James Craig - The Circus

‘For what?’ Carlyle said, turning away from Joe and lowering his voice. ‘I don’t know where you get your stuff from and, more to the point, I don’t want to know.’

‘Sure, sure. Anyway, thanks for the tip. Things are really cooking at the moment; my agent is negotiating a deal for a book on this whole Trevor Miller stroke phone-hacking scandal, and there’s talk of me presenting a new version of London Crime .’

‘Be careful,’ Carlyle said solemnly. ‘Remember what happened to the last person to present that show.’

‘Ah, yes, Rosanna Snowdon, RIP. What do you think about this rumour that she was one of Miller’s victims?’

‘No idea.’

‘C’mon,’ Bernie protested, ‘it’s me you’re talking to.’

‘You know that I never speak to the press,’ Carlyle laughed, ‘and I’m not going to start now.’

‘Fair enough. I’ll be in touch.’

‘I’m sure you will,’ the inspector replied, the smile fading from his face. But by then he was talking to himself because, moving on to his next source, his next story, his next exclusive , Bernie had already hung up. Tossing the handset on to the desk, Carlyle’s thoughts turned to the various delights of the station canteen. Joe was hovering nearby, with a look of concern. ‘We’ve got a problem,’ he said.

Carlyle’s heart sank.

‘Gemma Millington.’

Suppressing a grin, the inspector thought back to Duncan Brown’s deshabillee girlfriend in her pink wig. ‘What about her?’

‘That picture of her from the memory stick?’ Making a show of trying to dredge a long-forgotten image from the depths of his memory bank, Carlyle nodded. ‘Well, someone put it on the internet along with a few others. Apparently, it was viewed four hundred and seventeen thousand times before it got taken down.’

I’m not surprised, Carlyle thought.

‘Her lawyer has been on the phone. She’s going to sue.’

‘Sue for what?’

‘Dunno,’ Joe shrugged. ‘Breach of data-protection laws, maybe?’

The inspector stared at Joe. ‘It wasn’t you, was it?’

‘No, no,’ Joe said quickly. ‘But I might have shown it to a few people.’

Listening to his stomach rumble, Carlyle told him, ‘Well, it wasn’t me.’

‘What should we do?’

‘No idea,’ the inspector said honestly. ‘Wait and see what happens, I suppose.’

‘That’s not much of a plan, is it?’

‘Well,’ said Carlyle with mock cheer, ‘it’s the only one we’ve got.’

Striding forward, a stressed-looking Daniel Brabo was intercepted by a uniform before he could step through the door.

‘Inspector!’ His face was flushed and he looked like he’d been drinking.

‘Not now,’ Carlyle said sharply. ‘You shouldn’t be allowed in here.’ He gestured to the uniform. ‘Get him outside.’

‘Who was that?’ Simpson asked, as Brabo was unceremoniously hustled away.

‘Dario Untersander’s lawyer,’ said Carlyle, as he carefully selected a shortbread finger from the plate on the art dealer’s desk. Shortbread still wasn’t his favourite but it would do; he could sense his sugar levels dropping and he needed something to eat before he turned irritable.

Or, rather, even more irritable.

‘He doesn’t look very happy.’

Carlyle nibbled at one corner of the biscuit and gave a nod of appreciation. Not bad. . for shortbread . ‘Neither does his client.’

Stifling a grin, the Commander gazed at the inert body of Dario Untersander, slumped in his chair with a bemused expression on his bloodied face.

‘Ivor Mosman smashed in his skull with an antique silver candlestick,’ Carlyle explained.

‘How quaint.’

‘I guess Dario shagging his wife was one thing, but having her and their son killed was quite another.’

‘Mm. And where is Mr Mosman now?’

‘They’ve taken him to the Savile Row station, along with the candlestick in question.’

‘Very efficient of them.’

‘It was all rather straightforward,’ said Carlyle, ignoring her sarcasm. ‘After offing Untersander, Mosman called 999 and waited patiently for the police to arrive. When they got here, he was enjoying a cup of coffee and a shortbread finger. He explained precisely what had happened, and they arrested him on the spot.’

‘That was considerate of him,’ Simpson mused.

‘Yes,’ Carlyle agreed. ‘If only everyone who committed a violent crime could be as accommodating towards the forces of law and order, our lives would be a lot easier.’

‘I trust that the judge will take such exemplary behaviour into account when it comes to his sentencing.’

‘Who knows?’ Carlyle popped the rest of the shortbread into his mouth, chewing happily.

Simpson checked her watch. ‘I would be surprised if he hasn’t signed his confession by now.’

Top man, the inspector thought.

‘We still have to find the paintings though.’

‘That’s the Arts Unit’s job,’ Carlyle observed.

‘Don’t you want to see it through?’

‘I have seen it through,’ Carlyle said firmly. ‘The paintings are incidental.’

‘That’s an interesting point of view for a policeman to take,’ the Commander said archly.

‘Isn’t the stuff insured?’

‘No idea.’

‘Anyway,’ Carlyle continued, ‘from what I hear, it’s all fairly second-rate stuff. There’s nothing involved likely to make much of a dent in the national debt.’

‘So now you’re an art critic?’

‘Isn’t everyone?’ Carlyle shrugged.

‘I suppose,’ Simpson moved on, ‘it looks like you did call it correctly, broadly speaking.’

Carlyle gave a modest bow. ‘It happens now and again.’

‘It would have been much better though, if there had been rather less mess involved.’ A patronizing smile skipped across her face and for a moment he caught a glimpse of the old, bitch-from-hell Commander Simpson. ‘It’s nice to actually prevent the odd crime, you know, rather than just wait for them to happen and then bang up the perpetrator.’

‘Yes,’ he said, not rising to the bait.

‘We were never in control of this situation.’

‘No.’ To Carlyle, she sounded just like a football manager trying to find fault with his team after they had just won a game.

‘And then this happens.’ She fixed him with a grim stare. ‘You know that I had to be called away from Maude Hall’s funeral?’

‘Sorry.’

‘At least Joe Szyszkowski was there,’ the Commander sniffed.

‘We decided that one of us should go.’ Carlyle didn’t really want to discuss WPC Hall. ‘What do you make of Sir Chester’s resignation?’ he asked, trying to change the subject.

‘He was the author of his own misfortune,’ she said simply. ‘I can’t say that I have much sympathy.’

‘Any idea who’ll get his job?’

She shook her head. ‘No idea. These days I’m as out of the loop as you are — well, almost.’

‘Not our problem, eh?’

‘No.’ Simpson gave him a thin smile. ‘By the way, I spoke to Maude’s father at the funeral.’

Carlyle thought back to his own conversation with Mervyn Hall on the street outside his daughter’s flat, and he nodded.

‘He asked me,’ said Simpson, lowering her voice as if the dead man might be listening in to their conversation, ‘to thank you.’

The inspector tried to look bemused. ‘For what?’

‘You tell me. Maybe he thought you had more of a hand in Trevor Miller’s death than you are letting on.’

Carlyle stared at his shoes. ‘And why would he think that?’

‘You tell me,’ Simpson repeated.

‘I explained to you what happened.’