by James Craig
Roche’s grunt by way of response could have signalled her disapproval of his comment on various grounds: inappropriate, unprofessional, untrue, sexist. Or, more likely, all of the above at the same time.
Feeling suitably chastened, Carlyle licked some crumbs of chocolate from his lips and concentrated on eating the remains of his Mars Bar.
‘I spoke to the Chief Inspector in charge of the diamond robbery case.’ Reaching for one of the cups, Roche mentioned the name of a woman he had never heard of.
‘I bet she’s having nightmares at the moment,’ the inspector said ruefully, ‘watching her career go down the pan. Why did it take them so long to respond to the incident?’
‘There was some computer problem on the night, apparently,’ Roche said, ‘combined with a lack of bodies as a result of West Ham playing at home.’
‘West Ham?’ the inspector scowled. ‘What have they got to do with anything?’
‘That’s what I heard. Anyway, it was hardly the Chief Inspector’s fault.’
‘That won’t help her much,’ Carlyle predicted. ‘Murder and mayhem on the streets of London and the perpetrators get away with it; someone’s going to have to pay for that.’
‘There but for the Grace of God.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ said Carlyle haughtily.
‘Yeah, like you’ve never been hung out to dry.’
‘I’m not worth hanging out to dry,’ he observed.
‘Shit!’ Grimacing, the sergeant shifted in her chair.
Unwell pregnant woman alert! Carlyle froze. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeah. It’s nothing.’ Roche took a few deep breaths. ‘Just a twinge.’
‘Have you seen your doctor?’
‘Of course I’ve seen a doctor, you berk. I’m having a bloody baby.’
‘Fair point.’ Looking away, the inspector waited for her discomfort to clear. There was no one else around; the rest of the office was like a morgue. Let’s hope they’re all out catching criminals, he thought. Somehow, that seemed unlikely.
After a further spell of controlled breathing, Roche regained her composure. ‘They are really struggling with this case, right enough. Bodies all over the place, but still no sign of the stolen diamonds. And apparently, that Inspector Ward is being a right pain in the arse.’
‘That sounds like Ward, all right.’ Finishing the Mars Bar, Carlyle walked over to the recycling bin in the corner of the room and dropped the wrapper inside. ‘She’s tight with Simpson, it seems.’
‘I don’t know about “tight”.’ Removing the lid from one of the cups, Roche blew on her tea before taking a sip. ‘Thanks, by the way.’
‘No problem.’
‘Simpson knows Ward through the Women in Policing Forum, but I don’t think that they’re close, particularly.’
The Women in Policing Forum? Carlyle knew he should keep his own counsel, but he couldn’t quite manage it. ‘Are you a member?’
‘You don’t really join.’ Reaching across the table, Roche picked up the Mars Bar. ‘You just turn up. Some people see it as good for networking. I’ve been to one or two events over the years but never really found it to be my thing.’ Thinking better of it, she let the chocolate fall back on to the desk.
‘Are you going to eat that?’ Carlyle asked, licking his lips.
‘I might have a nibble,’ Roche teased. ‘Why? Are you still hungry?’
‘No, no.’ Carlyle reached over and took his cup of tea. ‘Just asking.’
‘Mm.’
‘So, what have we got?’ He took a mouthful of tea and grimaced. The bag had been in for too long.
‘What have we got . . .’ Roche shuffled the papers on her desk, coming up with a small Moleskine notebook. Flipping through the pages, she said sheepishly, ‘My bloody handwriting, what a joke! Sorry, hold on. Here we go. I checked with the HR people at MCS. They claimed to have bugger-all on Joseph Isaacs, other than his bank account details, which they won’t give us without a warrant.’
The inspector shook his head sadly. ‘It’s great the way people always fall over themselves to co-operate with us.’
‘However,’ Roche continued, ‘the woman I spoke to did let slip that it was an offshore bank account. Jersey.’
Carlyle reflected on that for a moment. ‘And what does that tell us?’
‘Not sure. However,’ her face brightened, ‘I did some digging and found a paper that Joseph Isaacs gave to the Royal Institute of International Affairs. I spoke to a nice lady there who managed to locate a bio for him.’
‘Well done,’ said Carlyle, genuinely chuffed.
‘It seems that Isaacs has been a “security consultant” for around a decade. Before that, he was a Major in the Army.’
A thought began to grow in the inspector’s brain. ‘Check in with them, see if you can pull his service record.’
‘Already done that,’ she said triumphantly. ‘His last posting before leaving the Service was Iraq, where he served with—’
‘Andy Carson!’ Carlyle chorused.
The smile on Roche’s face grew wider. ‘No.’
‘Oh.’ Wishing he had kept his mouth shut, Carlyle waited for her to enlighten him.
‘Adrian Colinson spent nine months in Basra as part of a unit headed up by Major Isaacs.’
The inspector struggled to place the name. ‘Who?’
‘Colinson was the getaway driver.’
‘The guy who drove the Range Rover into the concrete pillar?’
Roche nodded.
‘Not exactly Jeremy Clarkson,’ Carlyle noted.
‘It’s a link.’
‘It certainly is.’ Putting the lid back on his tea, Carlyle said, ‘I wonder if Daniel Hunter knows about this?’
‘Dunno. Where is he?’
Carlyle stood up. ‘As far as I know, Ward still has him down at West End Central.’
‘She really has got it in for him,’ Roche said ruefully. ‘It’s not right. Poor bloke.’
‘That’s the understatement of the century.’ Carlyle began heading for the stairs.
‘One other thing,’ Roche called after him.
‘Yeah?’ Carlyle turned.
‘Bob Biswas.’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gerry Durkan’s client.’
‘He’s an even more colourful character than Isaacs. Started out as an illegal bookmaker in Mumbai. Now he runs a diamond-trading business in Antwerp.’
‘Diamonds? I thought that was a Jewish business.’
‘Times change. Apparently it’s dominated by Indians these days. Anyway, it was Biswas’ diamonds that were nicked at City airport.’
‘Really?’ Carlyle pondered the significance of this new information.
‘Yup. The kid that was shot at the airport was his nephew.’
‘Bloody hell!’ Carlyle scratched his head. ‘So why would you go and see Mr Durkan right after you’d been hit by a double whammy like that?’
‘That’s a good question.’
‘To which we need an answer.’ As Carlyle turned again to take his leave, he gave his final instruction: ‘Keep digging.’
Affecting an air of professional detachment, Colonel Trevor Naylor watched as the female police officer scribbled her signature on the bottom of a sheet of green paper.
Tossing the biro on to the desk, Inspector Ward then handed him the release form.
‘Are we done?’ Naylor asked.
Ward glanced at Hunter, who was busy retrieving his personal effects from a brown A4 envelope. ‘He’s all yours.’
Folding the paper into quarters, Naylor stuffed it into his pocket. ‘Good luck with the rest of the investigation.’
Uttering something incomprehensible, Ward stalked down the corridor and disappeared into the bowels of West End Central.
‘You know what?’ Naylor grinned. ‘I think she likes you.’
Taking his wallet from the envelope, Hunter did not smile.
The Colonel felt a stab of embarrassment for attempting to be hu
morous. ‘Sorry. This is no time to be trying to make jokes.’
‘No.’
Naylor considered a poster on the wall, appealing for witnesses in a murder investigation. ‘I know you must be knackered but there’s a lot still to deal with.’
‘I had a kip in the cells,’ Hunter lied. Five hours spent staring at the mould growing on the ceiling had done nothing to clear his head or refresh his body. He felt eviscerated.
‘It’s absolutely disgraceful the way you’ve been treated here,’ Naylor fumed. ‘I will be having words.’
‘She’s only doing her job,’ said Hunter dully.
‘Yes, but still.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’ Hunter couldn’t give a fig about making a complaint; he still had an open case to bring to an end. ‘Have there been any developments?’
‘Not of any significance. It looks like Carson’s gone to ground.’
‘He could have left the country.’
‘I doubt it. We’re watching all the ports and airports. He won’t be able to get through.’
I can think of quite a few ways, Hunter reflected.
‘And, even if he did, we’ll catch up with him sooner or later.’
‘ “Sooner or later” isn’t good enough.’
‘I know, Dan. I know. Everyone is making this their number one priority. We’ll get him for you.’
‘I want to get him myself.’
A pained expression crossed Naylor’s face. When he spoke, his voice showed signs of cracking. ‘You have to look after your family.’
‘My family is dead.’ Hunter’s words bounced off the walls, like ricocheting bullets, each one ripping a wound in his shattered being. For a moment, he thought he might collapse but, before his knees could buckle, he felt the envelope start to vibrate in his hand. It took him a moment to realize that someone was calling his mobile, still inside. Taking out the phone, he threw back his shoulders, standing upright as he considered the unfamiliar number on the screen.
After a moment, he lifted the handset to his ear.
‘Hunter.’
There was no reply. Straining to hear, Hunter imagined that he could make out someone breathing on the other end of the line – slow, shallow breaths, like someone struggling to bring their heart-rate under control.
‘Hello?’ Slowly walking away from Naylor, Hunter stepped through the doors of the police station and into the cool night air. Standing on the pavement, a couple of uniforms were enjoying a cigarette as they chatted about last night’s television. Moving to his left, the phone still clamped to his ear, Hunter took up a position under a streetlight.
‘Captain Hunter?’ a female voice said finally. ‘Are you still there?’
‘I’m still here,’ he said, keeping his voice even, trying not to sound too eager. ‘Who am I speaking to?’ He thought he knew the answer to his question but needed it to be confirmed.
‘It’s Becky Carson.’
‘Becky.’ Hunter felt a wave of serenity wash over him.
‘Andy Carson’s wife.’
‘I remember.’ Closing his eyes, Hunter brought up a mental picture of Carson trooping out of his house in handcuffs, head bowed, followed by a scrawny blonde woman shouting insults at the young Redcaps leading him towards the waiting people carrier. In the background, the kids stood in the doorway, seemingly more embarrassed by their mum’s invective than by their father’s arrest.
‘Are you still looking for him?’
Holding his breath, Hunter opened his eyes. Then said: ‘Yes, I’m still looking for him.’
A bus rolled slowly down the other side of the street, coming to a temporary halt opposite the lamppost. On the side was an advert for the latest Jason Statham action flick. From the depths of his memory, Hunter recalled reading somewhere that the plot revolved around a diamond heist of some sort. Was that life imitating art, or the other way round? Unable to work it out, his gaze dropped to the lower deck, focusing on a young black woman with a giant afro. Her hair was so large, his first impression was that it had to be a wig. The woman was nodding gently in time to the music coming from a large pair of red headphones clamped to her skull. Briefly their eyes met. The woman didn’t smile; instead she looked through Hunter as if he wasn’t there.
That’s all I am now, he thought, a ghost.
For a few moments, he almost forgot the woman on the other end of the phone.
Then, after a delicious pause, Becky Carson spoke again.
‘I know where he is.’
THIRTY-TWO
When it was done, Becky Carson let the phone fall on the bed and stared at her naked self in the floor-to-ceiling mirror on the bedroom wall. The woman looking back at her was in reasonable shape; there was some inevitable southward drift here and there, but overall she didn’t look too bad, all things considered. She certainly wasn’t ready for the scrapheap just yet. There was reason to believe that her post-Andy life could consist of more than just gardening and gin.
Becky’s mind drifted towards thoughts of the pretty policeman, Inspector Nikos Jones. The boy with the English father and Greek mother. Or was it the other way round? Either way, he was a decent-looking bloke. And interested. Definitely interested. She had picked up the vibes when he had been standing in her kitchen. The guy was a player.
She had his number; the cute cop’s card was still in her bag, unlike that of Daniel Hunter, which was already in the rubbish. Maybe she would give Nikos a call and see if he fancied a drink; make it clear that there were no strings. The kids would give her grief about it – not to mention her mother – but Becky could handle that. From down the corridor, she could hear the comforting sound of music coming from Lucinda’s room. Downstairs, her mum would be tucked up in bed, doing a crossword or reading the latest Martina Cole. Liam was out somewhere with his girlfriend. The Carson family unit, narrowly defined, was functioning normally; fairly normally anyway. Despite being stuck in this nightmare situation, everyone was doing a decent job of getting on with their life. That seemed the only sensible thing. She would do the same. At some point, once Andy had been caught, they would have to go back to England. Apart from anything else, the kids couldn’t bunk off school for ever. In the meantime, however, they should make the most of the sunshine – and everything else that Crete had to offer.
Grabbing a T-shirt from the bed, she pulled it over her head before reaching for the glass of white wine that had been left on the bedside table. With the best part of a bottle of Ino Moschofilero inside her, Becky knew that she was well on the way to being really rather pissed. Tomorrow morning, she would no doubt have a very nasty hangover. There was no point in worrying about that now though. Raising the almost empty glass to the mirror, she offered a mock toast to her absent husband.
‘Good luck, Andy,’ she giggled. ‘You’re gonna need it.’
Lifting his gaze from the gutter, Hunter contemplated the warm glow coming from the café across the road. The people sitting inside were enjoying their lattes, chatting, playing on their Apple laptops and generally just watching the world go by. An older guy by the window glanced up from the book he was reading and smiled.
Hunter let his gaze drift down the street. When it returned to the café, the man had returned to his tome. A blonde woman had taken up a seat nearby, sipping occasionally on her coffee as she rummaged through her outsized shoulder bag. The whole scene looked so . . . civilized. For several moments, the Redcap had to fight an almost overwhelming urge to join the café’s patrons, to flop into one of its chairs, indulge in a spot of casual people-watching and try to pretend that he still had a normal life of his own. Instead, Hunter looked at the address Becky Carson had given him, which he had scribbled down on the back of the envelope from the police station containing his personal effects. Mersea Island? He had never heard of the place. Still, it only took a few seconds of tapping on his phone to discover not only its location – on the Essex coast – but also the most efficient way of driving there: 62.7 miles – estimated journey
time just under two and a half hours.
Hunter wondered about Becky giving her husband up. Maybe the woman wasn’t so dumb, after all. By shopping her old man, she was bringing the whole mess to its inevitable conclusion faster than otherwise would be the case; save everyone a bit of grief. Two and a half hours. He checked the time on his phone. This thing could be finished tonight.
Hunter quickly ran through a mental check list: pick up some stuff from the flat, recover the gun that he’d wisely stashed before heading over to Thatcher Towers, and hire a car. Taking another look at the phone, he scanned the map kindly provided by Google. Just north of Mersea Island was the port of Felixstowe. ‘That’ll do,’ he mumbled to himself. The idea that had been floating around his brain began to take shape.
Bookmarking the web page, Hunter cleared his call log and placed the phone back in his pocket. Removing some small change from the envelope, he then ripped it up and dropped it into a nearby waste bin. For a moment, he tried to imagine his life a year from now. After some prompting, his mind presented an image of himself sitting on a bed in a sunlit room. Stripped to the waist, he was breaking down an assault rifle, working quickly, mechanically, laying the parts on the bed in order, the concentration on his face total. Moving his mind’s eye away from the bed, he tried to see what else was in the room but it was impossible. All he could see was the image of the man with the gun.
A small road-sweeping van rumbled past in the gutter, bringing Hunter back to the here and now. Heading towards him, a man walking a poodle went past the entrance to the police station. The uniforms who had been enjoying a smoke when Hunter first came out on to the street had now retreated inside.
It was time to go.
Struck by a momentary paralysis, however, Hunter hovered on the pavement. He thought about Naylor waiting for him and all the bureaucracy he would have to deal with.
The bureaucracy of bereavement: the death certificates, the insurance policies, the council tax, the school . . . an endless stream of paperwork and empty condolences.
An image of Mel, Susie and Rob in that bedroom flashed through his brain. Crying out, he fought back a sob. The dog-walker gave him a funny look before dragging his poodle away from the nutter hovering beside the lamppost.
