woman’s breast, rising and falling with her breathing.
‘What’s going on, Trevor?’
The woman belatedly piped up: ‘He’s touching me up, the dirty bastard.’
Carlyle took a step closer. Miller automatically took a step back, half dragging the woman with him. ‘Just fuck off out of it, Carlyle,’ he snarled. He was six foot plus, which Carlyle knew gave him about four inches in height and probably about forty pounds in weight. Miller could beat him to a pulp with one hand tied behind his back, but Carlyle knew that he was all front. He could face him down.
The woman started squirming again. ‘Get him off me!’
Carlyle stepped through the gate and into the garden. ‘What did she do?’
‘She assaulted me.’
‘Fuck off,’ the woman spat in fury. ‘You assaulted me, put me in a headlock, grabbed my tits and started squeezing them. Fucking pervert.’
Unbelievably, Trevor started grinning.
‘Trevor,’ Carlyle sighed, ‘she’s half your size.’
‘So?’ He seemed genuinely surprised by the idea that there might be a problem with what he was doing.
‘So,’ Carlyle shouted, ‘the only way she could have assaulted you is with a loaded AK47. Let her fucking go!’
Miller looked at him blankly, a bead of sweat hanging from the tip of his nose.
‘Now!’
Stepping sideways, Miller tramped some flower or other into the dirt. Maybe it was even a weed. Staring off into the middle distance, he gave Carlyle’s request several seconds’ thought. ‘Mind your own business, you wanker,’ was his considered reply.
It was time for a change of tack. Carlyle spread his arms wide and adopted what he hoped was his most philosophical tone: ‘Mate, think about it. You don’t want a complaint. It could seriously hurt your career.’
Trevor grunted. ‘I’m making an arrest.’
‘This is the kind of thing that could cost you your job.’ Carlyle was about five feet away from them now, edging closer.
‘I’ve done nothing wrong here, Carlyle.’ Trevor looked and sounded like a little boy. A monster of a little boy.
‘Let her go… c’mon we have to get back.’
‘No!’ Trevor shook his head.
Carlyle took another step towards him, trying not to stare at the woman’s nipples which seemed to be getting even bigger. Maybe I’m becoming delusional, he thought. ‘You have to.’
At last, Trevor recognised that Carlyle wasn’t going to just walk away. Finally, he let go of the woman’s breast and loosened the neck hold slightly. The woman immediately sank her teeth into his arm and bit him as hard as she could.
‘Fuck!’ Trevor grunted.
With all the gear he was wearing, Carlyle doubted if she even broke the skin, but Miller instinctively recoiled and pushed her away. The woman took this as her cue to make a dash for freedom. She bolted past Carlyle, a bottle-blonde blur that was out of the garden and down the road before he could react. Showing a nice turn of speed, and, Carlyle noticed, a very shapely arse, she was round a corner and out of sight in a matter of seconds.
Trevor struggled with his options as he tried to decide whether or not to give chase. In the end, the final decision was no decision. He shrugged, and the spell was broken.
Carlyle stood there, wondering what to do next. His headache was returning with a vengeance, and he needed again to find some shade.
Eventually, Trevor picked up his helmet and slowly trudged out of the garden. ‘You stupid bastard,’ he hissed, pushing past Carlyle. ‘You stupid bloody bastard, next time try to remember which fucking side you’re on.’
SIX
Not wishing to dwell on his rampant stupidity any longer than was absolutely necessary, Inspector Carlyle headed back in the direction he’d come from only ten minutes earlier. The fact that it was such a short walk did nothing to improve his mood. Grinding his teeth in frustration, he lengthened his stride and tried not to think about the bed he could already be lying in. There was no one about to catch a middle-aged policeman talking to himself like a demented dosser, and so he took the opportunity to curse himself loudly. Tonight wasn’t the first time this year that he’d arrived outside his flat, stuck his hand in his jacket pocket and realised that he had left his house keys at the station and, therefore, couldn’t get in. There was no way he would dare wake his wife at this time of night, so he turned round and headed back to Charing Cross Police Station.
Keeping up a brisk pace, Carlyle cut across the north side of Covent Garden piazza, whose cobbles felt hard and unyielding under the soles of his shoes. This was his home territory, just three blocks north of the biologically dead waters of the River Thames at Waterloo Bridge.
Carlyle passed an imposing mansion standing at number 43 King Street, in the north-west corner of the piazza, which was now home to a flagship shoe store. Back in the nineteenth century it has been one of London’s first boxing venues. Then, as now, the prizefight game was so bent that many of the bouts descended into farce. One of the most famous King Street matches ended in chaos after both fighters took a dive even before a single punch had been thrown. Not surprisingly, the disgruntled punters sought to take out their frustrations on the two boxers, one of whom found the presence of mind to feign blindness in order to escape a beating from the mob. Legend had it that this ‘blind’ boxer was declared the winner, and awarded the purse as well.
Glancing up at a poster advertising a new computer game, Carlyle stumbled on a loose cobblestone. He steadied himself in front of the life-size image of a cartoon commando letting fly with a machine-gun in each hand. The game’s strapline promised ‘a new kind of war’. That’s just what the world needs, Carlyle thought sourly, as he resumed walking. Almost immediately, he was passing in front of St Paul’s Church. Known as the actor’s church, it was currently flanked on one side by an Oakley sunglasses store, and on the other by a Nat West bank. Inigo Jones, the architect, would doubtless be proud, Carlyle thought, to see his celebrated creation now keeping such august company. God would probably be quite chuffed, too.
In front of the church’s outsized portico, an acne-scarred youth wearing last season’s Arsenal away shirt sat on the kerb, with his head buried in his hands. Oblivious to his suffering, a couple of insomniac pigeons pecked at the large pool of golden vomit shimmering under the orange street lights nearby. Behind him, a very young-looking girl in an insubstantial silver dress stood motionless, expressionless, apparently disinclined to comfort him or to leave him, as their night on the town struggled to die.
The pair paid Carlyle no heed as he walked on. For his part, Carlyle gave the girl a hard stare, saying a silent prayer that his own daughter wouldn’t be found in a similar situation in seven or eight years’ time.
Reaching the corner of Agar Street, Carlyle looked up and took in the hulking mass of Europe’s largest police station. Covering a whole block of some of the most expensive real estate in the world, it stood a couple of blocks north of the eponymous train station. It was a squat, featureless building, rising to six economical storeys, bristling with CCTV cameras on every corner, peppered with windows too small for its bulk; windows for seeing out of rather than for looking in through. The half a dozen old-fashioned blue police lamps placed in random locations around the building looked just as fake as they actually were. The same blue lamp used to be found outside every police station, reminding the public that the police were always ready to serve. Now they were just design accessories.
The station building was painted in an off-white colour that always looked grubby. The finishing touch was a small portico, as if copied from the nearby church in the piazza, framing the front entrance and making it look more like a provincial town hall than a major cop shop.
Charing Cross was one of a hundred and forty Metropolitan Police stations located across London, and Carlyle had been stationed at this one for almost ten years now, making it his longest posting by a considerable margin. In the previous decade and a half, he had made various random stop-offs around the capital in the fairly random circuit
