All the same, maybe he could have given her some tips on how to handle the session; how to take control, keep Wolf at arms’ length. Fail to prepare, the saying went, and prepare to fail. Maybe, after the massacre at St Pancras, she wanted to fail.
After a while, the door to Wolf’s office opened. The shrink popped out his head and beckoned her inside. The room itself was small and cosy. Littered with family photos and books, it had a lived-in look that Wolf had doubtless striven hard to create. There being no couch, Roche took a seat in one of the two armchairs in front of the battered wooden desk. From the bay window behind the desk came the remaining dregs of the afternoon gloom, along with the reassuring hum of rush-hour traffic. Illumination came from a freestanding floor lamp in the corner, its light falling across a framed poster for The Wild Bunch.
Roche cleared her throat. Better get on with it, she thought. ‘Good evening, Doctor.’
‘Good evening to you, Sergeant Roche,’ Wolf replied, somewhat uncertainly, as he slipped into the chair behind the desk. Opening a hardback A4 notebook, he flicked through the pages until he came to the notes he was looking for. Running an index finger down the page, he scanned them carefully.
Waiting patiently, Roche looked Wolf up and down. In a grey, open-neck shirt, he was a short, wizened man of indeterminate age, with watery blue eyes and long grey hair, tied back into a rather unfortunate ponytail. Sometimes he wore a wedding band. Today it was absent. Otherwise, she noticed no differences from her last visit.
After what seemed like several minutes, Wolf closed his notebook and looked up. ‘So,’ he smiled, then said in an accent that Roche had never been able to place, ‘how are we today?’
‘I am okay,’ said Roche, careful to sit up straight in her seat.
‘I see that you have gone back to work,’ Wolf said evenly.
‘Like I said,’ Roche replied, ‘I feel fine. I saw no reason to stay away. I think it is good to get back to being busy.’
Wolf leaned across the desk. ‘But you are not able to carry a gun.’
‘No,’ Roche said calmly. ‘Given what happened, there will need to be an investigation before I can do that.’
The shrink raised his eyebrows. ‘How does that make you feel?’
Ha! thought Roche. I saw that one coming. A tight smile spread across her lips. ‘It makes me feel that I am going through a proper and professional process that will help me return to my full range of duties in due course.’
Sighing, Wolf sat back in his chair and folded his arms. ‘Tell me about what happened when you lost the prisoner.’
Christian Holyrod took a sniff of his half-full tumbler of Auchentoshan Three Wood and let out a purr of pleasure. Allowing the blackcurrant, orange, plum and raisin aroma to fill his nostrils, he took a healthy mouthful of the Lowland single malt. The oaky sweetness covered his tongue and he swallowed slowly. Sitting forward in his chair, the Mayor pulled up the video file that had just arrived in the inbox of his private email account and hit Play. As the interior of Everton’s Gentleman’s Club filled the 17-inch screen he took another mouthful of whisky and carefully placed the glass on his desk next to the laptop. Slipping on his telephone headset, he quickly dialled the number of Abigail Slater with one hand while fumbling with his fly with the other.
She picked up immediately, even before he had time to find his member. ‘I’m in a meeting,’ she whispered.
Distracted by the black woman straddling the pole on the screen in front of him, he could only manage a grunt.
‘Christian?’
Finally releasing his tool, Holyrod began massaging himself. ‘I was just . . .’ A blonde girl had arrived on the stage and proceeded to stick her face between her colleague’s buttocks. Squeezing the tip of his penis between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, the Mayor began to pant. He hadn’t realized just how horny he was; this was going to be a sixty-second job, at most.
‘Christian?’ his mistress said crossly, her voice rising as she became more angry. ‘Are you all right?’
Just when he thought he was going to reach la petite mort, the fake lesbians disappeared and the screen went blank. ‘Shit!’
‘Christian!’
For some reason, she sounded like his mother. It was not a mental image he wanted right at this moment and he tried to shake it from his mind. Happily, the screen burst back into life with an image of the naked Amazon haranguing a cowering police officer.
‘Hello?’
The more annoyed Abigail sounded, the more aroused he became. ‘I was just wondering,’ he groaned, ‘what kind of underwear you’ve got on.’
‘For God’s sake,’ she breathed, lowering her voice to less than a whisper, ‘you’re not playing with yourself again, are you?’
The Amazon was astride the policeman now, hitting him repeatedly over the head with what looked like an outsized albino truncheon.
‘Good God!’
As he teetered on the point of no return, Holyrod watched in horror as the camera jerked up and away from the action. For a couple of seconds he was treated to a series of shots of Everton’s ceiling. Then a face filled the screen. As it came into focus, Holyrod let his erection slip from his hand. ‘Holy shit!’ he hissed, trying not to fall from his chair. ‘What the fuck are you doing there?’
‘Thanks.’ Carlyle took the mug from his wife and gave her a quick peck on the forehead. Alice had already left for school and they had the flat to themselves. Taking a couple of hasty gulps of peppermint tea, he poured the rest down the sink.
‘In a hurry?’ Helen asked.
‘I’ve got to get going,’ he replied. ‘See how the great strip-club round-up is going.’
She gave him a stern look. ‘I hope you’re not going back there.’ Helen had been deeply unimpressed by his tale of the raid on Everton’s. Although she trusted her husband, she saw no need to have him put needlessly in the way of temptation. For that reason, the Vice Squad had never appeared on Carlyle’s cv.
‘No, no,’ he said hurriedly, trying not to sound too defensive. ‘I’m off to the station.’
‘Good,’ she said, reaching up on to her toes and giving him a kiss on the lips. ‘I’ll see you later.’
Standing on the pavement, the inspector watched a group of four white guys unload the back of an open-topped lorry on the opposite side of the street. They were fitting out what had been Il Buffone, the café that Carlyle would visit most days for his breakfast. The owner, Marcello Aversa, would have a double macchiato and outsized raisin Danish on the table in front of him almost before Carlyle had slipped into the back booth where he liked to sit, contemplating the day ahead under a crumbling poster of the 1984 Juventus scudetto winning squad, the team of Trapattoni and Platini, higher beings from a different time. With Marcello retired, Carlyle knew that the place would never be the same. But a man still had to eat and he was prepared to give the new establishment a go.
Slowly, a couple of the men began lifting the new sign into place above the front door. Carlyle’s jaw dropped. ‘You’re fucking kidding!’ he wailed. ‘A kebab shop?’ One of the men gave him a dirty look. Carlyle glared back at him before turning on his heel and heading quickly in the direction of Holborn tube, his stomach grumbling noisily. Ten minutes later, he was sitting in the basement of Cornwell amp; Black Opticians, trying to guess the blurred letters that were being flashed up on the screen in front of him.
‘Your eyes are fine, Inspector.’ Denzil Taleb swivelled on his stool and scribbled some notes in Carlyle’s file. ‘You are just a bit short-sighted.’
Carlyle grunted the most reluctant of acknowledgements.