Buckingham Palace Blues (36 page)

As they disappeared from view, the inspector pulled an envelope from one of his pockets. Inside it was the warrant for Alexandra Gazizulin’s arrest. Tearing the document up, he tossed the pieces into the air, watching as they were carried off on the breeze. When the last shred of paper had vanished, he walked over to join his wife and her new friend.

THIRTY-NINE

Carnival, football, samba!

Bollocks.

It was a cold, dark, wet evening and the wind whipping spitefully off the Thames made it harder to imagine any place on God’s earth less like Brazil. Checking the time on his mobile phone, Carlyle hurried across Charing Cross footbridge, cursing under his breath. He was supposed to be at a performance by the South American Circus at the Royal Festival Hall, but that had started ten minutes ago.

Damn, damn, damn.

Helen had spent a fortune on tickets for the show. Afterwards they were going for a pizza at one of the restaurants on the South Bank – a relaxed setting for their family meeting. That, at least, had been the idea. A train rumbled noisily past on the railway bridge nearby as he felt his phone buzzing angrily in his pocket. Another text from Helen, no doubt, wondering where the hell he was. He only hoped that she and Alice had taken their seats and left his ticket at the desk in the foyer. If not, he could meet them in the interval, assuming that there even was one. At the very least, he could pay for their dinner as a gesture of goodwill.

He struggled forward. The footbridge was barely eight feet wide. There was just enough space for four people, two moving in each direction, less if people stopped to take photographs or just admire the view. ‘Excuse me!’ Slaloming round an elderly woman, Carlyle barged past a man standing by the railings, looking west, towards the Houses of Parliament. Ignoring the man’s complaint, he tried to increase his pace.

His phone started vibrating again and he glanced at the screen. It was Joe Szyszkowski. The inspector knew what it would be about, so he let it go to voicemail. They had both been delayed by the latest mini-drama at the Charing Cross station where a WPC had launched a sexual harassment claim against the Met and various officers at Charing Cross. It was a nasty little dispute – involving too much alcohol and too many sex toys – that was rapidly heading towards a tribunal and the pages of the tabloid newspapers. Carlyle didn’t want to have anything to do with the whole sorry mess. He only knew the principals in the vaguest terms and had been less than pleased to find himself pulled into an interview room earlier in the afternoon and required to give a formal statement on the matter. He was even less pleased when the Met’s lawyer then proceeded to spend almost an hour going through a list of seemingly random questions to which the inspector had no answers.

None of that would cut any ice with Helen, however. His wife assumed that work only got in the way if you let it. At the very least, she would consider Carlyle’s tardiness symptomatic of a subconscious desire to avoid dealing with Alice’s karate issue. Trying to press on, he found his way blocked by a young woman deep in earnest conversation with a homeless guy selling the
Big Issue
. Carlyle tried to swerve round her, but his path was blocked by a group of schoolkids coming the other way, led by a teacher. Carlyle glared at the magazine seller who, sensing his frustration, smiled mockingly.

As the schoolkids snaked past, the inspector felt someone push up behind him. That wasn’t a surprise, given the bottleneck, but then he felt something hard being rammed into the base of his spine.

Carlyle half-turned.

‘Eyes front,’ a voice hissed. ‘This Walther P99 goes off, and the best scenario is that you will be spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair. And that’s absolutely the best-case scenario.’

Carlyle recognised the voice but said nothing.

A hand between his shoulderblades pushed him forwards.

‘Step over there . . . to the side. Put your hands on the rail, where I can see them.’

Carlyle did as he was told. He stared down at the grey-brown soup that was the River Thames, and shivered.

The man with the gun stepped close up behind him, almost like they were spooning, giving Carlyle no room for manoeuvre while keeping the semi-automatic out of sight of other people crossing the bridge.

Carlyle turned his head slightly, so that his words wouldn’t get lost on the wind. ‘So what are you going to do now, Charlie?’ he asked. ‘Shoot me or fuck me?’

Charlie Adam dug the gun deeper into the small of Carlyle’s back. ‘You always were a complete arse,’ he said with contempt. ‘I’m just going to finish a job that should have been done years ago. Undesirables like you should never be allowed in the Force. You should have left SO14 in a box.’

‘Like Tommy Dolan?’

‘Dolan was a far better copper that you could ever hope to be.’

‘Yeah . . . right.’ Carlyle watched the schoolkids disappear towards the train station. He could feel his pulse racing and his heart was threatening to jump out of his chest. Breathing in deeply, he wondered quite how he was going to resolve this situation. Nothing immediately sprang to mind. ‘I got Dolan, so what?’ he said calmly. ‘What do you care?’

‘I don’t give a damn about Tommy Dolan,’ Adam whined, the adrenaline and stress sounding clear in his voice, which was now at least an octave higher than usual, ‘He’s the only one anyone ever talks about. I had more than a million in that bloody firm. What about me?’

‘United 14?’

‘God, Carlyle, you can be really slow sometimes. Yes, United bloody 14. A million bloody quid! That was a lifetime’s work . . .’

A lifetime’s graft more like, Carlyle thought. Serves you right for being a bent bastard. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that’s gone. I can’t get it back for you.’

Tears welled up in Adam’s eyes. Maybe it was due to the wind. Maybe it was the frustration. Maybe it was the thought of a poverty-stricken old age. ‘I know you can’t,’ he snarled. ‘My retirement is gone – up the fucking Swanee.’

‘So what do you want from me?’ Carlyle snarled back. He was getting bored with this. In the absence of a better plan, he decided that he would just have to smack the little twat in the face and take his chances.

Adam waited as another train went by. ‘I want to see you jump.’

‘What?’ Carlyle snorted. ‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding.’

‘Jump, or I shoot you and push you in.’

Would the little shit have the bottle to kill him? The inspector seriously doubted it. On the other hand, he didn’t really want to put it to the test. ‘Fuck off!’

Adam moved the gun a fraction of an inch away from Carlyle’s spine. ‘Jump and you might survive.’

Like fuck I might. If I don’t drown, all the poison in there will kill me.
Carlyle imagined Adam’s index finger tightening on the trigger. Had he taken the safety-catch off? Above all, he wondered how he might dodge the bullet.

‘I beg your pardon?’

Adam took half a step back and Carlyle turned to see a tall man with white hair and a white beard standing in front of them. In his hand was a German-language
City Guide to London
. Behind the man stood a middle-aged woman and two teenage girls, presumably the pair’s daughters.

‘We are looking for the London Eye,’ announced the man, speaking in the kind of precise, clear English that only the Germans used. ‘We have a booking for a flight in thirty minutes.’

Adam and Carlyle both turned to look at the 400-foot wheel, lighting up the night sky as it revolved serenely, barely 100 yards from where they were standing.

Charlie Adam turned back to the clueless tourist. ‘What the bloody hell do you think that is?’ he growled.

The man glanced at the Eye and then, realising his mistake, smiled apologetically. As he did so, Carlyle took a small step towards Adam. Moving up on to his toes, the inspector smashed his right elbow into the chief superintendent’s face. Adam’s legs sagged and Carlyle gave him the elbow a second time. As Adam’s hands went to his face, he dropped the Walther. The German family looked on disbelievingly as they watched the pistol bounce once, twice on the bridge before disappearing through the railings and into the river.

Everything was happening in slow motion. Carlyle’s blood was up now. Grabbing Adam by the collar of his coat, he threw him against the railings and launched a drop kick between his legs.

‘Ooof!’ As he struggled for breath, Adam tried to spit blood from his mouth. Carlyle could see that the fire had gone out of his eyes. It was time to end it. Stepping forward, he wound up a right hook to the man’s chin, which connected perfectly. Adam’s head snapped back. He tried to hold on to the rail, but stumbled sideways and slumped to the ground.

Seeing that Adam was done, Carlyle turned to the small crowd that had gathered to watch. He fumbled in the pocket of his trousers and pulled out his warrant card. Waving it above his head, he made eye-contact with as many of the onlookers as possible. ‘Has anyone called the police?’ he shouted.

The sirens approaching on the Embankment below gave their own answer.

‘Oh, my God!’ A woman started screaming.

Carlyle turned round to find that Charlie Adam had disappeared. By the time he stepped to the rail and gazed down into the floodlit murk, there was no sign of the man at all.

FORTY

In a restaurant just to the north of the piazza in Covent Garden, Carlyle looked at the Rajasthani puppets hanging from the ceiling. The scene depicted a royal wedding: bridegroom seated on a traditional white horse, surrounded by an array of priests, acrobats, musicians and dancers. In one corner, he spied a group of snake charmers and smiled. Across the table from him were Helen and Alice. It was time for their belated ‘family meeting’.

Charlie Adam’s body had been washed up on the south bank of the Thames near Tower Bridge two days earlier. The four German tourists had corroborated Carlyle’s version of events, missing their flight on the London Eye in the process. Now, finally, the case was closed.

Returning home in the early hours of the following morning, Carlyle had given Helen an only slightly sanitised version of what had happened. After some deliberation, he was excused, if not forgiven, for having missed the circus. He still had to take them to dinner.

Taking a gulp of his Cobra beer, the inspector sat back in his chair. He already knew what he wanted to eat but waited patiently while Helen played with her tap water and carefully scanned a menu that she had seen many times before. Alice, her head deep in a vampire story called
Never Bite a Boy on the First Date
, ignored them both.

‘I think I’ll have the dhaba rogan josh.’ Helen placed the menu on the table and turned to Alice. ‘What about you?’

‘Not hungry,’ said the voice behind the book.

‘You’ve got to have something,’ her father snapped.

‘No, I don’t!’ Alice protested, briefly looking up from her book. ‘Just because you managed to turn up this time, you think you can tell me exactly what to do. Well, you can’t.’

Out of his depth, Carlyle felt a wave of consternation wash over him. What was all that about?

Helen gave him an amused look that said,
Welcome to my world, Mister Policeman
.

The brewing argument was interrupted by the cheery hum of a mobile phone. Carlyle and Helen both checked their phones, but neither had received a call.

‘It’s for me,’ Alice said, her petulance immediately giving way to a genuine cheeriness, as she pulled a mobile out of the back pocket of her jeans.

Finishing his beer, Carlyle gave his wife a hard stare, which she ignored.

‘Hello? Stuart . . . hi!’ Jumping to her feet, Alice jogged towards the door, nearly sending a waiter and his tray of thalis flying.

Carlyle felt a migraine building at the base of his skull. He watched Alice standing on the street, talking away animatedly. His Alice? Still? Not yet a young woman, but not his little girl any more.

He gestured to the waiter for another beer.

‘When did she get that phone?’ he asked his wife.

‘She bought it with money my mother sent her.’

‘Great,’ Carlyle sighed.

‘Come on,’ Helen shrugged, ‘you’ve got to ‘‘get real’’, as Alice would say. All the girls in her class at school have got one. Anyway, she needs it to be able to call us when she’s out and about . . .’

She’s never called me.
Carlyle looked helplessly at his wife. ‘And who the bloody hell is Stuart, anyway?’

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Acknowledgements

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine