James Craig - Acts of Violence

Zhou folded her arms. ‘No?’ This was the part of the job she liked the best – denial; when the guilty still thought that there could possibly be some way out, some means of escape from the firing squad or the prison cell.

‘No.’ Ren tore up the paper and the scraps fell at his feet. ‘I will not go.’

Quality of life.

The Commissar was unmoved. ‘I’m afraid, Ren Qi, that you have no choice in the matter. The court has issued the warrant. You must come with us.’

‘There is always a choice.’ Ren gestured over his shoulder. Whatever crimes he had had to commit, in order to get his mansion, whatever misdeeds had been required, in order to install his €1,500-an-hour German escort by the pool, they had all been worth it. ‘Look around you,’ he said, the pride clear in his voice. ‘Look at what I have here. Why would I go back?’

‘Because,’ said Zhou slowly, ‘as I said, you have no choice.’ She watched impassively as Xue administered a swift kick to Ren’s groin, sending the politician sinking to his knees.

‘I . . . will . . . not . . . go.’ Through tear-filled eyes, Ren watched as the young MSS killer stepped forward and placed a boot on his chest. A gentle push sent him sprawling backwards. Fighting for breath, Ren could only look up at the blue sky and repeat his desperate mantra. ‘I . . . will . . . not . . .’

A shadow passed across his face as Xue Xi hovered over him. In her hand was a hypodermic needle. Effortlessly, she found a vein and pushed down on the plunger. Almost immediately, the sky began to darken.

Quality of life, Ren thought dreamily. Quality of life.

Walking along Maiden Lane, on the south side of the Piazza, Carlyle watched a rickshaw driver pull his vehicle up on to the pavement and take a small prayer mat from under the front seat. On the side of the dirty vehicle was an advert for a strip club called Everton’s which had recently been closed down by the council. Umar’s wife, Christina, had worked there; that was where the two of them had first met. With some embarrassment, the inspector realized that he had yet to enquire about his colleague’s recovery from the unfortunate gunshot wound inflicted by Sebastian Gregori. Pausing to reach for his mobile, he pulled up Umar’s number, then thought better of it.

Putting the phone back in his pocket, he watched as the rickshaw driver carefully placed his mat on the pavement. The guy, a spotty-looking white boy with a fine coating of bum fluff on his chin, dropped to his knees and began rocking gently backwards and forwards. Carlyle watched, bemused, as a steady stream of pedestrians stepped off the pavement and into the road, giving the boy sufficient space to continue with his prayers undisturbed. Aside from one woman who did a theatrical double take, no one seemed perturbed in the slightest.

Watching this performance, Carlyle calculated that the boy was praying towards Waterloo Bridge. Is that really the direction of Mecca? he wondered, as he continued on his way.

Approaching the police station, he was intercepted by Amelia Elmhirst. ‘Where have you been?’ the sergeant demanded, grabbing his arm and marching them both off in the direction of Chandos Place. ‘Commander Simpson has been calling me every ten minutes demanding to know why we haven’t left on our hunt for Gregori yet. She says you’ve not been answering your phone.’

‘I had stuff to attend to.’ The inspector did not feel the need to share the details of his father’s medical adventures with his colleague. Apart from anything else, the hospital visit seemed already to have been relegated to a distant memory. It was barely forty minutes since he had said goodbye to Alexander but, arriving back in Covent Garden, Carlyle had immediately been swallowed up by the relentless energy of the city and transported to a totally different world.

‘That’s what I told her. She didn’t sound very impressed.’

Tough. Carlyle looked at his watch. He wanted to go home, pour himself a stiff drink and watch some football on the TV.

That’s what he wanted to do.

‘We’re going to get caught in the rush hour,’ Elmhirst said grimly.

‘It’s always the rush hour,’ Carlyle pointed out. Why anyone tried to go anywhere by car in London was beyond him; it was the constant triumph of stupidity over bitter experience.

Slipping through a side door, Elmhirst led him into the cramped police garage. ‘C’mon, Joel’s waiting for us.’ Once in the courtyard, the inspector was dismayed to find that Gapper was sitting behind the wheel of the same crappy green Astra that they’d been given last time. Through the open window came the sounds of some over-strenuous rap song that he didn’t recognize.

‘Turn that crap off,’ Carlyle ordered, pulling open the door and climbing into the back seat. If nothing else, however, the music reminded him of his business with Mr Chase Race. Helen had yet to come good on her promise to set up a meeting. He sent a quick text, chivvying her along, before turning his attention back to the vehicle’s various shortcomings: ‘Is this the only bloody car we can get?’

‘ ’fraid so,’ Gapper shrugged. He pointed to the sat nav that had been installed on the dashboard since their last adventure. ‘At least they’ve given us that.’

‘Great. Not exactly the bloody Sweeney, is it?’

Looking in the rear-view mirror, Gapper gave him a mystified look.

‘Never mind.’

‘Look on the bright side,’ said Elmhirst cheerily in the front seat, as she pulled on her seatbelt. ‘At least we’ll blend in with the locals.’

‘I don’t want to blend in,’ the inspector growled as Gapper slowly edged out of the garage, heading towards Charing Cross Road.

‘It’ll be fine,’ Elmhirst chirped.

Her good humour was starting to grate. Carlyle wished he had Roche, or even Umar, joining him on the trip. He rested his head on the window and closed his eyes. If nothing else, at least he could catch up on his rest while they headed back to the provinces.

In the event, the inspector found it impossible to sleep in the back of the car. Inevitably, the traffic was appalling and it was almost an hour before they had made it past Archway. Feeling a little sick, he opened the window a couple of inches, in order to let in some fresh fumes. Seeing that he was awake, Elmhirst passed a thin A4 manila envelope over her shoulder.

‘What’s this?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘My homework,’ she smirked. ‘What I was busy finding out while you were AWOL.’

‘I wasn’t AWOL,’ Carlyle groused. Tearing open the envelope, he pulled out an A5 black and white photograph and two sheets of A4 paper, photocopies of some kind of official forms, written in German. He held up the picture. The headshot was maybe ten or even more years old, the face had fewer lines and the hair was longer, but it was immediately identifiable.

‘Sebastian Gregori.’

Elmhirst shook her head. ‘No.’

‘No?’

‘That is the guy who pretended to be Gregori. His actual name is Marcus Popp. The real Gregori is still in Port Elizabeth. When his boss got hold of him last night, he was completely unaware that Popp had stolen his identity.’

‘So who is Popp? Why is he playing this game? And how did you manage to identify him?’

‘The German police made the ID.’ The sergeant’s grin grew wider. ‘He was caught on CCTV getting on a flight to London with Kortmann. He was on some kind of a watchlist.’

‘Obviously a very effective one, if no one actually stopped him.’

Elmhirst shrugged. ‘These things happen. Not everyone gets stopped all the time, even if they do get flagged. Popp travelled to London on his own passport. Not that Werner Kortmann knew that. He would have thought Popp was Gregori.’