector limped into the lobby of the Charing Cross police station with his sergeant, Umar Sligo, in tow. Carlyle reflected unhappily that he should have gone easier on the whiskey. That was the problem about having a drink with his father; you kept going back to the bar in order to break up the uncomfortable silences. The reality was that Alexander Carlyle wasn’t the only one getting on a bit. These days, the effects of even a modest amount of drinking would stay with the inspector well into the following day.
‘Home sweet home,’ Umar murmured. Another sleep-deprived night had taken the edge off his pretty-boy good looks, but to the inspector’s jaundiced eye, he still looked more like a male model than a policeman.
Shifting his weight from his sore foot, Carlyle grunted something suitably dismissive as he surveyed his domain. Given the early hour, the place was rather busier than he would have expected. At the front desk, a middle-aged man in a suit was arguing with the duty sergeant while a random selection of other customers waited their turn on the benches provided. Conducting a quick head-count, the inspector came up with a total of twenty-three people. As you would expect in this part of London, they were of all ages, shapes, sizes and ethnic origin. For a moment, he wondered what had brought them to his door, before shaking his head sadly. Twenty-three people, each with their own tale of woe, represented rather too much humanity for one policeman to contemplate before breakfast. ‘It’s like the number 15 bus,’ he said aloud.
Turning to face the inspector, Umar offered up one of his trademark blank looks. ‘Huh?’
Carlyle gestured towards the front desk, where the sergeant, an amiable North Londoner called Frank Stapleton, was trying to placate the increasingly upset businessman in front of him.
‘We’re the only station in London that still has an old-style front desk, with a sergeant who will interact – like a normal human being – with whoever drops in off the street. Everywhere else, it’s like walking into a call centre: Take a ticket and a customer-service operative will be with you shortly. After two hours, some intern working for a support-services company – nothing to do with the police at all – gets you to fill out a form and gives you a Crimestoppers number, so you can claim on your insurance.’ As he spoke, Carlyle could feel himself getting worked up by it all, but he wasn’t quite sure why. This had been the norm in police stations across the capital for years now – and it wasn’t like it was his problem. ‘You might as well be dealing with a computer. In some stations, you probably are already.’
‘Yeah.’ Umar nodded, not sure where this particular rant was going. He had been working with the inspector long enough to realize that his random moaning was not to be taken too seriously. Whatever had rattled his cage would normally be forgotten once he’d had his morning fix of both caffeine and sugar. ‘Want me to go to Carluccio’s?’ he asked, gesturing towards the door. There was a branch of the upmarket café just up the road and he knew it was close to the inspector’s heart.
Carlyle gave the proposal careful thought before deciding, ‘Nah. Here’s fine.’ Carluccio’s had far better coffee than the basement canteen in the station, and the cakes were to die for, but if he didn’t start rationing his visits, the place would bankrupt him.
‘Suit yourself.’ Glancing up at the clock behind the desk, Umar wished he was back in bed. He had always hated the early starts; now that his daughter Ella had arrived, they had become even harder to endure. Yawning, he thought about how his recent plan to quit the Met – and bin his alarm clock – had been stymied. Christina, Umar’s wife, had wanted to go back to work. For his part, Umar had been more than ready to embrace the role of house-husband. But the job market was tough and Christina had found nothing that could come close to matching his sergeant’s salary. So the status quo was maintained – hurrah for traditional family values – and here he was, stuck with the ever-complaining inspector at bastard o’clock.
Umar liked to think that Carlyle was pleased that he had stayed on. He knew that the reality was that the old sod simply took whatever happened in his stride. If he left, another sergeant would take his place. That was the thing about Inspector John Carlyle, he always moved on with a minimum of fuss.
‘It’s like the old Routemaster buses on the 15 through the centre of Town,’ Carlyle continued, oblivious to Umar’s lack of interest. ‘A bit of heritage for the benefit of the tourists. The only buses you can still jump on and off between stops, with a conductor. Far more fun than those crappy modern driver-operated ones.’
Umar gestured towards the desk sergeant, who was growing visibly exasperated with the unhappy suit. ‘I’m not sure I would call Stapleton a tourist attraction,’ he grinned.
‘No,’ Carlyle conceded, ‘but you know what I mean.’
Not really, old man. ‘Yeah, yeah.’
‘He exists to create the impression that we give a fuck about people and customer service, rather than just hiding behind our desks. We want the public to think that there are still some traditional standards left here and there.’
What the hell are you on about? Umar wondered.
‘Gentlemen.’ Seeing the two officers loitering by the door, Frank Stapleton beckoned them over to the desk.
Carlyle approached warily. ‘How’s it going, Frank?’ he asked, ignoring the customer.
‘This, er, gentleman,’ Stapleton said carefully, pointing at the suit with the chewed end of a blue biro, ‘could do with some assistance.’
‘Uh-huh.’ Carlyle took a quick step backwards so that Umar was to the fore.
The suit turned and looked at the sergeant expectantly.
‘Um, yes,’ Umar said reluctantly, ‘what is the problem?’
The man offered a hand. ‘Brian Yates.’ He was of medium height, maybe five foot eight, with thinning grey hair and a day’s worth of stubble on his chin. The wrinkles around his pale brown eyes were pronounced and he had the haunted look of a man who hadn’t slept much the night before. His creased suit and the absence of a tie added to the overall effect.
You look even worse than I feel, Carlyle thought. He imagined Yates to be an insurance salesman from Birmingham, or maybe something in IT from Manchester. The inspector’s metropolitan snobbery kicked in and he felt a pang of sympathy for the bloke. More to be pitied than scorned, no doubt.
Umar looked at Yates’s outstretched hand but made no attempt to shake it.
‘Mr Yates feels that he has been a victim of fraud,’ Stapleton smirked, his exasperation evaporating as he effortlessly passed the buck to his colleagues. ‘But I am sure that you officers will be able to help him.’
Umar glanced at Carlyle, but the inspector simply took another step backwards to underline his disinclination to get involved.
‘Like I said to the sergeant,’ Yates said brightly, happy now that his complaint was finally being acknowledged and that he was moving up the food chain, ‘I tried calling 999, but couldn’t get any joy. No one would take me seriously.’
‘So he came to the station,’ Stapleton explained with the tone of a man building up his joke in anticipation of the punchline.
‘So what was the fraud?’ Umar asked.
‘Contravention of the Sale of Goods Act 1979,’ said Yates, with all the authority of a man with Google on his side. ‘I checked it on the internet.’
Letting his smirk mutate into a full-blown grin, Stapleton looked at Carlyle. ‘He wasn’t happy with Sonia.’
‘Sonia?’ the inspector asked, allowing himself to be drawn into the conversation despite his better judgement.
‘Sonia Coverdale,’ Stapleton explained.
Carlyle recognized the name but said nothing.
‘Who’s Sonia Coverdale?’ Umar asked.
‘Sexy Sonia,’ Yates jumped in, ‘a
Platinum girl from Royal Escorts. Except that she wasn’t.’
‘Eh?’ said Carlyle and Umar in unison.
‘I paid three hundred quid for a quote-unquote “stunning beauty” – one of their top girls – and that’s not what I got. The law says goods must be of satisfactory quality, be fit for purpose and match the seller’s description.’
Carlyle took a moment to retrieve a mental image of the hooker. He probably hadn’t seen her in the last year or so, but, as far as he could recall, Sonia was a perfectly good-looking girl.
‘I mean she was all right, but nothing special. It was a clear case of mis-selling if ever there was one. But when I asked for my money back, she told me to get stuffed and stormed out of the hotel.’
‘You paid in advance?’ Umar asked.
‘Yes,’ Yates blinked. ‘I said – three hundred quid. Why?’
Careful not to make eye contact with the chortling Stapleton, Carlyle gestured towards the stairs. ‘I think you’d better come with us, sir.’
More blinking. ‘Aren’t you going to make a report?’ Yates asked, his tone more pleading than demanding.
‘First things first,’ said Carlyle, leading the way. ‘Let’s go and get a coffee.’
* * *
Sitting in the canteen, Carlyle rested his injured foot on a free chair. Should he put some ice on it? Deciding that it would make too much mess, he distracted himself by watching one of the dinner ladies chalk up a list of the day’s lunch specials on a blackboard on the wall next to the serving area. Seeing nothing that took his fancy, he then considered where else he might take his lunchtime custom. Unable to reach a decision, he turned his attention back to Brian Yates, who was morosely toying with a packet of sweetener.
