Five minutes later, he knew for sure that it wasn’t.
From the pavement, they entered through a metal gate with a well-tended eight-foot hedge on either side. Signalling for the uniforms and the paramedics to wait out on the street, Carlyle lifted the latch and stepped on through. Immediately he spotted the body of a man sprawled in front of the main door of the house. He had clearly been shot in the head.
‘Joe. .’ Carlyle began, distracted by the blood seeping towards a nearby flowerbed.
The sergeant appeared at his side. ‘Fuck.’
‘Good nutrition for the roses, I suppose.’
Joe frowned. Neither of them had green fingers. ‘What about inside?’
‘No bang — yet. I’ll go in and take a look.’
Joe eyed him doubtfully. ‘Okay.’
‘Go and call for some reinforcements and I’ll give you a shout in a minute.’
I could really do with a piss and some fresh air, in that order, Carlyle thought. He had been trying to ignore the sour smell in the room for over an hour now.
‘Want something to eat?’ he asked. ‘They delivered your pizza a while back.’
The youngster started to shake his head, then quickly thought better of it. ‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Fair enough.’ The inspector smiled at young Horatio. ‘You’re doing fine. I’m sure it won’t be too much longer.’
‘I want this bloody thing off!’ the teenager wailed.
‘We’ll be as quick as possible.’
Horatio slumped back on the sofa in slow motion. ‘You don’t think it’ll go off, do you?’
‘Nah.’ This time Carlyle’s grin was genuine. ‘It’s a fake. There was something similar happened recently in — New Zealand, I think. Somewhere like that. It was just a bullshit attempt at extortion. A guy was arrested fairly quickly. I think he confessed.’
‘Uh-huh.’ The boy sniffed, not really taking in what the policeman was saying.
‘Look on the bright side. Once you get out of here, you’ll be something of a celebrity. All the girls will want to know you.’
‘I’ll settle just for getting this off.’ Horatio gestured at the collar, where the little red light continued to blink menacingly.
‘Sure.’ Carlyle glanced at a couple of explosives officers from Specialist Operations who were talking quietly in a corner. ‘They just have to go through the set procedures for this kind of thing, simply to be on the safe side.’
‘But it’s been ages now,’ the boy whimpered.
And it hasn’t gone off yet. Carlyle made a final effort at the big smile. ‘So far, so good.’
‘Mm.’
‘These guys,’ Carlyle explained, ‘they have detailed procedures to follow, even when they think — even when they really know — that the bomb’s a fake. They always take it one step at a time. Better to be on the safe side.’
‘Okay.’ Horatio wanted to be convinced, but he couldn’t quite get there.
As if on cue, the officers finished their conversation. One of them slipped out of the room while the other stepped over towards Carlyle and the boy.
‘Inspector?’
‘Yeah?’ Carlyle looked up at the squat, well-built guy with a regulation number-one haircut that showed a hint of grey at the temples. The dark rings under his flat brown eyes made him look — to the inspector’s mind — a bit like a vampire. The name stencilled on the breast pocket of his uniform said Baldwin.
‘Well?’ Carlyle prompted.
‘We’re good.’ Baldwin reached across and patted Horatio on the shoulder. ‘We’ll have it off you in a few minutes.’
‘Yeah!’ Horatio clenched a fist in triumph.
‘Thank God for that.’ Grimacing, Carlyle got to his feet and indulged in a stretch. ‘I need a comfort break.’ The last thing he wanted was to do a Gerard Depardieu and piss himself in public.
Grinning, Horatio pointed to the door. ‘There’s a guest bathroom just down the hall.’
‘Thanks,’ Carlyle replied. ‘I’ll only be a minute.’
Zipping himself up, the inspector squirted a blob of liquid soap on to his hands and turned on the wash-basin tap. After rinsing his hands, he splashed a little cold water on his face, before drying it off with a towel. It was well past midnight but the adrenalin rush had yet to wear off and he was still buzzing. ‘Good effort tonight,’ Carlyle told his reflection in the mirror. He could have been blown to bits out there, but he hadn’t bottled it. Helen would give him shit but that was nothing new. Bottom line, he was only doing his job. He flashed himself a cheesy smile. ‘When the going gets tough. .’
He was still grinning at the mirror when there was an almighty explosion somewhere nearby.
‘Fuck!’ Carlyle automatically threw his hands up to protect his face as the bathroom door flew open and the false ceiling fell in on him. Losing his footing, he felt his head bounce off something cool and smooth before he landed in a heap on the floor.
Then there was only darkness.
Where the hell am I?
Blinking in the gloom, Hannah Gillespie lay staring at the ceiling, listening as the pounding in her head alternated with the hum of traffic outside. After a while, she pushed aside the grimy duvet. Heaving herself up, she slowly swung her legs over one side of the bed. Head bowed, she tried to remember the events of the previous evening, but it was all a blank. She felt dizzy and there was a chalky taste in her mouth. Suddenly nauseous, she tried to throw up, but nothing came out.
What time was it? There was no clock, but from the daylight filtering into the room, Hannah guessed that she was already late for school. Shit! She hadn’t written that bloody essay either. Bloody hell, girl, she thought ruefully, you’ve really overdone it here. You’ll have a job to talk your way out of this one.
A tentative sniff of her T-shirt suggested a shower was in order and she also needed to pee. Grabbing her jeans from the floor, she quickly pulled them on, before shoving her feet into her trainers. Rushing over to the door, she yanked the handle. It was locked.
‘Hey!’ Panic rising, she hammered on the door with her fist. ‘Hey! Stop jerking around. Let me out!’
Getting no response, Hannah slumped back on to the bed. Closing her eyes, she fought back a sob.
‘Mum. .’ It came out like a whimper.
Outside, the traffic slipped past relentlessly.
‘MU. . UM!!’
No one came.
TEN
‘That was a good time to take a leak,’ Joe Szyszkowski observed, biting into a bacon sandwich.
‘Tell me about it.’ The inspector drained his demitasse and signalled to the waitress for another double espresso.
The girl gestured to a menu with her pen. ‘Would you like anything to eat?’
‘Nah, thanks.’ The caffeine was mixing with the adrenalin and Carlyle felt too pumped to contemplate any food. He looked up at the clock on the walclass="underline" 4.57 a.m. Just over three hours since Horatio Mosman had been blown to kingdom come.
Amazingly, no one else had been killed in the explosion. One of the explosives officers and a paramedic had been taken to the Royal Free Hospital with serious injuries, but the expectation was that they would survive. The ground floor of the house meanwhile was — well, it was like a bombsite. The living room was completely wrecked and the rest of the ground floor had suffered extensive blast damage. The device had clearly been designed to do more than simply remove the unfortunate teenager’s head from his shoulders. Forensics would be collecting bits of his body for days, if not weeks.
And yet the explosives officer — Carlyle struggled to remember his name — Baldwin had claimed it was a fake.
Bad call.
Bad, bad, bad call.
Was the guy just trying to keep the kid calm? Carlyle wondered. Surely not. How could he have got things so wrong? There were lots of questions but no answers. Anyway, that was something to worry about later. When Mr Baldwin came out of Intensive Care, it would be back to traffic duty for him, career over.