‘Glad to hear it.’
‘The whole thing is very sad, but I’ll get over it.’
Which is more than you can say for Ronan himself
, Carlyle thought, stifling a giggle.
‘The funeral was last week.’
‘Sorry,’ he said, pulling himself together. ‘I didn’t realize.’
‘Don’t worry about it. You’ve had a lot on your plate. The funny thing was, I was there with David’s mum and she was the one consoling me. I don’t think she knew about the sister-in-law.’
‘Was the sister-in-law there?’ Carlyle asked, prurience getting the better of him.
‘She was,’ Roche grinned, ‘but I kept my distance. She looked pretty upset about the whole thing.’
Marcello appeared from behind the counter. ‘Hey, you two, it’s time for me to close up. Haven’t you got any work to do?’
‘Yes, unfortunately.’ Getting to his feet, Carlyle dug a fiver out of his pocket and slapped it down by the tin. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘I’ll be here, as always.’
‘Good to know,’ Carlyle said sincerely, as he ushered Roche out of the door and back towards the police station.
Feeling on less than top form, Carlyle was not best pleased to get home and find Helen also in a foul mood. After listening to her banging around angrily in the kitchen for several minutes, he couldn’t take any more.
‘Bad day at the office?’ he asked.
‘Totally shit,’ she confirmed, racking a selection of dirty plates into the dishwasher.
He waited for her to explain, but she declined to elaborate. ‘Anything in particular?’ he asked finally.
‘Four of our medical staff were arrested today,’ she said, slamming shut the dishwasher door. ‘A doctor and three nurses. They had been working in Gaza and took some time off in Tel Aviv. We got a call this morning to say that they had been arrested by the Israeli police . . . two bloody days ago.’
Knowing where this was going, Carlyle felt his heart sink.
‘
Then
,’ she continued, ‘we got a call from some snotty little bureaucrat in the Israeli Foreign Ministry, informing us that what he called “the so-called medical aid charity” Avalon had seventy-two hours to close down all of its operations in Gaza or our people will be charged with espionage offences carrying a jail term of up to twenty-five years’ imprisonment each.’ She kicked a cupboard door in frustration. ‘It’s just such total fucking crap!’
He slung a comforting arm round her shoulder and pulled her close even as she tried to wriggle free. ‘Can you do it?’
‘Do what?’
‘Close everything down in three days.’
This time he let her push him away. ‘What are you suggesting?’ she demanded, eyes blazing. ‘That we should just give in?’
Carlyle shrugged. ‘Don’t fight battles you can’t win.’
She gave him a firm punch on the chest. ‘That’s not advice I remember you yourself ever sticking to.’
‘And look what happened.’ Carlyle flung his arms wide in frustration. ‘People got killed. The Israelis basically got what they wanted. It was all a bit messy, and they had a few casualities of their own, but they don’t really care about that. They sit there, doing their American TV interviews, smugly refusing to confirm or deny ever doing anything to anyone. Meanwhile, I saw two kids in the piazza today walking around wearing
Don
’
t mess with the Mossad
T-shirts, like those guys are some kind of rock stars. The whole thing might be totally fucked up, but there’s nothing you can do about it. Trying to fight against it will just drive you mad.’
‘So you think you got it wrong?’
He let out a terrible sigh. ‘What did we achieve in the end?’
‘Oh, John.’ Stepping towards him, Helen buried her face in his chest.
‘Look,’ he said quietly, ‘you are a small charity. You do great work all over the world. There is never going to be any shortage of places for your people to go and things for you to do. You have to live to fight another day.’
‘I suppose so,’ she sniffed.
‘The other thing to remember is that it won’t be you who’s sitting in some shitty jail, wondering if you’ll ever get home again. You can’t play politics with other people’s lives.’
She looked up at him. ‘Haven’t I heard that somewhere before?’
‘Probably,’ he grinned.
‘There’s an emergency board meeting at nine a.m. tomorrow to discuss what to do,’ she said. ‘I think that there will be a fairly energetic debate.’
‘I bet there will.’
‘But we will make a decision.’
‘Good.’
‘Then I have to leave at lunchtime, to go to Louisa’s funeral in Reims.’
Carlyle had completely forgotten about that commitment.
‘I catch the Eurostar at two-fifteen. The funeral is at eleven the next morning. I’ll be back around seven in the evening.’
‘Okay.’
‘Alice has promised to look after you while I’m away.’
‘Great. How are things with her boyfriend?’
Helen raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Don’t ask.’
‘Like that, eh?’
‘All part of growing up,’ Helen sighed.
A thought popped into his head. ‘Is Louisa being buried with Fadi?’
‘No. Her parents didn’t approve of the marriage, so that was a non-starter. I was told that he was cremated.’
‘And will his ashes be returned to his family?’
She shrugged. ‘I hope so, but that will be a matter for the Foreign Office.’
Carlyle shook his head. ‘Poor bugger.’
‘That’s exactly why we have to fight for these people,’ Helen reminded him.
‘Fight and lose,’ he said sadly. ‘Fight and lose.’
Sitting in the same basement interview room where they had met previously, Carlyle watched Ambrose Watson happily polish off a jumbo croissant before picking up a sheet of IIC-headed paper and then passing it across the desk.
The inspector quickly scanned the tiny font. ‘What’s this?’
Ambrose said, as if it should be blindingly obvious, ‘It’s the form you need to sign to say that you have voluntarily agreed to take part in this investigation, that you understand its conclusions and that you agree to undertake any suggested remedial actions relevant to yourself. There’s a copy for us and a copy for you.’
‘What remedial actions?’
‘Nothing really.’ Ambrose scratched his nose. ‘Just that you agree to continue seeing the psychiatrist that Commander Simpson has arranged for you.’
‘For how long?’ So far, Carlyle had endured three follow-up visits to Dr Wolf, and the novelty had long since worn off.
‘That’s hardly for me to say, now, is it?’ Ambrose chided. ‘That is something you will have to agree with the good doctor in due course. The Met is by no means prescriptive in these things. It just wants what is best for you.’
‘Right.’
Ambrose handed Carlyle a biro and pointed at the two small
x
s pencilled at the foot of the page. ‘Just sign here and here.’
Carlyle frowned. ‘And if I don’t?’
‘Inspector,’ Ambrose sighed, ‘you really can get too suspicious sometimes. Normally when I hand over an X 37/C, people can’t sign it quickly enough.’
‘What’s an X37/ C?’
‘It’s the form that you’ve now got in front of you,’ Ambrose replied tartly. ‘It’s our standard investigation-completed form. In this case, it’s a bit of a miracle that it’s ever got to see the light of day. With so many bloody corpses, I would have expected the investigation to run for years, if not decades.’
‘So what happened?’ Carlyle asked innocently.
‘It was dealt with at a higher level,’ was all Ambrose would say.
‘Okay.’ Carlyle scribbled something approaching his signature in the appropriate places and returned the form to Ambrose
‘Thank you.’ Ambrose took back his pen and gave Carlyle his personal copy of the document. ‘If you don’t mind me saying so, I think you’ve been more than a little lucky in all of this.’
Carlyle grunted.
‘It could have hung over your career like a big black cloud for a very long time.’
Tell me something I don
’
t know
, Carlyle thought.
Stuffing his papers back into his briefcase, Ambrose got to his feet. ‘Well, Inspector,’ he said, ‘that concludes our business on this occasion. Please don’t take it the wrong way if I say that I hope our paths don’t cross again for a while.’
‘Amen to that,’ said Carlyle, smiling.
After Ambrose had left, he sat for a while with his mind empty, simply enjoying the silence.
Carlyle took his seat by the side of the runway, rather disappointed that he hadn’t been invited backstage to get another chance to gawp at the naked models getting ready to showcase the final collection from the late, lamented Rollo Kasabian, whose giant portrait now hung above the entrance to the runway. All the talk this evening was of Rollo and his genius, but Dominic Silver had decreed that tonight’s show, being held in a disused railway station, would be a benefit for the family of Lottie Gondomar, the model who had hanged herself in the police cells at Charing Cross. Closing his eyes, Carlyle spent several minutes trying to recall the girl’s face, but his mind remained blank.
The business was now being run by one of Rollo’s erstwhile assistants, a dour fellow by the name of Karl Auclair. Before putting him in charge, Dom had Auclair checked out by a firm of private investigators, who had given the young man a clean bill of health, or had at least reported that his drug use was within socially acceptable limits and that his sexual appetites were modest and dull. Noting that they were now almost thirty minutes late in getting started, Carlyle presumed that good timekeeping had not been a key part of the job description.
It was decidedly chilly on the station platform and Carlyle wished that he had brought along a coat. He idly watched the seats around him fill up till finally the lights dimmed and a bombastic rock track that he didn’t recognize began blaring out of the speakers positioned beside the runaway. Moments later, the first model sauntered into view, wearing what looked to Carlyle suspiciously like a bog-standard kaftan.
Dom slipped into the seat beside him. ‘What do you think so far?’
Carlyle shrugged. ‘It’s only just started.’
Dom punched him gently on the shoulder. ‘Don’t sound too excited, will you.’
‘Would you wear that?’ Carlyle grunted, pointing to the kaftan.
‘You’ve got to broaden your horizons, Johnny boy,’ said Dom, waving a hand in the air. ‘You’ve got to broaden your horizons.’
At least the show was mercifully brief. Passing on Auclair’s afterparty, the pair of them headed for a quiet bar half a block away.
‘Do people actually buy that stuff?’ Carlyle stared into his glass of Jameson whiskey.
‘There’s no accounting for taste.’ Dom took a swig from his bottle of Peroni beer. ‘And don’t forget this is Rollo’s swansong; the last ever Kasabian collection. The fashion editors can’t get enough of it. The fat, rent-boy-loving, drug-snorting fuck-up has been offi-cially rebranded a genius.’
Carlyle laughed.
‘Now, you know and I know that
genius
,’ Dom continued, ‘is almost certainly the most over-used word in the English language. But the point is that his legend has already been written. Anything with his name on it will now sell like hot cakes.’
‘Was he really any good?’ Carlyle asked. ‘I mean, how difficult can it be to design a shirt? Or a pair of jeans? It’s not like it’s never been done before.’
‘I know, I know,’ Dom agreed. ‘I don’t understand it either. But I’m not complaining. Rollo did me a big favour by shuffling off this mortal coil so quickly. The business might even move into profit this year.’
Carlyle let a mouthful of whiskey lie on his tongue before swallowing it. ‘Of course,’ he said casually, ‘that would have given you a pretty good motive for having him killed.’
Dom took another gulp of his beer. ‘Is that a question or an observation?’
‘No one has ever been charged with the murders of Kasabian or Sam Hooper,’ Carlyle observed matter-of-factly.
‘These things happen.’
Carlyle emptied his glass and said, lowering his voice, even though there was no one else within earshot: ‘We have an unusual relationship.’
Dom smiled, knowing where the conversation was going. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we do.’
‘But we can only stretch things so far.’
‘That is understood.’
Carlyle exhaled slowly. ‘So – there are certain lines that cannot be crossed.’
Dom nodded. ‘That has always been not only understood but respected.’
‘So, I need to know . . .’
‘What do you need to know, John?’
‘Were you responsible for the deaths of Kasabian and Hooper?’
‘Responsible?’
‘Did you have them killed?’
‘Bloody hell!’ Dom laughed. ‘What kind of a question is that?’
‘I need to know,’ Carlyle said grimly.
Dom’s eyes narrowed. ‘Do you
really
want to know?’
No
, screamed a voice in the inspector’s head.
Absolutely not. Never in a million fucking years
. ‘Yes.’
‘Okay, suit yourself.’ Grabbing Carlyle’s empty glass, Dom got to his feet. ‘Let me just nip to the bar and I’ll be right back with an answer. Same again?’
Feeling sick to his stomach, Carlyle merely nodded.
Dom handed Carlyle the double whiskey and sat down with a fresh bottle of beer. ‘Cheers!’
‘Cheers,’ Carlyle repeated, without enthusiasm.
‘Remember the night you arrested Lottie?’
‘Yeah.’ That seemed a hell of a long time ago now, but even if he couldn’t remember her face, he could recall what the rest of her looked like, standing naked, backstage.
‘And remember I told you about Marina and Cockayne Syndrome.’
‘Yup,’ Carlyle said.
‘Well, since then, there have been more tests and the news isn’t getting any better. The other day, the child even asked me “When am I going to die, Dad?” ’ He shook his head. ‘Five years old. What kind of a fucking question is that?’
‘What did you say?’ Carlyle asked, wondering where Dom was going with this.
‘What
could
I say?’ Dom cleared his throat. ‘I told her that we loved her and we would look after her and that we wouldn’t lie to her, but that we didn’t know the answer to everything.’