James Craig - Buckingham Palace Blues

He shrugged. ‘These type of places always need a lot of upkeep, I suppose.’

Bored with the conversation, she held out a hand. ‘Good to know you, John Carlyle.’

Carlyle hesitated. Then he took her hand, holding it for the shortest moment. ‘Good to know you. . ‘‘Olga’’.’

She leaned over and kissed him lightly on the cheek. ‘In your dreams, policeman,’ she whispered. ‘‘‘Olga’’ would have eaten you alive, many times over.’

Feeling himself blush violently, Carlyle looked over towards his wife. Mercifully, Helen was still deep in conversation with Mayflower, so didn’t pay him any attention.

By the time he had composed himself, Alex was almost halfway across the lawn. A firm breeze caught him in the face, and he realised that it had stopped raining. A tiny patch of blue had appeared in the sky, displaying token resistance against the inexorable advance of winter. Sticking his hands deep into the pockets of his raincoat, Carlyle watched Alexandra Gazizulin catch up with Alzbetha’s mother and lead her towards an attendant who was waiting by a doorway, ready to show them off the premises.

As they disappeared from view, the inspector pulled an envelope from one of his pockets. Inside it was the warrant for Alexandra Gazizulin’s arrest. Tearing the document up, he tossed the pieces into the air, watching as they were carried off on the breeze. When the last shred of paper had vanished, he walked over to join his wife and her new friend.

Carnival, football, samba!

Bollocks.

It was a cold, dark, wet evening and the wind whipping spitefully off the Thames made it harder to imagine any place on God’s earth less like Brazil. Checking the time on his mobile phone, Carlyle hurried across Charing Cross footbridge, cursing under his breath. He was supposed to be at a performance by the South American Circus at the Royal Festival Hall, but that had started ten minutes ago.

Damn, damn, damn.

Helen had spent a fortune on tickets for the show. Afterwards they were going for a pizza at one of the restaurants on the South Bank — a relaxed setting for their family meeting. That, at least, had been the idea. A train rumbled noisily past on the railway bridge nearby as he felt his phone buzzing angrily in his pocket. Another text from Helen, no doubt, wondering where the hell he was. He only hoped that she and Alice had taken their seats and left his ticket at the desk in the foyer. If not, he could meet them in the interval, assuming that there even was one. At the very least, he could pay for their dinner as a gesture of goodwill.

He struggled forward. The footbridge was barely eight feet wide. There was just enough space for four people, two moving in each direction, less if people stopped to take photographs or just admire the view. ‘Excuse me!’ Slaloming round an elderly woman, Carlyle barged past a man standing by the railings, looking west, towards the Houses of Parliament. Ignoring the man’s complaint, he tried to increase his pace.

His phone started vibrating again and he glanced at the screen. It was Joe Szyszkowski. The inspector knew what it would be about, so he let it go to voicemail. They had both been delayed by the latest mini-drama at the Charing Cross station where a WPC had launched a sexual harassment claim against the Met and various officers at Charing Cross. It was a nasty little dispute — involving too much alcohol and too many sex toys — that was rapidly heading towards a tribunal and the pages of the tabloid newspapers. Carlyle didn’t want to have anything to do with the whole sorry mess. He only knew the principals in the vaguest terms and had been less than pleased to find himself pulled into an interview room earlier in the afternoon and required to give a formal statement on the matter. He was even less pleased when the Met’s lawyer then proceeded to spend almost an hour going through a list of seemingly random questions to which the inspector had no answers.

None of that would cut any ice with Helen, however. His wife assumed that work only got in the way if you let it. At the very least, she would consider Carlyle’s tardiness symptomatic of a subconscious desire to avoid dealing with Alice’s karate issue. Trying to press on, he found his way blocked by a young woman deep in earnest conversation with a homeless guy selling the Big Issue . Carlyle tried to swerve round her, but his path was blocked by a group of schoolkids coming the other way, led by a teacher. Carlyle glared at the magazine seller who, sensing his frustration, smiled mockingly.

As the schoolkids snaked past, the inspector felt someone push up behind him. That wasn’t a surprise, given the bottleneck, but then he felt something hard being rammed into the base of his spine.

Carlyle half-turned.

‘Eyes front,’ a voice hissed. ‘This Walther P99 goes off, and the best scenario is that you will be spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair. And that’s absolutely the best-case scenario.’

Carlyle recognised the voice but said nothing.

A hand between his shoulderblades pushed him forwards.

‘Step over there. . to the side. Put your hands on the rail, where I can see them.’

Carlyle did as he was told. He stared down at the grey-brown soup that was the River Thames, and shivered.

The man with the gun stepped close up behind him, almost like they were spooning, giving Carlyle no room for manoeuvre while keeping the semi-automatic out of sight of other people crossing the bridge.

Carlyle turned his head slightly, so that his words wouldn’t get lost on the wind. ‘So what are you going to do now, Charlie?’ he asked. ‘Shoot me or fuck me?’

Charlie Adam dug the gun deeper into the small of Carlyle’s back. ‘You always were a complete arse,’ he said with contempt. ‘I’m just going to finish a job that should have been done years ago. Undesirables like you should never be allowed in the Force. You should have left SO14 in a box.’

‘Like Tommy Dolan?’

‘Dolan was a far better copper that you could ever hope to be.’

‘Yeah. . right.’ Carlyle watched the schoolkids disappear towards the train station. He could feel his pulse racing and his heart was threatening to jump out of his chest. Breathing in deeply, he wondered quite how he was going to resolve this situation. Nothing immediately sprang to mind. ‘I got Dolan, so what?’ he said calmly. ‘What do you care?’

‘I don’t give a damn about Tommy Dolan,’ Adam whined, the adrenaline and stress sounding clear in his voice, which was now at least an octave higher than usual, ‘He’s the only one anyone ever talks about. I had more than a million in that bloody firm. What about me?’

‘United 14?’

‘God, Carlyle, you can be really slow sometimes. Yes, United bloody 14. A million bloody quid! That was a lifetime’s work. .’

A lifetime’s graft more like, Carlyle thought. Serves you right for being a bent bastard. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that’s gone. I can’t get it back for you.’

Tears welled up in Adam’s eyes. Maybe it was due to the wind. Maybe it was the frustration. Maybe it was the thought of a poverty-stricken old age. ‘I know you can’t,’ he snarled. ‘My retirement is gone — up the fucking Swanee.’

‘So what do you want from me?’ Carlyle snarled back. He was getting bored with this. In the absence of a better plan, he decided that he would just have to smack the little twat in the face and take his chances.

Adam waited as another train went by. ‘I want to see you jump.’

‘What?’ Carlyle snorted. ‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding.’

‘Jump, or I shoot you and push you in.’

Would the little shit have the bottle to kill him? The inspector seriously doubted it. On the other hand, he didn’t really want to put it to the test. ‘Fuck off!’