James Craig - Buckingham Palace Blues

With a grunt, the woman at the table over-hit her shot and watched the cue ball slam into the middle pocket and disappear. ‘Shit!’

‘Unlucky,’ Carlyle said, stepping towards the table.

Alexa Matthews slid away from the table and turned to face him. ‘Fuck off.’

Making an effort to almost smile, he looked her up and down. They were about the same height, but she was twice his width. Wearing a pair of biker boots, torn jeans and an Iron Maiden T-shirt, she looked every inch the off-duty copper that she was. Matthews had been dressing the same way for at least twenty years. In his opinion, the nose ring and the three piercings in each eyebrow didn’t really suit a woman in her late forties. Presumably she took them out when she went on duty.

‘What are you doing here?’ she scowled, grasping her pool cue tightly.

‘I wanted a word,’ Carlyle said evenly, glancing cautiously at the cue. ‘I left you a message.’

‘And I didn’t reply,’ Matthews said. ‘Didn’t that tell you something?’

The other woman had retrieved the cue ball and proceeded to pot a couple of colours in quick succession.

Matthews glanced at the table and grimaced. Turning back to Carlyle, her eyes narrowed. ‘And now you’ve put me off my game,’ she said, without even the hint of a smile.

The other woman moved round the table for her next shot, gently shooing Matthews out of the way, forcing her to step closer to Carlyle.

‘Now that I’m here. .’ he started.

‘You shouldn’t have come,’ Matthews hissed.

‘Now that I am here,’ he repeated, ‘I wanted to ask you about something important.’

Matthews tossed her cue on to a nearby sofa and picked up her pint. ‘I don’t want to talk to you.’

‘It’s important,’ he repeated, not wanting to plunge into the details.

‘Maybe to you.’

‘Seriously.’

‘It was always important with you, Carlyle,’ Matthews sneered. ‘Wasn’t it?’

Carlyle ignored the barb. ‘I just need some up-to-date information on SO14.’

‘What?’ Matthews snorted. ‘You still trying to fuck the unit up? I thought you’d given up on that one a long time ago.’ She grinned at her companion. ‘Around about the time you got your fucking head kicked in.’

The other woman looked up from the table and laughed, before quickly potting a green.

Carlyle gazed at his shoes in an attempt to hide a rueful grin. His mind went back to the night when a couple of his SO14 colleagues, incensed by his lack of ‘team spirit’, had dragged him out into the Palace stables for a good beating. They had just been working up a head of steam when Matthews had appeared with a couple of royal footmen, and hauled them off. Carlyle had been left with just a few cuts and bruises, and a medium-sized dent to his pride.

The next day, he had gone to thank her, but she had waved him away. ‘I did it for them,’ she had said, ‘not for you. You’re not worth anyone risking their career for.’

Matthews drained the last of her pint. ‘Just because I saved your arse that time doesn’t mean I’m your friend.’

Carlyle held up a hand in supplication. ‘I know.’ He watched the other woman sink the last ball and drop her cue on the table.

Matthews held out her empty glass and nodded towards the bar. ‘Why don’t you get me another one, Heather? I’ll be out in a minute.’

Heather? That was it: Heather Ramen. Or Raven? Or Ramsden? Something like that. A ‘performance artist’ back in the day. Carlyle wondered if she still ‘performed’.

Heather grunted as she took her pint pot and wandered off.

Matthews waited until she had left the room before turning to Carlyle. ‘You always were a right cunt, causing trouble, winding everyone up.’

‘Maybe.’ Carlyle shrugged. ‘But things are getting worse in SO14, aren’t they?’

Matthews picked up the cue ball and weighed it in her hand like she wanted to smash his skull with it. ‘What would you know about it?’

‘It’s come up during an investigation.’

‘Bollocks. You’re just shit-stirring.’ Matthews reluctantly tossed the ball back on the table. ‘You should leave SO14 alone. It’s not your problem any more. And it’s not mine either. I’m leaving. Transfer out next month.’ She pointed a stubby index finger at him. ‘So I don’t want any aggro.’

Carlyle stood his ground. ‘This is a formal investigation, Alexa. I’m well within my rights to come and see you at work. Or at home.’

She studied him doubtfully.

‘If I wanted to cause you and your girlfriend any aggro,’ Carlyle continued, ‘I wouldn’t have trundled all the way out here to make a discreet social call at eleven o’clock in the morning.’

Matthews bristled. ‘Leave Heather out of this, you tosser. I’ve been out for a long time. Everyone knows I’m a dyke. So what?’

‘It wasn’t a threat,’ Carlyle said mildly.

‘Yeah, yeah.’ Matthews glanced in the direction of the bar. For a moment, she clearly turned something over in her mind.

Carlyle waited.

Heather had decided to take her time. Matthews cursed under her breath.

Carlyle looked at his shoes.

‘Joe Dalton,’ she said finally.

‘Joe Dalton?’ Carlyle made a face. ‘Who’s Joe Dalton?’

Matthews pawed at a stain on the carpet with her boot. ‘Joe was in SO14. Did a bit of moonlighting in his brother’s taxi. Topped himself a couple of months ago.’ She rubbed her eyes. ‘Decapitated himself in his cab.’

Carlyle thought about it for a moment. ‘How did he manage that?’

‘It was in the papers. You might have read about it.’

Carlyle shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think so. What’s Dalton got to do with all the shenanigans going on at SO14?’

She shot him a look. ‘That’s for you to work out. You’re the bloody detective. Jesus!’

‘Okay.’ Carlyle sighed. ‘If I’m the bloody detective, where should I start bloody looking?’

Despite herself, Matthews grinned. ‘Go and talk to his girlfriend. A woman called Fiona Allcock.’ The grin stretched into a leer. ‘As in all-cock.’

‘Where do I find her?’

‘It shouldn’t be difficult to track her down. She’s famous.’

‘Famous?’

‘Just Google her.’

Fucking Google. Suddenly it was the world’s number-one police tool. How did any criminals ever get caught before it existed? Carlyle thought about it. ‘It’s a fairly common name. How will I know if I’ve got the right Allcock?’

‘Jesus!’ Matthews groaned. ‘You’re still as annoying as ever.’ Then her grin reappeared, this time wider than before. ‘Try Googling ‘‘Allcock’’ and ‘‘animals’’. See what you get. Just don’t let the wife catch you doing it.’

Carlyle raised an eyebrow.

‘Off you go.’ Matthews laughed, sticking a couple of coins in a slot in the table and releasing the balls for another game. ‘That’s your lot. And don’t come back here again. Next time I will brain you. And that’s a promise.’

Superintendent Warren Shen was standing in the storeroom on the first floor, above the Vintage Magazine Shop in the heart of Soho. Yawning, he flicked the fringe of his shoulder-length blond hair out of his eyes. Six foot one inch tall, rake thin, dressed in jeans and a Bruce Lee Fists of Fury T-shirt, he looked like he was barely into his twenties when, in fact, he would reach forty in little more than six months’ time. A seventeen-year police career, the last six of them in Vice, had not yet eaten away at his boyish good looks. What it had done to him on the inside was, however, another matter entirely.

Out of the window, Shen eyed the entrance to the Soho Parish Church of England primary school, on the other side of Great Windmill Street. It was coming up to leaving time and a small group of mothers, a couple of them minding younger children in pushchairs, were standing by the gate to collect their kids. Every couple of minutes, one of the girls from the Fun Palace strip club next door would venture out into the street and remonstrate with the waiting mothers, inviting them to fuck off lest they put off potential punters wandering up the street.