James Craig - Shoot to Kill

Kelly squirmed in her seat with excitement. ‘How much will we get?’

Frank smiled. ‘That depends. We need pictures, video, text messages . . . then I can make the calls to the newspaper editors. We’ll have another meeting next week.’ The phone on his desk started ringing. Waving goodbye to his newest clients, he picked it up on the second ring.

‘ Darling . . .’

Getting to their feet, the girls shuffled silently to the door.

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’

‘Nice to see you too, Inspector,’ Abigail Slater smiled. She introduced the man sitting next to her in the second-floor meeting room of Charing Cross police station. ‘This is Clive Martin, my client.’

The inspector looked the cheery-looking pensioner up and down. The man was somewhere between his late sixties and early seventies, and his trademark silver mullet shone under the strip-lighting. Martin was a local celebrity if ever there was one; Carlyle knew exactly who he was but chose to say nothing.

‘Mr Martin,’ Slater explained patiently, ‘is the owner of Everton’s Gentleman’s Club, along with various other . . . entertainment venues in and around Central London.’ Sitting next to her client, the lawyer was an imperious figure. At over six foot tall, with curves in all the right places, Slater looked as if she would be perfectly at home in one of Martin’s clubs. Even dressed ultra-conservatively, in a navy business suit with a pink blouse, buttoned all the way to the neck, she exuded an aggressive sexuality that made Carlyle feel uncomfortable.

‘We are here to make a formal complaint about your illegal raid on Everton’s.’

‘Ah,’ Carlyle said. ‘So the Catholic Legal Network is representing smut kings now, is it?’ he asked, making a reference to their last professional meeting, when Slater had represented a paedophile priest by the name of Father Francis McGowan. Justice – in Carlyle’s book, at least – had finally been done when McGowan had taken a leap off a church roof, but not before Slater and the CLN had tried to destroy the inspector’s career.

‘This has nothing to do with the CLN,’ Slater said tartly.

Martin gazed at Carlyle, his eyes sparkling with mischief. ‘Are you a prude, Inspector?’

Maybe I’ll just book the pair of them for wasting police time , Carlyle thought.

‘These days, we’re all in the sex industry,’ Martin opined. ‘Everyone who sells clothes, music, movies, whatever – we are all sex people, like it or not.’

‘Anyway,’ said Slater, putting a hand on her client’s shoulder, ‘the point of this meeting is to make a formal complaint and to notify you that we will be looking to recover damages for loss of earnings.’

‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ Carlyle snorted. ‘One of my officers was assaulted.’

‘Whose fault was that?’ Martin chirruped.

Cursing himself for having had the stupidity to ever walk into the room, Carlyle took a deep breath. ‘Look,’ he said, wagging an angry finger at Slater, ‘if you want to go and moan to someone about the alleged infringement of your client’s “rights”, go and complain to your boyfriend. This was an initiative from the Mayor’s office. Maybe after your next fuck, you can get him to talk you through it.’

Sitting up in her chair, a look of grim fury settled on Slater’s face.

Carlyle then got to his feet. ‘If you want to make a complaint, the desk sergeant will help you fill out a form.’ He looked down at Martin. ‘I presume you are a pragmatic businessman.’

‘Of course,’ Martin said smoothly.

‘Good,’ said Carlyle. ‘In that case, do not waste my time again. Or I might just make it my business to come and visit all of your establishments on a regular basis.’ Shoving his chair out of the way, he stormed out of the room and headed back upstairs.

It was already standing room only in the tiny first-floor bar of the Chandos pub, just north of Trafalgar Square. David Guetta’s ‘Who’s That Chick?’ was blasting out of a couple of tiny speakers hanging from the ceiling while an Arsenal game played mutely on a TV screen on the far wall. Carlyle felt a trickle of sweat run down his back as he watched a middle-aged man in a pinstripe suit glare angrily at Umar as the young sergeant brushed past him, carelessly knocking a quarter of an inch of London Pride from the pint.

‘Sorry, mate,’ Umar said breezily, annoying the commuter even more. Taking a sip from his glass of Jameson’s whiskey, Carlyle stepped over and shrugged apologetically.

‘Sorry, but this is a private event.’

The man was about to protest when an enormous cheer went up. Turning to greet the new arrival, Carlyle joined in the applause as PC Lea appeared at the top of the stairs. Embarrassed, the constable did a small bow, soaking up the cheers of the twenty or so colleagues who were all now waving Earth Angel vibrators above their heads.

Carlyle watched with a certain sympathy as the commuter beat a hasty retreat downstairs. Then he turned to Umar and grinned. ‘Where the bloody hell did all those come from?’

‘There was a sale at the Ann Summers on Oxford Street,’ Umar explained. He slipped his arm round the waist of a pretty female constable called Wendy Saunders, who giggled appreciatively. ‘But wait till you see the best bit.’

A much louder roar went up as a green-haired Asian girl in a WPC’s uniform now appeared at the top of the stairs. The girl looked vaguely familiar but it took a moment for the inspector to place her.

Taking one of the Earth Angels from an officer in the crowd, the stripper licked the business end of it with gusto before rolling it across Lea’s crotch.

Oh shit , thought Carlyle nervously.

‘It’s the entertainment,’ Umar shouted in his ear. ‘We hired her from Everton’s.’

Not wishing to have to explain this when he got home, Carlyle quickly drained the last of his whiskey. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he said hastily, as he began pushing his way towards the exit.

‘What?’ Umar frowned, but the inspector was already on his way. By the time he passed her, the girl had already shed her uniform and was down to an emerald green bra and G-string. Halfway down the stairs, another roar went up, suggesting that the underwear had now gone as well. Feeling hot and bothered, Carlyle fled into the night.

Adrian Gasparino looked at the blank screen on his MP3 player and sighed. How was he going to get the damn thing recharged? The music helped him get to sleep. Without it, he was in for a long night. Stuffing the machine into his coat pocket, Gasparino took a swig from his 700 ml bottle of Tesco Value Gin, feeling it slip all the way down his throat and into his empty stomach. Keeping the bottle close to his lips, he let out a small sigh as he lay back, lifting his hips off the ground and pulling his sleeping bag up around his waist. This doorway would be his bed for the night and he was glad to have found it. Out of the persistent, niggling rain, it was relatively dry. No one had pissed in it recently, which was another plus. But the clincher was the vent in the corner supplying a welcome stream of warm air from the building inside.

All in all, it could only be described as a desirable spot in a chichi Central London location. Certainly, it was the best place he had found on his travels so far. It hadn’t taken Gasparino long to realize that sleeping rough in the infantry was not the same as rough sleeping on the streets. This would be his third night on the street since leaving the hostel. On the first, he had sneaked into a car park on Shelton Street, near Covent Garden tube station. But he had been discovered sleeping underneath a Range Rover by a parking attendant, who’d kicked him out into the night at 4 a.m. The second night had been worse. Trying to claim a spot behind St Giles-in-the-Fields parish church, he had been attacked by a couple of junkies who had chased him off.