James Craig: Buckingham Palace Blues

Green observed them approach with an air of weary suspicion. The child had the kind of vacant, expressionless face that she had seen a million times before, and the policeman was just another copper who would be all too happy to dump this additional pile of shit in her lap.

‘Carlyle?’ she asked, as they reached the foot of the steps.

The policeman nodded.

Green looked the girl up and down. ‘Is this her?’

No, Carlyle thought, I’ve got another one under my desk. ‘Yes.’ He gave the girl a gentle pat on the head and was gratified when she didn’t flinch. ‘Her name is Alzbetha or Elizabeth. . I think. Something like that. She hasn’t said much.’

‘Hello, Elizabeth.’ Green greeted the child with no obvious enthusiasm.

‘She doesn’t have much English.’

Green eyed him carefully. ‘But she has some?’

‘Not really,’ Carlyle said. ‘I’ll put it in my report.’ He felt the girl step closer to him and reach for his hand. There was a look of boundless resignation in her grey eyes and his heart sank. He turned to the social worker. ‘Have you spoken to Dr Weber yet?’

‘Not yet,’ the woman said defensively.

‘You should.’ He gestured towards the girl. ‘She’s been badly abused.’

Green nodded, like that was fairly normal in her line of work. It probably was.

Inside, Carlyle sat at his desk watching Green laboriously fill in a series of forms.

Finally, with the tiniest of flourishes, she finished the last sheet of paper. ‘Right, you just need to sign here. .’

Carlyle looked at the girl — playing intently on a nearby computer — and then he looked at Green. Did he really want Social Services to walk off with the kid? Green sensed his hesitancy and looked at him, her expression defiant. They both knew that he had no choice. Carlyle took her pen and limply scribbled the remotest approximation of his signature he could manage on the line next to where the social worker had made a little cross.

‘Thank you,’ Green said, scooping up the pile of papers and dropping them into her bag. She stood up and turned to the girl. ‘Elizabeth, we need to go now.’

You don’t even know for sure that’s her name, Carlyle thought. He felt sick. ‘Where are you taking her?’ he asked quietly.

Green looked vaguely annoyed at the question. ‘I need to go back to my office, and then we can see if we can allocate her a place in an interim facility.’

Interim facility? How cosy.

‘It depends where we’ve got some space,’ Green continued.

‘Let me know.’

Green zipped up her bag. ‘Of course.’

Carlyle ticked off the To Do list in his head. ‘I need to file my report, look at the findings of Dr Weber and also locate an interpreter.’ He wondered about going back to the guy at the Box cafe, but that would fall foul of Social Service protocol. ‘I assume that the council has Ukrainian speakers on its books?’

Green shrugged.

‘The Met,’ Carlyle said, gesturing at his computer, ‘has two. One has been off sick for three months. The other is away on holiday. Maybe you could help us out on that score?’

‘Inspector,’ she said sharply, her mouth curling up at the edges, ‘I have to look after almost a hundred kids at any one time. I reckon that an average group of children speaks something like twenty different languages.’

‘Wow!’ Carlyle made a belated and insincere stab at empathy.

‘With Ukrainian, make that twenty-one,’ Green went on. ‘Working on the basis of limited communication is normal. I will do my best.’

‘Thank you.’

‘What we really need to do is find someone in the girl’s family.’

‘Of course.’ Yawning, he opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a small box of business cards. Removing a couple, he stood up and handed one to Green. ‘Call me when you know where she is going to stay. I will come and visit her this afternoon.’

The woman dropped the card in a pocket, saying nothing.

Carlyle went over to the girl and crouched beside her. When she kept her eyes firmly on the computer screen, he touched her shoulder. ‘This lady,’ he said softly, when he had her attention, ‘is going to find you somewhere to stay.’ He tried to smile. ‘Somewhere nicer than this.’

The girl’s eyes began to well up, and Carlyle had to grit his teeth to stop from doing the same. It was one of those relatively rare moments during his professional life when he felt totally inadequate as opposed to just inadequate. He had found her and now he was abandoning her. She had become his responsibility, and here he was passing the buck.

‘Here. .’ his hand trembled slightly as he handed over his card. ‘This is me.’

She held the card between her thumb and forefinger, without looking at it. He gently took it back from her and put it carefully in the pocket of her jeans. Sensing Green hovering impatiently behind him, he gave the girl a pat on the arm. ‘Don’t forget your books. I will come and see you this afternoon and bring you some pens, I promise.’

Slowly the girl slid off her chair and followed the social worker to the stairs.

With a mighty sigh, he watched them go.

When he got home, there was a note from Helen saying that she had gone out with Alice to meet some friends at Coram’s Fields, a playground for children up towards King’s Cross. He thought about heading up there to meet them but now exhaustion got the better of him. Taking off his shoes, he collapsed on to the bed, still fully clothed. Keeping his eyes tightly shut, he tried to clear his mind and get some rest. Sleep, however, would not come. After about twenty minutes, he bowed to the inevitable and got up again. Following a shave and a change of shirt, he made himself a couple of slices of toast with marmalade. Washing them down with a cup of coffee, he planned out the remainder of his day.

Returning to the station, he typed up his report. It didn’t take long — there really wasn’t much to say. He had just printed out a hard copy when an email from Thomas Weber pinged into his inbox. With some trepidation, Carlyle opened the attachment and read the doctor’s own report following his session with the girl the night before. Weber had been far more detailed than Carlyle; indeed, Weber was far too detailed for Carlyle, whose squeamishness had, if anything, become worse over the years. A quick scan showed that all of his worst fears had been realised. The girl had been physically and sexually abused, probably over a period of several months. Her right forearm had been broken too, an injury that had only recently healed. He felt a surge of adrenaline and hatred for the people who had done this. Someone has to pay, he thought. This is not something that you can just let slide.

After correcting a few typos in his own report, he attached both documents to an email and sent it to his boss, Commander Carole Simpson, along with a covering note that said he would give her a call to discuss things later in the day. Next, he called Hilary Green; her voicemail kicked in immediately and he asked her to call him with the address where the girl was staying. Finally, he Googled various translation services looking for someone who could speak Ukrainian. He tried a couple of numbers, but no one was picking up on a Sunday.

Putting down the phone, he sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. Where do you go from here? he wondered. He laid out the events of the last eighteen hours in sequence: the girl, the posh bloke, the evident abuse — no Missing Person report.

Mm.

No immediate lines of enquiry popped into his head. This type of thing really wasn’t his area of expertise. He would need some help — but who could he reach out to? For want of anything better to do, he picked up the phone and called his sergeant, Joe Szyszkowski.