Buckingham Palace Blues

having to listen to this whining wanker. ‘What about Alexa Matthews?’ he asked.

‘Don’t know about that,’ Dolan sniffed. ‘Maybe someone got carried away.’

‘That’s why we’re here, Dolan,’ snapped Joe, lifting the bottle to his mouth but not taking a swig. ‘You said that you had something for us.’

‘All I want,’ said Dolan, once again displaying the self-awareness of a flea, ‘is to retire with my pension.’

Taking a final gulp of whiskey, the inspector placed his empty glass on the bar. ‘Okay, Tommy,’ he said, ‘I’m off in one minute. Time to put up or shut up.’

Dolan cradled his pint thoughtfully, eyes lowered, looking like the crafty little shit he was. ‘I can give you Adam,’ he said finally.

‘Charlie Adam!’ Carlyle attempted a snort of derision. ‘Why should I give a fuck about Charlie Adam? He’s too stupid to be bent.’

‘I wouldn’t be so sure.’

Carlyle put a hand on Dolan’s shoulder. ‘For the avoidance of any doubt, Tommy, I do not give a flying fuck about Charlie fucking Adam. Not least because I hear that the little muppet is resigning next week.’

Dolan stared at Carlyle.

So did Joe.

Both of them thought he was making it up.

Both of them knew that he was making it up.

Neither of them challenged him on it, however.

‘Time’s up,’ Carlyle said. ‘Give me Falkirk or fuck off.’

Dolan made a face. ‘Do we have a deal?’

‘Cheeky cunt,’ said Joe, grinning.

‘You know how it works, Tommy,’ said Carlyle, glaring at his sergeant, and trying to get him to calm down. ‘There can be no promises.’

Dolan fixed him with a look that said I might get fucked here, but I’m not going to get fucked stupid. ‘I understand that,’ he said slowly, ‘but we’ve got a gentleman’s agreement, don’t we?’

‘None of us are gentlemen, Tommy,’ Carlyle replied haughtily. ‘But for my part, assuming that you personally didn’t have anything to do with torching Alexa and her girlfriend, I will limit my interest to Falkirk. And I will speak to Simpson to see if that will hold true for the rest of the investigation. Then it will be down to you and your union rep.’

‘Great,’ said Dolan, without any enthusiasm. ‘The little twat is about twelve years old. He doesn’t have a fucking clue.’

‘That’s the thing, Tommy,’ Carlyle grinned. ‘Even the Police Force reps are looking younger and younger these days.’

Dolan stared at him blankly.

‘You have to give a statement to IIC,’ Carlyle continued. ‘Go and speak to a guy called Ambrose Watson. He seems okay.’

‘If he’s IIC,’ Dolan hissed, ‘he’s bound to be a git.’

Whatever, Carlyle thought. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘you have to talk to him. I’ll see what I can do in the meantime.’

‘What are your next steps?’ Dolan asked, failing to recognise that he was now a policeman in name only.

‘That’s my problem, Tommy,’ Carlyle replied, finally heading for the door. ‘You’ll have to leave it to me.’

TWENTY-EIGHT

‘What’s he doing here?’ Gordon Elstree-Ullick turned in his seat, eyeing Carlyle up and down.

Sitting behind the gilded cherrywood desk in his spacious office on the ground floor of the west wing of Buckingham Palace, looking out on to the central quadrangle, Sir Ewen Mayflower spread his hands wide. ‘I asked the inspector to come,’ he said evenly, ‘because I thought that he might assist in our conversation.’

Falkirk couldn’t have looked any more disgusted. ‘This po-liceman,’ he hissed, in his best Eton-meets-Harlem accent, ‘tried to arrest me.’

Carlyle glanced at Mayflower and said nothing.

‘The point is-’ Mayflower persevered.

‘The point is,’ Falkirk interrupted sharply, but in a voice tinged with fear, ‘that you have got me here under false pretences.’ He stood up and stared Carlyle in the eye. ‘This is the second time this. . incompetent officer has harassed me.’

Carlyle couldn’t resist the slightest of grins. ‘Dolan has given you up, Gordon,’ he said quietly. He then looked theatrically at his watch, hoping that Ambrose Watson had completed the interview by now. ‘It’s all over.’

‘Damn you,’ said Falkirk, pushing past Carlyle and heading for the door. ‘I will be speaking to my lawyer about this, once again.’

Enjoying the show, Mayflower raised his eyes to the ceiling.

‘Yes, you will,’ Carlyle agreed, placing a hand on Falkirk’s shoulder. ‘However, that will be after I have arrested you and charged you with people-trafficking, controlling prostitution — and murder.’

Mayflower let out a tiny gasp.

Falkirk shrugged off the inspector’s grasp, before jumping towards the door. Pulling it open, he bolted down the corridor.

Sighing, Carlyle headed after him.

‘Be careful with the antiques,’ Mayflower yelled after him.

In no particular hurry, Carlyle followed Falkirk down a corridor into the Blue Drawing Room, a cavernous space with chandeliers hanging from the ceiling like distended jellyfish. Trying desperately to place a call on his mobile, Falkirk tripped on the thick red carpet and went sprawling, dropping the handset as he did so.

Stepping past the Earl, Carlyle stomped on the mobile several times. ‘That’s the one phone call you’re allowed,’ he growled, trying not to enjoy himself too much.

Falkirk staggered to his feet and swung a kick at Carlyle, catching him right on the thigh.

‘You fucking bastard,’ Carlyle snarled, reaching out and grabbing a vase from a table just to his left. Fitting his grasp perfectly, the blue and white vase was about twelve inches tall, thin at the neck and round at the bottom. In one fluid, elegant movement, he smashed it down on Falkirk’s head, sending him back to the carpet in a haze of fragmenting porcelain and blood.

‘Oh my!’ Mayflower panted. ‘Oh my, oh my, oh my.’

Waiting for his adrenaline rush to wear off, Carlyle looked at the Head of the Royal Household, who was on his knees picking pieces of vase off the carpet. ‘Chinese,’ he mumbled. ‘Seventeenthcentury. . Qing Dynasty.’

‘Take it out of their Civil List money,’ Carlyle quipped.

Blood oozing from his scalp, Falkirk groaned as he tried to get up. ‘Stay still!’ Mayflower slapped him sharply on the top of his head. ‘Don’t move!’ He gestured for Carlyle to help. ‘We have to keep all the fragments.’

Carlyle stood exactly where he was, saying nothing.

With both hands now full of shards, Mayflower looked up. ‘You can’t arrest him until we’re sure that we’ve recovered all the pieces. I need to call in the specialist restorers.’

‘I suppose you’ve got them available on speed dial,’ Carlyle grinned.

Mayflower fixed him with a hard stare. ‘Don’t be flip, Inspector, that vase was priceless.’

‘Bill me,’ said Carlyle, suddenly feeling weary of being in the presence of all this wealth.

But Mayflower was talking to himself. ‘We will have to get another from storage while we glue this one back together.’

‘Storage?’ Carlyle asked.

Falkirk emitted another groan. Carlyle took a half-step closer and gave him a sly kick.