‘Of course,’ Carlyle nodded.
‘And I will kill the fucker.’
The inspector really did need that drink. ‘I didn’t know Maude for very long,’ he said finally, ‘but I really enjoyed working with her. She had great energy and charm, and she was an excellent police officer.’ Looking round, he realized that Hall wasn’t listening to him. He was busy typing a text message on his mobile.
‘I’ve got to go and see Maude’s mum,’ he said, hitting the send button. Pulling a pen from his jacket pocket, he scribbled down a mobile phone number on a napkin and handed it to Carlyle. ‘Let me know when I can see my daughter.’ Slowly getting to his feet, he looked down on the inspector, his expression more detached than grim. ‘And remember what I said.’
‘Mister. .’
Carlyle looked up from his papers to see a blonde girl in a red Michael Jackson T-shirt, green bikini bottoms and a pair of brown cowboy boots standing at his table with an impatient look on her face. ‘Pardon?’
She began waving a pint glass in front of his face. The glass was empty apart from a couple of pound coins and a fifty-pence piece, which rattled about noisily. ‘Put some money in the glass and I will do a dance.’ She gestured with the glass towards the tiny stage that had been raised maybe eight inches off the floor at the far end of the room. In the middle of the stage was a pole. Another girl, in a grubby yellow evening dress, was giving it a clean ahead of the next performance with some Cif anti-bacterial spray and a rag.
‘A pound,’ the girl repeated. He guessed that her accent was West Country, or maybe Welsh.
Embracing the warm, comforting buzz of the whiskey, Carlyle looked around the bar. The lunchtime rush was over and the only other patron he could see was an old guy sitting at a nearby table with his head stuck in the Racing Post.
‘I don’t want to watch a dance.’
The girl shook the glass angrily. ‘It’s only a pound, you cheap git.’
With a sigh, Carlyle brought out his warrant card and waved it at the girl. ‘Fuck off and leave me alone.’
Muttering to herself, she turned and stalked off, wiggling her ample rear as she did so. If you’re going to make it as a stripper, Carlyle thought to himself, you’ll have to work on that arse. Finishing his drink, he returned to the stack of papers that Fiona Singleton had given to him earlier in the day. Delving back into the Rosanna Snowdon case offered him some kind of excuse for delaying his return to Maude Hall’s flat, and he was more than happy to accept it.
On top of the pile was one of the stories that had been printed out from the BBC website. At the top, in red pen, was written LC?
LC — that was fairly straightforward since Rosanna had presented a television show called London Crime. Presumably she had been considering this as a potential item at the time of her death.
The inspector began reading further.
The article was the best part of three years old. It concerned the unsolved murder of a private investigator called Anton Fox. The inspector thought about that for a moment, but the name didn’t ring any bells. Apparently, five years ago, Mr Fox had been found in the car park of a West London pub with an axe in his head. The vague suggestion in this BBC piece was that Fox had been chasing down alleged police corruption. However, no one had ever been brought to trial.
Reading the story, Carlyle had the frustrating sense of lots of pieces of unconnected information floating round in his brain. He knew that somehow he had to try and find a common thread that would pull everything together.
And then he reached the crucial paragraph.
There it was, also ringed in red pen — the name of Fox’s employer at the time of his untimely demise: Wickford Associates.
Wickford Associates.
Carlyle smiled.
Wickford fucking Associates.
It was time to give Charlie Ross a call.
Without warning, Spandau Ballet’s ‘True’ started blaring from the speakers above the bar. The girl in the cowboy boots skipped on to the stage, the Jacko T-shirt now discarded to reveal a pair of nipple tassels attached to her over-inflated breasts. As she reached for the sparkling pole, the grandad did not look up from his form guide. Scooping up his papers, Carlyle got to his feet and jogged to the door.
‘The shit I have to put up with. .’
It’s not just me then, Carlyle thought happily.
Carole Simpson read aloud from the report in the evening paper. ‘Scotland Yard revealed that a detective sergeant was demoted to constable, and three constables were formally reprimanded for having taken, quote, “an overly aggressive approach to stopping a suspect with unauthorized equipment”, unquote.’
The inspector frowned. He liked to think he was up on the latest in MPS crime-fighting techniques, but this particular fiasco had passed him by. ‘What does that mean?’
Simpson flashed him the photo accompanying the story. ‘Officers attacked a guy’s Mini with baseball bats. In the middle of the rush hour! And they bloody filmed it, of course, so it’s all over the sodding internet.’
Despite everything, Carlyle couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Why?’
‘Despite a three-year, two-million-pound investigation that involved — amongst other things — bugging Southfield police station to listen in on their private conversations, we never actually got to the bottom of that,’ Simpson grumped.
‘Surprise, surprise.’
‘Anyway, that’s done. Now we have other things to worry about.’ Closing the newspaper, Simpson folded it in half and dropped it into the cardboard box sitting on the floor by Carlyle’s desk that served as a waste-bin. ‘I understand that you spoke to Maude Hall’s father?’
‘Yeah.’ Carlyle glanced at his watch. ‘He should have formally identified the body by now.’
The look on the Commander’s face — a mixture of sadness and concern — was deeply unsettling. Carlyle found her anger much easier to deal with. ‘I truly hope, John, that you didn’t do anything that contributed to the poor girl getting killed.’
Sitting back in his chair, Carlyle lifted his gaze to the ceiling, but said nothing.
‘The investigation into Hall’s killing has to be fast and flawless. We simply cannot drop the ball on this.’ Simpson mentioned the name of a DI — some woman whom Carlyle had never heard of. ‘She is in charge now, and whatever it needs, she gets. Make sure you provide every possible cooperation, while staying well out of the way.’
‘Sure,’ Carlyle nodded vigorously. Standard operating procedure dictated that he couldn’t be seen to take part in the investigation because of a potential conflict of interest. But reading between the lines, Simpson was giving him the green light to get on with finding Hall’s killer. ‘With the Mosman thing out of the way, I can clear the decks.’
‘What do you mean?’ Simpson asked sharply.
Carlyle paused. Maybe he was misreading the signals, after all? What the hell. He ploughed on regardless. ‘Well, with Zoe Mosman murdered, I think we’ve reached a dead end.’
‘Don’t give me that crap,’ Simpson snorted. ‘Whoever put a bomb under Horatio Mosman, it wasn’t his bloody mother.’
‘I don’t know,’ Carlyle shrugged. ‘Not everyone is naturally cut out to be a parent.’
‘Now is simply not the time for any of your juvenile humour, John.’ Simpson looked like she wanted to reach over and give him a good hard slap. ‘How many times do I have to tell you that the Mosman case is your priority? Why do you never bloody listen? Why can you never just focus on the cases you’ve been given rather than running off elsewhere like an incontinent puppy?’
Now might not be the best time to mention Rosanna Snowdon and Anton Fox either, Carlyle thought, stifling a nervous laugh. ‘An incontinent puppy?’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Okay, okay.’ He held up a hand. ‘We’re on the case.’