‘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. ‘
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.’
She watched Merrett trudge off, feeling sorry for himself, and then she started off in the opposite direction, heading towards the footbridge over the Thames that would take her to Charing Cross on the north side. From there she could walk back to the office in about fifteen minutes. Approaching the Eye, she passed the fast track ticket booth, which was now empty. The last flight of the day had started and there would be no more customers this evening. On a whim, Rose stepped over to the booth and looked inside. It was empty, apart from a large black refuse sack that had been left, tied at the top, in the back, next to an open bin. She glanced around. There were a couple of staff tidying up litter, getting ready to usher the last visitors off the wheel and then go home for the night. But no one was paying any attention to her. Ducking into the booth, she opened her handbag and pulled out a large pair of tweezers and a small plastic bag that she’d saved from her last trip to Boots. Putting her handbag on the floor, she lifted up the sack, weighing it in her hand. It was full of used tickets, cardboard cups and empty plastic bottles; in short, a lot of crap to have to sort through. Rose sighed; she simply didn’t have the time right now.
Carefully returning the sack to where she had found it, Rose peered into the bin itself. It was empty apart from a couple of tickets. Reaching inside, she pulled out both of them with the tweezers and placed them carefully on the ground. In the poor light, she picked up the first ticket and brought it close to her face. It was for the 7.30 flight, pod 12, in the name of Cunningham. On the back were the terms and conditions of use. Nothing else of any interest. Crumpling the ticket up, she tossed it back into the bin.
The second ticket was also for the 7.30 flight, this time for pod 8. It had the legend SEG Ent. typed in the bottom right-hand corner.
‘Bingo!’ said Rose under her breath.
Dropping the ticket into her plastic bag, she noticed that something had been scribbled on the back. Grabbing it again with the tweezers, she took another look. There was a name and a mobile number.
‘Double bingo,’ she whispered.
FOURTEEN
Standing under the gloomy strip-lighting, Carlyle stared at the three corpses on the table and felt a bit queasy. He now wished that he had delayed his breakfast until after this visit to the East End. Pacing the concrete floor, he rubbed his hands together in a feeble attempt to keep warm. The room was cold, just as cold as it had been in the street outside. The weather had taken a turn for the worse and Carlyle reminded himself again that it was time to deploy the winter wardrobe. He cursed himself for not choosing a heavier overcoat. Through an open
