Goodbye and good luck.
Carole Simpson had no idea where all of this bile had come from. It seemed completely out of character. Deciding to walk away from the City with an obscene amount of money was one thing. Rubbing everyone else’s noses in it was quite another. Particularly as Joshua still had his political ambitions. If anything, they seemed to be growing. She fretted that this farewell message would come back to haunt him. It was juvenile. Biting the hand that feeds you is never a good idea.
The letter had yet to be posted to investors or published on McGowan Capital’s website, so maybe she could talk him out of it at tonight’s reception. Drinks followed by dinner. Another evening lost to playing the dutiful wife, as if she didn’t have a career of her own. The heavy card invite lay on her desk. Glancing at it, Simpson calculated that she would have to leave in about fifteen minutes. That would be more than enough time.
Picking up the telephone, she punched a button and waited for her PA in the room next door to answer. ‘Send him in,’ she said briskly, immediately dropping the receiver back on to its cradle, without waiting for a response.
The office door opened. Simpson watched Carlyle come in and stand in front of her desk. Another man who’s causing me needless aggravation, she thought. Letting him wait there for a few seconds, she looked him up and down, on the off-chance that she might find some new insight into her under-achieving — if sporadically impressive — colleague. There was none to be found.
Scribbling some notes on a pad, she instructed him to sit down with a curt wave of the hand. ‘How are you, Inspector?’ she said finally.
‘Fine.’ Carlyle sat upright in his chair, as if he was back in the Headmaster’s office at the Henry Compton secondary school, thirty years ago, waiting to take his punishment for some minor indiscretion. Unwilling to engage in any fake pleasantries, he kept his response to the one word, and let his gaze wander. Nothing here seemed different from his last visit. Aside from the basics, the office was empty, the desk spectacularly bare save for a photograph of a smug-looking middle-aged man gone to seed. Carlyle assumed that was Simpson’s husband.
The inspector was always on his guard with his boss. They were very different animals and both knew it. Five or six years younger than Carlyle, the commander could still realistically anticipate moving further up the career ladder before her time was up. He had known Simpson for almost twelve years now, coming under her direction not long after his move to Charing Cross. She was, he had to admit, a hell of an operator — she only ever looked upwards — and had taken to her management role like a duck to water. She could be charming too — if you were a man of a certain age (i.e. between ten and fifteen years older than she was) and she wanted something from you.
Simpson rarely wanted anything from Inspector John Carlyle. The inspector knew that she was frustrated by what she saw as his refusal to play the game. Just as important, perhaps more so, was his inability to hide his feelings towards her. Simpson left Carlyle cold. He hated the feeling that he had been co-opted on to her mission for personal glory. Somehow, the collective good always seemed nicely aligned with the interests of the commander. Her approach to the job he found completely introverted, indeed almost demented. She was too busy climbing the greasy pole to worry about anything else.
The way he saw it, she was either extremely selfish or she had the self-awareness of a goldfish. Either way, Carlyle eyed her with a mixture of extreme distrust and antipathy. However, with much effort, he found that he could tolerate her well enough, as long as their paths did not cross too often. When they did, he felt as if his brain was overheating, and he was always too close to speaking his mind.
Simpson looked down at the notes she had scribbled on her pad.
‘About this bus…’
‘Yes?’
‘There’s been a complaint.’ Simpson kept her voice firmly neutral.
‘Oh?’ He placed what he hoped was a butter-wouldn’t-melt look on his face and concentrated on trying to keep it there.
‘A woman called Sandra Groves says that you assaulted her,’ Simpson continued. ‘She says that there is video evidence.’
Sandra Groves? It suddenly dawned on Carlyle that she must be the religious loony from the bus; he had never checked the woman’s name. He grinned sheepishly and adopted the tone of a casual observer with no axe to grind.
‘Well, what happened was…’
For the next few minutes, he talked the commander through the events of the previous week, throwing in as much detail as he could recall, relevant or not, without addressing Ms Groves’s accusation either directly or indirectly. He did this safe in the knowledge that Joe Szyszkowski’s report backed him up 100 per cent. Moreover, Groves and her boyfriend not only had been charged, but already had records for previous public-order offences, as well as a couple of outstanding parking tickets. The only thing that could have caused him any problem, the video, had since been erased from the camera’s memory stick. Just to be on the safe side, the camera itself had accidentally been run over — several times — by the back wheel of a police Range Rover in the garage of Charing Cross police station before being deposited in a rubbish bin on the Strand. Carlyle was confident that its remains were well on their way to some illegal landfill-dump in India by now. The complaint might lead to a formal investigation, but he knew that he was in the clear.
‘And then…’
His monologue was interrupted by the sound of a mobile phone. Irritated, Simpson plucked at various pieces of paper before finding it buzzing on the desk. Checking the caller’s identity, without preamble she said, ‘Hold on one minute.’ Standing up, she raised a forefinger to Carlyle, indicating that she would not be long, before quickly stepping out of the room.
As the door closed behind her, Carlyle’s gaze fell on Simpson’s desk. Leaning forward, he couldn’t resist a quick peek. Over the years, he had become quite adept at reading things upside down from a short distance. Next to what were clearly the reports of the Groves case, which he could easily read when he got back to Charing Cross if he felt the need, was a fancy-looking invitation card. The black script was a bit small, but he could make it out without having to leave his seat:
Christian Holyrod, Mayor of London, and Claudio Orb, Ambassador of Chile to the Court of St James’s, invite you to a reception at City Hall organised by the Anglo-Chilean Defence Technologies Association. The event will celebrate our two great countries’ long history of co-operation and support, as well as England’s long-standing association with Chilean naval hero Agustin Arturo Prat Chacon.
More Chileans. What were the odds of some connection? He was wondering who Agustin Arturo Prat Chacon was, when he heard the commander re-enter the room.
Simpson smiled thinly as she sat down behind her desk. ‘So, where were we?’ she asked, folding her arms and sitting back.
‘Sandra Groves,’ said Carlyle amiably. ‘After I had been assaulted, we restrained her and her boyfriend…’
A minute or so into his continuing monologue, Simpson held up her hand. She had heard enough. Carlyle could argue for England, indeed the irritating little sod could argue for a World Select XI, and she knew that he would not be so stupid as to be caught out on something like this. She could never hope to get so lucky. ‘All right, Inspector,’ she said wearily, ‘I get the drift. I’m sure, if it ever gets that far, that the Police Federation will make mincemeat out of this complaint. But next time, please try to show a tiny bit more restraint.’
‘Restraint is my middle name,’ Carlyle said genially.