Buckingham Palace Blues Read online

  ‘God bless you all! . . .’

  The sudden applause woke him from his reverie. Groggily, he got to his feet and stepped across the podium to shake the Director by the hand. A bell sounded and the children quickly filed out through the exits. Within a minute, the room was cleared apart from four girls sitting silently in the back row, gazing into space. The Director eyed the girls thoughtfully for a moment before turning to face Elstree-Ullick. Without saying anything, the Englishman pulled a small white envelope from his jacket pocket and handed it over. Grasping the envelope tightly, the Director bowed his head and disappeared through a back door.

  ‘I really need a stiff drink,’ Elstree-Ullick muttered to himself. Stepping down from the podium, he walked slowly towards the rear of the hall under the suspicious gaze of his four new employees.

  Alexa Matthews stood in front of the chief super’s desk, waiting for the smug little bastard to invite her to sit down. Outside, she could see a couple of gardeners trimming the lowest branches of an oak tree. She idly wondered what it would be like to wield one of their chainsaws on Tommy Dolan and his chums.

  After a few more seconds scribbling notes on a pad for effect, Charlie Adam looked up at her with his solemn face on. ‘Well?’

  Well, what? she thought angrily, concentrating hard as she tried to stop herself swaying in time to the throbbing in her head. Her whole body ached and she was acutely aware that, even in uniform, she looked a complete mess, with a bust lip and a peach of a shiner around her left eye. Even before you considered the bruises all over her body, the bruised ribs and the broken hand, Alexa looked like she’d been on the wrong end of a beating. Which, of course, she had.

  ‘I’ve read Dolan’s report,’ Adam continued. ‘What do you have to say for yourself?’

  Matthews focused her gaze on a spot on the wall a foot above Adam’s head. ‘I was going about my lawful business when I was assaulted, sir,’ she replied in a matter-of-fact manner.

  Adam tapped a sheet of paper lying on the desk with his index finger. ‘That’s not what it says here.’

  Big fucking surprise, Matthews thought. She hadn’t read Dolan’s work of fiction but she could guess well enough what it said. She took a deep breath. ‘No, sir.’

  ‘It claims here,’ Adam said, the annoyance in his voice clear, ‘that you got blind drunk and attacked a couple of your colleagues.’

  Which would be why I am the one who is black and blue, Matthews thought grimly, and none of them have so much as a scratch. ‘What about the CCTV, sir?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘What?’ Adam looked bemused by the question.

  ‘The pub has CCTV that covers the full length of that alley,’ Matthews explained. ‘The footage will confirm my version of events.’

  Adam glanced again at the papers on his desk. He ran a finger down the top sheet until he found what he needed. ‘The CCTV camera wasn’t working.’

  How convenient.

  ‘Apparently it’s been defective for months, if not years,’ Adam said coolly. ‘Which you would doubtless know, given that, by all accounts, you go drinking in the Drunken Friar most nights of the week.’

  What I know, Matthews thought, is that I’ve been done up good and proper. She tried to calm herself down. You’re almost out of here, she told herself, so don’t make a fuss.

  Adam flopped backwards in his chair, sighing loudly. ‘This is simply not good enough. Do you have anything else to say for yourself?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘This is a disciplinary offence.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘The investigation process will take time.’

  ‘Yes?’ Matthews wondered where this was going.

  Adam dropped his gaze to the desk. ‘In the meantime, you will be staying in SO14. I have decided to pull your transfer.’

  ‘But—’ Matthews began to protest.

  Adam held up a hand to silence her. ‘Take it up with your union rep if you wish. I am not going to risk letting our dirty laundry be aired outside the unit. This matter will have to get sorted out fully before you leave.’ He looked her in the eye. ‘Indeed, as I am sure you are aware, the investigation into this violent outburst may result in you leaving the Force altogether.’ He folded his arms in the manner of a headmaster dismissing a troublesome pupil.

  Fighting back her tears, Alexa Matthews got to her feet and stumbled towards the door.

  ELEVEN

  In no way did number 75 Thane Villas look like a desirable residence. It stood on a terraced street located between Seven Sisters Road – the rat-run less commonly known as the A503 – and the main railway line into the centre of the city. It was a four-storey bay-fronted terrace house set six feet back from the street behind a small patio area and a massively overgrown hedge. On the pavement, an overflowing rubbish bin stood sentry by the gate, next to an ancient, rusting Vespa scooter with two flat tyres which was propped up against a low wall. The windows of the house were caked with grime, and a pile of discarded junk mail sat outside the front door, which itself was crying out for a new coat of paint.

  The whole property clearly needed some serious attention, but it was unlikely ever to get it. Even before the property slump, this part of North London was a long way off becoming gentrified. This was a low-income neighbourhood. Number 75 was the only property in the street that had not been chopped up into tiny flats to accommodate a transient population of students, immigrants, minimum-wage foot soldiers and benefits scroungers.

  The neighbourhood also enjoyed one of the highest crime-rates in the city. Yellow police signs asking for witnesses to the latest assault, or worse, were commonplace. One Saturday night, a council survey had recorded an incident of ‘anti-social behaviour’ – anything from pissing in the street to attempted murder – every forty-three seconds. It was the kind of place which, if you could afford to, you quickly moved out of.

  Carlyle stood in the gloom of a downstairs bedroom, listening to Warren Shen’s men bounce up the stairs. Doors were banged open and he could hear the sound of their boots thumping across the bare floors of the rooms above. Flexing the toes in his aching right foot, he wondered if he should have been quite so quick to kick the door in. But, after no one answered the bell, what else was he going to do? Fuck off and try again later? Not likely. Not if there was any chance that the missing girl could be here. Rotating his ankle, he felt a sharp stab of pain. But his foot could stand it. He was reasonably sure that nothing was broken.

  ‘It’s empty,’ a voice shouted from the top of the stairs. ‘There’s no one here. The whole place has been cleaned out, too.’

  Shen appeared in the doorway, snapping on a pair of rubber gloves. ‘Looks like we missed the party.’ He looked glumly around the empty room. ‘Or maybe your source sold you a bum steer.’

  Carlyle grunted noncommittally. He hadn’t told Shen about his conversation with Olga. That was something he had decided to keep to himself, for the moment at least. He had yet to make his mind up about the guys from Vice. Like a lot of coppers he had come across over the years, they made him feel uncomfortable. Maybe it was just him. Maybe it wasn’t. Carlyle didn’t really care either way. Over the years, he had learned to trust his own judgement. Right now he was wishing he had left them chasing hopeless masturbators round Soho, or whatever else it was that they did on wet Wednesday afternoons. He should have come up here on his own.

  ‘Who owns this place?’ Shen asked.

  ‘I haven’t checked that yet,’ Carlyle replied almost absentmindedly. ‘I was told that the girl was,’ he corrected himself, ‘that the girl had been here.’

  ‘Recently?’

  ‘Yeah, I think so. At least, since I originally found her. Maybe she was brought here after being snatched from Social Services. I thought it was worth checking out – just in case.’

  ‘Of course,’ Shen said, sounding unconvinced.

  ‘She could have been here.’

  ‘Well,’ Shen sighed, ‘she’s not here now. Whoever w
as here has gone. And they’ve cleaned up after themselves pretty well, by the looks of things.’ He poked at a loose floorboard with the toe of his boot. ‘Did your source give you anything else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A wild-goose chase then.’ Shen shot Carlyle a look that finally let his irritation show. ‘Thanks for that.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Carlyle shrugged. ‘But it was worth a look.’

  ‘I suppose. These things happen.’ Shen took a deep breath. ‘Okay. Seeing as we’re here, we might as well be thorough. I’ll start at the back.’ He stepped into the hall. ‘This shouldn’t take long.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought so.’ Carlyle gazed vacantly at the ceiling. He was already finished. He had given up on Olga’s tip. Clearly he had been chasing his tail.

  ‘Which is probably just as well,’ Shen grinned, ‘seeing as you kicked the bloody front door in. We don’t want one of the neighbours calling the police, do we?’

  ‘Round here? Hardly likely.’ Carlyle listened to Shen disappear into the kitchen and took another look around the dreary room. A torn bedsheet had been jammed into the top of the windowframe, in place of a curtain. A bare lightbulb hung from the ceiling. Tattered wallpaper covered the walls. A wide crack in the far corner suggested that there might be some kind of subsidence problem. Even the air he inhaled here felt dirty and tired.

  The only piece of furniture was a small single bed with a metal frame; larger than a camp bed but a bit on the tight side for anyone much bigger than Carlyle. A child’s bed? Maybe. Lying on the frame was a bare, striped mattress, which was stained in various places. There were no sheets and no pillows; nothing to indicate when it had last been slept in, or by whom.

  What have I got for my time and my sore foot? Carlyle wondered. Sweet fuck-all, basically.

  From the kitchen came the sound of breaking crockery, quickly followed by the sound of Shen cursing. ‘Shit!’

  Smiling, Carlyle dropped to the floor and adopted a press-up position. Lowering his chest even further, he turned his head to check under the bed. Amid the thick dust were tiny pellets of what looked like mouse droppings, but on the far side, by the wall, was a rag or a piece of clothing. Grunting with the effort, he pushed himself back up and wiped the dirt off his hands, reminding himself that a trip to the gym was overdue. Walking round to the far side of the bed, he knelt on the mattress and slid his hand down to recover the item. It was a child’s T-shirt. He laid it out in front of him on the bed: the white cotton was grey with dirt, but you could still make out the legend All you need is love in flowery red script. Carlyle recognised it immediately, having taken it from Alice’s wardrobe to give to the girl he had found in the park.

  Hearing footsteps in the hallway, he quickly scrunched the T-shirt into a ball and stuffed it in his trouser pocket. Getting up from the bed, he turned to face Shen.

  ‘Find anything?’

  ‘Nope,’ Shen replied, scratching his head.

  ‘Okay,’ said Carlyle. ‘Sorry for wasting your time. Let’s call it a day.’

  Rose Scripps sat in the windowless, airless video-review room, tightly gripping a Venti Gingerbread Latte in her left hand. The outsize cardboard cup was still more than half-full, but the coffee had long since gone cold. Rose now bitterly regretted spending £3.50 on it on her way in to the office. As a single mum living in one of the most expensive cities in the world, it was the kind of luxury that she couldn’t afford – especially if she didn’t actually drink the bloody thing. She took another sip and made a face. At least it was some sort of distraction from the appalling video material that she had been obliged to watch this morning.

  Rose rolled her chair further away from the monitor, keeping her eyes focused on a spot eight inches above the screen on the wall behind it. That way, it looked as if she was still watching the footage, even though she wasn’t. She had seen enough.

  ‘Arrrghh . . .’

  ‘Don’t!’

  ‘Yes . . .’

  ‘Please . . .’

  What Rose continued hearing, however, was another matter. She couldn’t mute the sound and it was impossible to tune out, impossible to ignore. Even now, the incessant soundtrack of grunts, groans, cries and slaps affected her, got inside her head and messed with her brain. She could erase the images but not the sounds. They played in a loop inside her head until she could smell it, taste it, feel it.

  She felt a hand on her shoulder. ‘Want to take a break?’ Detective Simon Merrett paused the video and dropped the remote on the desk nearby. ‘This stuff is heavy going. It’s okay for you to walk out if you want to.’

  Rose nodded, biting her tongue in an attempt to stop the tears welling up. It wasn’t professional; she should be beyond crying by now. She had been doing this for a long time: five years as a child protection social worker for the NSPCC – the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children – followed by two years on secondment to the Victim ID Team. There were still plenty of times like this, when she felt sick to her stomach, but it was a job that had to be done. Around 3,000 people a year were prosecuted for committing sex offences against children, including rape, assault and grooming. The people responsible for this morning’s video nasty were just the latest on the list.

  Grabbing her bag with her free hand, she quickly got up and headed out the door. In the ladies’ toilet, she blew her nose and washed her face. Then she locked herself in one of the cubicles and sat down on the closed toilet lid and went through her coping routine. First, she got her breathing in order and cleared her head of all the images she had just seen, humming to herself to try and drown out those awful sounds as well. Then she went through the story of her day: Louise, her lovely, warm seven year old, jumping into bed with her at 6.32 a.m.; a rushed breakfast followed by the school run; then the journey to the office and her ridiculously decadent coffee purchase. Everything up to the moment she arrived at work. Everything, therefore, that reminded her that she was a normal person who did normal things; someone whose life wasn’t all about wading through an ocean of other people’s shit. Not all of her life, anyway.

  Then she thought about the rest of her day.

  After more than two hours in the video suite, Rose wondered how much more of it she could take today. She glanced at her watch, then pulled her mobile out of her bag. Hitting the most recently dialled number, she waited for a connection and listened to it ring.

  ‘Hiya!’ The chirpy voice of Sasha, the gormless but likeable Hungarian au pair that Rose shared with three other mums, came on the line. Some heavy beat thumped in the background; it sounded like Sasha was in a disco although it was probably just a shoe shop or something.

  ‘Sasha, look, there’s a change of plan at my end. I’ll pick Louise up from school myself today.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Sasha shouted back, over the music.

  ‘Yeah, I’m going to work through lunch and then I can get away from the office later this afternoon. I’ll do some more work at home tonight.’ Setting this out for her own benefit rather than Sasha’s, pre-empting any guilt she might feel at the thought of bunking off.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Are you still on for tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Thanks. Speak then.’

  ‘Okay. Bye.’

  Rose ended the call and dropped the phone back in her bag. A couple of women had entered the toilets and started complaining about the latest collapse of the office IT system. After flushing for the sake of authenticity, Rose unlocked the stall and headed over to the washbasins. She didn’t recognise the other two women and they ignored her. After washing her hands, she proceeded straight to her desk, giving the viewing room a wide berth.

  About fifteen minutes later, Simon Merrett came and found her. He was a few years older than her, married, with two kids, one a couple of years older than Louise, and one a year younger. Merrett liked to hover by her desk, and Rose had the distinct impression that he was waiting for her to come on to him, but tha
t was never going to happen. He was a good-looking guy but he was a colleague – and anyway, he was spoken for. Both of those were big red flags. Louise’s father had done a runner three years before. Since then, Rose’s ‘private’ life had been like a desert. But she could handle that. Apart from anything else, this job did nothing for your sex drive. If she got into another relationship, it would be with someone who had a boring job and could last the distance. That excluded any coppers and married men.

  Coming closer, Merrett perched himself on the edge of her desk. In a pair of torn jeans and a Foo Fighters T-shirt, he looked thirty-five going on eighteen. Instinctively, she edged away from him slightly.

  ‘Had enough for today?’ he asked.

  ‘Is there much more?’

  ‘Nah, I’ve been through most of the rest of it.’ He looked around the room, an open-plan office full of empty desks. ‘Even by the standards of this place, it’s really quite bizarre stuff.’

  Rose fiddled with a Bic pen. ‘At least we don’t have to try and guess where that event took place.’