Buckingham Palace Blues (20 page)

‘John? This is Warren Shen. You were trying to get hold of me?’

*   *   *

He found Shen sitting in a dingy café off the Holloway Road, hunched over a mug of coffee. Facing him was a youngish woman, who looked pretty but tired and worried. Without saying anything, Carlyle pulled out a chair and sat down with them.

Shen nodded to the woman. ‘Rose, this is Inspector John Carlyle. He’s from the Charing Cross station. John, this is Rose Scripps. She’s from—’

Carlyle cut across him brusquely. ‘Have you heard anything from Ihor yet?’

Shen sat back in his chair and eyed Carlyle carefully. ‘No. Not yet.’

‘You know we found the girl.’

‘I know,’ Shen sighed. ‘It’s horrible.’

Carlyle glanced at the woman, who was watching them closely but said nothing. He turned back to Shen. ‘So what are we going to do about it?’

The uncomfortable look drifting across Shen’s face said
It’s not really my problem
. He took a sip of his coffee and Carlyle noted the legend on the mug, celebrating Arsenal’s
Invincibles
from 2003–4, the season when they didn’t lose a single game. That did nothing to improve his mood. The inspector, a Fulham fan, hated Arsenal. The favoured club of the effete metrosexual media elite who understood nothing about football or its heritage, they were almost as bad as Chelsea.

‘I will go and see Ihor again,’ Shen said finally. ‘And my boys have got the word out that we really want this one. We will keep at it.’ His mobile started vibrating its way across the table and he grabbed it quickly. ‘Hello? Yes . . .’ Lifting up a finger to signify he would be back, Shen stood up and walked to the door.

Saved by the bell, Carlyle thought as he watched the superintendent standing out on the pavement, with his back to them, as he spoke on the phone. Suddenly he felt hungry. He looked at the woman, who was now checking messages on her BlackBerry. ‘Would you like anything to eat?’

Without looking up, she shook her head.

*   *   *

Carlyle was sipping a double espresso and waiting for his fried-egg sandwich when Shen finally reappeared. ‘Sorry,’ he said, holding out a hand. ‘I’ve got to go.’

Carlyle shook it limply.

‘I’ll let you know when I get to speak to Ihor,’ Shen continued. He looked over at the woman. ‘Rose, keep me posted on your . . . problem.’

‘I will,’ she nodded.

‘I hope your guy turns up.’

‘Me too.’

‘Okay,’ said Shen, shuffling towards the door. ‘See you later.’

As soon as Carlyle’s sandwich appeared, he added some ketchup and took a large bite. The woman finally finished with her BlackBerry and dropped it into her bag. Fishing out a business card, she pushed it across the table towards Carlyle.

Taking a second bite out of the sandwich, Carlyle eyed the card:
Rose Scripps, Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre
. ‘What do you do there?’ he asked.

‘I’m a child protection social worker, on secondment to CEOP Victim ID Team from the NSPCC.’

‘Mm.’ Another bloody social worker, Carlyle reflected. That’s just great. He was aware of CEOP, although he had never previously worked with anyone from there. An uncomfortable thought flitted through his brain: maybe he should have thought about contacting them earlier in his investigation. He looked Rose Scripps up and down. Could this child protection social worker be any use to him? ‘And how do you know Shen?’

She studied him equally carefully. ‘I don’t, really. I was just hoping that he might be able to help me with a case I’m working on.’

‘Good luck with that.’

Rose sat up in her chair and put her hands on the table. ‘Why do you say that?’

Carlyle popped the last of the sandwich into his mouth and wiped his hands on a napkin; then he drained the last of his espresso. ‘Well . . .’

They spent the next twenty minutes drinking coffee and comparing notes. Carlyle was embarrassed to admit that Alzbetha had gone missing while she was supposed to have been in the care of Westminster Council but Rose showed no surprise. ‘Last year, more than three hundred children arriving in the UK went missing from the care of local authorities,’ she said.

‘How many of them were being trafficked?’ Carlyle wondered.

‘Many are, for sure. I worked on Operation Pentameter a while back, and there’s a market for children, just as there’s a market for adults.’

‘Pentameter?’ Carlyle shook his head. ‘Don’t really know much about it.’

‘We were targeting sex trafficking and forced labour. There were hundreds of raids, and hundreds of arrests. More than two hundred victims were recovered, including a dozen or so girls aged under eighteen.’

‘You found twelve out of two hundred?’ Carlyle made a face. ‘That doesn’t sound so good.’

‘None of our statistics ever do.’ She stared out the window, and for a moment he thought she might start to cry. When she turned back to him, however, there was a steely glint in her eye. ‘Those children come from all over the place. Many of them are from West Africa, China and Vietnam, but also from places like the Ukraine in the old Soviet Bloc. Some come off their own bat, asking for asylum. Most are sent by traffickers. If they are picked up at the airport by the authorities, the traffickers know the likely places the children will be taken. Or they tell the children to run away once they get there. Local authorities just don’t take the issue seriously enough.’

Carlyle grunted his agreement on that point.

‘So, of course, when a child goes missing,’ Rose continued, ‘we have no records at all. No photographs, no real names and no documents. Vietnamese boys end up working in illegal cannabis factories. West African girls are forced into brothels or domestic service. The Chinese children work in restaurants or selling DVDs door to door.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Even the children staying in local authority homes can be abused. I was told of one case of four girls in care who were taken to work as prostitutes each day by their trafficker.’

‘I suppose that makes good business sense,’ Carlyle groaned, ‘insofar as it cuts down on their costs.’

Rose frowned. ‘Are you always this cynical, Inspector?’

‘I try to be.’ Carlyle smiled thinly. ‘I like to think of it as a God-given talent.’

They sat in silence for a while longer. Finally, Rose stood up and announced that she had to go and collect her daughter.

‘We should continue this later,’ she said.

Carlyle nodded. ‘Yes.’ It seemed clear that there could be a connection between their respective cases. Signalling to the waitress for the bill, he watched Rose Scripps head off briskly down the road. Interesting woman, he thought. Maybe, just maybe, she can help me crack this.

NINETEEN

It was ridiculous. There was nowhere you could smoke indoors these days. Out of uniform but on the clock, Tommy Dolan stepped on to the pavement on Cork Street, in the heart of Piccadilly, and lit a cigarette. Keeping one eye on the people inside the Block Gallery, noisily enjoying the Private View canapés and the Director’s Cut Russian River Chardonnay (which he had to admit was very nice), he took a deep drag.
Ahh!
That was better. He exhaled in the direction of a poster displayed in the gallery window, advertising an exhibition by a young British sculptress named Henrietta Templeton.

‘Hello, Tommy!’

Dolan wheeled round to see John Carlyle standing at the kerbside, next to a grinning fat bloke who, Dolan guessed, must be his sidekick.

‘Fuck,’ Dolan groaned, taking another puff. ‘What do you want?’

‘We’re here to see your boss,’ Carlyle said, the cheeriness in his voice belied by the hostility evident in his eyes.

‘Huh?’ Dolan took a final drag and flicked the cigarette in the direction of the gutter.

‘Gordon Elstree-Ullick,’ Carlyle said, looking past Dolan towards the throng inside. ‘Also known as the Earl of Falkirk. Twenty-second in line to the British throne, I believe. The guy you’re supposed to be protecting from whatever threat to his person may be lurking among those sculptures tonight.’

Dolan stepped in front of the door. He wasn’t a particularly tall man, but he was still just about able to look down on Carlyle. ‘He’s hardly my boss. And I don’t think he’d want to be disturbed at the moment – not when he’s busy networking. Why don’t you fuck off like a good little boy and I’ll let him know you were wanting a word.’

Carlyle stepped closer. ‘Now, now, Tommy. You don’t want me to have to get Joe here to arrest you. Think of the embarrassment in front of your rich friends.’

A well-preserved woman in a fur coat of some description arrived at the door. Giving them a dirty look, she went inside.

‘Arrest me?’ Dolan snorted, once the door had closed behind her. ‘For what? You’re out of your fucking mind.’

‘For assaulting Alexa Matthews, for a start.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Dolan replied. ‘I wouldn’t touch that fat cow with a bargepole.’

‘I’ve seen the mess she’s in.’

Dolan grinned nastily. ‘I think you’ll find
she’s
the one under investigation.’

Carlyle coughed. ‘Then there’s Dalton.’

‘Joe?’ Dolan’s eyes narrowed. ‘He committed suicide. What’s that got to do with me?’

Carlyle leaned closer. ‘We’re on to you, Tommy. United 14 . . . the whole works. You’ve been pushing your luck for far too long.’

‘Got a warrant?’

Carlyle said nothing.

‘Thought not.’ Dolan tut-tutted. ‘It’s just the same old snivelling bullshit from you, my friend. Now fuck off.’ He put a hand on Carlyle’s chest and shoved him away from the door. As Carlyle stumbled backwards, Joe Szyszkowski grabbed Dolan by the collar with his right hand and sank a meaty left hook into his stomach.

‘Ooof!’ A look of surprise spread across Dolan’s face, as his legs buckled.

No one inside paid them any notice.

Half-marching, half-dragging Dolan away from the gallery entrance, the sergeant turned to Carlyle. ‘I’ll deal with this guy. You go on inside.’

The temperature inside the gallery was at least ten degrees warmer than out on the street. Carlyle took off his overcoat and waited patiently for the girl on the reception desk to lift her head out of her book. Its title –
Bad Art for Bad People
– made him smile. Almost.

‘Name?’ With immense effort, the girl looked at him through her red-framed glasses and down her not inconsiderable nose. She was all blonde hair, Mummy’s pearls and studied boredom. There were thousands just like her among London’s well-heeled pretend professionals. He didn’t let it get to him.

‘Carlyle,’ he said politely.

Putting down the book, she slowly scanned a sheet of names in front of her. A small smirk crept on to her lips. ‘I’m sorry, but your name is not on the list.’

Carlyle dropped a card on the desk. ‘That’s because I’m a policeman and I’m here on business. It’s nothing to do with the gallery. I just need to speak to one of your guests. All very discreet.’ He gestured towards the card. ‘That’s for your boss’s information – a courtesy; so that you can let him know that I’m here.’

‘A policeman?’ Ignoring the card, the girl cocked her head to one side, as if she was trying to process this information.

‘Yes. Take this.’ Carlyle handed her his coat. ‘I won’t be long.’ Stepping past the desk, he took a glass of wine from the tray held by a hovering waiter and scanned the main room. The gallery was a reasonable size, maybe 700 square feet, with a smaller room at the back. But, with easily 100-plus people in attendance, the place was very full. Everyone seemed to be chatting away, paying no attention to the art whatsoever, and the inspector’s arrival passed unnoticed. Taking a mouthful of wine, Carlyle began moving slowly through the room, looking out for his man.

A couple of minutes later, he had located Falkirk talking animatedly to two blondes in a corner at the rear of the main gallery. They were standing behind a limestone sculpture called
Mindscape
that came with a price tag equivalent to almost three-quarters of Carlyle’s annual inspector’s salary. Finishing his wine, he carefully placed the empty glass on the tray of a passing waitress. Pulling his warrant card from his pocket, he stepped toward the trio.

‘Hello? . . . Hell
oo
. . .’ a voice boomed.

To his right, Carlyle saw a large, middle-aged man in a tweed jacket standing on a small platform raised six inches above the floor. He was holding a microphone which he tapped to see if it was working. The resulting feedback suggested that it was. The beam from an overhead spotlight reflected off his bald head as he stroked his prodigious handlebar moustache nervously. ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.’

Falkirk and his companions turned to face the speaker. As he did so, Carlyle caught his eye. Falkirk’s face looked puffy; his expression glazed. He was clearly wasted. There was a flicker of recognition before the Earl looked away.

‘As many of you will know, I am Laurence Block, owner of this gallery and host of this evening’s event.’

Jettisoning the two women, Falkirk moved slowly but deliberately through the crowd, getting closer to the stage but also closer to the door.

‘I would just like to say how delighted we are to be hosting this exhibition . . .’

Although he was only three or four yards behind Falkirk, Carlyle found it hard to keep up. People were listening to the speech and reluctant to let him through. One woman even kicked him on the shin as he tried to push past her.

‘These works on display in the gallery tell tales of history and place, of isolation and hidden depths . . .’

By the time Carlyle reached the corner of the stage, Falkirk had disappeared from view. Had he managed to leave? The crowd was thinner here and the inspector could move more easily towards the door. Stepping outside, he looked up and down the street. There was no sign of Falkirk.

Fuck!
Carlyle shivered in the cold, then remembered that he had left his overcoat behind. From inside came a smattering of applause as Block’s speech came to an end, quickly replaced by the buzz of conversations being resumed. Pushing the door back open, he had one foot inside when he heard a voice from behind him.