He never came to Kami no Shizuku simply for work alone, but for the whole experience. Tonight, having dealt with business, the exquisite meal demanded an extended period of reflection. Even more importantly, his two-grand bottle of 1982 Chateau Lafite-Rothschild still had some wine left in, it and he certainly wasn’t going to waste it. He stared into his glass and smiled, before raising a gentle toast to his wife. ‘Thanks for putting up with that.’
‘What?’ Carole Simpson had already forgotten about the couple they had spent the last two and a half hours dining with. Rather, she was wondering about the wisdom of having chosen the sticky toffee pudding for dessert. It had been delightful, as always, but she shouldn’t have let Kanzaki talk her into it. Once consumed, it became just a pile of additional calories that she didn’t need. Despite her surroundings, she still saw herself very much as a regular police officer, and was therefore embarrassed by the amount of time she spent sitting on her backside behind a desk. Her attempts to keep in shape were tortuous enough.
‘Thanks for coming tonight,’ he said, pouring the last of the wine into his glass.
‘My pleasure,’ said Simpson. ‘Well, not really, but you know what I mean.’
‘Yes, I do,’ her husband agreed.
‘Remind me. Who were they?’
‘Shane is a mid-level backer,’ said her husband casually. Mid-level meant someone who had put between fifty and a hundred million pounds into one of McGowan Capital’s funds. ‘He’s not nervous about the funds, which is just as well, considering he is locked in until next March, but he happened to be in town with his wife, and…’
Carole smiled. ‘And some reassurance and a free meal never do any harm when the stock market is in freefall.’
‘Exactly,’ Joshua agreed, suppressing a slight feeling of annoyance. He had explained all this to his wife at least three times in the preceding days, but by now he was used to her not paying much attention to his work. She seemed merely amused that he made so much money by pushing numbers across a computer screen. To a police officer it just didn’t seem real.
Her casual attitude didn’t really bother him, however, since he didn’t have much interest in her job either. They were more than secure financially, so there was no actual need for her to work. The way Joshua saw it, the police thing was less of a job now and more like a hobby. But neither of them had ever given thought to the idea that she might quit. The Job was a core part of her being, always had been, and he knew that she would never give it up voluntarily.
For a few minutes they sat in comfortable silence, while, not for the first time, Simpson eyed her husband with a mixture of bemusement and deep affection. How he had transformed himself from the rather unworldly Imperial College computer scientist that she had married into a razor-sharp financial investor, in ten short years, amazed her. She was just glad that the five-bedroom house in Highgate, the expensive restaurants, the needy clients and the political networking had not turned Joshua into a completely different person, robbing her of what she had seen in him in the first place. And it amused her that they could now mix in circles that were way beyond her previous expectations. Many of her social experiences were consequently way beyond the aspirations of even her most senior bosses in the Metropolitan Police. It was fun but it wasn’t what she had signed up for, and, if it all disappeared tomorrow, Simpson knew that she could happily go back to the way things had been before.
The meal had been pleasant enough, but now she felt deeply tired. Tomorrow would mean another extremely early start and, as always, the new day would bring more committee meetings and less policing. Responsibility without power was wearisome. The backlog of cases that she was ultimately in charge of was getting far too long for comfort. She wondered if John Carlyle had tracked down the Ahl woman yet. He should have given her an update this evening, but she knew how he hoarded his information carefully. All in all, he made her extremely nervous, and she even hated him for that. Why couldn’t the little rat-faced cynic just do what he was bloody well told, she wondered, not for the first time.
The problem with Mr John Carlyle, she had concluded long ago, was that he possessed too much of a sense of his own importance. Sudden heartburn sent a spasm of discomfort through her chest. She should have insisted that he bring the Ahl woman straight in to Charing Cross for questioning. Things would be far more straightforward once they had made an arrest. It was still Carlyle’s investigation, but Simpson knew that she had the bigger picture to consider. Maybe it was time for her to give him a sharp nudge. Getting this case off her desk would represent a big step forward.
Joshua was thinking about a cigar, but saw how tired his wife looked and decided against it. Instead, he caught Kanzaki’s eye and gestured for the bill. Turning back to his wife, he said: ‘The gossip is that the mayor is finally ready to take out the commissioner. After the election is out of the way, and Holyrod’s chums are settled in Downing Street, your man Osgood is a goner.’
Carole Simpson smiled. Like everyone else on the Force, she knew that the rumours had been gathering pace for some time. The present commissioner, Luke Osgood, had nailed his colours too closely to the mast of the old regime. Christian Holyrod, as trailblazer for the incoming Carlton regime, was busy flexing his muscles ahead of a change of government in Westminster. Changing Britain’s top cop was a good way of showing everyone just who was in charge now.
‘Luke was always his own worst enemy,’ she remarked airily.
‘Past tense?’ her husband asked.
‘Past tense,’ she agreed. ‘When he goes, no one will be surprised. He’s always been seen as too close to the current government. With them on the way out, he’s been a dead man walking for a while now.’
‘How loyal,’ he teased.
‘I am loyal,’ she smiled. ‘To his memory.’
‘Very funny.’ He gave one of those fake for-the-client laughs that she hated so much.
‘Seriously,’ she pouted, ‘in many ways, Luke was a great policeman. London is now a very safe city, and he should get some of the credit for that. But you know what they say…’
He played along. ‘What do they say?’
She grinned. ‘They say that all political careers end in failure.’
Joshua sipped his wine. ‘When he goes… it will shake things up?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘That’s got to be good for you?’
‘You’d hope so, but we’ll have to wait and see.’ She didn’t want to get carried away, but Simpson knew that she was still on the way up and the possibilities were exciting. And it would be a lie to suggest that she hadn’t given the matter some considerable thought over recent months. At the very least, she should be able to skip chief superintendent and go straight to commander. From there, an assault on assistant or even deputy commissioner beckoned. She could see it all falling into place, especially if they sorted out this other business quickly and discreetly.
‘By the way, how is the Carlton thing going?’ It was as if he was reading her mind.
Simpson took a dainty sip of her peppermint tea and replaced the cup carefully on the saucer. ‘It looks like we are finally making progress. My inspector has tracked down a woman called Susy Ahl, who is the nearest thing we’ve got to a suspect.’
‘Interesting.’
Kanzaki silently appeared at his shoulder and placed the bill on the table. Joshua Hunt gave it a cursory glance and fished out his American Express Centurion Black card.
‘Apparently, Ahl was the girlfriend of a boy called Robert Ashton. Ashton killed himself at Cambridge in 1985,’ Simpson said quietly, once Kanzaki had retreated a respectful distance. ‘It was Ashton’s photo that was left at the Hogarth crime scene.’
‘So it’s a revenge thing? You think she did it?’ her husband asked, as the restaurant owner returned with the hand-held card reader.
Simpson waited while her husband typed in his PIN and collected the receipt. When they were alone again, she replied. ‘She’s the only lead that Carlyle seems to have at the moment.’
‘If it really was her,’ Joshua asked, ‘why would she leave such an obvious clue?’
‘Who knows?’ Simpson sighed. ‘People like that are, by definition, not very good at thinking straight.’
‘Or maybe she wants the publicity,’ Joshua mused.
‘Perhaps,’ Simpson agreed. That was what really worried her.
‘A killer who wants to get caught…’
Simpson shot her husband a look that said: Don’t make me join the dots for you…
