‘We should have waited,’ said Carey. ‘And locked down the place.’
Which is the age-old dilemma, when chasing a suspect into a big building.
‘We just have to hope she doesn’t know we’re coming,’ I said. ‘You ready?’
Carey pulled his X26 from his shoulder holster and checked the charge. Following the operation in Chiswick, Seawoll had insisted that Carey and Guleed were routinely armed. Carey, who could moan about an overtime bonus, had never complained once about carrying the bulky thing.
The lift slowed, pinged and opened its doors on to the thirty-fourth floor. The lobby beyond was small, windowless and dimly lit. With its durable peach coloured carpet, neutral coloured walls and sturdy hardwood fire doors it looked temporary – a placeholder.
Mitchell the guard indicated an electronic touch lock by one of the fire doors and pulled a key card from his pocket.
‘This should open it,’ he said.
Carey took the card from his fingers and shushed him when he tried to protest. I gently pushed him away from the door so he wouldn’t be in the line of fire or in our way, and nodded at Carey.
Carey pressed the card to the touch lock – and nothing happened.
He tried a couple more times and we both turned to glare at Mitchell, who cringed.
‘It should work,’ he hissed.
We pointed out, in low whispers, that it obviously didn’t.
‘It’s supposed to open everything,’ whispered Mitchell. ‘For safety.’
‘Well, obviously it doesn’t,’ said Carey.
Mitchell said if we would just give him a moment he’d fetch another card, and we let him scuttle back down in the lift.
Carey gave me an inquiring look, I nodded, and we switched off our Airwaves and our phones.
Then I blew the electromagnets that were holding the door closed.
Modern office security and fire doors are designed to fail into an unlocked position so that cubicle monkeys can make a run for it in case of a fire. Disrupt the electrical supply and you can unlock them without breaking a sweat or blowing all the microprocessors in the vicinity and accidentally triggering the sprinkler system.
But, in my defence, that only happened once and they’re planning to move New Scotland Yard to a new building in any case.
There was a quiet thud as the magnets let go and I cautiously pushed the door open.
Beyond was it was wide open – at least half the thirty-fourth floor’s available space, lit by the grey daylight slanting in through the glass cladding.
Zach was reclining on the red leather sofa that faced the door, a can of Red Stripe in one hand and what would turn out to be, after later examination, an enormous spliff in the other.
‘You took your time,’ he said before turning his head. ‘I was going to spark up without you.’
Despite this, me and Carey made a cautious advance – just in case it was a trap.
‘Oh, shit,’ said Zach, when he realised it was us. ‘And it was going to be sushi night too.’ He jumped to his feet. ‘What are you guys doing here?’
Carey strode forward and, before I could stop him, punched Zach in the face – hard enough to stagger him backwards.
‘Where the fuck is she?’ he shouted.
‘How the fuck should I know?’ said Zach, clutching his face and backing away towards the wide windows and their expensive view of north London.
I grabbed Carey’s arm before he could hit Zach again. He shrugged off my hand but stepped back, his hands raised, palms up to show that he was finished. I was gobsmacked. You have to be a bit aggressive to be a police officer, it’s the nature of the job. But I’d never seen David Carey so much as shout at a suspect before. He always said he was too lazy to hit someone.
I pointed at the brass bed that sat incongruously in an open space and told Zach to sit on it. I looked at Carey to see if he was going to be trouble, but he just shook his head.
‘You watch him,’ I said. ‘I’ll do a quick search.’
And it was a quick search, since it was standard open-plan office floor into which what looked like a pied-â-terre’s worth of furniture had been deposited. Then arranged into a wall-less imitation of a flat, with separate spaces for kitchen, bathroom, lounge and bedroom. It was creepily like a stage set or something out of a surreal episode of the original Star Trek.
The furniture was all high end and I suspected that if I called up the John Lewis catalogue on my phone I’d find every single item. Except maybe the trio of creepy white busts with half-formed faces that lined the top of a dresser. Wig holders, I realised.
‘She used to put her masks on them,’ Zach explained later.
Somebody was going to have to track the furniture in case Martin Chorley had been sloppy enough to use his own bank account to buy it. Likewise one of our forensic accountants would trace the ownership of the office space back to whatever shell company Martin Chorley had bought it with. How many of these front organisations could he have? And how many could he lose before his operation ground to a halt?
As many as he needs, I thought. Not to mention other underhand details that we haven’t even thought of yet.
‘Can I least finish the spliff before the handcuffs go on?’ said Zach.
‘Only if you give me some,’ said Carey.
16
Stupidity Led
We arrested Zach for obstruction of justice but not for possession – mainly because most of the evidence was missing and Carey had become worryingly cheerful. There was definitely something up with David Carey, but I wasn’t sure what to do about it – you can’t talk to a senior officer without dropping your mate in the shit. And your average police, especially your average male police, don’t like you insinuating that the job’s getting a bit much for them.
There were probably some guidelines somewhere, but I expect they were above my pay grade.
I stayed at the open-plan flat overnight just in case Lesley was stupid enough to come back, while a couple of specialist DCs interviewed Zach for eight hours straight before coming back the next morning and doing it again for at least another six hours. If Zach told the truth at any point in the fourteen hours total, then nobody was able to prove it. The National College of Policing now use excerpts of the tapes for their advanced interview training course.
We gave up on any notion that Lesley was going to appear that morning and, around ten o’clock I went back to the Folly for a wash. As I came in the back Toby ran up, barking in what would have gone into a police notebook as ‘an agitated fashion’.
‘I’m going to bed,’ I said. ‘I don’t care.’
But Toby kept up sharp little yaps in the manner of a dog who had been putting in some practice recently, and could probably keep the noise up indefinitely.
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Go on, then.’
Toby danced back a couple of lengths and then turned and ran up the east stairs and up another flight until we were outside one of the teaching labs on the first floor. Toby scratched on the door and I heard the unmistakably Welsh Dr Jennifer Vaughan say, ‘For God’s sake don’t let him back in.’
Just to be safe, I knocked on the door. In the Folly you never knew what you might be walking in on.
Dr Vaughan asked who it was. I assured her it was me, and the door opened enough to reveal her face – albeit half covered by eye protectors and a filter mask. She looked down at Toby.
‘Get back, fiend from hell,’ she said. And then, to me, ‘You can come in as long as you keep him out.’
It took a bit of effort to arrange, but once I’d got myself in I got a whiff of something that made me wish I’d stayed outside with Toby. Dr Walid and Abigail were dressed in the same style paper smocks, eye protectors and filter masks as Dr Vaughan and they were all clustered around a bench. On the bench was what I recognised as a stainless steel dissection tray.