‘So what do you want to do?’ Joe asked.
‘Dunno.’ Pushing back his chair, Carlyle got to his feet. ‘Maybe I’ll go and talk to Simpson.’
‘Hey, hey.’ Joe motioned for him to sit back down. ‘We haven’t finished yet.’
‘No?’ Reluctantly, the inspector did as he was told.
‘No,’ Joe said firmly. ‘We still have to talk about Hannah Gillespie.’
‘Who?’
‘The young girl who went missing from the Peabody Estate,’ Hall reminded him.
‘Yeah, yeah. She’s not turned up, then?’
‘No.’ Hall glanced at Joe.
‘There’s good news and there’s bad news.’ The sergeant gestured to Hall. ‘You tell him.’
‘I went to Hannah’s school,’ Hall explained. ‘It seems like she’s a bright kid, quite mature but a bit restless. She’s done things like this before, but always turned up again after a few days.’
‘Shouldn’t her parents have mentioned this?’
‘Maybe,’ Joe reflected, ‘they don’t have her on as short a leash as they liked to imply.’
‘Anyway,’ Hall said, ‘our best guess still is that she’s out and about somewhere, having fun.’
‘Best guess isn’t good enough,’ Carlyle snapped. ‘We need more than that.’
Hall lowered her voice slightly. ‘Well, we know that Hannah’s been checking her voicemails on her mobile phone. She listened to her new messages as recently as two hours ago.’
Frowning, Carlyle looked at Joe. To intercept someone’s phone messages required a warrant. That could normally take several days.
‘We’re using our initiative,’ Joe said. ‘Don’t ask.’
‘Okay. I won’t. So if she’s listening to her messages, she must know people are looking for her. But she still can’t be arsed to even phone home? I thought that you said she was bright?’
Hall shrugged. ‘Maybe she’s worried about the reception she’ll get when she returns.’
Kids. At least his own daughter, Alice, wouldn’t do anything like that — he hoped. ‘So, what’s the bad news?’
‘Two words,’ said Joe. ‘Francis Clegg.’
The inspector gave him a look that said Who he?
‘According to one of Hannah’s schoolfriends,’ Joe explained, ‘Mr Clegg is her boyfriend.’
‘How reliable is this friend?’
‘Melanie Henderson seems a nice girl,’ Hall interjected. ‘Keen to help.’
‘Nice girls,’ Carlyle sighed. ‘They’re always the worst.’
‘She says she’s seen them together a couple of times.’
‘Mr Clegg,’ announced Joe, ‘is thirty-two.’
‘Ah.’ As both a copper and a parent, the inspector didn’t much like where this was going.
‘With two previous convictions for sex with underage girls, and he also beat one of them up quite badly.’
‘That’s just fucking great,’ Carlyle groaned. ‘How long have we known about this?’
‘A couple of hours,’ Joe replied.
‘So why haven’t we found this bastard yet?’
TWENTY-THREE
After silently counting to a hundred, Carole Simpson reopened her eyes. Sadly, the troublesome inspector was still sitting in her office. ‘I thought that I specifically asked you to focus on the Mosman case?’
‘I am focusing on the Mosman case.’
‘John. .’
‘I’m multi-tasking,’ Carlyle said, conscious that the words sounded too much like an excuse, ‘just trying to be more efficient.’ It went against all his instincts to keep his boss in the loop, and he was already regretting making such a quick return to the Commander’s office in Paddington Green. ‘That’s what we’re all meant to do these days, isn’t it? That’s what the Cochrane Review is all about, if I understand it correctly.’
‘Mm.’ They both knew that Carlyle didn’t give a hoot about the government’s report into what a twenty-first-century police force might look like. ‘I suppose I should be grateful to at least receive a briefing.’
Yes, he thought, so you should. ‘Things are moving quickly on all fronts,’ he said briskly. ‘I might therefore need a bit of assistance on one or more of them.’
‘What you mean,’ Simpson grinned knowingly, ‘is that you’re going to need me to save you when you jump into the shit.’
At least she didn’t say ‘again’. Carlyle gave his protector and benefactor a grateful smile. ‘Precisely.’
The humour vanished from Simpson’s face even faster than it had appeared. ‘It goes without saying that I’ll want you to give Trevor Miller a wide berth.’
‘I’m not interested in Miller,’ Carlyle replied primly.
‘John,’ Simpson scolded, ‘you are a terrible liar; truly terrible. I am warning you now: leave that man alone. If you don’t, all it will do is create more trouble — for both of us.’
Carlyle slumped in his chair. ‘You know me, anything for a quiet life.’
‘As if. Look, do I really need to spell it out for you? Miller is close to Simon Shelbourne, who is Sir Chester’s media strategist.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Shelbourne used to work for Sonia Claesens, the head of the Zenger Corporation. Apparently, they are still close.’
The inspector gave her a blank stare.
‘Do I need to draw you a bloody map?’
‘Yes, you do,’ he said obtusely.
Gritting her teeth, Simpson continued, ‘All they want to do now is find a way of closing down the hacking inquiry.’
‘But,’ Carlyle frowned, feigning confusion, ‘it was Miller’s boss — the Prime Minister, no less — who set it up.’
‘Yes,’ Simpson said heavily. ‘And they set it up so that they could be seen to be doing something.’
‘How jolly cynical of you,’ he joshed, adopting a mock-posh accent.
‘That is rather rich coming from the self-proclaimed “most cynical man in the world”.’
‘Me?’ Carlyle raised his hands in surrender. ‘Never.’
Simpson gave him a nasty look. ‘Do you want me to proceed or not?’
Lowering his arms, the inspector said graciously, ‘Go on.’
Simpson sighed. ‘No one realized that this thing would just keep growing. And an election is not so far away. The independent police investigation, Operation Redhead, was supposed to have been and gone by now. Instead, it could drag on for ages.’
‘Surely that’s okay,’ Carlyle said, ‘if they can kick it into the long grass.’
‘Maybe. They would much rather kill it though. And Sir Chester is increasingly worried about how it might all play out. In fact, he’s as nervous as hell.’
Carlyle looked at her carefully. ‘How do you know all this?’
‘You’re not the only one with sources, John.’
‘So, what do you want me to do?’
Simpson started counting off with her fingers. ‘Number one, wrap up the Mosman case asap. That’s still the priority. Do what you have to do; and if you want to go after the mother, that’s fine.’
‘Okay.’
‘Number two, keep the Brown thing nice and focused. If I had more bodies I’d give it to someone else, but I don’t. These bloody budget cuts are killing us.’
‘Twenty-first-century policing.’
‘Don’t I know it.’
You could always get out from behind that desk, Carlyle thought. The top brass are always moaning while they sit about on their arses. He mumbled something that he hoped sounded vaguely sympathetic.
‘So that means you’re still on Brown,’ Simpson repeated, ‘but it doesn’t mean I want to see you wading into the phone-hacking mess and creating even more problems for everyone. The Met is under enough scrutiny as it is.’ He made to say something but she held up a restraining hand. ‘The last thing we need is the usual John Carlyle bull in a china shop routine. Just focus on the precise question of who stabbed that journalist and dumped his body in the back of a rubbish truck.’
‘Understood,’ Carlyle nodded. ‘The blinkers are on.’
‘Good. Keep them on. Focus is important in an investigation. Now, is there anything else?’
‘What about Hannah Gillespie?’
The Commander gave him an exasperated look. ‘Who?’