James Craig - Then We Die

‘Better that than calling your sprog something like Kylie or Jason,’ Carlyle mused, taking a sip of his Jameson Redbreast twelve-year-old Irish whiskey.

‘The other was called La Mariposa , the Butterfly,’ Dom continued.

‘Do you have a nickname yourself?’

‘What?’ Dom took a sip of his Chateau La Fleur de Gay 2005, irritated at Carlyle’s repeated interruptions.

‘You could be, like. . I dunno — the Professor . . or the Scorpion .’

‘Fuck off,’ Dom scowled. ‘I’m a serious businessman.’

‘Maybe the Cobra ?’

‘Fuck off !’

‘It might be a good idea. It’s all about marketing, after all.’

‘Anyway,’ Dom sighed theatrically, keen to get his story back on track, ‘the Black Widow and the Butterfly were on the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Most Wanted list back in the 1980s. One of them — I can’t remember which — was captured in Venezuela and sent back to America naked, in chains, in a dog cage.’

‘Nice,’ Carlyle grinned. ‘You’d better hope the Americans never get hold of you.’

‘They don’t care about me,’ Dom sniffed. ‘I am a very small-scale, local operator. And I am very careful to have no dealings with anyone who does anything at all in the US.’

‘You wouldn’t go on holiday there, though, would you?’

‘No,’ Dom admitted. ‘Why take the risk? Anyway, we prefer Tuscany.’

‘In terms of the women?’ Carlyle prompted, glancing at his watch.

‘Yes. . right, there are some women at high levels in the Mexican cartels; other women who are awaiting trial on charges of trafficking large quantities of cocaine into the US. And why not? The drugs business is the same as any other. It reflects the wider trends in society. And it is more meritocratic than most. If a woman has the necessary skills to do the job, she can get on.’

‘And this model?’

‘Lottie seems very good at organizing people and handling money. She’s wasted as a model, in fact.’

‘So why not give her a job?’ Carlyle asked. ‘Rather than dragging me into it.’

‘I did try and broach the subject, but she’s a bit. . headstrong. And I think she thought that I was just trying to get into her knickers.’ Dom raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘People management is a really shit part of the job. I don’t really want any more high-maintenance employees if I can possibly help it. Anyway, I don’t have a vacancy. The boys of Class A Company are doing a really good job.’

As it happened, the boys of Class A Company — named after the UK’s A, B, C classification system for illegal drugs — came from A Company, the Ninth Battalion Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. Over the last few years, they had divided their time between ceremonial duties, guarding Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London, and conducting rather more stressful tours in Afghanistan. They were famous for spending 107 consecutive days fighting the Taliban at Now Zad in a single summer.

They were also famous, in some quarters, for their recreational activities. Four Fusiliers had been caught taking cocaine on a rifle range during a live firing exercise. Others had tested positive for cocaine or cannabis in compulsory drug tests. When the young culprits were unceremoniously thrown back on to Civvie Street, Dominic Silver was waiting for them with the offer of a new job, and a new ‘family’ to go with it.

‘The Ninth Battalion is getting the chop, you know.’

‘Eh?’

‘It’s being disbanded as part of the latest defence review.’

‘Bummer.’

‘Bad news for the Army,’ Dom said, ‘but good news for me. Plenty of fresh talent coming onto the market.’

‘I suppose.’

‘It’s just one more reason why I don’t need Lottie,’ Dom explained. ‘I can’t see any way round it — she has to go.’

‘If you say so.’

Dom clapped him on the back. ‘Think of it as one small victory in the never-ending war against drugs.’

‘Right.’

‘Seriously, this is one of these classic win-win situations.’

Carlyle placed his glass back on the table. Whenever Dom used the phrase ‘win-win’, he knew that trouble lay ahead.

With the show finally over, the multi-talented Lottie was pulling on a pair of skinny jeans as Carlyle approached her.

‘Ms Gondomar?’

Zipping up her trousers, a look of recognition mixed with disgust crept across the girl’s face. ‘Rollo!’

But the fat man was nowhere to be seen.

‘ Rollo! ’

‘I’m police,’ Carlyle said quietly, brandishing a warrant card in one hand and a pair of speedcuffs in the other. He gestured towards the shoulder bag sitting on the floor by the girl’s feet, as if that was the only explanation necessary for his presence here. ‘Please put on a shirt, before we head to the station.’

After almost four hours of emergency surgery, Joe Szyszkowski had been placed in a private room at one end of the Sarah Swift Ward, the short-stay acute medical admissions unit at St Thomas’ Hospital. Standing guard outside was his wife Anita, flanked by two of her brothers.

Skulking round the corner was John Carlyle.

After dropping off an outraged but clearly guilty Lottie Gondomar in a holding cell at Charing Cross, he had grabbed a sandwich from a newsagent’s just off Trafalgar Square and headed straight down to Westminster Bridge Road. Not wishing to face his sergeant’s family, he had slumped on a sofa in a nearby waiting room and promptly fallen asleep.

‘John?’

Waking with a jerk, he found his boss, Commander Carole Simpson, standing over him.

‘Was I snoring?’ he asked, embarrassed.

‘I don’t think so,’ she smiled, handing him a coffee. ‘Here.’

‘Thanks.’

Taking the lid off the cardboard cup, he took a sip before looking her up and down. Out of uniform, in jeans and a fleece, with no make-up, she looked tired and frail. Just about as tired and frail as Carlyle himself felt.

God , he thought, is this what The Job does to us?

Simpson was five or six years younger than Carlyle. They had worked together for almost fifteen years now. Unlike Carlyle, she had spent most of that time on the fast track to success. But any aspirations Simpson might have had of a Deputy Commissioner’s job had been derailed when her husband, Joshua Hunt, had been jailed for financial fraud. Simpson had kept her head down, refused to resign, and taken whatever solace that her work could offer. But she knew that she was considered damaged goods. There would be no more promotions. Now, like the inspector himself, she was basically doing her job because she didn’t know how to do anything else.

Ironically, the collapse of Simpson’s own career had paved the way for a much improved relationship with her troublesome inspector. Whereas Carlyle had been deeply suspicious of her on the way up, he felt far more sympathetic to her current plight. For her part, Simpson had responded to Carlyle’s belated ability to show some empathy at a time when others were all too ready to keep their distance from her.

‘Did you speak to Anita?’

Carlyle put the lid back on his coffee. ‘No, I don’t think she’d be too happy to see me right now.’

Simpson gazed out of the window. ‘So what’s the latest news?’

‘Dunno. . I’m still waiting for a doctor to show up.’

Simpson sat down glumly. ‘I hate hospitals.’

‘Me too,’ Carlyle yawned, wishing he could just go back to sleep.

‘Joshua’s been in and out of here God knows how many times in the last six months. It’s been horrible.’

‘I can imagine,’ Carlyle lied. No chance now of nodding back off, so he pushed himself upright. While he was in prison, Joshua Hunt had been diagnosed with cancer of the colon. Karma, or just shit bad luck? Either way, he had been released on compassionate grounds on the expectation that his illness would prove terminal in fairly short order. ‘How’s that going?’