He eased himself out of the chair and crossed to the desk to open his takeaway. It would be cold by now, and his appetite for it had passed. Still, he needed to eat.
It was only then that he noticed a red light winking on his desk phone, almost obscured by a stray sheet of paper lying across it and diffusing the light. He picked up the phone and thumbed the message-replay button.
‘Mackenzie, it’s Bill Beard here. I know you don’t start with us until Monday, but I wonder if you could come in tomorrow morning for a briefing?’
Chapter Four
The London headquarters of the National Crime Agency was tucked away in Citadel Place in a sprawl of industrial buildings south of the railway lines between Vauxhall and Lambeth. It was an unremarkable structure of brick and steel and glass. It came into view as Mackenzie walked along Tinworth Street, and he was overcome by the same depression which had afflicted him the previous evening. And not a little anxiety. Whatever he had believed or imagined when first joining the Metropolitan Police, he could never have envisaged ending up here.
Spring sunshine sprinkled light across the floor tiles in reception and he told the girl behind the desk that he had an appointment with Director Beard. She asked him to wait and lifted a phone. ‘Someone will be down in a few minutes.’
Six minutes and thirty-three seconds, to be exact. Mackenzie had watched every passing second counting itself off on his watch. He had arrived on time and was aggrieved that his new boss could not organize his schedule to reciprocate.
It was a woman in her early thirties who came through the door to greet him, offering a firm dry handshake. She was thin, with an awkward gait, blue tights beneath a grey skirt, and hair drawn back untidily. ‘Ruth Collins,’ she said. ‘You’re here to see Mr Beard.’
It seemed more like a statement to Mackenzie than a question, so he didn’t respond.
They entered the lift in an awkward silence, and Collins made a brave stab at breaking it as she selected a button for the third floor. ‘You start next week,’ she said, as if he might not have known. Again he felt no need to reply and she seemed a little disconcerted. She tried again. ‘Have you met the boss before?’
He nodded. ‘At the interview.’
She smiled. ‘Tread carefully, then. He can be unpredictable. Everyone calls him Mr Grumpy, and he’s not in the best of moods this morning.’ Mackenzie nodded, and they lapsed again into silence until they debouched from the lift on to floor three.
Beard had a corner office with windows on two walls. He was on the phone when Collins showed Mackenzie in, and he raised a finger to indicate that they should wait a moment. They stood uncomfortably just inside the door, unable to avoid eavesdropping on his side of the conversation.
‘Well, fucking tell him to get the finger out!’
And as Beard listened to the response from his caller Mackenzie took a moment to make an appraisal of him. His new boss was a big man, a mop of curly fair hair above a florid round face. It was clear he was running out of patience. Steel-blue eyes turned chilly.
‘If the report’s not on my desk by noon I’ll squeeze his balls till his eyes pop.’ He slammed down the phone and looked at Mackenzie. But his mind was elsewhere. Then suddenly he was with them, and his expression changed. ‘Mackenzie. Grab a seat.’
Mackenzie nodded and sat down. ‘Good morning, sir.’ He attempted a smile. ‘I can see why they call you Mr Grumpy.’
Beard’s eyes narrowed. ‘Who fucking calls me Mr Grumpy?’
‘Everyone, apparently.’ Mackenzie glanced at the flushing Ms Collins, who appeared to have found a spot of extraordinary interest on the carpet.
Beard cocked an eyebrow and managed a tight little smile. ‘Do they, now?’
Collins decided to meet his eye and brazen it out with a grin. Beard flicked his head towards the door. ‘I’ll see you later.’
As she turned her back on Beard she darted a venomous glance in Mackenzie’s direction before slipping out into the hall. Beard leaned back in his swivel chair and eyed Mackenzie cautiously.
‘You’re a bit of an arsehole, Mackenzie, aren’t you?’
‘I have been told that, sir.’
‘Have you?’
‘But I’m not sure you can describe an arsehole in increments, sir. Which bit of the arsehole are we talking about? Is it a big bit, or a small bit?’
‘In your case, Mackenzie, quite clearly it’s the whole fucking thing.’
Mackenzie looked as if he might respond, but was overcome by a rare moment of restraint. Beard reached across his desk to lift a folder from an untidy pile of them. He pulled it towards himself and flipped it open.
‘So what persuaded you that the NCA should be your next career move?’
‘I think I explained that at the interview.’
Beard flicked him a look of irritation. ‘You got the job, Mackenzie. This is not an interview. I want the real story.’
‘I’m a cop, sir.’
‘So why did you leave the Met?’
‘Not really my choice.’ He corrected himself. ‘Well, it was. But one I was forced to make. In the jargon I think they call it constructive dismissal.’
Beard sat back and laced his fingers across his ample belly. ‘Tell me.’ Although he surely already knew.
Mackenzie drew a deep breath. ‘They put me on every shit shift going, sir. I was spending most of my life behind a desk doing paperwork rather than police work. I have been repeatedly denied promotion.’
‘Why?’
‘Because nobody likes me very much.’ There was neither rancour nor resentment in this. It was just a simple statement of fact.
Again, ‘Why?’
‘You would have to ask them that.’
‘I’m asking you.’
Mackenzie took a moment to think about how he might frame his response. ‘I think, sir, because I say it as I see it. My wife says I have no filter. That I lack tact.’
‘Does she? And I suppose she would know. What kind of relationship do you have?’
‘Fractured, sir. We’re separated.’
This was clearly news to Beard. ‘And whose idea was that?’
‘Hers.’
Mackenzie’s boss made a thoughtful moue with his lips. ‘So...’ he said, ‘you think you know better than everyone else and aren’t afraid to say so.’
‘I think, sir, you’ll find that in most cases I do know better than everyone else, and I am never afraid to say so.’
Beard cocked an eyebrow in surprise. ‘Some people might characterize that as arrogance.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘But not you.’
‘I’d characterize it as honesty.’
Beard sat forward suddenly. ‘Well, let me be honest with you, Mackenzie. You were not my first choice for this job. But other members of the recruitment board were impressed by your...’ he swept his hand above the open folder in front of him ‘... credentials.’ He lifted the top sheet. ‘For my part, I have to wonder why a man with degrees in quantum physics and mathematics would want to be a cop.’
‘I never wanted to be anything else sir. The degrees are just a hobby. I study at night on the Open University. I’m planning to take another.’
There was an almost imperceptible shake of Beard’s head. ‘And what might that be?’
‘Astrophysics, sir.’
Which left Beard temporarily speechless. To recover himself he lifted another couple of sheets from the file. ‘It says here your father was a police officer.’
‘In Glasgow, yes. He was killed in the line of duty when I was two years old.’
Beard looked again at the sheet in front of him and a frown, like a shadow, passed momentarily across his face. His eyes flickered towards Mackenzie then away again, before he slipped the papers back in the file and closed it. He reclined in his chair once more. ‘Well, the reason I asked you here this morning is because of your talent for languages. According to the file you are fluent in French, Spanish and Arabic.’ He spat out each language as if it left a bad taste in his mouth.