Buckingham Palace Blues Read online

  It was already 5.38. Checking she had her Oyster card in her pocket, Rose skipped towards the door. There was now only silence on the line. ‘Hello?’ But Claire Merrett had hung up or been cut off or whatever. ‘Stupid woman!’ Rose hissed as she reached the top of the stairs, in too much of a rush to wait for the lift. ‘Find your bloody husband yourself.’ Concentrating on not tripping up and flying arse over tit, she reached ground level and began the lengthy slog towards home.

  In the end, it took more than an hour to get back home. Rose arrived at her flat frazzled and penitent, only to discover a scene of domestic serenity: Louise sprawled on the sofa, already fed and bathed, cuddled up to Sasha who was doing her homework.

  ‘I didn’t even notice the time,’ Sasha smiled as Louise jumped up to give her mother a big kiss.

  Rose had to resist the urge to burst into tears.

  An hour later, with Louise tucked up in bed and Sasha sent home with an extra tenner in her pocket, Rose stood in the kitchen, sipping from a large glass of Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc, staring at her mobile, which lay lifeless on the table. She had texted Simon Merrett on her way into the tube station and left him a voicemail after she exited at the other end. Picking up the handset, she checked the missed-calls log, just in case. Seeing that no one had tried to call her since she had left work, she reluctantly hit Claire Merrett’s number.

  The phone barely had time to ring. ‘Have you heard from him?’ were the first words out of Claire Merrett’s mouth.

  ‘No. And you?’

  ‘No, nothing. We were supposed to be going out tonight.’ She sounded less in control than earlier, as if she’d been drinking. ‘I can’t understand it.’

  Rose tried not to let her own concern show. ‘Maybe something came up at work that I don’t know about,’ she said as soothingly as possible. ‘A new case or something. Let me make a few more calls and see what I can find out.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Rose grimaced at her reflection in the darkened window as soon as the words had left her mouth. It was a stupid thing to say, a kind of hopeless reflex. ‘I’ll phone you if I hear anything.’ Ending the call, she sat down at the kitchen table, wondering exactly who to try first. She pulled up a number for Eric Babel, Head of CEOP Specialist Operations Support. Babel was their ultimate boss, but Rose had only met him twice, and even then only for a combined total of something like thirty-five seconds. She therefore didn’t know him at all. Ringing him up with a false alarm would be a major embarrassment.

  On the other hand . . .

  Feeling relieved when Babel’s number promptly went to voicemail, Rose didn’t leave a message. Putting down the handset, she tried to focus on her last conversation with Simon Merrett the day before. It had been fairly inconclusive. Still embarrassed by the débâcle at the London Eye, Merrett wanted to press ahead with the prosecution of the wretched Sandra Scott. That would give them at least something to show for their efforts. As for Shen, they still couldn’t make up their minds what to do there. Yawning, Rose’s thoughts turned to a bath, followed by bed. First, however, she pulled a notebook out of her bag and rifled through the pages until she found what she was looking for. Then, punching a new number into her handset, she made the call.

  ‘You are the guy from the London Eye.’

  Simon Merrett shifted uneasily on the bare concrete floor. Squatting in front of him, Ihor held an expensive-looking Canon camera, slowly going through a series of digital images of Merrett receiving medical attention from the paramedic outside City Hall. He gestured to the cast on Merrett’s broken wrist. ‘Does it still hurt?’

  Handcuffed to a metal ring set into the floor, Merrett said nothing. After they had bundled him out of the Palermo, he had been forced into the back of a silver Mercedes with tinted windows, and driven straight here. They had emptied his pockets, taken his mobile, his keys, his wallet and sat him down on the top floor of an unfinished office block somewhere in North London. Through the floor-to-ceiling window, he could see the transmission mast at Alexandra Palace blinking in the darkness. He was cold and hungry and his arse was numb. He wondered how he had managed to get himself into this mess. His guts spasmed as he realised that he had passed up his only chance of trying to make a break for freedom, when they had been in a public space. Now he was completely at their mercy.

  ‘Of course,’ Ihor Chepoyak smiled, ‘now that we know who you are, we don’t need the photos.’ He began deleting the images, stopping at one showing Rose Scripps patting him on the arm. ‘Who is the woman?’

  Merrett bit down on his fear. ‘Fuck off.’

  The smaller man stepped forward, fists raised.

  Ihor raised a hand. ‘No, Artem. No need.’ He deleted the image and stood up. ‘We can find out easily enough. Why is Child Protection interested in all of this?’

  Despite everything, Merrett laughed. ‘Why do you think? You do what you do. We do what we do – which is to try and stop it.’

  Ihor nodded at the reasonableness of it all. ‘How did you find out about it?’

  Merrett shrugged. Telling them the truth couldn’t make much difference to anything. ‘One of the Eye workers was selling the security tapes on the internet. She gave you up straight away.’

  Ihor turned to Artem and said something Merrett didn’t understand. Then he slipped back into English. ‘Stupid woman. And Shen. Is he involved in this?’

  Merrett gazed out of the window. ‘Who?’

  Ihor stepped forward and tapped his cast gently with the toe of his shoe. ‘Don’t lie,’ he said gently. ‘You weren’t following me. You were following him.’

  Merrett said nothing.

  ‘Interesting. You are investigating a police officer.’ Ihor stroked his chin in mock deliberation. ‘You must think he is part of this. Corrupt.’

  ‘Is he?’ Merrett couldn’t help himself.

  ‘Come on, Detective.’ Ihor smiled. ‘I am not here to answer your questions, am I?’ He tossed the camera to Artem and both men headed for the door. Switching off the lights, he turned to Merrett. ‘We will be back later. Now is the time for you to make your peace with the world.’

  Sitting in the darkness, Merrett had a half-hearted tug at the handcuffs and felt a sharp pain shoot through his broken wrist. He touched the cast where his daughter had drawn a little heart and scribbled Silly Dad! Get well soon. Silly, Merrett thought grimly, wasn’t the half of it. Staring out at the orange glow of the North London night – so familiar, but so far away – he thought of Claire and the kids and wept like an infant.

  ‘And this is the 1844 Room, decorated for the state visit of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia in, well, 1844.’

  The Earl of Falkirk pointed to an oil painting of a sad, weak-looking man in military dress uniform. He had a bushy moustache and a very bad comb-over. The legend beneath the portrait read: Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias, King of Poland; Grand Duke of Finland.

  ‘He liked to keep the serfs in their place, apparently. Top man.’

  Olga yawned. She wanted a drink, not a tour of these endless, dreary rooms. So it was a palace, big deal. There were plenty of palaces where she came from. Autocrat of All the Russias? Pah! Just another deluded man with a small cock and a big title. What did he achieve? Nothing. He was barely even a blip on the course of history.

  Who would have thought this Englishman could be both a pervert and a history bore? Was it possible to come up with a worse combination in a man? Surely not.

  The room was hot and stuffy. Olga felt sleepy and her feet ached. Unable to take any more, she dropped her bag on the carpet and flopped down on a nearby sofa. Closing her eyes, she leaned back and thought of a large, sparkling glass of Laurent Perrier Cuvée Brut Rosé.

  Big mistake.

  Within a second, he was upon her, pinning her to the red velvet, slobbering in her face. She could feel his erection against her leg as he tried to pull up her dress.

  ‘Let go of me!’

  She tried to kic
k him in the crotch but could get no leverage. One hand pinned her neck to the sofa while the other hiked her dress up around her waist.

  ‘My, my,’ Falkirk whispered, panting with the effort and the excitement. ‘No panties.’

  She watched in amused horror as he undid his trousers, pushing them down towards his knees.

  ‘Hold on,’ Olga gasped, trying to look impressed. ‘Wait a second. I have protection.’

  ‘I don’t bother with that.’

  ‘But I do,’ she said sweetly, running her tongue across her top lip, hoping that she wasn’t about to get a faceful. ‘And you should see how I put it on.’

  Quivering, Falkirk grunted his assent. Twisting away, she grabbed the handle of her bag, pulled it closer to her, before rummaging through the contents at the bottom of it.

  Manoeuvring on the sofa to prise her legs apart, Falkirk made a noise like a puppy being strangled. ‘Hurry up!’

  ‘Got it!’ Placing her hand around the grip, she pulled out the tiny Kevin ZP98 and pointed it at the spot where Falkirk’s eyebrows met in the middle of his forehead.

  ‘Whoa!’ If anything, the gun seemed to make him more excited.

  ‘This is Kevin,’ she said quickly. ‘It is a sub-compact semiautomatic pistol manufactured in the Czech Republic. My father gave it to me. It takes a 9mm Makarov cartridge.’

  ‘A whore with a gun!’ Falkirk laughed giddily. ‘I’m in heaven. Heaven!’

  Olga tried to ignore the stickiness around her belly button. ‘The thing about Kevin,’ she said calmly, ‘is that it doesn’t have a safety-catch. If you don’t get off me this second, I pull the trigger and you die.’

  Pointing the ZP98 just past his left ear, she fired. There was a loud bang and the Autocrat of All the Russias took one right in the kisser.

  Olga turned the gun back on Falkirk. ‘Off! Now!’

  ‘Yes, ma’am!’ With the grin still on his face, and his cock in his hand, Falkirk slowly slid off her and stood up.

  Quickly getting to her feet, Olga pulled down her dress, keeping the gun trained on her host. She stepped away in disgust as he finished himself off and wiped his mess into the carpet.

  A sour smell began to fill the room. Falkirk, the madness now gone from his eyes, buttoned himself up. ‘Come on,’ he said, heading for the door as if nothing had happened. ‘Let’s go and get that drink.’

  Rose ended her latest call and checked her voicemail, just in case Merrett had phoned while she was on the line:

  You have no new messages and eight old messages . . .

  Rose hit the end button and dropped her phone on the table. She felt a gnawing in her stomach, but she had done what she could for tonight. When he turns up, I’m going to bloody kill him, she thought, as she stood up and turned out the light.

  EIGHTEEN

  They were sitting in the back booth of Il Buffone, a tiny 1950s-style Italian café on the north side of Macklin Street, just across the road from the flat. Alice had been coming here since she was born; Carlyle quite a bit longer. Today, it was just gone 4 p.m. and they were the only customers left in there. The owner, Marcello, had just flipped the Closed sign. Humming ‘Cuore Matto’ – ‘Mad Heart’ – an Italian pop song from the 1960s, he went about his end-of-day routine, in no hurry to usher them out.

  Alice played with the straw in her orange juice and looked up from the table. ‘You know, Dad, I’m not stupid.’ She gave him a withering look.

  Just like her mother, Carlyle thought. A familiar and not altogether unpleasant feeling of helplessness washed over him.

  ‘Just because some of the girls in the class are behaving like idiots,’ Alice continued, ‘it doesn’t mean that I’ll behave like that too.’

  Carlyle felt a stab of pain in his chest and forced himself to smile. ‘I know, sweetheart.’ This was his chance to raise the drugs issue, following Helen’s tip-off about the latest problems at City School for Girls. His daughter seemed happy enough to talk about it, but Carlyle was painfully aware that he didn’t really have much to say. After all, there was nothing that he could actually do to lessen the risks. He gripped his demitasse tightly. ‘It’s just that . . .’ He glanced at the crumbling poster of the 1984 Juventus scudettowinning squad on the wall above Alice’s head. But even Trapattoni and Platini couldn’t offer any practical assistance on this one. ‘Well, your mother tells me a couple of girls were expelled.’

  ‘Yeah, but that was a while ago now.’ Alice finished her juice and pulled on her overcoat, signalling that she was ready to go home.

  ‘One of them was in your class?’ Carlyle observed, as casually as he could, conscious that he was slipping into policeman mode.

  ‘Yeah, Susan Watts. But I never really hung out with her. I don’t think she did anything, really.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  Alice frowned. ‘I don’t think she actually took anything. Susan didn’t do drugs herself. She always seemed manic enough without them.’

  Carlyle raised an eyebrow. ‘So what did she do then?’

  ‘She just held some stuff for her boyfriend,’ Alice replied, equally casually. ‘That’s what they found on her: five or six roll-ups with skunk in them.’

  ‘Her boyfriend?’

  ‘He goes to Central Foundation. Well,’ Alice grinned, ‘you know, he used to. He was expelled as well. He was a bit ugly. But he was sixteen.’

  Sixteen? Carlyle thought. Jesus Christ. ‘Oh,’ he mumbled, trying to keep any trace of panic from his voice. What was more worrisome: drugs or boyfriends? Discuss. He took a deep breath. ‘Do you—’

  He was interrupted by Marcello, who appeared at the table with a couple of unsold pastries in a bag for Carlyle. He handed it to the inspector and smiled at Alice. ‘How’s school these days?’

  ‘Fine, Marcello, thank you,’ she said primly. ‘Although I still have to submit to the occasional interrogation from my father.’

  Marcello chuckled. ‘You should listen to your father, young lady. He knows what he’s talking about.’

  If only, Carlyle thought. If only. His mobile started ringing in his pocket. He pulled it out and hit the receive button. ‘Hello?’

  ‘John? This is Warren Shen. You were trying to get hold of me?’

  He found Shen sitting in a dingy café off the Holloway Road, hunched over a mug of coffee. Facing him was a youngish woman, who looked pretty but tired and worried. Without saying anything, Carlyle pulled out a chair and sat down with them.

  Shen nodded to the woman. ‘Rose, this is Inspector John Carlyle. He’s from the Charing Cross station. John, this is Rose Scripps. She’s from—’

  Carlyle cut across him brusquely. ‘Have you heard anything from Ihor yet?’

  Shen sat back in his chair and eyed Carlyle carefully. ‘No. Not yet.’

  ‘You know we found the girl.’

  ‘I know,’ Shen sighed. ‘It’s horrible.’

  Carlyle glanced at the woman, who was watching them closely but said nothing. He turned back to Shen. ‘So what are we going to do about it?’

  The uncomfortable look drifting across Shen’s face said It’s not really my problem. He took a sip of his coffee and Carlyle noted the legend on the mug, celebrating Arsenal’s Invincibles from 2003–4, the season when they didn’t lose a single game. That did nothing to improve his mood. The inspector, a Fulham fan, hated Arsenal. The favoured club of the effete metrosexual media elite who understood nothing about football or its heritage, they were almost as bad as Chelsea.

  ‘I will go and see Ihor again,’ Shen said finally. ‘And my boys have got the word out that we really want this one. We will keep at it.’ His mobile started vibrating its way across the table and he grabbed it quickly. ‘Hello? Yes . . .’ Lifting up a finger to signify he would be back, Shen stood up and walked to the door.

  Saved by the bell, Carlyle thought as he watched the superintendent standing out on the pavement, with his back to them, as he spoke on the phone. Suddenly he felt hungry. He looked at the
woman, who was now checking messages on her BlackBerry. ‘Would you like anything to eat?’

  Without looking up, she shook her head.

  Carlyle was sipping a double espresso and waiting for his fried-egg sandwich when Shen finally reappeared. ‘Sorry,’ he said, holding out a hand. ‘I’ve got to go.’

  Carlyle shook it limply.

  ‘I’ll let you know when I get to speak to Ihor,’ Shen continued. He looked over at the woman. ‘Rose, keep me posted on your . . . problem.’

  ‘I will,’ she nodded.

  ‘I hope your guy turns up.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Shen, shuffling towards the door. ‘See you later.’

  As soon as Carlyle’s sandwich appeared, he added some ketchup and took a large bite. The woman finally finished with her BlackBerry and dropped it into her bag. Fishing out a business card, she pushed it across the table towards Carlyle.

  Taking a second bite out of the sandwich, Carlyle eyed the card: Rose Scripps, Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre. ‘What do you do there?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m a child protection social worker, on secondment to CEOP Victim ID Team from the NSPCC.’

  ‘Mm.’ Another bloody social worker, Carlyle reflected. That’s just great. He was aware of CEOP, although he had never previously worked with anyone from there. An uncomfortable thought flitted through his brain: maybe he should have thought about contacting them earlier in his investigation. He looked Rose Scripps up and down. Could this child protection social worker be any use to him? ‘And how do you know Shen?’

  She studied him equally carefully. ‘I don’t, really. I was just hoping that he might be able to help me with a case I’m working on.’