‘And this is the 1844 Room, decorated for the state visit of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia in, well, 1844.’
The Earl of Falkirk pointed to an oil painting of a sad, weak-looking man in military dress uniform. He had a bushy moustache and a very bad comb-over. The legend beneath the portrait read:
‘He liked to keep the serfs in their place, apparently. Top man.’
Olga yawned. She wanted a drink, not a tour of these endless, dreary rooms. So it was a palace, big deal. There were plenty of palaces where she came from. Autocrat of All the Russias? Pah! Just another deluded man with a small cock and a big title. What did he achieve? Nothing. He was barely even a blip on the course of history.
Who would have thought this Englishman could be both a pervert
The room was hot and stuffy. Olga felt sleepy and her feet ached. Unable to take any more, she dropped her bag on the carpet and flopped down on a nearby sofa. Closing her eyes, she leaned back and thought of a large, sparkling glass of Laurent Perrier Cuvee Brut Rose.
Big mistake.
Within a second, he was upon her, pinning her to the red velvet, slobbering in her face. She could feel his erection against her leg as he tried to pull up her dress.
‘Let go of me!’
She tried to kick him in the crotch but could get no leverage. One hand pinned her neck to the sofa while the other hiked her dress up around her waist.
‘My, my,’ Falkirk whispered, panting with the effort and the excitement. ‘No panties.’
She watched in amused horror as he undid his trousers, pushing them down towards his knees.
‘Hold on,’ Olga gasped, trying to look impressed. ‘Wait a second. I have protection.’
‘I don’t bother with that.’
‘But I do,’ she said sweetly, running her tongue across her top lip, hoping that she wasn’t about to get a faceful. ‘And you should see how I put it on.’
Quivering, Falkirk grunted his assent. Twisting away, she grabbed the handle of her bag, pulled it closer to her, before rummaging through the contents at the bottom of it.
Manoeuvring on the sofa to prise her legs apart, Falkirk made a noise like a puppy being strangled. ‘Hurry up!’
‘Got it!’ Placing her hand around the grip, she pulled out the tiny Kevin ZP98 and pointed it at the spot where Falkirk’s eyebrows met in the middle of his forehead.
‘Whoa!’ If anything, the gun seemed to make him more excited.
‘This is Kevin,’ she said quickly. ‘It is a sub-compact semiautomatic pistol manufactured in the Czech Republic. My father gave it to me. It takes a 9mm Makarov cartridge.’
‘A whore with a gun!’ Falkirk laughed giddily. ‘I’m in heaven. Heaven!’
Olga tried to ignore the stickiness around her belly button. ‘The thing about Kevin,’ she said calmly, ‘is that it doesn’t have a safety-catch. If you don’t get off me this second, I pull the trigger and you die.’
Pointing the ZP98 just past his left ear, she fired. There was a loud bang and the Autocrat of All the Russias took one right in the kisser.
Olga turned the gun back on Falkirk. ‘Off! Now!’
‘Yes, ma’am!’ With the grin still on his face, and his cock in his hand, Falkirk slowly slid off her and stood up.
Quickly getting to her feet, Olga pulled down her dress, keeping the gun trained on her host. She stepped away in disgust as he finished himself off and wiped his mess into the carpet.
A sour smell began to fill the room. Falkirk, the madness now gone from his eyes, buttoned himself up. ‘Come on,’ he said, heading for the door as if nothing had happened. ‘Let’s go and get that drink.’
Rose ended her latest call and checked her voicemail, just in case Merrett had phoned while she was on the line:
Rose hit the end button and dropped her phone on the table. She felt a gnawing in her stomach, but she had done what she could for tonight. When he turns up, I’m going to bloody kill him, she thought, as she stood up and turned out the light.
EIGHTEEN
They were sitting in the back booth of Il Buffone, a tiny 1950s-style Italian cafe on the north side of Macklin Street, just across the road from the flat. Alice had been coming here since she was born; Carlyle quite a bit longer. Today, it was just gone 4 p.m. and they were the only customers left in there. The owner, Marcello, had just flipped the
Alice played with the straw in her orange juice and looked up from the table. ‘You know, Dad, I’m not stupid.’ She gave him a withering look.
Just like her mother, Carlyle thought. A familiar and not altogether unpleasant feeling of helplessness washed over him.
‘Just because some of the girls in the class are behaving like idiots,’ Alice continued, ‘it doesn’t mean that I’ll behave like that too.’
Carlyle felt a stab of pain in his chest and forced himself to smile. ‘I know, sweetheart.’ This was his chance to raise the drugs issue, following Helen’s tip-off about the latest problems at City School for Girls. His daughter seemed happy enough to talk about it, but Carlyle was painfully aware that he didn’t really have much to say. After all, there was nothing that he could actually do to lessen the risks. He gripped his demitasse tightly. ‘It’s just that. .’ He glanced at the crumbling poster of the 1984 Juventus scudettowinning squad on the wall above Alice’s head. But even Trapattoni and Platini couldn’t offer any practical assistance on this one. ‘Well, your mother tells me a couple of girls were expelled.’
‘Yeah, but that was a while ago now.’ Alice finished her juice and pulled on her overcoat, signalling that she was ready to go home.
‘One of them was in your class?’ Carlyle observed, as casually as he could, conscious that he was slipping into policeman mode.
‘Yeah, Susan Watts. But I never really hung out with her. I don’t think she did anything, really.’
‘What does that mean?’
Alice frowned. ‘I don’t think she actually
Carlyle raised an eyebrow. ‘So what did she do then?’
‘She just held some stuff for her boyfriend,’ Alice replied, equally casually. ‘That’s what they found on her: five or six roll-ups with skunk in them.’
‘Her boyfriend?’
‘He goes to Central Foundation. Well,’ Alice grinned, ‘you know, he used to. He was expelled as well. He was a bit ugly. But he was sixteen.’
He was interrupted by Marcello, who appeared at the table with a couple of unsold pastries in a bag for Carlyle. He handed it to the inspector and smiled at Alice. ‘How’s school these days?’
‘Fine, Marcello, thank you,’ she said primly. ‘Although I still have to submit to the occasional interrogation
