James Craig - Acts of Violence

‘I’ll just leave this for the owners,’ Wilson replied, coming down the stairs. ‘They can give me a call if they see anything on the CCTV.’

‘Huh?’

With his biro, Wilson pointed towards a small wall-light in the hallway. ‘They’ve got cameras all the way up to the top. Set them up to look like lights. Not bad.’

Carlyle stared at the camera. It looked like a normal light to him.

‘If you look inside, you’ll see that the “bulb” is a camera.’ Carefully placing the form on the bottom step of the stairs, Wilson went and stood directly underneath the fitting. ‘You can just see the little red light to indicate it’s on.’ He gestured for Carlyle to come and take a look.

‘It’s OK,’ the inspector said grumpily. ‘I need to get going.’ Who the fuck has CCTV inside their house? He cursed Derek Hutton under his breath.

‘I’ll let you know if they find anything.’

‘Thanks.’ Bolting from the house, he gave Constable Garner the briefest of nods before heading down Doughty Street and turning on to Gray’s Inn Road. Seeking out the sanctuary of Andrews Café, he ordered All Day Breakfast Number 3 and dialled Umar’s number.

‘I need you to get up here,’ he commanded when the sergeant finally answered.

‘Why?’ Umar whined.

‘I’ll explain when you get here.’ Carlyle gave him the Huttons’ address. ‘Meet me there in half an hour . . . no, make it twenty minutes.’ The service in Andrews was always quick; he would have enough time to finish his food before trying to clean up this latest self-inflicted mess.

‘Ren Qi is not going to be happy.’ Guo Miao looked down at the body of Michael Nicholson lying peacefully on the bed. ‘What happened?’

‘They gave him a sedative,’ Xue Xi explained, ‘in preparation for the journey. Maybe they gave him too much. Or maybe his heart just gave out. He might have had a pre-existing medical condition. We have no way of knowing.’

The State Security man shook his head. ‘The boss does not deal in “maybes”. He will want to know.’

‘That is a matter for the doctor,’ Xue replied, her tone a shade more dismissive than she had intended.

‘We’re hardly going to do an autopsy,’ Guo snapped back.

‘No. Of course not.’ For a moment, the pair of them stared at the corpse in silence. The man didn’t look any more appealing dead than he did alive. An image of Nicholson on top of the tiny Wang Lei flashed through Xue’s mind and she shuddered. ‘What are we going to do with the body?’ she asked finally.

‘That remains to be seen.’ The major eyed his underling carefully. Xue Xi was turning into something of a disappointment and it pained him more than he would have imagined. She had been his star student but her efficiency was beginning to be undermined by a lack of discipline. First she almost takes the security guard’s head clean off, and then this. Perhaps the deaths were indeed due to circumstances beyond their control. But wasn’t it the job of Ministry personnel to control all circumstances at all times?

Sensing her boss’s displeasure, Xue stared at her boots. A gift from her father when she had joined the MSS, she knew that they would last her whole career. As always, they were polished to an impressive shine. Flexing her toes, she felt the leather creak.

‘Did you hit him?’ Guo asked.

‘What?’

‘Did you hit him?’

Xue paused. She should deny it but she could not lie completely. ‘I used appropriate force,’ she said quietly, ‘when it came to restraining the prisoner. He struggled when the doctor came to give him the injection. It was hard to find a vein.’

‘Is that right?’ Guo was old enough to remember the Cultural Revolution. ‘Appropriate force’ meant anything up to and including throwing people out of tenth-floor windows.

‘Yes, sir.’

Guo looked around the room. I should have installed a surveillance camera, he thought, up there in the corner. In the event, there simply hadn’t been time. It was just one more way in which this wasn’t a secure location. That’s what happened when you went off on these private adventures; everything got compromised. He had always considered his loyalty to Ren Qi as unwavering but now he could see that it had its limits. His patron was becoming increasingly erratic in his decision-making. Driven by hubris and lust, it seemed that the man’s fall from grace was written in the stars. It was a story as old as the hills. The final chapter was only a matter of time and there could only be one ending.

The chatter in Beijing was getting louder. Guo had already been approached on two separate occasions, with offers to dish the dirt on his boss. So far, he had refused. Next time, however, his answer might very well be different. His gaze once again fell on the dead Englishman. ‘Leave him for now,’ he commanded. ‘He’s not going anywhere.’

* * *

Looking exceedingly pleased with himself, Umar sucked down another mouthful of Coke. ‘It was really straightforward. Once we found their box of tricks under the stairs, all I had to do was erase the hard drive.’

Carlyle grunted. His All Day Breakfast had settled in his stomach and he was feeling less than chipper. What he really needed was a lie-down in a dark room with a damp towel over his head.

‘Basically, everything gets stored for a month.’ The sergeant paused, taking another mouthful of his drink. ‘I’ve cleared it all and set it to start up again in a couple of hours.’

‘And there’s no back-up?’

‘Let’s hope not,’ Umar played with his can, ‘for your sake.’ Acknowledging the look of vague distress on his boss’s face, he quickly added: ‘I couldn’t see any evidence of anything else. It’ll be fine.’

‘Thank you,’ Carlyle said grudgingly. ‘Seems like a lot of kit to have in your house.’

‘Not really,’ Umar countered. ‘It’s quite common these days. Apart from deterring burglars,’ he shot Carlyle a look, ‘ attentive burglars, that is, people use it for spying on the nanny, things like that.’

Umar finished his drink. ‘Bit risky, wasn’t it?’

No more risky than sending everyone in the station pictures of your willy, Carlyle thought sarkily. ‘I just wanted to take a look.’

‘What were you doing in there anyway?’

With what he liked to think was commendable brevity, Carlyle brought his sergeant up to speed on the situation with Gregori and Kortmann and his earlier visit to see Barbara Hutton.

‘So you think she is this other woman?’ Umar asked. ‘The German terrorist?’

‘That,’ Carlyle replied rather wearily, ‘is what we’re gonna have to find out.’

* * *

The receptionist at Horse, Kellaway amp; George was not in the mood to take any nonsense from the man who had just dropped in on the off-chance of a word with one of her senior partners. A sturdy fifty-something, the woman had clearly spent decades perfecting various looks of displeasure as she contemplated the broad array of miscreants that arrived at her desk. Smiling lamely, Carlyle imagined that she couldn’t have looked more put out if she realized that he had recently broken in to her boss’s home.

‘I do not have an appointment,’ he said patiently, ‘but I think that Mr Hutton will want to see me.’

‘What is it concerning?’ the woman asked brusquely, making it clear that she doubted that very much.

Resisting the temptation to start flashing his warrant card, the inspector went for the enigmatic approach. ‘It’s a private matter.’

Without another word, the woman shot out of her seat, buzzed herself through the door to the left of her desk and disappeared, leaving Carlyle to peruse the mug shots of grinning lawyers that lined the wall behind the desk. He found the chubby, cheery face of Derek Hutton on the top row, directly underneath HK amp;G’s mission statement. With nothing better to do, Carlyle read it carefully: Our human rights experts provide access to justice for our clients, despite the notoriously expensive and complex UK legal system. Combining civil liberties, discrimination and social care expertise, we act for individuals, groups and organizations who find themselves challenging the lawfulness of decisions, acts, omissions and policies of public bodies and authorities.