Already out from behind the desk, Lagerbäck gave him a clipped ‘of course’ as she led them to the door.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Still in no hurry to return to the police station, Carlyle ushered Roche into Green Park. After buying two bottles of water from the kiosk on Queen’s Walk, they found a free bench and sat down. For a few moments Carlyle sat in silent contemplation, thinking through the details of their meeting with Lagerbäck. Finally, he turned to Roche, who was fiddling with her mobile phone. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think I wish I had her arse,’ Roche laughed.
‘The picture was taken quite a while ago.’
‘Yeah, but still.’ Roche took a sip from her bottle. ‘What kind of person has a larger than life-size picture of their bum hanging on the wall in their office?’
‘Mm.’
‘I don’t think she nicked anything though.’
‘Oh?’ Carlyle watched a couple wobble past on rollerblades. ‘Why not?’
‘People like that,’ Roche replied, following his gaze, ‘they don’t need to
steal
anything. They’re all set up to get people to give them money willingly.’
Carlyle scratched his head. ‘I suppose.’
‘The woman is what, in her mid-thirties? She appears very well-off. She’s definitely very sure of herself and has a smooth business operation going. If people like that need cash, they don’t rob their own store; they just go and tap up a few rich investors.’
‘But if her firm is in trouble . . .’
‘If HDK is floundering, the numbers being talked about dwarf the value of the goods stolen in the raid, even at retail price. It would not make the slightest difference.’ She shrugged. ‘Anyway, firms go bust all the time. All you do is set up another one.’
Carlyle knew that was true, although the idea of just walking away from your debts was something at odds with the Calvinist DNA that his parents had brought down to London from Scotland almost half a century earlier.
‘That’s the thing,’ Roche continued. ‘You always hear stories about these people who make millions, billions even. But where does all the money come from? Not everyone can be a winner. The losers keep their mouths shut.’
‘If they’ve got any sense,’ Carlyle grunted. Taking the cap off the bottle, he drained the contents in three quick gulps.
‘These kinds of people are definitely not stupid.’
‘No,’ Carlyle agreed. Crushing the plastic bottle in his fist, he tossed it in the direction of the trash can at the end of the bench. When it missed, he cursed, got to his feet, picked it up and dropped it in the bin. ‘So what do we do now?’ he asked, looking down at Roche.
‘I would leave Lagerbäck for now,’ she advised. ‘The store manager and the security guy were on CCTV all the time until the first units arrived. Then they were with officers all the time until they came back to the station. So I would rule them out. And I can’t believe any of our people would do that. The most likely scenario is still that Dyer and Samuels took the stuff and we haven’t found it yet. I’ll talk to them again.’
‘Good.’
‘I won’t waste too much time on it though. Those two are toast anyway. If we don’t get the stuff back, like you say, the insurance can take care of it.’
‘Don’t let Trevor Cole hear you say that,’ Carlyle laughed.
‘He seems a reasonable enough guy.’
‘I think he is.’
Roche got to her feet. Putting the cap back on her bottle, she dropped it in the rubbish even though it was still more than half-full. ‘You can’t do his kind of job without being pragmatic. We’ve got a result for him on this one.’
‘Yes, we have.’ Carlyle’s mobile started ringing. Checking the name on the screen, he decided this time to answer it. ‘Ambrose,’ he said cheerily, ‘how’s it going?’
‘Inspector!’ said a low, hoarse voice. ‘What has happened to you?’
‘Apologies,’ said Carlyle, turning away from Roche, ‘but we have been tied up on a rather pressing investigation.’
‘Superintendent Buck,’ said Ambrose, lowering his voice further, ‘is extremely unhappy. She was expecting to talk to you today. And your sergeant.’
Stepping further away from Roche, Carlyle scanned the horizon in search of some tranquillity. ‘Give the superintendent my apologies, but remind her that I did not consent to any meeting today. Moreover, I will not be taking part in any interview without my Federation representative being present.’
‘She has complained to Commander Dugdale.’
‘About what?’ Carlyle snapped.
‘About your lack of cooperation.’
‘Look, Ambrose,’ Carlyle sighed, ‘I apologize if you’ve been placed in a difficult situation here. I know that you are trying to help me and you have always been very fair in our previous dealings.’
‘Yes.’ For Ambrose, that now sounded like that was a matter of some considerable regret.
‘But you don’t have to get involved this time. I will, of course, cooperate fully and promptly with any IIC and IPCC enquiry. I do, however, expect that my own rights will be respected, along with those of Sergeant Roche.’
‘Of course.’
‘Innocent until proven guilty and all that.’
‘Indeed.’ Ambrose seemed even less sure of that than Carlyle did himself.
‘So give the superintendent my
sincere
apologies and tell her that I look forward to meeting with her soon.’
‘Okay.’
‘And Ambrose?’
‘Yes?’
‘Thanks again for all your help. I really mean it. But you don’t have to go out on a limb for me.’
‘Just be careful, Inspector. Once these investigations get up a head of steam they can be very difficult to stop.’
‘I will. Thank you.’ He ended the call and turned to face Roche.
The sergeant made no effort to hide the fact that she had been listening intently. ‘More problems?’ she asked.
‘Just the usual,’ Carlyle sighed. Minded to walk back to the station via The Mall, he started walking in the direction of the Queen Victoria Memorial.
Behind him, Roche groaned as her phone started buzzing. The next thing he knew, the handset was flying past his left ear before bouncing off the grass five yards away.
‘Hey!’
‘Sorry.’ Roche held up a hand in apology. Her face was a picture of annoyance. He could almost see the steam coming out of her ears.
‘The bastard!’
Carlyle stepped over to the phone, which had narrowly avoided landing in a fresh-looking pile of dog shit. Wrinkling his nose, he picked it up and moved quickly away. On the screen was a text from ‘Martin’ that simply said:
It
’
s over x
Handing the phone back to his sergeant, he somehow managed to keep his mouth shut.
‘What a total wanker!’ Roche hissed. ‘Imagine dumping someone by fucking text!’
‘That’s men for you,’ Carlyle said, affecting the air of someone who knew what he was talking about.
Roche shook her head.
‘At least he sent you a kiss.’
She shot him an angry look. ‘Don’t try and be fucking funny.’
‘No. Sorry.’ Dropping his gaze to the grass, the chastened look on his face was real; something that he had had ample opportunity to perfect at home over the years.
They resumed walking. ‘It wasn’t like it was working out,’ Roche said after a while. ‘But it’s always better to do the dumping, rather than be dumped.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Carlyle, conscious that he didn’t have much experience of either.
‘And to be dumped by bloody text!’ Holding up the phone, she deleted the message with a flourish. ‘Well, fuck you.’
‘A commendably healthy attitude,’ Carlyle smiled.
He waited until they had almost reached the ICA before returning to work-related matters. ‘Have there been any more developments regarding SO15?’
Roche swerved a dawdling tourist. ‘Not really. I would be interested though. I hear that CTC are investigating the guy in the holdall.’
Carlyle grunted. The ‘guy in the holdall’ was a Secret Intelligence Service officer whose decomposing body had been found a few days earlier in a sports bag in the bath of an expensive Pimlico apartment. The media were, of course, loving it, happily speculating that he had been brutally murdered because of his job. Was the poor victim the first ‘spy’ to be killed in Britain since former KGB man Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned in a sushi bar in Piccadilly? Carlyle knew that the reality was likely to be more mundane – sex, money, whatever. However, Homicide and Serious Crime Command were still having to work with Counter Terrorism Command and domestic intelligence agency MI5 looking over their shoulder. He knew, from personal experience, what a pain in the arse that could be.
Reading the concerned look on his face, Roche gave him a gentle punch on the shoulder. ‘It’s not a done deal,’ she smiled. ‘We can worry about it if it happens.’
He nodded. ‘Fine by me.’
Neatly stacked on his desk at the station were two letters. On top, someone had stuck a Post-it note on which an unknown hand had simply scrawled:
call Dugdale. Maybe later
, Carlyle thought, picking up the first envelope. It was no great surprise to find that it was a formal notice from the IIC, signed by Buck, informing him of the date of his complaint hearing. Of more interest was the second, from one Jayne Smith, Personnel Administrator, in HR, outlining the redundancy terms that they were prepared to offer him. Carlyle stared at the numbers on the page, trying to work out whether they offered him even the remotest chance of walking away from the Met.
Unable to come up with any conclusions one way or another, he stuffed the letter in his pocket and reached for the desk phone. It was past the time he expected anyone from the Federation to still be in the office and, sure enough, Geoff the Rep’s voicemail kicked in after a few token rings. Carlyle left him a message asking him to call in the morning. Pulling a sheaf of papers out of the top drawer of his desk, he quickly went through his ‘to do’ list on the Leyne killing.
First, he called Phillips. She picked up on the second ring, but it sounded like Carlyle had caught her at a bad moment as she curtly informed him that her report into Leyne’s death had been sent to him the day before.
‘But it’s not on my desk,’ he complained, repaying her irritable tone with interest.
‘That’s because I emailed it to you,’ she sighed. ‘Call me if you’ve got any questions.’
‘Okay,’ he replied. ‘Sorry.’ But she had already hung up on him. With a heavy heart, he switched on his PC. Bitter experience told him that it would take at least five minutes for the thing to warm up, before crashing again almost immediately. After typing in his user name and password, he ignored the somersaulting sand-timer and tried ringing another of Leyne’s former wives.
Sally Jones, wife number two, had a London phone number but wasn’t answering it. Carlyle left a message. Undeterred, he moved swiftly on to number three. Next to Rachel Gilbert’s name was a mobile number which he proceeded to misdial three times. However, when he finally got the number right, the call was picked up instantly.
‘Hi!’ said an impossibly chirpy voice that sounded like it was coming from the middle of a disco. ‘This is Rachel . . .’
Confused, Carlyle frowned. Was this another mother-daughter situation, like his call to LA?
‘Hello?’
‘Is that—’
But the call was terminated before he could get any further.
Cursing, he dialled the number yet again.
‘Hi! This is—’
‘This is Inspector John Carlyle of the Metropolitan Police in London,’ he said quickly and firmly, ‘and I am looking to speak to Rachel Gilbert.’
There was a pause.
‘Hello?’ Carlyle shouted, feeling like an idiot.
‘This is Rachel,’ said a now not so chirpy voice.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Once they had mastered the art of conducting a basic telephone conversation, it was established that Rachel Gilbert was sitting in a bar called Stearn’s in Golden Square, walking distance from the station. Always preferring to do these things face-to-face, Carlyle proposed heading over there straight away. With some reluctance, she agreed.
Ending the call, Carlyle realized that his PC had finally sprung into life. Opening Phillips’ email, he scanned her report. Not surprisingly, the cause of Roger Leyne’s death was given as the two 9mm hollow-point parabellum rounds that had been fired into his chest at close range. It was estimated that Leyne had been face down in his swimming pool for eight or nine hours before Carlyle had found him. The retrograde extrapolation of Leyne’s blood-alcohol content suggested it was approaching 0.20 per cent at the time of his death, representing very serious intoxication. Unless Leyne had developed a very high tolerance for drink, such a high BAC would result in emotional swings, impaired judgement and poor gross motor control. In other words, he was quite an easy target. Phillips had also found traces of cocaine in his bloodstream, but it wasn’t clear if the professor had been partaking immediately before his death. ‘
Quite the party animal
,’ Carlyle said to himself. Printing off a copy of the report, he stuck it in the inside pocket of his jacket and headed for the door.
Twenty minutes later, he walked into the funky, if largely empty, bar, to be greeted almost immediately by a nervous-looking waif, whose short, pixie haircut only served to accentuate the fact that she looked about twelve years old. She was dressed in black jeans and a Kylie T-shirt. A pair of pink Converse All Stars rounded off the ensemble, further enhancing the childish look.
‘Inspector Carlyle?’
‘Yes.’
Rachel Gilbert offered him a limp hand. ‘I thought it was you. Most of the people who come in here are a lot younger.’
Thanks
, thought Carlyle, as he let her usher him to a table near the door.
‘Would you like something to drink?’ she asked. ‘They have the biggest gin collection in the country and the cocktails are great.’
Carlyle took a seat and gestured for her to follow. Thankfully, someone had turned the music off. ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘This shouldn’t take too long.’ He scanned the Stearn’s early-evening crowd, wondering who she was with. ‘Just a couple of quick questions and you can get back to your . . . er . . . friends.’