The noise was getting louder. ‘Where are you?’ Carlyle asked.
There was a pause before Roche said: ‘I’m at the Beekeeping Club.’
‘The what?’
‘The Beekeeping Club,’ she repeated. ‘SO15 set it up a couple of months ago to help firearms officers de-stress.’
‘And is it working?’ Carlyle asked, intrigued.
‘This is only my second visit, but I’ll keep you posted.’
‘Just make sure you don’t get caught in any sting operations,’ the inspector giggled.
‘Yes, yes,’ Roche said flatly. ‘Very good. Never heard that one before. Not in the last ten seconds anyway.’
‘Sorry.’ The inspector bit his upper lip.
‘Was there something I could help you with?’
Was there? Distracted by the bees, it took Carlyle a moment to remember the purpose of his call. ‘I was just wondering,’ he said finally, ‘did you ever find out any more about those “ninjas”?’
‘Nah. They eventually tracked down the bloke who made the call but he turned out to be a complete alkie. I spoke to him myself, or at least I tried. It was barely eleven in the morning and the guy was already sozzled.’
‘A quality wino then?’
‘Oh, a perfectly nice bloke. Lives in a flat that’s probably worth a couple of million, if not more.’
Carlyle let out a low whistle.
‘Easily. Gerald Howard’s certainly no dosser. More of your nice middle-class dipso. A functioning alcoholic, at least up until lunchtime. The problem is, he was probably on bottle number four or five by the time it all happened. By that stage he could barely remember his own name. Hardly what you could call a reliable witness.’
Carlyle recalled the statuesque associate of Ren Qi who had turned up at the police station. ‘I was wondering if one of the ninjas could have been a woman.’
‘Boss,’ Roche responded, exasperated, ‘they could have been little green men for all we know. There’s nothing to show that they existed at all.’
‘Someone sliced Marvin’s head off,’ he reminded her. ‘That was hardly a figment of Mr Howard’s imagination.’
‘No.’
‘Could a woman have done it?’
‘Yes, in theory. You’d need a strong stomach, as well as strong arms though.’
Stepping off the pavement, he was almost knocked down by a Lycra-clad cyclist racing round the corner. ‘Watch where you’re fucking going,’ the rider snarled. Carlyle flipped him the finger but the guy was already fifty yards down the road, shooting through the next red light.
‘I hope you get taken out by a bus, you git,’ the inspector shouted after him, to the amusement of his fellow pedestrians nearby.
‘What?’ Roche demanded on the other end of the phone.
‘Nothing,’ he replied, stepping back onto the pavement.
‘So, have you got anything? How’s the widow bearing up?’
‘Nothing worth reporting – not so far, at least. Naomi’s doing OK, I suppose, under the circumstances. Your boyfriend hasn’t been to see her again, has he?’
‘Oliver Steed is not my boyfriend,’ Roche responded curtly, ‘and no, he hasn’t been to see Mrs Taylor again.’
‘Just as well,’ Carlyle chuckled.
Ending the call, Carlyle approached the next crossing with care, looking round for any more rogue cyclists before stepping tentatively off the kerb.
TWENTY-FOUR
Lying on the bed in Room 226, staring at the ceiling, he finally realized what was bothering him. Swinging his feet on to the floor, Sebastian Gregori padded into the bathroom and stood in front of the sink. All of his pots and bottles were lined up in front of the mirror, in the usual fashion. Missing, however, were the sleeping pills: Werner Kortmann’s prescription.
‘Hell.’
The only possible explanation was that the cop had taken the tablets.
His plan was beginning to unravel. Gregori had assumed that the Huttons would have been arrested by now, paving the way for Kortmann’s brutalized body to be found in a remote ditch, a final victim of a long-forgotten class war. The Huttons, however, were refusing to play their part in the drama that he had so carefully constructed. With their unexpected disappearing act, his whole timetable had been thrown out of kilter. Worse still, that arsehole cop was making no effort to track them down. Instead, he seemed more interested in Sebastian himself.
For several moments, Gregori stared blankly at the mirror. Then he grabbed his wash bag and began packing.
Carlyle was walking along Orange Street when his phone started vibrating.
‘He’s leaving.’
‘What?’
‘He’s leaving,’ Rosalind McDonald repeated. ‘Sebastian Gregori just came downstairs and said he was checking out. I thought that you’d want to know right away.’
‘Yes, thanks.’ Calculating that he was only a couple of minutes from the hotel, Carlyle upped his pace as he passed the back of the National Gallery. ‘How much luggage has he got?’
‘Just a weekend bag, I think,’ McDonald replied, understanding immediately what the inspector was getting at. ‘He hasn’t asked for a cab. Then again, there’s roadworks outside at the moment, so he’ll have to walk a bit to find one.’
‘OK. I’m not far away. Get the desk to delay him for a couple of minutes if you can. I’ll see if I can pick him up when he comes out.’ Breaking into a brisk jog, he ended the call and immediately pulled up another number.
Umar picked up on the third ring. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘You sound like you’re out of breath.’
Ignoring his sergeant’s amused tone, Carlyle explained what he needed.
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
‘No rush,’ said Carlyle sarcastically, ending the call. This time he didn’t worry about the traffic, challenging drivers and cyclists alike as he strode across Charing Cross Road and nipped down the pedestrianized Cecil Court.
In the event, he had a good two minutes to spare. Using the cover provided by a utility company van, one of several that had been parked on that stretch of St Martin’s Lane, Carlyle watched the entrance to the hotel.
He was just starting to fear that he had missed his man when Gregori appeared. Hesitating on the pavement, he began moving in the direction of Trafalgar Square before turning 180 degrees and heading north. The inspector let the man get twenty yards ahead; as he started following, Umar fell in step next to him.
‘Did you see our man?’ Carlyle asked.
‘Yeah,’ Umar nodded. ‘Gapper’s trying to make his way up Charing Cross Road, if we need him.’ Joel Gapper was one of the drivers at Charing Cross. ‘He’s in a green Astra.’
‘Nice,’ Carlyle scoffed, keeping an eye on Gregori on the far side of the road. ‘Not going to be much use in this traffic, is he?’
‘If it’s gridlocked for us,’ Umar said chirpily, ‘it’s the same for the bad guys.’
‘Yeah,’ Carlyle mused. ‘Maybe he’s not going very far.’
‘Or maybe he’ll take the tube.’
Irritatingly, the sergeant’s prediction was almost instantly proved to be correct. Reaching Long Acre, Gregori hustled across the road, heading west.
‘Looks like he is going underground,’ Carlyle groaned, ignoring Umar’s smirk as he upped the pace. ‘Bugger.’
Following his quarry into Leicester Square station, the inspector assumed that Gregori must be heading for the Piccadilly Line and the airport. Instead, however, the private eye took the escalators for the Northern Line, ducking into a passage for the northbound platform when he reached the bottom.
‘What do we do?’ Umar asked.
‘Keep following,’ said the inspector, elbowing a tourist out of the way as he clattered down the left-hand side of the escalator, his sergeant following reluctantly behind.
‘What are we looking for?’
‘How the hell should I know?’ the inspector muttered under his breath. ‘We’ll know it when we see it.’
‘What do we do if he recognizes us?’
‘Let’s just see what happens, shall we?’ Carlyle said impatiently.