Acts of Violence

Book 10: Inspector Carlyle

by James Craig

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

Awakening the sleeping dragon... Smooth expat Michael Nicholson is a fixer, getting on by doing favours for the rich and powerful in booming China. When he makes the mistake of getting too close to one of his clients, the wife of a leading Communist Party official, the ageing Lothario fears for his life as a vengeful husband decides to put his house in order. So when a domestic dispute from the other side of the world leads to a shoot-out in a luxury penthouse apartment in Chelsea, an ex-cop called Marvin Taylor is one of the casualties. Inspector John Carlyle is little more than a casual onlooker until Taylor's widow turns up, looking for answers. The inspector is drawn into the morass of dealing and double-dealing, much to the dismay of his boss, Carole Simpson, who wants him to focus on Barbara Hutton, a Bloomsbury housewife who may - or may not - be a former German terrorist wanted for a forty-year-old murder... 'A cracking read' BBC Radio 4 'Fast paced and very easy to get quickly lost in' Lovereading.com

Release date: February 4, 2016

Publisher: Constable

Print pages: 320

Sample

Rush hour was over, but the relentless hum of traffic from the King’s Road – reassuring and irritating at the same time – never abated. From the direction of Brompton Oratory came the sound of angry horns, followed by the wail of a siren further in the distance – probably an ambulance heading in the direction of the Cromwell Hospital. Gazing up at the darkening sky, Michael Nicholson took a drag on his Rothmans King Size and wondered what exactly he was doing back in London. When he was growing up, the city had seemed impossibly alive and exciting; now, after almost a decade living in Shanghai, it seemed about as dynamic as Derby or Carlisle – and almost as alien.

With a gentle nod of his head, Nicholson expelled the thought along with the smoke; he had never been given to introspection and his forties didn’t much seem like the time to start. Focusing his attention on the cigarette, he took a last drag, watching the end flare in the gloom before flicking the stub over the edge of the terrace and into the street below. Throwing back his head, he quaffed the gin and tonic he was holding in one hand, before wiping his mouth with the back of the other. It was his third gin of the night, so far, and he was beginning to feel pleasantly woozy. On average, he would get through six or seven gins, along with a bottle or two of wine over dinner, before falling into bed. It wasn’t so much that he was an alcoholic, more that he needed to self-medicate against the boredom.

How long would he be stuck here?

It was a question that was impossible to answer. Resisting the temptation to drop the empty glass into the street below, Nicholson watched one of the security team pass in front of the building. ‘One of Marvin Taylor’s finest,’ he hiccuped, as the man disappeared from view round the corner into the alleyway that led to the underground garage and the service entrance. ‘Trained killers, all of ’em.’ Stifling another hiccup, he tried to remember this particular guy’s name but it had gone. As far as he could see, each of the nine guys on Taylor’s crew were interchangeable – all in their early twenties, fresh-faced, with crew cuts and the pumped-up torsos of bodybuilders. God, they made him feel old, conscious of a steady decline when he should still be in his prime.

Bastards.

At least Marvin Taylor himself was a fair way down the same path towards decrepitude. A small, fifty-something black guy, Marvin liked to complain about his bad back. He looked as if he couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag. His ‘boys’, however, were something else altogether.

Taylor was an ex-policeman who ran his own security firm, promising ‘100 per cent professionalism and discretion’. Nicholson was less than impressed at their first meeting, but Taylor had been recommended by a former chum at Eton. Anyway, it wasn’t as if Nicholson had much to compare him with. After all, he didn’t go round hiring bodyguards every day of the week. And the testimonial from the pal, a rogue called Charlie Simmons, was genuine enough. Simmons was the kind of wheeler-dealer who made Nicholson look almost respectable by comparison. One particularly dodgy scheme left him on the wrong side of a bunch of Nigerian businessmen fearing for his life. In the end, Charlie had survived through a mixture of charm, cash stolen from his parents and Taylor-supplied muscle.

When pitching his services, Taylor was careful to imply that all of his employees were ex-Special Forces, or similar. That was highly questionable. Only some of the men was British; the rest were a random selection of men from around the globe. Perusing their résumés, Nicholson had joked to Wang Lei that they were getting the ‘United Colors of Close Protection’. All he got for his trouble was a blank look, quickly followed by a scowl that made Nicholson wince. He had faced up to the woman’s lack of a sense of humour a long time ago but it could still grate.

Special Forces or not, the boys that Marvin Taylor had protecting the flat knew how to handle a gun. Each of them carried a Heckler & Koch MP5, the kind of weapon that every other policeman in London seemed to carry these days, as well as a Glock 22 pistol.

Nicholson knew full well that it had to be illegal, armed private contractors wandering round SW7 like it was the Wild West, but Wang Lei was definitely impressed by the show of force. Initially, Nicholson had been determined to raise the issue with Taylor but, in the end, he had avoided the subject. Over the years, he had come to realize that one of his great skills was not asking questions.

Turning his glass upside down, he let the ice and lemon follow the cigarette butt towards the street, just as a second guard appeared on the pavement below. As the man looked up, Nicholson hailed him with the empty glass and got the briefest of nods in return. They must get so bloody bored. Nicholson knew that there would be a third guy somewhere nearby. Marvin’s nine-man team was split into three groups, running eight-hour shifts.

All of this at a cost of £12,000 a day.

Twelve grand.

Plus VAT.

And expenses.

Nicholson reflected that Taylor Security Services did not come cheap. Maybe I went into the wrong business. The whole set-up seemed to be more than a little over the top for Chelsea, but that wasn’t his call; Wang Lei, convinced that a bunch of killer ninjas were about to descend on them at any minute, had insisted that they invest in a full-on close protection service. To be fair, she was picking up the tab, although Nicholson could think of a lot of things that Wang would be better off spending her money on: him, for a start.

A familiar sense of frustration washed over him as he fished a cigarette packet from the pocket of his cords. The light was fading now and the last warmth of the day had gone. Shivering in the cool night air, he took the last coffin-nail from the crumpled packet and stuck it between his lips, resisting the urge to head back inside.

‘Michael, Mother says “What are you doing?”’

Making no effort to keep the annoyance from his face, Nicholson turned to confront the youth. ‘I was just having a smoke,’ he snapped, wondering where he’d left his lighter. Holding up his hand, he waved Exhibit A for the defence, the crumpled fag packet. ‘You know your mother doesn’t let me smoke in the house.’

Under an unruly mop of jet-black hair, Ren Jiong grinned malevolently. In the sanctity of his bedroom, the boy could get away with smoking as much weed as he liked. Nicholson himself was kept on a much tighter leash.

‘The smoke upsets her.’

Nicholson counted to ten. The idiot was the bane of his life; a spoiled brat with the emotional intelligence and maturity of a ten year old – a ten-year-old monkey, at that. Living in England had totally failed to smooth away the rough edges. Ren’s parents must have spent the best part of £600,000 in school fees alone, all of it wasted. The best education that money could buy had done nothing other than refine the youth’s taste in expensive booze, fast cars and even faster women. Not yet twenty, he already had the air of a second-rate playboy.

And, Nicholson reflected, I should know all about that.

The urge to slap the boy into the middle of next week was tempered by the fact that he was his meal ticket. Ren Junior had been his entrée to the Ren family. The extravagantly rich and powerful father, Ren Qi, and the bored and sexy mother Wang Lei, were like something out of a Chinese remake of a 1980s American soap opera. They were so two-dimensional that only by an immense act of willpower had Nicholson been able to convince himself that they were, indeed, real. Even now, their story was hard to credit. Ren Senior was a long-time political hack, the son of one of the ‘Eight Elders’ of the Communist Party, a ‘princeling’ of Chinese politics. His crass populism would have appeared commonplace in the West. In China, however, its novelty helped spur his rise, firstly as a provincial governor, then as a member of the Central Politburo. There was even talk of him getting the top job one day. Nicholson knew the fact that he was being mentioned at all probably meant it would never happen. These things were fairly random, like the election of a new Pope; luck and timing as always would play a decisive part. Even so, Ren Qi was definitely a man worth knowing.

Wang Lei, meanwhile, was the youngest daughter of General Wang Dejiang, a prominent figure in the Red Army when the Party came to power in 1949. General Wang fell out of favour during the Cultural Revolution and his daughter was forced to work in a butcher’s shop. However, the family was rehabilitated and Wang studied as a lawyer before meeting her husband at the start of his political career. Ren Junior came along a couple of years later; their only child.

When the time came to further the boy’s education, where better to send him than Eton, the home of elites from around the world? And who better to facilitate that than an Old Boy like Nicholson, a smooth fixer who worked in China and could bridge the cultural divide.

Wristwatches had provided Nicholson with his big break into the wider Chinese establishment. He had been selling off a small selection of Breitlings, Rolexes and Omegas for a fellow ex-pat with liquidity problems following a nasty divorce involving a transvestite cabaret singer and a bitter custody battle over the family Shih Tzu. Ren Qi, a connoisseur of such items, had heard of the sale and arranged for a private viewing of the collection at his Beijing home. After inspecting the goods, Ren had handed Nicholson a large tumbler of BenRiach and an envelope filled with cash.

‘Will twenty thousand US be enough?’ the politician asked.

Nicholson knew better than to check the money. ‘I’m sure that is more than sufficient.’ Not least as he had told the seller the best he could hope for was $14k. He lifted the glass to his lips and took a mouthful, letting the single malt linger on his tongue as he watched Ren slip a GMT-Master on to his wrist.

‘I like a man who delivers,’ Ren smiled, still staring at the timepiece.

‘That’s me,’ Nicholson smirked, ‘always at your disposal.’

‘There is one other thing . . .’ Ren reached for his glass.

‘Yes?’ Trying not to seem too eager, Nicholson slowly drained his glass.

‘My wife tells me you went to Eton . . .’

Getting Ren Junior into Eton had been a breeze, on the back of a large donation to the school’s social fund. Keeping him there was more of a struggle. Nicholson had to work tirelessly to ensure that the boy avoided expulsion, despite Junior’s complete lack of interest in his studies and a steady stream of extra-curricular indiscretions.

This babysitting role meant that Nicholson was spending more time in England than he had done in decades. His profile in China duly suffered; to Nicholson’s mind, Ren Senior had not kept his end of the bargain – the anticipated contracts and fees simply never materialized. Increasingly, the family had used him as a glorified servant, little more than an English butler.

Now, under virtual house arrest, Nicholson wondered where it had all gone wrong.

Probably should have kept my hands off the missus.

In the first few years, Wang Lei had never looked at him twice. But then she started spending more and more time in the UK, to be close to the boy, and, well, things had just happened. The lady of the house exercised her droit du seigneur. The husband, busy climbing the greasy pole in China, may or may not have known what was going on. Either way, he didn’t seem to care. Not until the relationship became so open that it was deemed to be a threat to his political career.

Over the last year or so, Nicholson had grown profoundly weary of the whole carry-on. Endless angry phone calls between London and Beijing, Wang refusing to let her son return to China and, now, the paranoid fear that their lives were under threat from some kind of Red Army hit squad. Why didn’t they just get a divorce, like normal people did? Nicholson himself had been divorced twice already; it was no big deal.

All he wanted now was to get back to his current wife and family; get back to his rather modest existence in Shanghai in a gated community of cookie cutter houses that were supposed to mimic Prince Charles’s idea of a typical English village, complete with cobbled streets, mock Tudor houses and a local pub called the Green Giant which, bizarrely, served only Guinness, Foster’s and Coke. The place was deadly dull, home only to a handful of ex-pats who spent most of their time there hiding from the droves of Chinese tourists who came to have their photographs taken in front of the red telephone box (with no phone inside) or the black cab that didn’t go anywhere as it didn’t have an engine.

Despite its shortcomings, as soon as things settled down, Nicholson was going to head back there like a shot. He would put the whole Ren episode behind him and return to the safer business of selling watches and other luxury items to less well-connected locals.

From somewhere overhead came the whine of a Jumbo’s engines as it made its final descent towards Heathrow.

‘Michael, come inside.’

It was an order, rather than a request.

Gripping his glass tightly, Nicholson resisted the temptation to smash it down on the kid’s head. The need for more nicotine came over him in a rush. Where was his bloody lighter? He must have left it inside. ‘I’m just coming.’

‘Hurry up.’ Ren turned and disappeared through the sliding doors into the living room.

‘Fuck off, you little shit,’ Nicholson hissed, once he was sure that the boy was safely out of earshot. Tossing the empty cigarette packet over the railings, he watched it float down towards the street. For the briefest moment, he toyed with the idea of throwing himself off the terrace, ending it all here. But the thought quickly passed. There was no way he felt suicidal, he was simply not the type. Anyway, it was time for another G&T; a bloody large one. Yawning, he ran a hand through his greased-back hair and reluctantly wandered inside.

Sitting in the cab of his Nissan van, Marvin Taylor watched Michael Nicholson disappear back inside the penthouse apartment four floors above. Finishing off his can of Coke, Taylor stuffed the last mouthful of Coronation Chicken wrap into his mouth. Chewing contentedly, he thought back to a conversation with his daughter in the supermarket earlier in the day.

‘Why’s it called Coronation chicken?’ Laurie, nine, had asked in that inquisitive way that all kids had.

For several moments, Marvin stared vacantly at the packet. ‘Dunno,’ he said finally.

‘There must be a reason,’ Laurie persisted.

‘Dunno,’ Marvin repeated. ‘It’s just chicken.’

‘But—’

‘Hey, what do you call a crazy chicken?’

Laurie made a face. ‘Dad . . .’

‘A cuckoo cluck,’ Taylor chuckled. ‘Get it?’

Recalling the conversation made him smile all over again. By now, Laurie would be wrapped up in bed, fast asleep hopefully, while her mum had her feet up watching Grand Designs, or something similar, on the telly, a glass of chilled white wine in her hand. He, on the other hand, was sitting here staring at an empty street in one of the richest neighbourhoods in the world. Marvin was cool with working nights but he didn’t like Chelsea much. Not because he was a Spurs fan, although that didn’t help, more because hanging out with wealthy people always left him feeling uncomfortable and discontented, just like most of his clients seemed to be.

In Marvin’s experience, both as a cop and as a private sector businessman, very wealthy people were uniquely unable to distinguish between perception and reality. Invariably, this meant that they made shit clients. Even so, the most important part of his business by a long way involved babysitting the paranoid rich of SW3, SW7, W8 and neighbouring postcodes.

After leaving the Met, Marvin had started Taylor Security Services – TSS – as an all-round security firm: installing alarms, protecting buildings, providing bouncers to nightclubs and so on. However, he quickly realized that the only area where there was any real money to be made was in close protection for SHNWIs. Super High Net Worth Individuals were now something approaching 90 per cent of TSS’s business. Over the last few years, he had seen it all: the actor’s daughter who wanted protection from her abusive, A-list father; the politician who paid a retainer of two grand a week so that a TSS operative would take his latest mistress shopping at Westfield on demand; the footballer who thought having a bodyguard would help him pull in West End nightclubs.

They were as nothing, however, compared to his latest clients. This trio was easily amongst the weirdest customers he’d ever had. Two foreigners and a Brit under self-imposed house arrest for almost a week now; too scared to come out of their building, only answering their front door for regular takeaways and deliveries from the local off-licence. What precisely they were scared of, he didn’t know. The dynamics of their relationship Marvin couldn’t quite fathom either. The woman was clearly in charge – she was the one paying the bills – but the English bloke? Was he her boyfriend, or just some lackey? And where did the boy – presumably her son – fit in?

Not that the details really mattered. Marvin had gotten the gig through an old Met contact and he was genuinely grateful for it. Stuffing the food packaging into a small plastic bag, he glanced at his watch. A long, boring night stretched ahead of him. Normally, he would delegate night-shift duties but when there was a no-show, like this evening, he had to fill the gap. All too often, guys just wouldn’t turn up for their shift. The people-management side of things routinely drove him mad. The young guys he worked with seemed to have no sense of responsibility. ‘Maybe I should have stayed on the Force,’ he muttered to himself, as he reached over for a battered copy of World Football magazine from the back seat and began flicking through it.

Engrossed in a feature about Liam Brady’s time at Juventus in the 1980s, he scowled when the walkie-talkie radio sitting on the dashboard cackled into life.

‘All clear.’

Letting the magazine fall into his lap, Marvin picked up the radio and hit the call button. ‘Another tough night on the front line, huh?’

‘Yeah. Christ, this is sooo fucking boring.’

‘Think of the money, McGilroy,’ Marvin told him.

‘Yeah, but still.’ James McGilroy was a thickset Irishman who had done two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan with the British Army. By comparison, the mean streets of Knightsbridge could be rather tedious. The only civilian he’d seen in the last hour was a woman in a burqa who had politely crossed the street to ignore him as she headed home, a Harrods plastic bag in each hand. ‘This is a strange gig, boss.’

Marvin liked it when the boys called him ‘boss’; it made him feel that he knew what he was doing, that he was the brains of the operation. ‘They’re all strange,’ he observed. ‘At least this one pays well.’

McGilroy grunted.

‘Where’s Kelvin?’ Kelvin Douglas, McGilroy’s buddy, was another ex-squaddie.

‘Taking a piss.’

‘OK.’ Marvin signed off. ‘Keep ’em peeled.’ Tossing the radio on to the passenger seat, he returned to his magazine.

‘How’s Taylor?’ Looking vaguely pleased with himself, Kelvin Douglas appeared from round the back of a dumpster, zipping up his flies.

‘He’s OK,’ McGilroy mumbled. ‘Not all that happy at having to be out with us tonight, no doubt, but he’ll live.’

‘Well, Chris said he had a hot date tonight with Annie, what do you expect?’

‘I suppose.’ Chris Goddard, the third member of their team, had been seeing his nursery teacher girlfriend for almost a year. ‘But you would have thought the novelty would have worn off by now.’

‘Apparently not.’ Reaching into the pocket of his leather jacket, Douglas retrieved an outsized roll-up. ‘Fancy a toke?’ he asked, gesturing towards the low wall that ran along the back of the flats.

McGilroy frowned. ‘Not on duty.’

‘Come on,’ Douglas grinned, ‘it’s not like we’re in Nahr-e Saraj, is it?’

‘No,’ McGilroy agreed. ‘I suppose not.’

‘God. That seems like a lifetime ago, now.’

‘I needed a smoke in bloody Helmand,’ McGilroy reflected. ‘But what I really fancy right now is a nice beer.’

‘Good shout.’ Douglas gestured towards the end of the alley with his thumb, as if he was trying to hitchhike, searching out an imaginary ride. ‘There’s an offie just down the road.’

‘Regardless of the circumstances, that really would be taking the mickey.’ McGilroy ran his hand over the grip of his Glock. The MP5s were safely locked up in TSS’s offices, but even the handgun made him nervous. He understood that they were only to reassure the clients – Marvin liked to call it his USP for the high-end market – and the woman in the flat above them was clearly paying through the nose for armed protection. But it still felt wrong. Their handguns were unloaded but it was still totally illegal to be carrying a concealed weapon on a London street; possession of a firearm and ammunition was in clear breach of the standing orders familiar to every British soldier and fundamentally was contrary to the law of the land.

In his head, McGilroy ran through the list of crimes he could be charged with: possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life; possession of ammunition with intent to endanger life; possession of a prohibited firearm; possession of ammunition for a Section 1 Firearm without a certificate. If they got caught, jail was inevitable. He remembered the case of a guy in Cardiff – a regular family guy – who had brought back a pistol from his tour in Afghanistan and kept it in his sock drawer as a souvenir. A judge had given him two years in jail. McGilroy seemed to remember that the sentence had been overturned on appeal, but only after a right palaver. If it came to it, he and Kelvin wouldn’t be so lucky.

Marvin Taylor liked to imply that he had it all covered; if necessary, he could call in a few favours from old colleagues to make any charges go away. But that was highly doubtful. McGilroy liked Marvin, but he knew a bullshit story when he heard it. ‘Ah, well,’ he mumbled to himself, ‘you’ve made your bed. You signed up for this gig. No point in blaming the boss if it goes tits up.’ He watched Douglas amble over to the wall, sit down and light up his spliff. Inhaling deeply, he began coughing.

‘Good stuff?’ McGilroy asked.

‘Not bad.’ Kelvin extended his arm, offering up the spliff.

McGilroy hesitated.

‘Don’t worry,’ Kelvin continued, taking another quick puff, ‘it’s going to be another quiet night. You know it and I know it. The clients are safe and sound upstairs. Marv is probably having a kip in the van. Anyway, we’re entitled to a five-minute break, aren’t we?’

* * *

The dope – a none too shabby Moroccan black – was pleasant enough but had little effect when it came to making McGilroy feel relaxed. Sitting on the wall felt like slacking off, and slacking off had always made him nervous, even when he was a young kid. On the other hand, the thought of walking aimlessly round the block for the next six-and-a-half hours did not appeal much either. The night before, McGilroy calculated that he had made 279 circuits of the building, moving at the slowest walking pace he could manage. It felt like being a rat in a lab experiment.

In the alley, shielded from prying eyes on the street, the two men finished the joint and fell into a rambling conversation that exhausted the usual topics – girls, guns and booze – before getting on to the subject of darts. Kelvin was opining on the relative merits of Phil Taylor and someone called Barney, when McGilroy sensed a movement off to his left. Slowly turning his head, he felt something cold brush against his cheek. At the edge of his vision, he could just make out the silhouette of a silencer. Oh, shit, he thought, stifling a nervous giggle, Marv is not going to be pleased.

‘Jesus.’ Jumping up from the wall, Kelvin Douglas reflexively reached for his empty weapon. There was a gentle pop and he went sprawling face down into the gutter.

Marv’s not going to be pleased at all. Staring into the middle distance, McGilroy let his eyes lose their focus. Keeping his breathing under control, he concentrated on turning his body to stone.

‘Boss? Boss, are you there?’ The words finally began to penetrate Marvin Taylor’s brain and he jolted himself awake, sending the half-read magazine sliding out of his lap and under the van’s steering column. Hell. How long had he been dozing? What would happen if the bloody clients had seen? Fumbling with the radio, he hit the Call button.

‘Yes?’ he said tersely, trying to hide the grogginess in his voice. ‘What is it?’

James McGilroy’s response was equally terse. ‘We’ve got company.’

‘What?’

‘Contact.’

What?. . .