James Craig - Never Apologise, Never Explain

Simpson rarely wanted anything from Inspector John Carlyle. The inspector knew that she was frustrated by what she saw as his refusal to play the game. Just as important, perhaps more so, was his inability to hide his feelings towards her. Simpson left Carlyle cold. He hated the feeling that he had been co-opted on to her mission for personal glory. Somehow, the collective good always seemed nicely aligned with the interests of the commander. Her approach to the job he found completely introverted, indeed almost demented. She was too busy climbing the greasy pole to worry about anything else.

The way he saw it, she was either extremely selfish or she had the self-awareness of a goldfish. Either way, Carlyle eyed her with a mixture of extreme distrust and antipathy. However, with much effort, he found that he could tolerate her well enough, as long as their paths did not cross too often. When they did, he felt as if his brain was overheating, and he was always too close to speaking his mind.

Simpson looked down at the notes she had scribbled on her pad.

‘About this bus…’

‘Yes?’

‘There’s been a complaint.’ Simpson kept her voice firmly neutral.

‘Oh?’ He placed what he hoped was a butter-wouldn’t-melt look on his face and concentrated on trying to keep it there.

‘A woman called Sandra Groves says that you assaulted her,’ Simpson continued. ‘She says that there is video evidence.’

Sandra Groves? It suddenly dawned on Carlyle that she must be the religious loony from the bus; he had never checked the woman’s name. He grinned sheepishly and adopted the tone of a casual observer with no axe to grind.

‘Well, what happened was…’

For the next few minutes, he talked the commander through the events of the previous week, throwing in as much detail as he could recall, relevant or not, without addressing Ms Groves’s accusation either directly or indirectly. He did this safe in the knowledge that Joe Szyszkowski’s report backed him up 100 per cent. Moreover, Groves and her boyfriend not only had been charged, but already had records for previous public-order offences, as well as a couple of outstanding parking tickets. The only thing that could have caused him any problem, the video, had since been erased from the camera’s memory stick. Just to be on the safe side, the camera itself had accidentally been run over — several times — by the back wheel of a police Range Rover in the garage of Charing Cross police station before being deposited in a rubbish bin on the Strand. Carlyle was confident that its remains were well on their way to some illegal landfill-dump in India by now. The complaint might lead to a formal investigation, but he knew that he was in the clear.

‘And then…’

His monologue was interrupted by the sound of a mobile phone. Irritated, Simpson plucked at various pieces of paper before finding it buzzing on the desk. Checking the caller’s identity, without preamble she said, ‘Hold on one minute.’ Standing up, she raised a forefinger to Carlyle, indicating that she would not be long, before quickly stepping out of the room.

As the door closed behind her, Carlyle’s gaze fell on Simpson’s desk. Leaning forward, he couldn’t resist a quick peek. Over the years, he had become quite adept at reading things upside down from a short distance. Next to what were clearly the reports of the Groves case, which he could easily read when he got back to Charing Cross if he felt the need, was a fancy-looking invitation card. The black script was a bit small, but he could make it out without having to leave his seat:

Christian Holyrod, Mayor of London, and Claudio Orb, Ambassador of Chile to the Court of St James’s, invite you to a reception at City Hall organised by the Anglo-Chilean Defence Technologies Association. The event will celebrate our two great countries’ long history of co-operation and support, as well as England’s long-standing association with Chilean naval hero Agustin Arturo Prat Chacon.

More Chileans. What were the odds of some connection? He was wondering who Agustin Arturo Prat Chacon was, when he heard the commander re-enter the room.

Simpson smiled thinly as she sat down behind her desk. ‘So, where were we?’ she asked, folding her arms and sitting back.

‘Sandra Groves,’ said Carlyle amiably. ‘After I had been assaulted, we restrained her and her boyfriend…’

A minute or so into his continuing monologue, Simpson held up her hand. She had heard enough. Carlyle could argue for England, indeed the irritating little sod could argue for a World Select XI, and she knew that he would not be so stupid as to be caught out on something like this. She could never hope to get so lucky. ‘All right, Inspector,’ she said wearily, ‘I get the drift. I’m sure, if it ever gets that far, that the Police Federation will make mincemeat out of this complaint. But next time, please try to show a tiny bit more restraint.’

‘Restraint is my middle name,’ Carlyle said genially.

‘Yes, well…’ Even Simpson had to repress a grin at his chutzpah. ‘Well done on that Mills thing, by the way.’

‘Thank you,’ Carlyle said.

‘Nice and neat,’ she said, resisting the temptation to add ‘ for once ’.

‘It looks that way,’ Carlyle agreed, ‘but there are still one or two loose ends.’

‘Like what?’ Simpson groaned. How could this irritating little man turn even the most straightforward domestic homicide of the year into a problem?

‘Mrs Mills, the victim, had made some enemies.’

‘Including her husband.’

‘Maybe.’

‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ Simpson huffed. ‘You know as well as I do, that in domestic cases like these, killing yourself is usually a fairly clear admission of guilt. Take the win, Inspector, and move on.’

‘I will.’ Standing up, he decided not to push his luck any further.

‘Good,’ said Simpson stiffly, gathering up the papers on her desk. ‘You know the way out.’

A solitary young man sat at a table on the pavement outside Cafe La Marquise on the Edgware Road. Holding a small cube of sugar to the surface of his strong, syrupy Turkish coffee, he watched it turn brown before letting it drop it into the demitasse. Picking up his teaspoon, he began carefully stirring his coffee, eyeing the small band of anti-war protestors as he did so.

What a rabble, he thought. There were maybe seventy people taking part, at the very most, with almost as many police in attendance. All they were doing was holding up the traffic and preventing normal, law-abiding people from going about their business as they made their way slowly down the middle of the road, heading towards Hyde Park and a rally at Speakers’ Corner. All the usual banners that he’d become familiar with recently were there: Socialist Worker, Stop the War Coalition, Students for Justice, etc., etc., carried by sallow, ill-looking people you would cross the road to avoid; all in all, nothing more than a bunch of pathetic, disorganised, ego-crazed losers.

He took a sip of his coffee and let the sweetness soften his mood. Towards the back of the crowd, he saw the banner he had been waiting for, and the three women underneath it, two of them holding the poles and one handing out leaflets while trying to start the occasional chant that invariably petered out almost as quickly as it began:

‘ What do we want?

‘ Troops out!

‘ When do we want it?

‘ NOW! ’

The conversations at the tables had stopped as the other patrons watched the protestors go by. Those British and their passions! To foreigners living in London, they were an endless source of amusement. Catching the eye of a gawping waiter, he ordered another coffee as the semi-organised shouting started up again.