Then We Die (8 page)

‘It was my tip,’ he explained. ‘I was supposed to go to that fashion show with Joe.’ Carlyle sat back in his chair and folded his arms. Almost immediately, he decided that gesture could be interpreted as defensive body language, so he unfolded them again. All of a sudden, he didn’t know what to do with his bloody limbs. Finally, he clasped his hands as if in prayer and forced them down into his lap. He looked up, to give Simpson some good eye-contact: ‘My tip, my arrest.’

Simpson sniffed. ‘Never were much of a team player, were you, John?’

Knowing she was right, Carlyle shrugged.

‘Anyway, you will be contacted about the IPCC investigation within the next couple of days.’

‘That’s fine.’ Carlyle knew he had done everything by the book. The Independent Police Complaints Commission investigated deaths that occurred in custody as a matter of routine.

‘You might want to speak to your Union rep.’

Carlyle shook his head. ‘No need.’

Simpson looked at him. ‘It would be a good idea – if not for the IPCC, then maybe for the Middle Market Drugs Project investigation.’

Carlyle made a face. ‘What the hell’s that?’

‘It’s a new joint venture between the Met and Customs and Excise, aimed at targeting dealers acting as the link between smugglers and street-sellers. After a successful trial, it has been given a mandate by the Home Office to disrupt criminal networks, stifle supply, arrest traffickers and seize their assets.’

Fuck
, thought Carlyle.
I don
’
t like the sound of that. I don
’
t like the sound of that at all
. He had a big problem when it came to any kind of internal police investigation – and that problem was called Dominic Silver. How do you explain your thirty-year relationship with a successful drug dealer to someone trying to winkle out even the merest whiff of corruption on the police force? The simple answer was that you can’t. Hell, most of the time, he couldn’t even explain it to himself. Did Simpson know about Silver? He had no reason to believe so; certainly he had never discussed his contact with her. And, despite the fact that his relationship with his boss had improved significantly over the last few years, he wasn’t going to start now.

‘Apparently,’ Simpson continued, ‘they had Charlotte Gondomar already under surveillance when you arrested her.’

Ignoring the sick feeling in his stomach, Carlyle smiled blandly. ‘I’m perfectly happy to talk to them at any time.’

‘Good.’ Simpson looked down at her desk, as if surprised to see it bare of paperwork. ‘Anything else?’

‘The usual.’ Running through the list of his current cases, it took a moment for Carlyle to recall the skeleton in the park. After his run-in with Spy Boy and now Simpson’s unwelcome news, that discovery seemed years ago now. ‘The council dug up a skeleton in Lincoln’s Inn Fields this morning,’ he said flatly. ‘An adult male, shot in the head.’

He paused to let Simpson give him a funny look.

‘Susan Phillips reckons that the victim has been in the ground for more than fifty years.’

‘That’s a bit of a turn-up for the books,’ Simpson observed. ‘Okay. Make sure the paperwork is dealt with, and then move on to more pressing matters.’ She lifted a large shoulder bag onto her desk and started rummaging inside. ‘And ask my PA to come in on your way out, will you?’

Helen had spent the early part of the evening working herself into a state. ‘You don’t mess with bloody Mossad!’ were the first words out of her mouth as Carlyle stuck his head through the living-room door.

Alice wandered in from the kitchen, a glass of orange juice in one hand and a sandwich in the other. ‘Mum says you’d better be careful or they’re going to kick your arse,’ she said cheerily, before stuffing half of the sandwich into her mouth and flopping down on the sofa beside her mother.

‘What the hell are you two talking about?’ he asked, stepping into the middle of the room.

‘It’s all over the bloody television!’ Helen replied angrily, waving the remote control at the screen.

The television was tuned to News 24, with the sound muted. The anchor, a middle-aged Irishwoman with big hair who always looked like she was reading someone’s obituary, was talking to some politician about tax rises. What’s that got to do with me? Carlyle thought irritably. Then his eye caught the ticker running across the bottom of the screen.

BREAKING NEWS
:
Intelligence sources have told the BBC that Israeli Secret Service Agents are suspected of being behind the double murder at a top London hotel
.

That
’
s great
, Carlyle thought.
Just fucking great! Can no one in this country keep their bloody mouth shut for more than two minutes?

He sat down on the sofa, prompting Alice to jump up and head for her room, mumbling something about ‘homework’. Careful not to make eye-contact with his wife, he stared intently at the screen.

‘Well, John Carlyle,’ she said finally, once it was clear that he wasn’t going to volunteer any information unprompted, ‘have you not got something to tell me?’

Sighing, he braced himself for another political lecture. Helen worked for an international medical charity called Avalon. After several years as a senior administrative manager, she had recently been promoted to the role of Chief Operating Officer. That meant she was directly responsible for a budget of almost £40 million and a team of 200 people working in 30 countries, including the Palestinian Territories. Carlyle was well aware of her views on the Israeli checkpoints, roadblocks and border closures that made it difficult for ordinary people to access healthcare. He knew her mantra off by heart, how the recent violence in the Gaza Strip had left more than 1,300 people dead and over 5,000 people wounded. The safety of Avalon health educators, nurses and volunteers was a constant source of concern to his wife.

She looked at him with fury in her eyes. ‘It could have been you.’

‘What?’

‘It could have been you, bleeding to death on that dirty pavement.’

‘Joe didn’t bleed to death.’

‘You know what I mean, you stupid man.’

Clumsily, he reached out to hug her but she shied away and punched him hard on the arm.

‘Hey! That hurt!’

‘You bloody deserve it,’ she sniffed, half-crying, half-laughing, then hitting him again, not quite as hard this time.

‘Look,’ he said, finally getting close enough to slide his arm round her. ‘It was a very strange situation. Maybe it could have been me. But it wasn’t. I’m okay.’

The expression of anguish on her face almost broke his heart.

‘Look,’ he repeated gently, ‘I’ve been a cop now for – what? Almost thirty years. Nothing like that has ever happened before. Nothing like it will ever happen again. It was a once-in-a-lifetime event, at the very most.’

Helen blew her nose on her sleeve, desperately wanting to be convinced.

However, they both knew, deep down, that such assertions were all just talk.

As husband and wife they didn’t do awkward silences. Holding his breath, Carlyle felt a tension such as he hadn’t experienced since their early courting days, those agonizing times when he worried that she might pack him in.

‘Poor Anita,’ she said finally.

Breathing out at last, Carlyle felt himself relax slightly. ‘I know,’ he murmured. ‘I know.’

‘Poor Anita,’ Helen repeated.

Poor Anita? She would have quite happily let one of her brothers beat me to a pulp
. ‘She is being well looked after,’ he said.

‘And the kids?’

‘Yes, them too,’ Carlyle nodded solemnly, happy to give any reassurance now that they were over the worst of their conversation.

‘And,’ Helen jabbed a gentle finger into his chest, ‘I had your bloody mother on the phone, moaning that she went to the loo at the Ritz and came back to find that you’d done a runner.’

His mother! Carlyle suddenly realized that he’d forgotten all about her. ‘Oh fuck.’ He remembered the conversation they’d been having at the time, but decided not to get into that with Helen right at this moment. ‘I’ll give her a call. Did she see all the fuss?’

‘I don’t think so. Anyway, she didn’t mention it.’ Helen pushed herself away from him. ‘She said how she told you that she was divorcing your dad.’

‘Er . . . yeah.’

Helen gave him one of her
Why didn
’
t you tell me this?
stares. ‘And?’

Carlyle shrugged. ‘Well, we didn’t really get into the details. She just dropped her little bombshell and then went off to the Ladies. Everything kicked off while she was still in there.’

‘You must have sensed something before.’

‘No.’ Carlyle shook his head. ‘Everything seemed pretty much normal to me. When she said she wanted to talk about my father, I assumed she was about to tell me that he had developed cancer or something.’

‘John . . .’ They both knew how he paid minimal attention to wider family issues beyond the walls of their own flat.

‘Come on!+-’ Carlyle allowed himself the smallest of smiles. ‘How could I have suspected anything? They’ve been married for almost fifty years! What’s the point of getting a divorce now?’

Helen gave him a sly look, one that he interpreted as saying:
Why not? You should never rule anything out
. He felt his balls shrink up inside him. Message received and understood.

‘Maybe she’s found someone else.’

‘Mum? Nah.’ Carlyle felt funny just thinking about the possibility.

‘Maybe
he
’
s
found someone else.’

‘I got the impression that this is all her initiative,’ Carlyle said. ‘I can’t see either of them ever playing away from home. So, I suppose that she’s just decided she needs a change – or something.’

‘Well, anyway, you need to talk to her about it. And to your dad, as well.’

‘Yes, yes – in a minute.’

Helen unmuted the television. A reporter was standing on the north side of the Thames, with MI6’s lego-like headquarters clearly identifiable on the other side. He was saying, ‘
It is very unusual for MI6 to become involved in this type of investigation. Sources have told the BBC that this is because the man killed in the Ritz Hotel . . .
’

One of the men
, Carlyle thought sourly.

‘
. . . is thought to have been a certain
,’ the reporter glanced down at his notes, ‘
. . . Omid Jarragh Ajab. Now
,
Mr Ajab is believed to have been one of the founders of the military wing of the Hamas militant movement which had control of the Gaza Strip. One line of thinking is that he was visiting London in order to buy weapons for Hamas. If this information is correct . . .
’

Not that you really have a clue whether it is true or not
, Carlyle thought.

‘. . .
then the prime suspects in his assassination will inevitably include Israel’s secret service, Mossad. Which, of course, is where MI6 comes in
.’

Carlyle had heard enough. He grabbed the remote from Helen and switched over to Sky Sports News.

‘Hey!’ Helen complained. ‘Don’t you want to hear more?’

‘No, I bloody don’t,’ Carlyle grumbled, taking solace in the latest football trivia. ‘I’ve heard more than enough already.’

‘I thought you were going to phone your parents,’ she reminded him.

‘I am,’ he lied.

‘It’s already late.’

‘I know. By the way, who is the best person at your place to talk to about Gaza?’

‘Fucking
hell
, John.’

‘What?’

‘I thought you said it was all over. There is no way that this can still be your case.’

‘No, no, of course not,’ he said quickly. ‘This is not even a police inquiry any more. It’s being handled by MI6.’ He recounted his meeting with Adam Hall, the youthful SIS guy, earlier in the day.

‘MI6?’ Helen snorted. ‘That’s great. That lot couldn’t find their way out of a paper bag.’

‘It doesn’t matter, anyway. If it is Mossad behind it, the guys who did this are probably safely back in Tel Aviv by now. The Israelis will tell anyone who complains to fuck right off while they smile smugly and do their usual “
We never confirm or deny anything
” routine.’

‘So why do you want to speak to someone at Avalon?’

‘You could say I’ve recently developed an interest in the subject.’

Helen let out the longest of sighs. ‘Well, our Gaza co-ordinator is a woman called Louisa Arbillot. She’s French and worked for Médecins Sans Frontières for years. She joined us about nine months ago.’

‘Can you get her to give me a call?’

‘She’s over there at the moment,’ Helen said, the lack of enthusiasm in her voice obvious, ‘but I’ll see what I can do. It might have to wait until she gets back next week.’

‘Thanks.’

‘I’m going for a bath,’ Helen yawned. ‘Remember to call your mother . . .’

A couple of Ibuprofen and a large glass of Jameson whiskey ensured that Carlyle slept soundly. By the time he reached the office the next day it was after eleven. Roche was sitting at Joe’s desk when he arrived, staring intently at the computer screen. Carlyle paused a moment to check her out. She was dressed in washed-out grey jeans, Gola trainers and a blue, long-sleeved T-shirt. Her hair was pulled back and she wasn’t wearing any make-up. As her fingers danced across the keyboard, he idly noticed that she wasn’t wearing any wedding or engagement ring.

‘How’s it going?’ he asked, flopping into his chair.

‘Not bad,’ Roche replied, not looking up. ‘Got some interesting stuff back from Phillips.’

Carlyle leaned back in his chair and yawned. ‘About the skeleton, you mean?’

‘No, that will still take a while. But she found a cartridge in the grave. Presumably the bullet that killed our victim.’ She swivelled in her seat to face Carlyle directly, a big grin on her face. ‘And she found the gun too.’

Carlyle sat up.

‘Presumably what happened was that the guy was shot and dumped in the shallow grave. The killer couldn’t keep the weapon about his person so he tossed it in too.’

‘Thank you, Sherlock Holmes.’