Buckingham Palace Blues (10 page)

‘John Carlyle.’ Carlyle shook his hand.

‘Ah, yes.’ Chepoyak had already turned away and was heading towards the back room. ‘Inspector John Carlyle, I will see you next time.’

Carlyle watched him disappear and accepted the bag of cakes from the woman, leaving the small pile of coins on the counter as a tip. Shen and the others had already gone outside and he heard the BMW’s engine start up.

‘You have a sweet tooth, Inspector?’ The girl with the sparkling eyes had appeared at his shoulder.

‘I’m afraid I do,’ Carlyle admitted.

The girl nodded sympathetically. ‘I also love a nice pastry. Perfect with a coffee.’

‘Yes.’ Carlyle couldn’t agree more.

‘In fact,’ she sighed, ‘I could do with an espresso right now.’ Turning to the woman behind the counter, she pointed at the ancient-looking Gaggia by the wall. ‘Anichka, could you get me one, please? A double.’

The woman grumbled under her breath before turning away from the pair of them to work the battered machine. As it rumbled noisily into action, Carlyle flinched slightly as he felt a hand on his backside. Holding his breath, he let the girl slip something into the back pocket of his jeans.

She studiously ignored his quizzical look, instead peering over the counter in anticipation of the arrival of her coffee. ‘Maybe just a little hot milk, too, if that’s possible . . .’

Remembering to exhale, Carlyle turned on his heel and left.

EIGHT

Helen gazed out of the window, looking south across the river, towards the London Eye. She watched Carlyle enter the tiny kitchen and grab a couple of Jaffa Cakes from a box sitting on top of the microwave. Waiting until he had stuffed the first one in his mouth, she waved the business card in her hand. ‘What is this?’

Carlyle swallowed. He felt the chocolate from the second Jaffa Cake melting on to his fingers. ‘It’s a girl’s phone number,’ he replied as casually as he could manage, resisting the urge to make a grab for the card itself. He knew that his only way out of this situation was a careful blend of insouciance and full disclosure. ‘She’s a Ukrainian prostitute. I met her yesterday.’ He took a nibble from Jaffa Cake number two. ‘On business.’

‘Yours? Or hers?’

‘Mine, obviously.’

Somewhat reluctantly, she handed him back the card and he slipped it into the pocket of his jeans. He waited patiently as Helen sipped her green tea and made a show of looking her husband up and down. She had never tried to set any rules when it came to his job, but she had always been secretly relieved that he had managed to steer clear of working in Vice. There were plenty of other things he could do on the Force where there was much less in the way of temptation. This latest case was making her uneasy, but she knew that she had to try to keep things light. He was a policeman, after all. He had always been a policeman, even before they had met. There were limits to how far she could circumscribe his career. ‘Do many working girls give you their phone number, Inspector?’

‘Only when they’re on the game,’ he deadpanned, confident – well,
reasonably
confident – that she was taking things in the right spirit.

Helen looked at the card again. ‘Why did
Olga
hand it over to you?’

‘I dunno,’ Carlyle shrugged, careful not to mention precisely
how
it had been handed over. ‘Maybe she can tell us something about the missing kid. God knows, we need a break.’

‘There’s something else.’ Helen abruptly changed the subject.

‘Oh?’ Carlyle’s heart sank. He didn’t need ‘something else’ at the moment.

‘Yes,’ she said, cradling her mug of green tea while gazing out the window. ‘They’ve had more problems at Alice’s school.’

‘That’s not really a surprise.’

All schools had their dramas, but Carlyle had to admit that his daughter’s school – City School for Girls in the Barbican – really did seem to push the boat out in that respect. He thought back to the time when the police had been phoned after two of the pupils had called in a bomb warning. Happily there was no actual bomb, but a subsequent police sweep of the classrooms had turned up no less than eight bags containing dope of one sort or another. The headmaster had implemented a very public crackdown. More than a dozen girls had been expelled, and all the parents had received a letter informing them that anyone found in possession of cannabis or any other drugs would face a similar fate. With cannabis being reclassified from a Class C to Class B drug, the headmaster added that ‘any student found to be in possession of cannabis will be arrested and taken to a police station where they can receive a reprimand, final warning, or charge depending on the seriousness of the offence’.

Helen had forbidden Carlyle from writing back and pointing out to the headmaster that no police station in the city would welcome the receipt of his errant charges, and that he should maybe look to try and put his own house in order by himself. On reflection, he realised that Helen was right: this was not the kind of issue to pick a fight over. Anyway, if Alice ever got involved in drugs while at school, the headmaster would be the least of her worries.

‘What’s happened now?’ he asked wearily.

‘Another two girls have been expelled.’

Carlyle shrugged. That was hardly hold-the-front-page news.

‘One of them,’ Helen continued, ‘was in Alice’s class.’

‘Shit.’ Carlyle frowned. ‘She’s what – not even a teenager.’

‘I know.’ Helen stepped away from the window and stood beside him, resting against the workbench. ‘I spoke to one of the other mothers today, and she says that they think that girls as young as eight could be involved.’

‘Bollocks.’

‘I don’t know, John.’

Carlyle stuck an arm round his wife’s shoulder. ‘Come on . . .’

‘I know, it seems ridiculous. But everyone’s getting a bit paranoid about it.’

Carlyle grinned. ‘Maybe some of the parents have been smoking too much skunk themselves.’

She gave him a gentle punch in the ribs. ‘That’s not funny.’

‘Sorry.’ He stood up straight and folded his arms, as if to show that he was taking it seriously. ‘Have you spoken to Alice about it?’

‘We had a chat.’ Helen reached over and placed her mug in the sink. ‘She didn’t tell me much, but at least we had a bit of a conversation. She didn’t storm off in a huff – which makes a change these days.’

‘So what did she say?’

‘According to Alice, everyone in the class knows about it. The girl who’s been expelled isn’t one of her friends, and had been hanging out with some older kids. She says no one else in her class has tried anything.’

‘So far.’

‘Anyway, Alice says she’s really not that interested.’

‘I can easily believe that.’ Carlyle leaned over and kissed the top of his wife’s head. ‘She’s basically a sensible kid – gets it from her dad.’

Helen didn’t smile. ‘I know, but . . .’

‘Shall I talk to her?’

She gave his arm a grateful squeeze. ‘When it comes up, and only when she’s happy to have the conversation. Don’t just jump in there and force her to clam up.’

Me? Carlyle thought. When did
you
become the expert in communicating with our little tweenager? He felt a familiar bubble of frustration in his stomach, and waited for it to pass. ‘Okay.’

She was obviously alert to the dark look clouding his face. ‘Promise?’

‘I promise.’

Halfway down Wilfred Street, a two-minute walk from Buckingham Palace, Alexa Matthews propped herself up against the wall in the alley next to the Drunken Friar and lit the last cigarette from the packet of twenty Lambert & Butler Silver that she’d bought from the machine inside the pub barely three hours earlier. Inside, she could hear the bell being rung for last orders. Alexa groaned and took a greedy suck on her ciggie. A ‘quick drink’ after work with a few colleagues coming off shift had turned into a proper session. After five or six pints of Stella, and a couple of vodka chasers, Alexa had to admit that she was well and truly bladdered. The two pork pies she had scoffed half an hour earlier hadn’t been such a good idea, either.

In her jacket pocket, she could feel her mobile buzzing. Alexa didn’t have to look at it to know who it was. Heather, her girlfriend – who had been expecting her home four hours earlier – was well pissed off. Reaching into her pocket, Alexa read the latest abusive text.

Where are u u stupid cow?

‘Fuck off!’ Alexa slurred to herself. Given the turn of events, she wondered if it would be worth going home at all. Would it be better to grovel tonight? Or in the morning? If needs be, she could kip in one of the empty stables back at the Palace – it wouldn’t be the first time. Taking a long drag on her fag, she tried to think herself sober.

‘Hey, Alexa!’

‘Shit!’ Cursing under her breath, Matthews looked up to see three men, all wearing jeans and bomber jackets, coming out of the side door of the pub and walking towards her. The group was led by the avuncular figure of Tommy Dolan, a sergeant in SO14. Dolan had been drinking with them for an hour or so. The other two she didn’t recognise. She didn’t even remember them being in the pub earlier in the evening.

‘Not going to puke, are you?’ Dolan stopped five feet short of Matthews, ready to dodge any flying vomit.

‘What do you want, Dolan?’ Matthews slipped her phone into a pocket and eyed the sergeant carefully.

‘Just checking you were okay.’

‘Yeah, right.’ Matthews took a deep breath and tried to fight off the nausea. Like everyone else in SO14, she knew that Dolan was trouble. The best way to deal with him was simply to keep out of his way. When he had appeared at the bar, she had vowed to make a sharp exit. Then someone had bought another round and she had stayed. Now that wasn’t looking like such a clever decision. Instinctively, she looked over her shoulder. Behind a pile of rubbish was a brick wall, at least twenty feet high. The only way out was to head back the way she had come.

She took a final drag on her cigarette and tossed it in the direction of Dolan’s trainers. Out of uniform, he looked nothing much: a squat bloke, five foot ten, in reasonable shape given that he was already well past fifty, with a number-one cut that made his silver hair shine under the orange glare of the streetlight at the open end of the alley. Dolan, thirty-year veteran of serving Her Majesty and her dysfunctional family, was the man who actually ran things on the other side of Buckingham Gate. The Charlie Adamses of this world might come and go, but Dolan was omnipresent. While Adam might be nominally running the show, it was Dolan who was in charge of all the money-making scams that had been carefully built up over the years, like the private tours, illicit parties and souvenir sales.

On the nights when he would sit out on the back lawn and get pissed on Pol Roger Cuvée Winston Churchill, the sergeant liked to joke that he was ‘the most important person in the whole bloody Palace’. The really funny thing was that this was probably true. Dolan was very protective of his mini-empire. He didn’t like anyone who didn’t share his view of SO14 as a nice little earner, wouldn’t put up with anyone who rocked the boat. And he was deeply suspicious of anyone who ever asked for a transfer.

‘Where’s your girlfriend?’ Dolan sneered.

Matthews ignored this, replying instead, ‘What can I do for you, Tommy?’

Without saying a word, Dolan moved to his right, allowing one of the men behind him to step forward and slam a fist into Matthews’s stomach. Sinking to her knees, gasping for air, she felt the pool of lager rebelling in her stomach. A second later, she was retching violently, sending a stream of vomit bouncing off the sticky tarmac.

‘Fuck!’ Dolan laughed, dancing away from the oncoming mess.

Her attacker then dodged to the side and gave her a firm kick in the ribs.

Happy to stay in the background, the third man laughed too.

Leaning as far forward as he dared, Dolan hissed, ‘You always were a skanky bitch, but why did you go and talk to that fucking wanker John Carlyle? That was really stupid.’

Matthews tasted the puke in her mouth and gagged again. Trying to push herself up, she vomited for a second time. One of her ribs felt like it might be broken. Through the haze of pain she cursed Carlyle. You’ve dropped me in it again, she thought, you stupid, fucking twat. Looking up at Dolan, she groaned, ‘I dunno what you’re talking about.’

Dolan reached down and grabbed her by the hair. ‘You’re a lying fucking slag.’

‘Fuck! Tommy, for fuck’s sake!’

Dragging her through the mess, he pushed her face down until she was prostrate on the stinking ground. ‘What did you tell him?’

Feeling the world spinning around her, Matthews tried to close her eyes. If she could ignore her tormentors . . . if she could go to sleep, maybe all this would stop.

Dolan gave her another hard kick. ‘What did you tell him?’

‘Nothing,’ she mumbled. ‘I told him nothing.’

‘Do you want us to go round your house and have a word with your missus?’

‘Leave Heather out of this . . .’

A boot glanced off the side of her head and, finally, she felt the world slipping away. As they set about her in earnest, she began dreaming of the stars.

NINE

Sitting on the kitchen floor, Carlyle dialled the number on Olga’s card and listened to the call girl’s mobile ring for what seemed like an eternity. It was 10 a.m. and he wondered if she might still be in bed. Waiting for the voicemail to kick in, he was surprised when someone finally picked up.

‘Da?’

‘Olga?’

‘Yes, darling,’ her voice purred down the line, ‘this is Olga. What can Olga do for you?’

Carlyle could hear voices in the background; maybe she could talk freely, maybe she couldn’t. It dawned on him that he couldn’t even be sure that he was talking to the right woman. Still, he ploughed on: ‘You gave me your card the other day . . .’

‘I give my card to a lot of people,’ she laughed. ‘You want business?’

Someone chortled in the background.

Was this a game? ‘Er . . . yes.’

‘Good,’ she said seductively. ‘What would you like?’

If his wife could hear him now . . . Carlyle felt himself blush ever so slightly. Thank God Helen was at work. ‘Er, what do you suggest?’