‘I see.’ Carlyle’s heart sank. Bloody Simpson. He would be speaking to her the moment he got out of this room.
Werner Kortmann finished his water, replaced the cap, and set the empty bottle on the table. ‘We were told,’ he said firmly, ‘that you would take us to see the Tosches woman tomorrow.’
‘I see.’
Gregori resumed rooting around in his case. ‘This,’ he said, pulling out an A4-sized photograph and offering it to Carlyle, ‘is Sylvia Tosches.’
Reluctantly, the inspector took the photo. The black and white image showed a painfully thin young woman, lounging against a wall. Dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt, she had cropped black hair and an intense but rather distant stare. It reminded Carlyle of Robert Mapplethorpe’s portraits of Patti Smith. Just Kids indeed. He handed the photograph back to Gregori. ‘A long time ago.’
‘That doesn’t matter,’ Kortmann snorted. ‘She’s still a killer.’
TEN
The inspector finally got rid of the Germans by promising to meet them at their hotel at 9 a.m. sharp the next morning, fudging the issue of a trip to see Hutton on the grounds that he didn’t have the remotest clue on what authority he was supposed to be acting. Retreating up to the third floor of the station, he passed Umar playing on his computer.
The sergeant looked up expectantly. ‘Time to go?’
‘In a minute. I just need to make a quick call.’
‘Check this out.’ Gesturing towards the screen, Umar offered Carlyle a set of headphones.
‘What is it?’ Carlyle squinted at the YouTube video. It looked like Lego.
‘It’s an animation of Eddie Izzard’s Death Star Canteen skit.’
‘Huh?’
‘Darth Vader is trying to get his lunch in the canteen of the Death Star.’ Pointing on the screen, Umar adopted the tone of an adult explaining something important to his dull five-year-old nephew. ‘But no one knows who he is. It’s brilliant.’
‘You’ve really got way too much time on your hands at the moment,’ his boss observed, ‘haven’t you? Maybe we should find you some traffic duty or something.’
‘Sod off,’ was Umar’s heartfelt response.
Taking the Sylvia Tosches file from under his arm, the inspector contemplated smacking his sergeant firmly across the back of his head with it. Once again, he reluctantly decided against resorting to physical violence on HR-related grounds. Instead, he dropped the papers on to his own desk, where they landed with a dismaying thud. ‘Five minutes.’
‘OK.’ Putting the headphones back on, Umar returned to his screen.
Grabbing the phone on his desk, Carlyle dialled Simpson’s mobile number. She picked up on the fourth ring. Big mistake. ‘Explain to me what the hell we are doing getting involved in this German thing?’ he demanded.
After years of dealing with his moods, the Commander took her underling’s brusqueness in her stride. ‘So I take it that you’ve met with Mr Kortmann?’ The noise in the background suggested that she had already made it to lunch.
‘Yeah. What an arrogant git.’
Over the clatter of the restaurant, he thought he heard her groan. ‘Hold on, let me step outside.’
‘This,’ Umar giggled, staring at his computer screen, ‘is not a game of do you know who the fuck I am?’
‘Shut up,’ Carlyle hissed, ‘I’m on the bloody phone.’
‘What?’ asked the Commander.
‘Nothing, nothing.’ Carlyle quickly ran through his meeting with the two Germans. ‘If their own police have got better things to do, why are we getting involved?’
‘There’s still an arrest warrant out for Tosches,’ Simpson informed him, ‘one of the oldest Interpol Red Notices still outstanding in Europe.’
‘Yeah,’ Carlyle replied sarkily, ‘and remind me, how much did we have to pay out to Hamzeh Kamalvand?’
Simpson bridled at mention of the recently revealed Interpol debacle. A young asylum seeker had been wrongly accused of premeditated murder, destruction of property, and possession of firearms, ammunition and explosives without a permit. After three years in detention, threatened with deportation, a judge had thrown the whole thing out. The Met had been left with a compensation bill of over £2 million.
‘Red Notices can’t be taken at face value,’ Carlyle persisted. ‘Countries send them out all the time these days, trying to track down people they don’t like for one reason or another.’ He knew a little bit about this from his wife; Helen’s charity had launched a campaign to support one of their doctors who had recently turned up on one of Interpol’s ‘wanted’ posters. According to Helen, the guy’s only crime was to have criticized his home government. The number of Red Notices being issued had almost doubled, to reach 30,000 in the previous year. Increasingly, the system was being abused by dictatorships wanting to hunt down opponents in exile.
‘Yes, but this is Germany we’re talking about,’ Simpson countered. ‘The Germans don’t do these things on a whim. And this one has been out for a long time. The issue is whether this woman is really Tosches, not whether Tosches should be sent home to face justice.’
‘She could be dead,’ Carlyle suggested.
‘Let’s find out, shall we?’
Reluctant to admit defeat, Carlyle stared at the ceiling. ‘Bit of a wild-goose chase, if you ask me.’
‘I didn’t ask you.’
‘Should this really be a priority? I still don’t understand why these guys appear at the station and I have to jump to attention.’
‘John . . .’ Simpson kicked out at an empty cigarette packet which had been discarded on the pavement, sending it flying into the gutter. Despite her lengthy experience of dealing with the inspector, he could still try her patience, quibbling over every request and instruction. As the saying went, he was the kind of man who could start an argument in an empty room. Every time she thought he might be mellowing a little with age, something would set him off again and he would be right back in her face. The Commander thought back to all the times she had pulled his balls out of the fire. Was it really worth it? Carlyle was a good cop, but maybe that was no longer enough. One day, he would stray too far over the line.
‘Kortmann,’ she said finally, ‘has clout.’
‘Not with me, he hasn’t.’
‘Maybe not,’ said Simpson curtly, ‘but with the Commissioner he does. His family firm donated more than a million pounds to various Met-related good causes last year. Apparently, they are also being lined up to be a major sponsor of the new police sports facilities in Ealing.’
‘And you get what you pay for.’ Like all frontline officers, Carlyle was aware of their increasing reliance on the financial support of private companies. The Force took support in the form of everything from concert tickets and football shirts, to high-end SUVs for use by Special Branch and Royal Protection Officers. Cash donations were funnelled into specialist investigation units. It was the kind of creeping privatization that had been eating away at all manner of public services for years and it created a rent-a-cop image that was, at best, unhelpful.
‘Yes, you do,’ Simpson agreed. ‘I don’t like it any more than you do, but that doesn’t do anything to change the facts of the situation.’
‘Which are-’
‘Which are,’ she said shrilly, ‘that we have been instructed to investigate the Hutton matter properly.’
What’s all this ‘we’ business all of a sudden, Carlyle wondered grumpily. I’m the one left holding the baby.
‘Do you understand? I don’t want to find another memo about you on my desk in the next few days,’ she paused, as if to catch her breath, ‘or ever for that matter.’