The adrenaline rush was wearing off and Roche felt ravenously hungry. Next to her foot, an aluminium chair had been knocked over in the stampede to get away from the gunmen. Pulling it upright, she carefully placed her weapon on the seat. Stepping over to an abandoned concession stall, Roche pulled a half-litre bottle of Diet Coke from a fridge, unscrewed the top and took a long drink.
‘I hope you are not looting, Sergeant.’ The voice behind her was clipped and tense, just like the Chief Inspector herself.
‘Of course not.’ Without turning round, Roche fished a two-pound coin out of her pocket and placed it behind the counter, next to the cash register. Then she let Wadham – a scrawny blonde in her mid-thirties who looked like the uniform was the only thing holding her body together – make a show of giving her a careful once-over.
When she’d seen all she needed, the Chief Inspector turned away. ‘Bloody mess,’ she said in her cut-glass accent. ‘Terrible.’ Shaking her head at the scene in front of them, she gazed to the heavens in search of some kind of inspiration.
Makes one wish one had joined the Foreign Office instead, doesn’t it?
Roche thought snidely.
‘Absolutely ruddy frightful.’
‘Yes.’ Roche took another swig of her Coke. Over Wadham’s shoulder, she could make out six bodies. Who were the other four? She felt a sudden spasm in her guts that young Sidney, the cheeky litter lout, might be one of them.
‘What happened?’
‘They started shooting,’ Roche said quietly, the fizzy drink already beginning to make her feel sick. ‘I saw two gunmen. They escaped, along with the prisoner.’
‘Internal Investigations Command will want to speak to you this evening,’ said Wadham primly.
Roche nodded.
‘And you will be required to see Dr Wolf tomorrow.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Roche wearily. This was her first fatal shooting but she knew the standard operating procedure. After IIC came the shrink. She really needed that bottle of Sauvignon Blanc now.
The Renoir was one of his favourite cinemas, along with the Lumière on St Martin’s Lane before it closed back in 1997. Helen had introduced him to both, getting him interested in ‘arthouse’ movies back in the days before they were married, long before their daughter Alice was born. In the 1980s and early 90s, she would take him to see French films like
Betty Blue
and
Les Amants du Pont-Neuf
. Maybe that was one of the reasons he had married her. It was just a small one, one among many. It was a nice thought, but it was a long way down the list. The primary reason was that she had let him. There were times when he still marvelled at that.
Carlyle would watch just about anything. Unlike Helen, he needed the subtitles. But he enjoyed the films all the same. Indeed, once he cottoned on to the fact that ‘arthouse’ did not preclude sex or violence, and often demanded lashings of both, he was quite happy to sit back and enjoy.
Standing in front of the Renoir, Carlyle thought about that time. Early-afternoon matinées in an empty cinema. Perfect. Perfect and long gone. Now, the Lumière had been turned into a gym. At least the Renoir was still there. He looked up at the films listed above the entrance. None of the titles meant anything to him, but that didn’t matter. ‘What are we going to see?’ he asked, pulling her close.
‘
Alice in the Cities
,’ Helen smiled.
He looked at her blankly.
‘It’s a Wim Wenders road movie.’
‘Sounds good,’ Carlyle nodded. ‘Let’s go.’
‘This stuff’s not bad.’ Olivia Blackman sucked down on the small joint and offered it to Alice Carlyle.
‘Nah.’ Alice shook her head. ‘I’ve had enough.’ She felt sluggish. The latest Lady Gaga CD was playing in the background but she tried to ignore it. Having spent the last five years listening to her dad’s CD collection, she was more into The Clash than whatever was currently flavour of the month. Right on cue, ‘Guns of Brixton’ started playing in her head and she smiled to herself.
‘Suit yourself.’ Flopping down on her bed, Olivia took another drag and began coughing.
‘Don’t your parents mind?’ Alice asked, climbing into her sleeping bag on the floor.
‘What,’ Olivia asked once she’d finally got the coughing under control, ‘about me smoking dope?’
‘Yeah,’ Alice said. ‘Mine are really pissed off about it.’
‘Big surprise,’ Olivia observed. ‘Your father
is
a cop, for God’s sake.’ She rested the spliff on an ashtray on the bedside table. ‘What do you expect?’
Alice shrugged. ‘It’s not like they didn’t do stuff themselves, like, when they were young.’
Olivia pushed herself up onto her elbows. ‘Being a parent means being a hypocrite, that’s what my mum says, anyway.’
‘But your parents, they let you do what you want.’
‘I wish!’ Olivia took another toke and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. ‘They won’t let Ryan stay over, for one thing.’
‘Mm.’ Alice felt herself blush slightly. Her experience of boyfriends wasn’t great and it wasn’t something she wanted to discuss.
‘I think they just ignore it,’ Olivia continued, ‘at least my dad does. He’s travelling a lot of the time, so I guess it’s not his problem.’
‘And your mum?’
‘Ha!’ Olivia collapsed back on to the bed, throwing out her arms, as if she was being crucified. ‘She absolutely
needs
me to do drugs.’
Confused, Alice sat up. ‘Eh?’
‘My dear mama,’ Olivia simpered, ‘is none other than Lucy Pulse.’ She raised her eyebrows as if this explained everything.
Alice frowned. ‘But I thought her name was Andrea Blackman?’
‘It
is
. Lucy Pulse is her pen name. She writes a monthly column
in
The Times
called “My Teenager Hell”. It’s a thinly fictionalized account of life with me and my brothers.’ She lifted her wrist to her forehead in a dramatic pose. ‘You know, saintly parents locked in an endless struggle with their wretched offspring with nothing but a bottle of Gordon’s, a DVD box set and a packet of Benson & Hedges for comfort.’
‘Oh.’ Alice thought about it all for a minute. A nasty thought entered her head. ‘Am I in it?’
‘Hardly,’ Olivia laughed. ‘Although I’m sure if you manage to vomit down the stairs or something, you’ll get an honourable mention in the next one. She’s on deadline and I heard her moaning on the phone the other day that she had nothing to write about.’
‘But why does she do it?’
‘Who knows?’ Olivia said. ‘It’s not for the money, which she says is a pittance. I guess she needs the attention and doesn’t have anything else to write about.’ She started to giggle. ‘Sometimes I feel like I’m under
sooo
much pressure to perform. All that my lovely brothers do is play World of Warcaft and masturbate, sometimes at the same time.’
‘Gross! That’s too much information.’
‘It’s not enough to keep a column going. If it wasn’t for yours truly smoking dope, getting into trouble at school and chasing boys, she would be totally fucked.’
Alice was beginning to see Olivia’s mum in a whole new light. ‘Why doesn’t she just make it up?’
‘She does, a lot of the time. But she needs to be able to claim it’s broadly based on real life; otherwise, no more column.’ Olivia picked up a diary from next to the ashtray. Inside was a collection of newspaper cuttings. Flicking through the pages, she found the one she was looking for. ‘
The aim of the column is to offer a scrupulously honest picture of family life. At the same time, inevitably, some incidents are partly fictionalized, some details have to be carefully rearranged and some characters become composites, to conceal the identity of our children
. . .’
‘Your mother said that?’
‘Yeah,’ Alice nodded. ‘About a month ago, not long after she was outed by another newspaper.’
‘Don’t you mind?’
‘Nah.’ Olivia closed the diary and tossed it onto the carpet by the side of the bed. ‘Who cares about some shitty newspaper column? Certainly no one at our school. The good thing is that the paper’s website is behind a pay wall, so no one will go and look at it online. Only a total idiot would pay to read the rubbish my mum writes.’
‘That’s something, I suppose.’
‘I wish she hadn’t done one about my first period, though,’ Olivia groaned. ‘And I’ve told her that Ryan is, like, totally off-limits, but I know that cow will write something about him anyway, just to embarrass me. I think she probably fancies him herself.’
‘Urgh!’ Alice stuck her head back inside the sleeping bag.
Fictionalized . . . rearranged . . . composites
. She made a vow that she would be very careful around Olivia’s mum from now on.
Tomorrow’s special was to be Shepherd’s Pie with chips and peas. All for the heavily subsidised price of just £2.99. For another £1.50 you could also have Bakewell tart with custard. Standing in front of a large whiteboard in the basement canteen of Charing Cross police station, a tiny, grey-haired dinner lady wrote up the details in large capital letters in bright red marker pen. When she had finished, the woman admired her penmanship, carefully replaced the cap on the marker then disappeared back behind the serving counter, which had been cleared for the night. Feeling more than a little peckish, Commander Carole Simpson scanned the vending machine in the corner. A Bounty Bar stared enticingly back at her. Disappointed with the amount of effort it took to abstain, she turned to John Carlyle, watching with a certain amount of envy as the inspector happily munched on an apple.
‘Where did all these people come from?’ she whispered.
‘Well,’ he whispered back, ‘if you ask for volunteers to raid a strip club, what did you expect?’ He gestured at the expectant crowd of officers. ‘I could have sold tickets for this gig.’
‘We didn’t ask for volunteers,’ Simpson said tetchily. She looked relaxed after a week’s holiday on safari in South Africa but, back on the job, he could already see the stress building up, starting to seep out of the corners of her eyes and her mouth. A mere couple of days back in wet and cheerless London had already taken their toll.
Standing next to his boss, Carlyle looked almost spectral by comparison. As befitted a man who was unwilling to take any
unnecessary risks with his health, he had not exposed himself to any serious sun for years, if not decades. ‘You might as well have done,’ he mumbled.
‘Don’t start, John, for God’s sake!’ she hissed.
You sound like my wife
, Carlyle thought. Realizing that was not an idea he wanted to pursue any further, he killed it quickly and concentrated on his job. ‘What am I supposed to do with this lot?’ He had counted almost thirty uniforms standing around joking and laughing, waiting for the fun to start. At most, he reckoned he needed eight.
Ignoring the question, Simpson looked at her watch and muttered, ‘I’m going to be late for dinner.’
Carlyle wondered what he was going to have for his own tea; probably just a couple of fried eggs on toast and – assuming that Alice hadn’t already emptied the packet – a handful of Jaffa Cakes. He was not the kind of bloke who felt the need to extend himself in the kitchen. ‘Going anywhere nice?’ he asked.
‘Maze.’ Simpson mentioned the name of a famous chef, almost instantly regretting her shameless name-dropping.
‘Nice,’ Carlyle murmured. He had never heard of the place but he knew it would be expensive.
‘It will be,’ said Simpson through gritted teeth, ‘if I ever get there.’
Carlyle grinned. ‘How is the new boyfriend?’
Did he imagine it, or did she redden just a little? ‘He’s fine,’ she said quietly. ‘Thank you for asking.’
Carlyle thought about prolonging her embarrassment and decided, for once, that discretion was the better part of valour. Then his mouth overrode his brain, as it was wont to do, and the grin became a smirk. ‘I saw you both in the paper last week, in
ES
magazine.’
‘Ah yes.’ Simpson stared at the floor. She was definitely blushing now.
‘At the
Harper’s Bazaar
Women of the Year Awards, if I remember correctly,’ he went on, after a moment’s contemplation, ‘in association with Estée Lauder.’
Simpson gave him a crooked smile. ‘My, Inspector,’ she said coolly, ‘what a good memory you have.’
‘I find that it’s very handy in my line of work.’
‘Not that I was up for an award, of course,’ she said hastily. ‘I only went along because . . . Dino got an invite.’
‘Of course,’ Carlyle nodded. For reasons that he couldn’t now recall, he had cut the photo and associated caption out of the magazine and stuck it on to the door of the fridge at home. Simpson looking very glamorous in a knee-length navy dress, smiling at the camera on the arm of Dino Mottram, an old-style entrepreneur, ten years or more her senior. Was he in line to become Mr Carole Simpson number two? Carlyle wondered idly. He was rather embarrassed to admit it – even to himself – but he rather hoped so.
If anyone deserved a bit of domestic bliss it was Carole Simpson. Simpson’s first husband, Joshua Hunt, had died of cancer a few years earlier, following a spell in prison. Joshua, an insider-dealing City spiv, had managed to make his wife a widow and crater her career prospects at the same time. Before the wheels had come off her home life, Simpson had worked her way through the ranks of the Metropolitan with determination and, to the inspector’s mind, a rather unpleasant efficiency. Carlyle knew that Simpson had harboured hopes of rising still further, perhaps as far as Assistant or even Deputy Commissioner. But having a crook for a husband ended all that. When Joshua was arrested and sent to trial, the press, of course, had a field day. Although not involved in any wrongdoing herself, Simpson came under considerable pressure to resign and walk away, in order to spare the Force any further embarrassment. When she refused, Simpson was effectively blackballed by those higher up and was told in no uncertain terms that there would be no more promotions. It was even suggested that, if she was to hang around, her pension might be under threat. Refusing to buckle, she simply got on with her job, showing a quiet dignity that Carlyle, never previously one of her greatest allies, had not seen before.