James Craig - The Circus

And then he reached the crucial paragraph.

There it was, also ringed in red pen — the name of Fox’s employer at the time of his untimely demise: Wickford Associates.

Wickford Associates .

Carlyle smiled.

Wickford fucking Associates .

It was time to give Charlie Ross a call.

Without warning, Spandau Ballet’s ‘True’ started blaring from the speakers above the bar. The girl in the cowboy boots skipped on to the stage, the Jacko T-shirt now discarded to reveal a pair of nipple tassels attached to her over-inflated breasts. As she reached for the sparkling pole, the grandad did not look up from his form guide. Scooping up his papers, Carlyle got to his feet and jogged to the door.

‘The shit I have to put up with. .’

It’s not just me then, Carlyle thought happily.

Carole Simpson read aloud from the report in the evening paper. ‘ Scotland Yard revealed that a detective sergeant was demoted to constable, and three constables were formally reprimanded for having taken, quote, “an overly aggressive approach to stopping a suspect with unauthorized equipment”, unquote .’

The inspector frowned. He liked to think he was up on the latest in MPS crime-fighting techniques, but this particular fiasco had passed him by. ‘What does that mean?’

Simpson flashed him the photo accompanying the story. ‘Officers attacked a guy’s Mini with baseball bats. In the middle of the rush hour! And they bloody filmed it, of course, so it’s all over the sodding internet.’

Despite everything, Carlyle couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Why?’

‘Despite a three-year, two-million-pound investigation that involved — amongst other things — bugging Southfield police station to listen in on their private conversations, we never actually got to the bottom of that,’ Simpson grumped.

‘Surprise, surprise.’

‘Anyway, that’s done. Now we have other things to worry about.’ Closing the newspaper, Simpson folded it in half and dropped it into the cardboard box sitting on the floor by Carlyle’s desk that served as a waste-bin. ‘I understand that you spoke to Maude Hall’s father?’

‘Yeah.’ Carlyle glanced at his watch. ‘He should have formally identified the body by now.’

The look on the Commander’s face — a mixture of sadness and concern — was deeply unsettling. Carlyle found her anger much easier to deal with. ‘I truly hope, John, that you didn’t do anything that contributed to the poor girl getting killed.’

Sitting back in his chair, Carlyle lifted his gaze to the ceiling, but said nothing.

‘The investigation into Hall’s killing has to be fast and flawless. We simply cannot drop the ball on this.’ Simpson mentioned the name of a DI — some woman whom Carlyle had never heard of. ‘She is in charge now, and whatever it needs, she gets. Make sure you provide every possible cooperation, while staying well out of the way.’

‘Sure,’ Carlyle nodded vigorously. Standard operating procedure dictated that he couldn’t be seen to take part in the investigation because of a potential conflict of interest. But reading between the lines, Simpson was giving him the green light to get on with finding Hall’s killer. ‘With the Mosman thing out of the way, I can clear the decks.’

‘What do you mean?’ Simpson asked sharply.

Carlyle paused. Maybe he was misreading the signals, after all? What the hell . He ploughed on regardless. ‘Well, with Zoe Mosman murdered, I think we’ve reached a dead end.’

‘Don’t give me that crap,’ Simpson snorted. ‘Whoever put a bomb under Horatio Mosman, it wasn’t his bloody mother.’

‘I don’t know,’ Carlyle shrugged. ‘Not everyone is naturally cut out to be a parent.’

‘Now is simply not the time for any of your juvenile humour, John.’ Simpson looked like she wanted to reach over and give him a good hard slap. ‘How many times do I have to tell you that the Mosman case is your priority? Why do you never bloody listen? Why can you never just focus on the cases you’ve been given rather than running off elsewhere like an incontinent puppy?’

Now might not be the best time to mention Rosanna Snowdon and Anton Fox either, Carlyle thought, stifling a nervous laugh. ‘An incontinent puppy?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Okay, okay.’ He held up a hand. ‘We’re on the case.’

‘Good,’ said Simpson sternly. ‘Get on with it or I’ll go and get one of those baseball bats out of the Evidence Room and beat you round the head with it.’

Gripping his pint of London Pride so tightly that it felt as if the glass might disintegrate, Charlie Ross tried to remember the last time he’d felt this angry. Probably not since his second wife had run off with one of the neighbours. In the event, that had turned out to be a blessing in disguise. This, however, was a total car crash, pure and simple.

The temptation to take his glass and smash it into Trevor Miller’s stupid mug was almost overwhelming. The boy had always been a liability — all the way back to the miners’ strike when he attacked that woman. How Miller had ever made it through the door of Downing Street would forever be one of life’s great mysteries.

It’s your own bloody fault , Charlie reproached himself. When Miller had come to him with the idea for Wickford Associates, he should have known that it was always going to go tits-up. At the time, however, he had been happy enough to come along for the ride.

‘So what are we going to do now?’ Miller asked, hiding behind his bottle of Mexican lager.

‘Keep your voice down,’ Charlie hissed. The pub, a dive off the Gray’s Inn Road, was largely empty but there was no harm in being paranoid.

Miller adopted an appropriate whisper. ‘What do you think?’ His face had the worried look of a ten year old who’d been caught stealing sweets from his local newsagent. A monster ten year old, but a little kid all the same. ‘Is it all going to blow over?’

It was questions like these that had left Charlie tossing and turning all night. At his age, sleep was hard enough at the best of times. At the moment, he couldn’t be getting more than a couple of hours a night. He felt weary to his bones.

‘What are we going to do?’

Having reached no kind of conclusion, Charlie just shrugged. ‘Well,’ he murmured, ‘I don’t see what else we can do except press on with the current plan.’

‘Have you ever heard of a guy called Anton Fox?’

‘Yeah,’ Carlyle said. ‘He was a private investigator who got murdered in a pub car park.’

‘That’s right.’ Dominic Silver yawned. Nine-thirty in the morning was still a bit early for him, given the nocturnal company he kept.

‘You need some coffee?’

‘Peppermint tea is fine.’ Sitting in a Dean Street cafe, they were comparing notes. ‘The Fox case remains open, as you are doubtless aware — you being a police inspector and all.’

Carlyle scowled; he was in no mood to have his leg pulled. ‘All right, all right, get on with it.’

‘Okay.’ Dom placed his cup on the table and spread his arms wide. ‘Gideon tracked down Bella Fox, Anton’s sister. That didn’t take him long.’

Carlyle nodded: they both knew that Gideon Spanner was extremely efficient and totally reliable.

‘She’s a teacher, living in Southend.’

‘Nice.’

‘I went to see her last night.’

‘You know,’ Carlyle laughed, ‘you might make a decent copper yet.’

‘Wish I could say the same for you, sunshine,’ Dom grinned. ‘Anyway, Bella says that, just before he was killed, Anton was convinced he was being targeted by the Sunday Witness . He told her that they had him under surveillance.’