Shoot to Kill

Book 7: Inspector Carlyle

by James Craig

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

When French gangster Tuco Martinez threatens Carlyle and his family, the inspector has to call on the resources and skills of Dominic Silver to try and see him off. But Dom won?t do all the dirty work and so Carlyle has to go into hiding. Cut off from his home turf, both literally and metaphorically, Carlyle struggles to cope with the situation while meanwhile, back in London, the charismatic major, Christian Holroyd, is finally spiralling completely out of control?

Release date: August 7, 2014

Publisher: Constable

Print pages: 368

Sample

‘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.’

‘No,’ Harry said firmly. ‘The bomb!’

Maybe he would kill the old bastard, after all. ‘What bloody bomb?’

Harry cackled. ‘What kind of policeman are you? It’s at your bloody feet.’

‘Eh?’ Carlyle looked down. Next to his feet on the doormat was a small brown cardboard box that had been left next to the front door of the flat. Ten out of ten for observation, Inspector, he said wryly to himself.

‘I opened the door and saw it there,’ the old man explained, ‘so I shut it again and called the police.’

Carlyle frowned. ‘And what makes you think it’s a bomb?’

‘They’re all over the place,’ Harry panted, ‘I saw it on the news. There’s a whatdyacallit . . . a terror alert thingy. Bloody nutters trying to blow everything up. Those Al . . . kayeeda folk, they’re everywhere. They should be deported, the lot of them. Send ’em back to where they came from.’

That would be the provinces, then.

‘You’ve got to stay alert,’ the old man protested. ‘I wouldn’t stand there. You don’t want to get blown to smithereens.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ Carlyle took a step backwards and peered at the box. There was some writing on it but he couldn’t make it out. You really need to get your eyes tested, he thought, and vowed to make an appointment at his local opticians as soon as possible. Less reluctant to bow to the inevitable than her husband, Helen had been there a few months earlier to get a pair of reading glasses. Now she spent half of her life wandering round the flat trying to find the damn things and accusing him of misplacing them. It drove him mad.

Squatting down, he carefully lifted up the box and brought it closer to his face so that he could make out what it said.

Unbelievable.

Carlyle did a double-take.

Un-fucking-believable.

Bursting out laughing, he said, ‘Harry?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Did you order anything from Amazon recently?’

Dino Mottram finished his Suntory Whisky Cappuccino and signalled to a nearby waiter that he would like an espresso. Watching the last of his directors unsteadily leave the in-house private dining facility next to the main restaurant floor of Nobu London on Old Park Lane, he grunted his displeasure. ‘Fitzroy is pissed – again.’

Dropping his napkin on the table, the soon to be ex-Mayor of London Christian Holyrod, watched one of the waiters scuttle over and take the elderly gent by the arm before he had the chance to walk into a broom cupboard. He then let out a small groan of pleasure and patted his ever-expanding stomach. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you did put on an excellent lunch. And not just the wine; the Beef Tenderloin was excellent.’

‘That’s no excuse for over-indulging.’ Mottram shook his silver head sadly. ‘I just hope he doesn’t go back to the office and grope his secretary.’

Holyrod narrowed his eyes against the glare from the skylight atrium. ‘How very 1950s,’ he drawled.

‘I’m not joking,’ Dino said tersely. ‘We had to pay tens of thousands in compensation to the last one when he dropped his trousers in her office and asked for a blow job.’

‘Not ideal.’

‘No. The old bugger claimed he was having some kind of flashback to his days in the Diplomatic Service in Africa. Ridiculous. Anyway, I’ve told the new girl that if he does it again, just to kick him between the legs and run.’

‘Good advice.’

‘I’ll get him pensioned off as soon as I can,’ said Dino. ‘Monty Fitzroy pinpoints exactly why we need fresh blood like you to drag us kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century.’

Christian Holyrod smiled.

‘I am genuinely delighted that we have got you at last.’ The older man gripped him firmly by the arm. ‘The Hero of Helmand residing in the boardroom of Entomophagous Industries – what a coup!’

Holyrod bit his lip. Introduced to Dino Mottram only six weeks earlier, he’d only joined Entomophagous Industries on a whim, largely because of the name. Entomophagy – from the Greek éntomos or ‘insect’, and phăgein, ‘to eat’ – meaning ‘insect eating’, had tickled his fancy. That, and the six hundred thousand pounds per annum for three days’ work a month. He tried to affect something approaching humility. ‘Helmand . . . that was quite a while ago now.’

Mottram jabbed a meaty finger into the space between them, his green eyes gleaming with passion. ‘It wasn’t that long ago. Anyway, the time doesn’t matter. What matters is that you did it.’

‘I suppose so,’ Holyrod agreed, although it seemed that his Army days were several lifetimes ago.

‘A Boy’s Own story made flesh,’ Mottram beamed. ‘One of Britain’s best soldiers – and then a stellar political career to boot.’

‘You are too kind,’ said Holyrod, grimacing slightly. The reality was that if his political career had indeed been ‘stellar’, or anything like it, he wouldn’t be here now, touting himself around the business world, looking to earn some proper cash for once in his life. As Mayor, he had been Prime Minister Edgar Carlton’s natural successor. But somehow, despite all the polls, Carlton had scraped a second election win and appeared to have every intention of holding on to the real political power at Number Ten for as long as possible. For Holyrod, well into a second term as Mayor, there was nowhere to go. No one was surprised when he announced that he would not stand for a third term. If, as the saying goes, all political careers end in failure, at least he had avoided failing on the biggest stage. Now, however, he had to earn a living. ‘I’m looking forward to getting started.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Mottram agreed, nodding vigorously.

‘I’m afraid that I don’t really know much about the company and what it does.’

‘Don’t worry about that.’ Mottram gestured towards the door. ‘Half of that lot have been on the board for years and they haven’t got a clue either. The trick is never to admit to your ignorance. You know what they say: never apologize, never explain and all that.’

‘Even so, I need to get up to speed with what it is you – we – do.’

Mottram’s espresso appeared and he took a noisy sip. ‘We do lots of things,’ he said airily. ‘Cars, property, natural resources – it’s a real old-fashioned conglomerate. We even own a football club.’

Holyrod made a face. ‘Football’s not really my thing.’

‘You surprise me.’

‘Why?’

‘You know what they say,’ Dino smiled. ‘Sport is really nothing more than war without the shooting.’

‘And what,’ Holyrod said, ‘is the point of that?’

Dino gave him a quizzical look. ‘So you’re really not into sport?’

Holyrod pondered the question for a moment. ‘I’ll watch a bit of rugby now and again, maybe go to Twickenham for the odd international, but I can’t say that I follow football. It is all so totally . . . base.’

‘Don’t worry, I won’t make you go to any of the games.’ Dino sighed. ‘We’re not having a great season. Then again, we rarely do. What we do have, though, is Gavin Swann.’

Even the Mayor couldn’t have gone through life without coming across Swann, a regular on the front pages of the tabloids for reasons that had nothing to do with his sporting prowess. ‘Now him,’ Holyrod nodded, eager to show willing to his new boss, ‘I have heard of. More for what he’s got up to off the pitch, though.’

Dino smiled wanly. ‘He seems to have put the gambling and prostitutes behind him and have become a proper family man – or he will be soon. Now all he needs to do is score some goals. Apparently, he has helped sell almost half a million replica shirts in the last couple of years. And when he is not fit enough to play, which is fairly often, we can always pack him off to Taiwan or Singapore to open another of our themed restaurants.’

‘Do you – we – make any money out of it all?’ Holyrod asked.

‘Some. Not as much as we should. Swann’s agent bleeds us dry. He agreed a new contract less than a year ago and already wants to renegotiate. Every time he does that, he raises the bar for all the others. It’s a never-ending cycle.’

Holyrod frowned. ‘Why don’t you just tell him to get lost?’

‘If only it were that easy. Agents are a real pain in the arse. They contribute to football’s prune-juice effect – the money comes in at the top and goes straight out of the bottom. We manage to grab some of it on the way down, but only a little.’

‘So why not just sell the club?’

Dino smiled ruefully. ‘Two reasons. First, and most important, we’d lose a packet. We paid far too much for the bloody thing in the first place, I’m ashamed to say.’

‘And the second?’

‘The second is that if we hold on long enough, we might make a packet. Hope springs eternal.’

That doesn’t seem like much of a plan, Holyrod thought.

‘People are always saying the bubble is going to burst, but the whole thing just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Compare Gavin Swann with the Queen,’ Dino continued. ‘Twenty-five years ago, the Queen’s Christmas Day speech was watched by twenty-eight million people in the UK. This Christmas she’ll be lucky to get a quarter of that. And the only way for the Royals is down. Even the new lot. Mark my words, in a few years they wouldn’t even be able to get their own reality TV show. We make a few of those as well, by the way.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yeah. Nothing you’ve ever heard of. Hell, nothing I’ve ever heard of. Anyway, as I was saying, as the Royals have fallen, football has risen: more than twenty-three million people in Britain saw Gavin break his foot at the last World Cup – at two o’clock in the morning!’ Dino’s eyes misted over. ‘It is a monster that generates unbelievable wealth . . . and we can grab a piece of it.’

We’ll see, thought Holyrod.

‘It would help if – off the pitch, at least – Gavin were a bit more like David Beckham and a bit less like Diego Maradona.’

‘Mm,’ said Holyrod, not really sure what Dino meant.

‘Anyway,’ Dino continued, ‘it’s probably best not to spend too much time thinking about it all or it will drive you round the bend. In terms of the numbers, sport is only a small part of our Group. There are lots of things in the portfolio that are currently more lucrative – and less likely to make you want to blow your brains out. I’ll arrange some kind of induction.’

‘That would be great.’ Glancing at his watch, Holyrod got to his feet. ‘Thank you for an excellent lunch. Let’s hope we can build on all your good work.’

Dino Mottram showed no sign of wanting to move from where he was. ‘I’m sure,’ he said, looking up at his newest recruit, ‘that we are going to go and do great things together.’

‘Fantastic!’

‘And more importantly,’ Dino added, with a cheeky glint in his eye, ‘make some serious amounts of cash.’

‘Can I touch it?’

‘What?’

‘Is it real?’

Scowling, Sergeant Alison Roche looked down at the boy who had sidled up to her at the Eurostar terminal in London’s St Pancras station. He was a scruffy-looking kid but well dressed; maybe ten or eleven with frizzy hair and a cheeky expression on his face.

‘I am Sidney,’ he told her.

Looking the kid up and down, Roche said nothing. He was wearing a pristine pair of blue and white Adidas sneakers, a pair of baggy stonewashed jeans and a grey T-shirt with a picture of a Dalek on it in red, under the legend EXTERMINATE. In his left hand was a half-eaten king-size Mars Bar.

‘That’s my name,’ the boy persisted. His English was precise but with a clear trace of an accent. Presumably, he was French.

Roche cleared her throat. ‘Go away,’ she growled.

Standing his ground, Sidney looked thoughtfully at the Heckler & Koch MP5 in Roche’s hands, waiting for another question to pop into his head. ‘Have you ever fired it?’ he asked finally.

Roche felt an overwhelming urge to give him a hard slap round the back of the head. Instead, she took a deep breath. ‘Bugger off!’

‘Have you?’ Sidney persisted.

‘Of course I’ve fired it, you stupid little sod,’ she hissed. ‘Now clear off.’ Thoroughly exasperated, she scanned the heaving station concourse, looking for any sign of someone who was responsible for this annoying kid. People were rushing around in all directions – the usual frenetic scene you got at any mainline terminus – but no one seemed to be looking for Sidney. Bloody parents, Roche thought with the righteous anger of someone who had never had any offspring of their own. They shouldn’t be allowed to have children if they can’t look after them.

Sidney stuck the last of the Mars Bar into his mouth before extending an arm and letting the wrapper flutter to the floor.

Roche gestured angrily at the litter with the toe of her boot. ‘Pick that up!’

Happy to have gotten a rise out of the female copper, the kid grinned, revealing a mouth full of chocolate and caramel. ‘Are you going to arrest me?’ he asked, making no move to pick up his rubbish.

No, thought Roche, but a bullet in the foot might encourage you to lose the attitude. Subconsciously checking that the safety on the Heckler & Koch MP5 was on, she felt her finger tighten around the trigger and realized that she’d been holding her breath. Exhaling at length, she took a step away from the boy. Get a grip, she told herself. Shaking out some of the tension in her shoulders, she made a mental note not to recall this little episode the next time she was called for a session with the departmental shrink. Suddenly, she saw a middle-aged woman in a paisley kaftan waddle towards them, a look of concern etched into her face.

About fucking time.

‘Sidney,’ the woman squawked, ‘viens ici!’

‘Maman . . .’ the boy sighed, slumping his shoulders in the exasperated fashion of children the world over.

The woman grabbed her child by the arm and pulled him towards her with a force that seemed to Roche somewhat excessive. Catching the mother’s eye, Roche saw a look of horror cross her pudgy face. ‘Attention, chéri,’ she whispered theatrically. ‘Elle est armée.’

‘I know,’ Sidney said in English. He beamed. ‘It’s cool.’

‘Tu m’emmerdes à la fin, Sidney.’ The woman dragged him away, Roche glaring at her as she went. If she didn’t like the son, she liked the mother even less. We’re supposed to be here to protect you, she reflected, and you look at us like we’re shit. Bending down, she picked up the discarded Mars Bar wrapper and tossed it on to a nearby café table.

Sitting at the table, Commissaire de Police Jean-Pierre Grumbach sipped his espresso and gave her a rueful shrug. ‘Another happy member of the public goes about her business.’

Roche felt like screaming. She was more than ten hours into a fourteen-hour shift, and for almost all of that time she had been babysitting the Frenchman and his colleague, Lieutenant Ginette Vincendeau, along with their prisoner, a sallow youth called Alain Costello. ‘In France,’ she replied stiffly, ‘I suppose the police are universally loved?’

‘No, no.’ Shaking his head, Grumbach sat back in his metal chair. He was a tall, elegant man, with a thick head of grey hair and laughter lines around his eyes, which looked good on his tanned face. In a black, single-breasted Christian Dior suit and a crisp white shirt, open at the neck, he looked less like a policeman than some kind of high-end businessman. Irritatingly, he had been hitting on her all day. Roche might have been more receptive to his flirting if it wasn’t for the fact that it was so shameless – that, and the fact that they were still on the clock. ‘There it is just the same. They need us, but they hate us. Or, at least, they want us kept out of sight, along with the bad guys.’

‘It’s true,’ Vincendeau nodded. Slumped over a cappuccino, she sat opposite Grumbach; a short, dark woman, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. Her SIG Pro SP2009 was clearly visible, peeking out from a shoulder-holster under her leather jacket. ‘But people in England are still not so used to seeing cops with guns.’

‘They should be by now,’ Roche shrugged. ‘We’re at airports, stations, even shopping centres. SO15 patrol the streets every day.’

‘That’s one thing I didn’t understand,’ Vincendeau said, gesturing at her prisoner. ‘Why did the Counter Terrorism Command Unit grab this one?’

‘The whole thing was a big mistake,’ Grumbach said, reaching across the table and gently punching Alain Costello on the shoulder. ‘They picked him up by accident. Funny, huh?’

Costello grunted but didn’t look up from the game – which Roche recognized as Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories – that he was playing on his PSP console. In handcuffs.

Roche felt embarrassment mingle with her frustration. It was true that the whole thing had been a bit of a cock-up. If SO15 hadn’t mistaken Costello for a suspected North African terrorist by the name of Mehdi Zerdab, Roche would have had nothing to do with him. As it turned out, he was only a low-level drug dealer, albeit high on the wanted list of the Préfecture de Police. To be fair, it was a relatively easy mistake to have made. The distinction between drug smugglers and terrorists was becoming more blurred all the time. In the last month alone, SO15 had seized seven machine guns and more than a dozen automatic pistols from terror suspects with well-documented connections to the illegal drugs industry. It was a symbiotic relationship that both sides were increasingly happy to exploit: the terrorist groups gained cash and the traffickers, protection. Smugglers carrying cannabis, cocaine, ecstasy and heroin were known to transport weapons on behalf of their business partners.

Forty-eight hours earlier, following a tip-off, SO15 had picked Costello up in a raid on a Brixton flat. The place was supposed to be home to a terrorist cell. Instead of the anticipated haul of Jihadi propaganda and homemade explosives, however, the police found twelve kilos of cocaine, twenty thousand Euros in cash – and Costello. The little runt had been caught trying to flee through a bedroom window, having st. . .