A look passed between Valette and Meyer. The latter eyed Carlyle suspiciously, then waved towards the three chairs lined up in front of an oversized desk. ‘Please.’
Carlyle took the middle seat and Valette took the one on his left.
‘Vanessa here tells me that you are on the Brown investigation.’ Meyer stepped away from the window and sat down behind the desk. The desk itself was bare — not even a phone to be seen. Unlike Valette’s office downstairs, there were no papers at all, no computer even; nothing to suggest that anyone actually worked here. By comparison, it made Simpson’s office back in Paddington look positively homely.
‘That’s right,’ Carlyle replied.
Meyer clasped his hands together as if in prayer; as if the Good Lord Himself was going to provide the right words for him to utter.
Ever the atheist, Carlyle waited patiently.
‘I want you to lay off.’
Carlyle frowned. This was not what he had been expecting to hear.
Meyer glanced at Valette, who was staring determinedly out of the window. Slowly, he returned his gaze to Carlyle. ‘Well, perhaps not lay off exactly, but don’t push too hard.’
Holding Meyer’s gaze, Carlyle forced himself to say nothing for ten seconds. The Detective Inspector didn’t blink.
‘This,’ Carlyle said finally, ‘is a murder inquiry.’
Meyer shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘I know that, Inspector, but your investigation into Duncan Brown cuts across Operation Redhead, and that, as you will appreciate, must be given priority.’
Knowing better than to protest, Carlyle sat back and folded his arms. ‘Explain that to me.’
‘Operation Redhead is not just about investigating a bunch of celebrities who’ve had their phones hacked. It’s much wider than that. It affects real people as well.’
‘And I am dealing with a murder inquiry,’ Carlyle repeated. ‘That profoundly affects a number of real people, too.’
‘This involves something’, said Meyer, ‘that goes beyond any single police case. It goes to the very heart of the way we do business in this country. It involves the way in which the press operates, yes, but also the media’s relationship with the government and even the Police Service. It involves our standards of behaviour.’
Spare me the speech, Carlyle thought.
Seeing the less than impressed look on the inspector’s face, Meyer decided to change tack. ‘You know what the really shocking thing is?’
‘Shock me.’
Valette suddenly coughed; it sounded like she was trying to stifle a giggle.
‘I’m fairly certain that the practice is still going on.’
‘Phone hacking?’
Meyer nodded.
Bollocks, Carlyle thought. ‘That would be fairly stupid, given what’s happened.’
‘These things tend to develop a momentum of their own,’ Valette interjected. ‘It can be hard to get out of the habit. When the furore about phone hacking first kicked off, Zenger Corporation looked at closing down the Sunday Witness, which was where most, if not all, of the stories were appearing. After a bit of hand-wringing, they decided against it. Ironically, their sales have gone up. Readers assume that they’re still busy hacking phones, so they must have the best stories.’
‘Makes sense, I suppose.’ Carlyle tried to think back to the last time he’d properly read a Sunday newspaper himself. Not in the last couple of years, at least. Life, he had decided, was too short.
‘So, we’re fairly sure that they’re still doing it,’ Valette continued. ‘They still need to find exclusive stories.’
‘And,’ Meyer jumped in, ‘they’re still using Wickford Associates.’
Is that so? Carlyle, however, kept his thoughts to himself.
‘Duncan Brown was involved in the tapping of more than a dozen people’s phones before he was killed,’ Valette added. ‘Indeed, that’s why he was killed.’
Carlyle looked at her, then turned to Meyer. He spoke slowly, keeping his tone even. ‘You know who killed Duncan Brown?’
‘We have a good idea.’ Valette couldn’t resist a smirk.
‘And?’
‘And nothing,’ Meyer said sharply. ‘Are we doing business here, or not?’
‘We’re doing business.’ Carlyle would work out precisely how to shaft this self-important little prick later. For now, he just needed the information.
‘Very well.’ Meyer seemed a little uncertain, but he ploughed on. ‘Bear in mind though, that we don’t currently have anything that would definitely stand up in a court of law. And anyway, it is not technically part of my operation.’
‘Technically,’ Carlyle repeated.
‘Not unless you go the whole hog,’ Meyer smiled, ‘and decide to join us.’
Carlyle stared at Meyer and then at Valette. The Chief Inspector’s smirk had grown, and he was beginning to find DI Valette more than a little annoying. He sat up straighter in his chair. ‘Why would I want to join Operation Redhead?’
They looked at him with a mixture of pity and dismay. ‘This is an extremely high-profile investigation,’ Valette explained. ‘It’s all over the newspapers.’
‘Which is quite ironic, when you think about it,’ Meyer quipped.
Carlyle wondered just how often the man had used that line over the last few months.
The Chief Inspector waved his hands in front of his face. ‘This thing is getting bigger all the time. More people are coming forward; there are more cases to investigate. Our budget has been increased but the single biggest threat to this investigation is not political interference, but simply the risk of us disappearing under a mountain of material. Every day I worry that it could all simply collapse under its own weight.’
Not my problem, Carlyle thought happily.
‘We need more people,’ Meyer went on, ‘meaning good people. People who can take this investigation forward, wherever it goes, without fear or favour.’
‘Outsiders,’ Valette added.
Meyer assumed his most sincere expression. ‘People like you.’
Holding the Chief Inspector’s gaze, Carlyle sat in silence, not liking at all the way they had teamed up on him. Nor did he like the idea that they assumed they could flatter him into shovelling their shit for them. He recalled that the Americans had an appropriate phrase for it: blowing smoke up your ass. John Carlyle didn’t like in the least the idea of anyone blowing smoke up his ass.
‘No,’ he said finally.
Meyer looked pained. ‘Why not?’
Carlyle shrugged. ‘Because I’ve got plenty of my own stuff to deal with, not least Duncan Brown.’ Meyer started to say something, but the inspector held up a hand. ‘And also because, ultimately, I’m not really that bothered about phone hacking. Even if it’s not just a bunch of witless celebrities who are being affected. ‘
Meyer drummed his fingers angrily on the table. ‘So you’re the kind of copper who likes to pick and choose what kind of alleged criminal he investigates?’
‘We all pick and choose,’ Carlyle said, ‘all the time. Some politician chose to set up Operation Redhead. You chose to take it on, for whatever reasons. In the process, you will have turned down something else.’
‘I’m not a dilettante,’ Meyer protested.
‘Neither am I. I’m just a run-of-the-mill police inspector who is trying to deal with a number of cases where the victims have suffered fates much worse than having their phones hacked.’ Realizing he was sounding a bit pompous, Carlyle tried to lighten the tone. ‘Anyway, everyone knows what the British press is like, so why would anyone expect they wouldn’t be tapping people’s phones?’
‘This is a very serious issue,’ said Meyer, trying to sell the job one last time. ‘The relationship between Zenger and the MPS needs to be cleaned up. The connections with the political elite are also complex and troubling. Our job is to sort it all out.’