James Craig - Shoot to Kill

‘Inspector Carlyle?’

Shit. He could see the door and, beyond it, the real world. Life going on outside this asylum, waiting for him to jump right in and disappear. All he had to do was keep walking.

‘Inspector!’

John Carlyle hesitated, cursing as he did so. He should have taken the back exit.

‘INSPECTOR!’

Gritting his teeth, Carlyle tried to fix the approximation of a smile onto his face as he wheeled around and said, ‘Yes?’

Angie Middleton, one of the newer desk sergeants, waved a sheet of A5 paper at him, a standard-issue worried look on her face. A massive black woman, she was sporting the kind of look that she normally reserved for times when the canteen had prematurely run out of her favourite roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. It suggested despair, laced with the slightest threat of impending violence.

Carlyle stopped about a foot from the desk in the hope that he could still make a getaway. ‘What is it?’

‘We’ve had a report of a suspicious package,’ she said, suddenly lowering her voice. She thrust the note towards him.

But I’m off the clock , he thought wearily. ‘Yes?’ he repeated, making no effort to take it from her. A suspicious package in London was about as suspicious as a pigeon in Trafalgar Square. And probably a lot less dangerous.

‘It’s in your building,’ Middleton added somewhat belatedly, her voice now barely a whisper.

The inspector tensed. ‘Winter Garden House?’

Winter Garden House, where he lived with his wife and daughter, was a 1960s block of flats in the north-east corner of Covent Garden, near to Holborn tube. A mixture of owned and rented properties, its inhabitants mainly consisted of low- and middle-income families, and others who qualified for social housing. The idea that anyone would want to try and blow it up was, quite frankly, ludicrous. But that was the thing about the so-called ‘war on terror’ – no one ever sought to deploy the weapon of common sense.

Angie nodded. ‘Yeah.’

Grabbing the piece of paper, he turned and hurried towards the exit, quickly scanning the details of the call as he did so. ‘EOD are on their way,’ Angie shouted after him. The Met’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit was a group of ex-Army officers called to deal with suspected Improvised Explosive Devices. In the aftermath of an explosion, they were also called to the scene, in order to determine its cause. ‘They should be there in about five or six minutes.’

Great , thought Carlyle as he lengthened his stride. The whole bloody circus is about to descend on us. It just gets better .

Outside, the cold night air invigorated him. Once across Agar Street, he called his wife’s mobile. As always when he really needed to speak to her, it went straight to voicemail. Frustrated, he left a terse message: ‘Helen, it’s me. If you get this before I see you, either stay in the flat or don’t go home until I call back. Nothing to panic about, it’ll be sorted within the next ten minutes.’ Ending the call, he dialled up his home number and listened to it ring. Stepping off the pavement in Bedford Street, he was almost mown down by a black taxi. Carlyle jumped backwards in fright as the cab came to a sharp halt in a line of traffic. ‘Stupid fucker!’ he hissed, giving the back wheel a kick as he manoeuvred his way around it. ‘Watch where you’re fucking going!’

As he came round the driver’s side, the cabbie stuck his head out of the window. ‘Did you kick my fucking cab, you tosser?’ he snarled, threatening to get out and give Carlyle a good kicking of his own. He was a big bastard and the inspector had no doubt that he would be on the receiving end of a serious pasting if he stood his ground. Without the time or the inclination to do so, he lengthened his stride. Running down Maiden Lane, with the driver’s curses falling behind him, he groaned as he heard the robotic message on the home voicemail finally kick in. ‘Can’t you just answer the bloody phone for once?’ Without leaving a message, he pulled up his daughter’s mobile number. Third time lucky – Alice picked up on the fourth ring.

‘Hi, Dad!’ she said cheerily. Some kind of pop music was playing in the background and Carlyle caught laughter and a couple of words from an unfamiliar voice.

‘Where are you?’ Carlyle demanded.

There was a pause. ‘I’m at Olivia’s,’ Alice said warily, suspecting a trick question.

Ignoring the hostility in her voice, he ploughed on. ‘Who?’

‘She’s a friend at school. Not in my class, though. I’m having a sleepover.’

That’s a result , he thought. ‘Oh.’

‘It was all agreed with Mum. I told you about it the other night.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Carlyle said hastily. He had no recollection of the conversation but he was happy that she was safe and sound. ‘Just checking. You have a great time. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘Yes . . . Dad,’ she said, the suspicion now replaced by embarrassment.

‘I love you,’ he said, as he slalomed round an old woman edging her way along the road with the aid of a Zimmer frame.

‘Yes, Dad!’ Alice laughed, ending the call.

It took him another couple of minutes to jog up Drury Lane, past the Freemasons’ Hall and into Macklin Street. Outside Winter Garden House, more than a little out of breath, he listened to the approaching sirens. The Bomb Squad hadn’t arrived yet but they couldn’t be more than a couple of minutes away, even accounting for London’s impossible traffic. Punching in the entry code to the front door of the building, he stepped inside and headed for the lift. For once, it looked like it was working. Protocol said he should take the stairs but it was ten floors up, and getting up there under his own steam was out of the question. Also, he didn’t have the time.

‘Hold the door!’ he shouted at an anorexic blonde woman who was just getting in the lift with her shopping. The woman did as she was told and soon they were heading upwards at a steady if not exactly rapid pace. For once the smell of ammonia did not assault his nostrils and he let the woman and her shopping get off at the seventh floor, proceeding alone to the tenth, three floors below his own flat.

Getting out of the lift, he turned right and made his way to number 20, home of Harry Ripley. Now in his eighties, Harry had lived in Winter Garden House since it had been built. He had no kids and, as far as Carlyle knew, no other family.

There were three doors on the landing. All were firmly closed. This high up, there was no noise from the street; the only sound was that of the leather soles of his shoes on the smooth concrete floor, and the whistling wind outside. Stopping at Harry’s front door, the inspector bowed his head and listened. Hearing nothing beyond the wind, he banged on the door with his palm. After a few seconds he banged again, harder this time.

‘Harry! It’s John Carlyle! Open the door.’ He ran his tongue along his teeth. A large glass of Jameson’s would go down a treat right now.

‘HARRY! OPEN THE BLOODY DOOR!’

‘All right, all right,’ from somewhere came a tired, crotchety and rather fragile voice. ‘There’s no need to shout.’

Suddenly disorientated, Carlyle looked around. There was nobody there. ‘Harry?’

‘I’m here.’

Looking down, Carlyle realized that the old man was talking through the letterbox. Give me strength , he thought, trying to hold back an urge to wring the old codger’s neck. ‘Open the door.’