The Lesson

Book 18: Inspector Carlyle

by James Craig

Genres: Crime Fiction

Synopsis

Praise for James Craig:

'A cracking read' BBC Radio 4

'Fast paced and very easy to get quickly lost in' Lovereading.com

'Craig writes like an angel' Crimefictionlover.com

Release date: February 1, 2024

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 90000

Sample

Without warning, the car veered off the tarmac, crunching over gravel, then sliding to a halt by the side of the road.

‘Why have you stopped?’ Sitting in the back seat, Lucy Bridge peered into the darkness. Trees lined either side of the two-lane blacktop. She let out a little groan. Nature wasn’t her thing: the countryside was far too messy and you could never get a decent coffee.

By the look of things they were in the middle of a forest. Not that far out of London, but a pretty good approximation of the middle of nowhere. They hadn’t seen another car in the last half-hour.

‘Where the fuck are we?’

Flexing his jaw, Curtis Otten kept his hands on the steering wheel in the ten-to-two position as he contemplated the middle distance.

‘What are you playing at?’ Bridge was irritated rather than concerned. She was wearily familiar with the boys and their games.

Otten waited a beat, then glared at her in the rear-view mirror. ‘Get out.’

‘What?’

‘You heard him, Luce.’ In the front passenger seat, Ryan Grant offered an apologetic shrug. ‘You need to get out.’

‘That’s not funny.’ Clasping her tote to her chest, Bridge made no effort to move.

Grant was playing his usual role, the good cop to Otten’s bad. ‘We’re not joking,’ he said quietly.

‘I want to go home,’ Bridge blurted. ‘Stop messing about. This isn’t funny any more.’

Taking one hand from the wheel, Otten released his seatbelt. ‘Don’t make me drag you out.’ He scowled. ‘I’m pissed off enough as it is. I should’ve been at the Lane tonight.’

‘We’re doing you a favour,’ Grant joked, alluding to the fact that Spurs were currently two down to a bunch of no-hopers from somewhere in Eastern Europe. ‘You should be thanking us.’

‘Shut your face.’ Muttering something about club boss Daniel Levy’s parentage, Otten rocked forward as if he was about to headbutt the steering wheel.

Why did I ever get in the car with these idiots? Pulling out her phone, Bridge was relieved to see a couple of bars of network coverage. At least she’d be able to call a cab.

As she started googling ‘local taxi’, Otten snatched the phone from her hand. ‘I’ll take that.’

‘Hey. Give it back.’

‘No phones.’ He pulled open the glove compartment and shoved it inside.

Bridge caught a glimpse of his service-issue Glock. You shouldn’t have that off duty, she thought.

Otten shoved the compartment door shut. ‘You’ll get it back tomorrow.’

‘What is this? A kidnapping?’

‘Just get out the fucking car.’

‘I suppose I can take my coat?’ she asked sarcastically.

Otten thought about it. ‘Sure.’

‘We’re not savages,’ Grant announced.

‘No, just morons. Just wait till Tony hears about this.’

‘Whose idea d’you think this was?’ Otten sneered.

What? Bridge tried to process the idea that her boyfriend would have sanctioned her being dumped in the middle of nowhere.

‘Tony’s not happy with you, Luce,’ Grant advised. ‘You’ve been giving him a hard time recently.’

‘I’ll kill the bastard when I get hold of him.’

‘I think that’s what he’s hoping.’ Otten chortled. ‘He likes a bit of slap and tickle, our Tone.’

‘That’s Chief Inspector Tone, to you, son,’ Grant giggled, giving their boss his proper title.

Otten scratched his nose. ‘Does Chief Inspector Brown make you dress up?’

‘What?’ It could hard to keep up with these two: their thought processes were always going off in random directions, like six-year-olds fuelled with litre bottles of Coke.

‘Does he like to do it when you’ve got your uniform on, like one of those … thingies?’

‘Strippergrams,’ Grant offered.

‘Thank you.’

‘You know, like those birds we got for Dean’s stag do.’ A dreamy look crossed Grant’s face. ‘Remember that blonde girl? The one who gave hand-jobs in the bogs for twenty quid a pop?’

‘Yes, all right, you berk, I’ve got it.’ Otten leered at the gagging Bridge. ‘Well? Do you have to get dressed up for Tone to get it up?’

‘Mind your own business, you dirty little bastard.’

‘You know where he is at the moment, don’t you?’ Otten sneered. ‘He’s off in Venice on a mini-break. Banging his missus while thinking of you.’

‘Verona,’ Grant corrected him.

‘What?’

‘They went to Verona. It’s not the same as Venice.’

‘Whatever,’ Otten muttered. ‘It’s in Italy, right?’

This isn’t happening. Bridge took a deep breath and tried to reassert her position as the designated adult. Despite being a couple of years younger than her abductors, she was the only one of them who could make a reasonable claim to being a grown-up. ‘When I report this, you pair are going to be in right trouble.’

‘If you were to try to report this,’ Otten countered, ‘you’d be out on your arse.’

‘Are you kidding? Have you boys never heard of #MeToo?’

‘Don’t be fucking stupid.’ Otten chuckled. ‘This is the Met we’re talking about. That kind of woke American bullshit doesn’t fly in Charing Cross nick.’

Bridge tried to ignore the truth of what he was saying. ‘You’ll get kicked out.’

‘No, we won’t,’ Otten asserted, ‘because you won’t say a peep.’

‘And why not?’

‘Martin Campbell,’ Grant said quietly.

‘Who?’

‘The guy at the house party in King’s Cross,’ Grant reminded her, ‘with his pubes dyed green.’

‘The bloke who was dancing on the roof of a taxi wearing nothing but a pair of Homer Simpson socks?’ Bridge smiled at the memory. ‘It was a miracle he didn’t do himself an injury.’

‘He was lucky his girlfriend quietly handed over his ketamine,’ Otten said, ‘so no one got nicked.’

Bridge didn’t remember that part.

‘If the DPS were to get wind of the fact that you kept some Class A for your own personal use,’ Otten continued, ‘well …’ The Department of Professional Standards was the latest name for Internal Affairs.

‘Ketamine’s Class B.’ Bridge had learned the list off by heart: amphetamines, barbiturates, cannabis, codeine, Ritalin, synthetic cannabinoids, mephedrone and ketamine. Possession got you up to five years in prison; supply had a tariff of up to seven. ‘Anyway, I didn’t nick any drugs. I don’t use them, for fuck’s sake.’

‘Yeah, right.’ Otten snorted.

‘The evidence uncovered by the DPS might suggest otherwise.’ At least Grant looked vaguely apologetic for threatening to stitch her up.

‘The stuff was never logged into Evidence,’ Otten noted.

‘What happened to it?’

Grant started to say something but Otten shut him up. ‘Never you mind.’

‘This is stupid.’ Taking a deep breath, Bridge made one last attempt to assert some control over the situation. At the end of the day, they were both pretty stupid, easily led. If Tony wanted to take them in one direction, she could move them in another. ‘You’ve had your laugh; now let’s get back.’

Otten growled like an angry German Shepherd.

‘I’m not getting out.’

‘C’mon, Luce,’ Grant pleaded. ‘Be reasonable. We’ve got a long enough drive back as it is.’

‘D’you think we’re doing this for fun?’ Otten whined. ‘I’m missing the football for this bollocks.’

‘Oops.’ Consulting his phone, Grant let out a girlish giggle. ‘Looks like Red Star Whatnot have just got a third.’

Otten unleashed a howl of pain, as if he’d just been stabbed.

‘Oh, no, hold on. VAR. Offside, or something. Disallowed.’

‘Stop winding me up, you fucker, or I’ll leave you here, too.’

‘I’m just saying what’s happening, guy.’ Grant held up his hands in mock supplication. ‘It’s not my fault you support a totally crap team.’

Bridge waited for the stream of expletives to abate before appealing to the good cop. ‘Ry, come on.’

Grant avoided eye contact. ‘You’ve got to do what he says, Luce.’

‘But we’re in the middle of nowhere.’

‘That’s the idea.’

For the first time, she considered the possibility that the idiots might actually leave her here. ‘What am I supposed to do?’ She cranked up the irritation in her voice to peak levels. ‘How am I supposed to get back?’

‘Think of it as a kind of … initiative test.’ Otten’s ugly mug broke into a crooked grin.

‘Yeah, right. If there was ever a guy who’d fail an initiative test, it’s you.’

‘That’s good, Luce,’ Grant chortled. ‘Nice one.’

‘Shut up, idiot.’

‘C’mon, Curtis, it was just a joke.’

‘Moron.’ Reaching into the back of the car, Otten tried to grab Bridge’s leg but ended up squeezing her knee. ‘Just get out the fucking car.’

‘But why?’ she complained. ‘Why are you doing this?’

‘Why d’you think?’ He looked at her like she was stupid. ‘To teach you a fucking lesson, that’s why.’

Dang Hieu watched the delivery guys sharing a joke outside the pizza restaurant across the road. Every so often, a waitress would come out and hand one of them a couple of pizzas to put into the box on the back of his scooter. Then the delivery guy would zoom off to deliver the food, returning fifteen or twenty minutes later to wait for the next delivery.

‘It’s the gig economy, mate,’ Si had explained.

Dang didn’t understand. His English was better than he let on – quite a bit better, in fact – but many words and phrases still passed him by.

‘The guys working in the gig economy, they get paid, like, per delivery. They’re the new wage slaves.’ Si laughed harshly. ‘Unlike you, of course, who’s just a slave.’

Despite his peculiar sense of humour, Si was okay. He wouldn’t let Dang leave the house, of course, but he checked on him regularly, made sure he was fed, and gave him some warm clothes. The clothes smelt funny but you got used to it.

They were about the same age. Si seemed a bit vacant and maybe a little lonely. He had even taught Dang some additional vocabulary, though Dang doubted whether words like ‘dickhead’ and ‘wanker’ would get him very far in the outside world, should he ever reach it.

After three months locked up in this decayed terraced house, Dang considered it home. The outside world consisted solely of what he could see from his window: the pizza restaurant, two clothes shops, a nail bar and a bus stop.

When Dang had first arrived, Si had given him a tour of the property, three floors of black plastic pots containing small plants.

‘Cannabis.’ Si mimed smoking a joint. ‘You know what cannabis is?’

Dang nodded.

‘The seedlings need to grow into big plants.’ Si mimed something that might have been a flower opening. ‘Five hundred plants. You take care of them.’ He showed Dang where the fuse box was, how to work the lighting and how to water the plants. A sheet of paper taped to the wall had written instructions – in Vietnamese – on when to turn the lights on, when to add plant food to the water and when to use some of the fertiliser from the sacks in a small room at the back.

There was a sleeping bag on the top-floor landing, a microwave and a freezer with enough food for a fortnight. Cables were everywhere – on the floor, sticking out of the walls, hanging from the rigging. ‘Don’t touch the wires – some of them are live.’ Si jerked a hand in the air and mimed receiving an electric shock.

‘Look after the plants, or there’ll be no more food.’ Si waved a large bunch of keys. ‘There are lots of locks, so don’t try to get out.’ He headed down the stairs. ‘I’ll be back later.’

The sound of footsteps died away. A door slammed. Dang sat down on the stairs, thinking of nothing.

Lucy Bridge stood at the side of the road watching the car’s tail lights disappear round the bend.

‘Ten minutes,’ she told herself, ‘and they’ll be back.’

It wasn’t funny but she’d put up with worse. Like the time they’d suggested she should have sex with a sniffer dog from the drugs squad. Or the time she was ‘accidentally’ Tasered by a sergeant who got the hump when she wouldn’t go for a drink with him. Or the time someone left a massive turd in her locker. The list was endless.

This was small beer. When they came back, pissing themselves like silly schoolboys, she’d get into the back seat with a big grin and get stuck into the banter. If you wanted to survive in the Met, you had to be able to take a joke. Never show them they can wind you up – that only means they’ll keep doing it.

‘What kind of a date night d’you call this?’ Megan Hill was pissed. A hundred bucks for a babysitter and all Chad wanted to do was drive around, fast, get stoned, and have his dick sucked. That might have been a plan back when they were nineteen, but more than a decade later, with two kids to their names, it was lame in the extreme.

England wasn’t Texas, either. The weather was nowhere near good enough for al-fresco sex and the quality of weed was terrible. If Chad had been posted to a US base, there would have been no problem. Instead he was working as a ‘contractor’ at RAF Halton, possibly the most boring place on the entire planet. To score any blow, she’d had to head into Aylesbury and hand over the equivalent of almost fifty bucks to a spotty kid in the back of a bar called the Dead Duck. In exchange, she’d received a pitiful bag of possibly the worst pot she’d ever smoked in her life.

Megan knew it was crap just from looking at it. The stuff was dry, falling apart. ‘Where’s this from?’ she demanded.

‘Up the road.’ The kid pointed his roll-up in the direction of the back door of the bar. ‘Edison Road.’

‘Home-grown,’ Megan drawled, without enthusiasm.

‘I guess.’ The kid stuffed the cash into the pocket of his torn jeans. ‘The police raided it last week, so I might not have much more for a while.’

‘I’m not gonna be a repeat customer.’

‘Suit yourself.’ The kid put on a mocking American accent as he watched her leave. ‘Have a nice day.’

Eventually, Lucy Bridge had to accept that Otten and Grant were not coming back for her.

‘Wankers.’

She started walking back in the direction they had come. After what seemed like an eternity, headlights appeared in the distance.

‘Thank fuck.’

She stepped into the middle of the road and started waving her arms. ‘Hey!’ she shouted. ‘I need you guys to stop.’

Next week she would take the kids back to the States to see her parents in Amarillo. Chad would join them in a couple of months, once he’d finished his contract. Taking a drag on her tragically feeble joint, Megan exhaled through a crack in the window. ‘I’m serious, Chad, I’m not gonna blow you.’

‘C’mon, babe.’ Grinning, Chad took a hand from the wheel and unzipped his Levi’s. ‘You know it’s my thing.’

Megan wrinkled her nose at the smell emanating from his trousers. Mingling with the aroma of the dope it created a signature fragrance that made her want to gag. Lowering the window further, she took a gulp of air. ‘When did you wash last?’

By way of reply he gave his member a couple of quick tugs.

‘Just concentrate on the road.’

‘I can multi-task.’ Chad glanced down in admiration at his work.

Taking another toke, Megan tried to distract him with the joint. Putting the blunt between his lips, Chad stuck his free hand behind her neck and tried to push her head towards his crotch.

‘Yeuww … fuck off.’ Up close the smell was even worse. Keeping her mouth clamped shut, she tried to break his grasp but found herself wedged between his disappointingly expanded gut and the steering wheel.

‘C’mon …’ There was pleading in his voice, and more than a touch of malice. ‘What the actual fuck—’ He suddenly released his grip, jerking the wheel with both hands. There was a loud thud as the car hit something and sped on.

Megan sat up and tried to regain her composure as she ran a hand through her hair. ‘What the fuck was that?’

The rear-view mirror offered nothing but darkness. ‘No idea.’ Chad showed no inclination to go back and check. ‘An animal or something?’ He packed himself away. ‘Let’s get home before we have to pay the babysitter extra.’ The babysitter was called Haley, seventeen going on thirty-five. Chad would give her a ride home in the hope she might be more accommodating than his wife.

‘Duck and dive, twenty-five.’ Emily Quartz counted the police officers as they jogged through the breached doors of Micky Monkseaton’s bingo hall on the Caledonian Road, a stone’s throw from Pentonville prison. Quartz had used the time spent waiting for the boys in blue to do her research. As well as providing her with a full list of bingo slang, the internet had come up with some decent colour on Micky: three wives, an affair with a Cuban dancer and a walk-on part in a local vote-rigging scandal.

‘God bless Wikipedia.’ The journalist had no idea how accurate the information was, but neither did anyone else. Her primary employer, the Investigation Unit, was so cash-strapped it could barely afford any editors at all. Sooner or later, probably sooner, Quartz would be handed her P45, along with the rest of the remaining staff. She was already dependent on freelance income to keep her head above water. Which was why she was standing on a freezing pavement at WTF o’clock in the morning, recording the raid on Monkseaton’s for an American website that still, in theory, paid by the word.

Colour and background, therefore, were definitely in. Micky – full name Michelangelo Salvatore Squillachi-Monkseaton – had been born in 1876, to an Italian mother and an English father. He had taken over the family grocery business, branching out into cinemas and bingo halls in the 1930s. His colourful private life included eight children and nineteen grandchildren. Micky had died in 1952 – or ‘deck of cards’ in bingo parlance, fifty-two being the number of cards in a deck – on a cruise round the Greek islands.

The bingo hall’s last game had been called back in 1980 – ‘Gandhi’s breakfast’, or ‘ate nothing’. The building had lain empty for most of the time since. According to local tax records, it was currently owned by an anonymous trust company on the Isle of Man.

At some point in the last couple of years, an even more anonymous entrepreneur had broken into the place and installed a couple of thousand cannabis plants. Suddenly Monkseaton’s was generating revenues of more than three million pounds a year, tax-free. It was only when the locals started complaining about the funny smell coming from the derelict building that the police had taken an interest.

‘Are you ready?’ Damian Corrigan, the Met’s oleaginous PR man, sidled up to her, outsized coffee cup in hand.

You could’ve got me one, Quartz thought sullenly. ‘Whenever you like.’

‘I was hoping ITV London might show up.’ Corrigan looked down the road, hoping for a glimpse of a TV van heading their way.

‘It doesn’t look like it.’ Quartz fretted that this might not be such a great story after all. It would certainly have been easier to regurgitate some crap from the Daily Mail about the Royal Family – the Americans lapped up that shit.

‘We’ll give it another five minutes.’ Corrigan afforded his watch a determined stare.

Man alive, five. Quartz gave him a bland smile. ‘Sure.’

Fifteen minutes later, with zero TV crews in attendance, the police finally broke down the doors and stormed inside. Unsurprisingly, the place was deserted. The plants were uninspiring, puny things barely a foot tall. The lights had been switched off, but the heat was still uncomfortable, and the walls were wet with condensation.

The atmosphere was thick, the familiar smell strong and sweet and not at all unpleasant. ‘Blimey,’ one of the cops quipped, ‘we’ll all be high in no time.’

‘Breathe through your mouth,’ someone else suggested.

‘Enough of the chat,’ the officer in charge growled. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

A couple of surreptitious deep breaths took Quartz back to her student days and long, lazy afternoons in bed with a pothead boyfriend, Ben. When last heard of, Ben was working as a trader of some description for Goldman Sachs in New York.

‘Looks like they’ve just harvested a crop,’ Corrigan declared, after consulting with the officer in charge, ‘but at least it’ll be the last.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Quartz photographed boxes of Canna Rhizotonic root stimulator and Grotek Monster Bloom fertiliser while officers ripped the plants from their pots.

‘Watch out for the wires.’ A female officer carrying an armful of contraband pointed at the ramshackle lighting gantries under which the plants stood. ‘Some of them are live. There are some on the floor, too.’

‘Thanks.’ Quartz smiled. ‘Looks like you’ve got your work cut out here.’

‘It’ll take a while to clear this lot,’ the woman replied cheerfully, as she headed for the exit.

‘Are you coming to the EcoPark?’ Corrigan asked hopefully, as he snuck a peek at her arse. The rebranded Poplar incinerator was where the plants were to be destroyed. ‘See all this go up in smoke.’

‘Maybe you could just send me some pictures.’ Quartz didn’t want to have to spend any more time with the creep than was absolutely necessary.

Mr Spin forced himself to make eye contact. ‘I was wondering …’

Inwardly, Quartz groaned. Here comes the plea for a date. She wanted to tell him to fuck off but that wouldn’t be professional.

‘… if you might fancy …’

She was saved from being asked out by a shout from the back of the hall. Carefully picking her way across the floor, Quartz went towards the commotion.

‘Hold on a second.’ Corrigan was stuck behind her, trying to get past. ‘It might not be safe. I can’t have anything happening to you on my watch.’

Ignoring him, the journalist moved forward until she kicked a can. Looking down she saw it was an empty tin of Pedigree Mixed Selection. ‘Dog food?’

‘It’s what they give ’em to eat, lass.’ The sergeant had a strong Yorkshire accent and looked older than her dad. He rocked back on his haunches, next to a hole where a couple of floorboards had been pulled up. Quartz edged towards him.

‘Careful.’ The sergeant held up a hand. ‘You don’t want to fall in.’

‘What the hell?’ Peering into the murky void, Quartz imagined two blank faces looking back at her.

The dope’s gone to my head.

She blinked, shook her head, and looked again.

The faces were still there.

They belonged to two young boys. Quartz imagined they couldn’t be any older than thirteen or fourteen at the absolute max.

‘We found them hiding in there,’ the sergeant explained. ‘The paramedics are on their way.’ He glanced hopefully at the PR man. ‘Someone needs to call Social Services.’

Carlyle walked out of the courtroom and took the lift to the ground floor. Heading through Reception he glanced at the massive TV screen covering a large part of one wall. Sky News was broadcasting live from an industrial estate a couple of miles away. A red lorry was partially hidden behind screens as a news bunny reported that a group of illegals had been found dead in a shipping container.

Poor bastards, Carlyle thought. Puts my troubles in perspective, sure enough.

Out on the pavement, he sent Helen a text, a thumbs-down emoji.

After a few moments, Agnes Drain appeared by his side. The lawyer’s expression was suitably downbeat. ‘Disappointed?’

‘Not really.’ Carlyle had been left a sum of money in the estate of Stanley Carstairs, a former colleague. It wasn’t exactly a lottery win, but enough for Carstairs’s estranged family to challenge the will in court.

Which they had now done, successfully.

‘We have to decide if we want to appeal.’

‘Nah.’ Carlyl. . .