Buckingham Palace Blues (15 page)

‘Dolan can’t sit around and wait. His glory days at SO14 may be coming to an end.’

‘Why?’ Joe asked.

‘There is talk of bringing in another 150 armed protection officers to cut back on overtime. That means more than thirty grand a year to the likes of Dolan.’

Carlyle let out a low whistle. ‘Bummer.’

‘Dolan is steaming. He blames Princess Cheyenne.’

Joe and Carlyle exchanged quizzical looks. ‘Who?’ they asked in unison.

‘The daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Colchester,’ Matthews sneered. ‘She’s something like tenth or eleventh in line to the throne. She’s at some crappy northern university studying the history of modern art, or some useless pile of wank like that. The annual protection bill for her alone is about four hundred grand.’

‘A bargain,’ Carlyle said sarcastically.

‘That’s nothing,’ Matthews went on. ‘The little genius now wants to go and study in America. That means two officers providing twenty-four-hour cover and a bill that could easily top a million. The papers are on to it and the top brass are running scared. They hope that if they can just get the overtime bill down, no one will notice that the overall bill keeps going up. The Commissioner has said the government already needs to find another twenty million a year to cover all the costs.’

‘Royalty doesn’t do belt-tightening,’ Carlyle commented. ‘Cuts, like taxes, are for the little people – people like us. Buckingham Palace has always refused to allow any cuts. They argue that the police and the state have a duty to protect both the Queen and the line of succession.’

Joe yawned, as he often did when his boss got on his soapbox. ‘Coming back to Dolan,’ he interjected.

‘Dolan has had to diversify.’

‘Into what?’ Joe asked.

‘Into things that some people can’t live with,’ Matthews said cryptically.

‘Be more specific,’ Carlyle demanded.

Matthews tried to stand up, wobbled, and fell back into her seat. ‘That’s all I’m going to say until I get myself out of there.’

Carlyle changed tack. ‘Is Adam himself in on it?’

‘He turns a blind eye. Can
you
get me out of there?’

‘I’ll speak to my boss,’ Carlyle said. ‘Why are you telling me all this now?’

‘Because, annoying little shit though you are, you’re my best bet for getting out of this whole mess and keeping my job.’ This time Matthews made it successfully to her feet.

Carlyle tried one last time. ‘What do they do?’

‘Get me out and I’ll give you more. Otherwise, that’s your lot for now.’

‘Dalton was in on it?’ Joe persisted.

‘Dalton couldn’t take it any more. He couldn’t hack it. He was a bit lame that way.’ She brushed past Carlyle, and paused while trying to work out a path through the throng towards the door. ‘Have you seen Allcock yet?’

‘Who?’

‘Dalton’s girlfriend.’

Carlyle was embarrassed to admit that he hadn’t got round to that yet. ‘Not yet.’

Matthews gave him a crooked grin as she pushed her way past another group of drinkers. ‘Better get on with it then, hadn’t you?’

‘Here you go.’

Helen tossed the brochure on to his lap and flopped down on the sofa.

‘I thought it might bring back lots of happy memories,’ she said with a smirk, picking up the remote control and switching on the television.

Carlyle looked down at the
Buckingham Palace: Official Souvenir Guide
, and made a face. ‘Thanks a lot. When did you get that?’

‘When we went on the tour there last year,’ Helen said, flicking rapidly through a succession of channels in search of her nightly fix of audiovisual dross. ‘Alice wanted it for a school project she had to do.’

Carlyle turned the thin volume over in his hands, looking for the price. ‘How much did it cost?’

Helen shrugged. ‘Dunno . . . eight quid, something like that.’

‘So,’ Carlyle felt a wave of parsimony wash over him, ‘all in all, with the tickets and everything, the whole visit cost you what – fifty quid?’

‘Easily.’ Helen had just found an episode of
Argentina’s Next Top Model
on some obscure satellite channel. Their time for talking was over.

‘Talk about the rich getting even richer.’

Opening the brochure, Carlyle perused the text:
Buckingham Palace is furnished and decorated with priceless works of art from the Royal Collection
.

He glanced over at his wife, who was engrossed in watching some girl in a bikini and biker boots being abused by an overly butch photographer in the middle of some desert. ‘Do they really need our money too?’

‘What?’ Helen didn’t look up.

Sighing, he read on.
Buckingham Palace has 775 rooms, with 19 State Rooms, 52 Royal and guest bedrooms, 188 staff bedrooms and 78 bathrooms. More than 50,000 people visit each year as guests to banquets, receptions and Garden Parties
.

The inspector felt annoyed by the boundless silliness of it all. ‘Have you got a decent hat? If I sort this mess out, maybe we’ll get invited to a Garden Party.’

The girl on the TV was now in tears. She was being asked to pose naked – apart from the boots – in the desert with some kind of snake. It was a big beast, too, maybe a python. Tossing the
Official Souvenir Guide
on the floor, Carlyle cuddled up to his wife to enjoy the rest of the show.

THIRTEEN

Unleashing his inner eight year old, Simon Merrett swivelled round in his chair to look at the bank of video screens ranged above the desk in front of him. ‘This is like the Starship Enterprise,’ he grinned. ‘How do we get to Warp Factor Ten?’

Marshall Monk felt the pain in his stomach intensify. The General Manager of the London Eye tugged at the collar of his shirt and wondered if he should check the CEOP detective’s ID again. ‘I beg your pardon?’

Rose Scripps gave her colleague a dirty look.

‘What I mean is,’ Merrett said hastily, getting his chair back under control, ‘how are we going to do this?’

Monk looked at the two uniformed policemen standing by the door of the control room, on either side of Sandra Scott. Scott looked her usual bovine self. The only thing that persuaded Monk that this wasn’t some kind of a wind-up was the fact that she had turned up for the start of her shift wearing handcuffs. ‘Well,’ he said nervously, ‘as I understand it, you are looking to apprehend—’

‘Arrest,’ Rose interrupted.

‘Detain,’ Merrett added unhelpfully.

Monk frowned, clearly not interested in their childish semantics. ‘You want to get hold of the gentlemen who have booked a private capsule for the seven-thirty flight.’

Merrett glanced at the piece of paper with the booking details on the table in front of him. ‘SEG Enterprises? Who are they?’

‘I don’t know,’ Monk shrugged. ‘But that was their second booking.’

‘Payment?’ Rose asked.

‘Through a corporate credit card,’ Monk replied. ‘Amex, if I remember correctly.’

‘The contact details are for a serviced office in Mayfair,’ Merrett added, pleased to be able to show off that he had done some homework. ‘SEG have rented space there for almost a year, but no one can ever remember anyone from the company actually turning up there.’ He turned to Monk. ‘So, what happens tonight?’

‘One member of the group will need to check in at the priority check-in desk – the fast track booth – fifteen minutes before the scheduled flight time. Once the whole group is assembled, the capsule host will escort the group through the fast track entrance, thus bypassing the regular queue.’

‘The capsule host?’ Rose asked.

‘Yes.’ Monk smiled, happy to be speaking to this sensible-seeming woman, rather than her juvenile colleague. ‘Every capsule has a host for the thirty-minute flight. The host is compulsory because there needs to be a minimum of three adults, over the age of eighteen, in each capsule.’

Rose looked at Merrett. ‘But on that DVD . . .’

Merrett looked over at Sandra Scott, out of earshot, staring at the floor and not showing any apparent interest in their conversation. Someone had doubtless been paid off, which made him wonder about Monk himself. Merrett turned back to Rose. ‘We’ll sort that out later.’ He glanced at the clock above the screens, which showed 6.10 p.m. ‘In the meantime, this is what we’re going to do now . . .’

‘My daughter Louise is keen to go up on the Eye,’ Rose said, looking up at the giant wheel in front of them. ‘They went there on a school trip, and she’s hassling me to take her again.’ They were now standing in the standard queue, sandwiched between an aged French couple and a noisy hen party of middle-aged women dressed as cowgirls, and clearly the worse for drink.

‘I’m sure Monk can sort it for you,’ Merrett said, his eyes focused on the fast track check-in booth, twenty yards to his left.

Rose shook her head. ‘No, thanks! I don’t fancy it myself. I don’t like heights at all.’

‘It’s not that high.’ Merrett looked at his watch for the third time in as many minutes. It was 7.11. He wondered if they were going to be stood up. They were only three or four away from the front of the queue now. Behind them, the cowgirls were getting more excited. One of them cheekily pinched Merrett’s backside. ‘Hey!’ He spun round angrily, to be confronted by a pair of bleach-blonde grannies collapsing into a fit of giggles.

‘Look!’ Rose grabbed Merrett’s shoulder and turned him towards her. She was surprised to see that he was blushing. She gestured towards a tall, well-dressed man and a girl handing their fast track tickets over to a waiting host. The pair had their backs to Rose and Merrett and, given the distance, the girl could have been aged anything between eleven to sixteen. ‘What about them?’

‘Worth a look,’ said Merrett, stepping out of the line and moving swiftly towards the newly arrived pair.

‘What’s the matter, love?’ one of the grannies cackled. ‘Worried what we’ll do to you when we get you up in the air?’

‘It isn’t his bum he should be worried about,’ another one shouted. ‘Come back here, lover boy!’

Rose followed after Merrett, who was already five yards in front of her. Up ahead, she could see that the host was still checking their tickets and had not waved the man and the girl through. The Eye host said something into his walkie-talkie, and the well-dressed man turned round with a look of exasperation on his face. Rose stopped and studied his face. The crowds had thinned and, even at this distance, she was relatively sure that he was not the same man they had seen on the DVD. Before she could look away again, he caught her eye. She glanced over at Merrett, who had slowed his pace, trying to work out what was going on. The man followed her gaze and immediately turned back around. Grabbing the girl by the hand, he pulled her away from the booth, and started heading quickly in the direction of Westminster Bridge. The host looked surprised, but said nothing.

‘Hey!’ Merrett started running after the pair, and immediately went sprawling straight over a young boy who had appeared from nowhere, eating a large pink cloud of candyfloss. ‘Shit!’

The boy started crying. Then he realised his candyfloss had landed in a puddle and he started screaming.

Merrett got up gingerly, holding his wrist. A large man with a shaven head and a Chelsea tattoo on his neck grabbed him by the arm. A small, nervous-looking woman, cigarette dangling from her mouth, hovered in the background. ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ the man snarled. ‘Why can’t you watch where you’re fucking going, you stupid wanker?’

‘My arm,’ Merrett winced.

‘I don’t care about your fucking arm,’ the man shouted. ‘You need to apologise to young Didier.’ He gestured at the kid, who was still blubbing for all he was worth. ‘
And
buy him some more candyfloss. Four bloody quid that cost.’

The boy had stopped crying by now, encouraged by the prospect of reparation. A small crowd had quickly gathered to see if Chelsea Man was going to beat the crap out of his son’s tormentor.

Leaving Merrett to sort himself out, Rose hurried along the Embankment, scanning the horizon. For a second, she saw their quarry at the top of the steps leading to the bridge above. Upping her pace, she dodged through the tourist throng and headed after them.

Reaching the top of the steps, she was out of breath and panting. She couldn’t remember the last time she had run anywhere, and the burning sensation in her chest was giving way to an urge to be sick. Looking over at Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, she took a couple of deep breaths and waited for the nausea to subside. The sweat running down her back had gone cold, and she shivered. A cyclist flashed past her, inches away from being taken out by a number 12 bus. Two hundred feet up, the quarter bells in the belfry played the Westminster Quarters, signifying it was now 7.15. Of the man and the girl there was no sign.

Allowing her frustration to subside, Rose took her time returning to the Eye. When she finally got there, Chelsea Man and his family were gone. Merrett was sitting on the steps leading to the back entrance of City Hall, having his wrist bandaged by a paramedic from the Cycle Response Unit.

‘Looks like it’s broken,’ Merrett groaned. ‘I’ll need to go and get it X-rayed at St Thomas’s.’ He didn’t look at her or ask about their quarry.

‘Did you get the kid a new stick of candyfloss?’

‘Four bloody quid!’ Merrett whined. ‘I hope the little bugger chokes on it. Where did he come from anyway?’ He ignored the grin on her face. ‘What are you going to do now?’

Rose thought about it for a moment. ‘I’ll check the CCTV and have another word with Mr Monk,’ she said. ‘Then I’ll get back to the office and write up a report.’

Merrett accepted a couple of painkillers from the paramedic and dropped them into his mouth. ‘Leaving out the bit about the kid and the candyfloss.’

Rose patted him gently on the shoulder. ‘Of course.’

Merrett took a swig from a bottle of water to wash the pills down. ‘Thanks.’ He offered her a drink.

Rose shook her head. ‘No, thanks.’

‘I appreciate it,’ Merrett continued. ‘No one likes looking like a dick.’

‘No problem.’ Rose gave him a reassuring smile. ‘These things happen. You go and get your wrist seen to, and we can see where we are in the morning.’