James Craig - Buckingham Palace Blues

‘The girl’s back.’

‘Eh?’ Relief at being out of the interview room was now mingled with irritation at the concierge’s cryptic statement.

‘The girl you were with last time,’ Miles explained. ‘She’s booked the penthouse suite. Paid for it this time, as well.’

Fuck. He was about fifteen minutes away by foot; maybe something less than that if he jumped in a taxi. Or maybe not. ‘Is she there now?’

‘She went up about ten minutes ago,’ Miles replied with the enthusiasm of a man making a big inroad into his debt at the Bank of J. Carlyle.

‘Alone?’

‘As far as I know.’

Carlyle thought for a second. ‘Okay, get me her booking details, including the credit card she used. And call me if she makes a move. I’ll be there in ten minutes.’

‘Ah, Inspector. I was wondering when you would manage to get here.’

Standing in the doorway of the hotel’s penthouse suite, feeling rather sweaty and dishevelled after jogging across Soho, Carlyle looked Olga up and down as he caught his breath. She wore a white dress shirt with the top two buttons undone, over a pair of expensive-looking jeans. Barefoot, sipping from a small bottle of Evian, she was looking good. More than good, just like an expensive hooker should.

‘I didn’t think we’d see you again,’ he said, once he was confident that he could open his mouth without his tongue falling to the floor.

‘Why not?’ A look of mock surprise moved carefully across her face. ‘Because the unfortunate Mr Ihor Chepoyak happened to go a little bit crazy?’

Carlyle sat himself on the bed. The lady clearly had an agenda, and he might as well hear it sitting down. ‘I thought you worked for him?’

‘Are you responsible for the actions of your boss?’ she asked, not confirming or denying anything.

Carlyle smiled. He was more than capable of answering a question with a question himself. ‘Do you know where he is?’

‘Not any more.’ She sipped her water and grinned, enjoying the game.

‘So what are we talking about?’ Carlyle asked.

The woman gave him a serious look. ‘I heard about the girl.’

Which one? Carlyle wondered. She knew about Alzbetha, but did she know about Yulia as well? He steeled himself, so as not to give anything away. Attractive women were the worst for getting you to say too much. ‘Alzbetha? I still have her ashes.’

‘Urgh.’ Olga shivered.

‘She had to be cremated,’ Carlyle said evenly. ‘If we don’t find her family soon, we will have to do something with them.’

‘Are you still investigating her death?’

Carlyle stood up and gave her a stern look. ‘A young girl is trafficked and killed — that is not the kind of case that you just walk away from.’

‘No.’ The woman’s face darkened. ‘I understand.’ She carefully screwed the top back on the water bottle and let it fall on to the bed. ‘Did you find anything at the house?’

Carlyle wondered if he should try and nab the bottle for fingerprints. Was it worth the cost — spending another couple of hundred quid that the Met didn’t have on forensics services? Probably not. ‘Which house?’

‘Ihor’s safe house,’ she pouted. ‘The one I told you about. Thane Villas.’

‘Nothing. It was empty.’ He paced in a small circle, hands in pockets, trying to wear out the carpet just to annoy Alex the concierge. ‘That address cost me a lot of money, as I remember.’

‘Okay, okay. Let me make it up to you.’ Olga lifted a large shoulder bag on to the bed and pulled out a number of A4 sheets of paper.

‘What are these?’ Carlyle asked.

‘These documents show that 75 Thane Villas is ultimately owned by a company called. . United 14.’

Good to know, thought Carlyle. That’s another nail in Tommy Dolan’s coffin.

‘I believe,’ Olga said archly, ‘that this is a company owned by the police.’

‘It is privately owned by a group of policemen,’ Carlyle said stiffly. ‘That is not the same thing.’

‘Whatever,’ said Olga, handing over the papers. ‘But the mortgage is paid by a second company. .’

‘You wouldn’t have thought that these guys would have needed a mortgage.’

‘It’s all about leverage,’ Olga said breezily, having satisfied herself that she was dealing with a financial idiot. ‘The mortgage is paid by a company called Black Prince Elite Enterprise Holdings.’

Ho, bloody ho, thought Carlyle, seeing now where this was going.

‘Which is owned by. .’

Don’t jump in.

‘A very important man. .’

Giving her good eye-contact, Carlyle nodded to show he was listening.

‘Called Gordon Elstree-Ullick, who is. .’

Don’t smirk. Let her tell it.

‘The Earl of Falkirk.’

‘I see.’

‘He knows the Queen!’ she squealed. ‘He is something close to the English throne!’

‘Do you know him yourself?’

‘Yes,’ she grinned. ‘As a matter of fact, I do.’

Carlyle found Alex the concierge in the gloom of the otherwise empty Light Bar on the ground floor of the Garden Hotel. He was sitting in a booth at the back, drinking a cranberry juice and catching up with his paperwork. ‘I hope you two didn’t mess the sheets,’ he said, stabbing at the keys of a outsized calculator and not looking up.

Ignoring the barb, Carlyle took a seat nearby. ‘What have you got?’ Feeling the need for a?6 fruit juice himself, he tried to catch the eye of the bartender, but the guy studiously ignored him as he went on drying glasses and placing them under the bar. Berk, Carlyle thought, returning to the matter in hand.

Miles pulled a sheet of paper from the bottom of a pile and placed it in front of the inspector. ‘This has come from a contact at the credit-card company.’ He jabbed at the document with his index finger. ‘It’s confidential information, so I’m not supposed to have it. And you are certainly not supposed to have it.’

Carlyle adopted a look of inscrutable officialdom.

‘You cannot use this in court,’ Miles said firmly, ‘and it doesn’t go any further than us.’

‘You have a contact?’ Carlyle asked. ‘What kind of contact?’

‘One that you don’t need to know about in any kind of detail,’ Miles replied sharply, before sipping at his juice through a pair of straws, like an overgrown schoolboy. ‘Fraud is a big issue — both for us and for them. It can easily cost us tens if not hundreds of thousands of pounds, if we don’t keep on top of things. We don’t want that to happen, neither do they. A free flow of information helps us both.’

Not wanting to annoy his source any further, Carlyle nodded as he scanned the list of names and numbers. ‘Understood.’

‘So,’ Miles said, jabbing at the paper again, ‘what this shows you is that the card used to pay for the penthouse suite is registered, in the name of Olga Gladkyy, to an address — a very expensive address — in Highgate.’

‘Okay.’ Carlyle was interested, but not that interested. Olga knew how to play him. By his way of thinking, she must have known that they would get to this, which meant it must be fairly useless information. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have used the card.

‘There are three other names with cards registered to that address,’ Miles continued, ‘all women. Daria Khudzamov, Anichka Ischenko and Alexandra Gazizulin.’

Alexandra Gazizulin.

Carlyle stared at the name on the sheet of paper for several moments.

Gazizulin.

‘Thanks for this.’ Carlyle grabbed the piece of paper, folded it in three and placed it in the inside pocket of his jacket. He stood up and offered Alex the concierge his hand. ‘Keep me posted on any comings and goings at the penthouse.’