‘DI Gilchrist. Hello? Yes, ma’am. Immediately, ma’am.’ She put her phone away and turned to Kate’s inquiring look. ‘The chief constable wants a word.’
Kate panicked.
‘Are we in it?’
‘Not we,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Me. And I’ve a horrible feeling I know what she wants a word about.’
Tingley slept late. After a quick breakfast he headed for the trolley car that went to the top of the nearby mountain. He walked down the Via Garibaldi, the sky a deep blue and the sun glaring on thick white walls. He was sweating again. He bought a newspaper from a kiosk and stuffed it in his jacket pocket.
The road widened as it neared the southern entrance gate and the signs to the funivia. He turned left immediately outside the gate and walked a couple of hundred yards uphill towards the ticket office.
When he saw the procession of slight green baskets making their way up the mountain face on a narrow black thread, he shook his head. He’d been expecting a proper cable car, with room for sixteen or so in each cage.
He bought a ticket and went to join a small queue. He watched the baskets come down. They were like birdcages with standing room for maybe three adults. Protective wiring came up to waist height. They were spaced at twenty-yard intervals on a cable loop that never stopped moving. Passengers jumped on as the cage swung round in a slow arc at ground level, the mechanic slammed the gate closed and they were on their way.
The cages looked fragile and the top of the mountain a long way away. Tingley thought he could see the cages wavering in the wind. He tidied things away in his pockets, felt the pistol fastened at the small of his back.
He clambered aboard the next cage and with a jerk it began a smooth ascent towards the mountain. Within moments Tingley was looking down at a rough scree of broken white rocks some hundred feet below.
He looked back at Gubbio falling away behind him. The plain beyond was vast, the foothills beyond that tiny. His cage brushed the tops of a clump of pine trees. Tingley smiled a hello at a couple with a little girl coming down about ten yards across from him.
He overbalanced as the cage reached the first of a series of tall metal pylons through which the cable was threaded. He grabbed for the guard rail as his cage tilted and juddered by. The sun was high in the sky, wisps of cloud hanging motionless. Tingley closed his eyes.
There was a flat concrete platform at the top, about twenty yards long. A man grabbed his cage and pushed away the safety bar so that he could drop out on to the concrete. The platform was beside a terrace cafe.
Tingley got a beer from the bar. He threaded his way through noisy youngsters playing table tennis, table football and videogames. He found a table with a view over a gorge and back across the Gubbio plain. Below him Gubbio seemed tiny, its red shingled roofs bright against the light green of the fertile plain.
To the side of him the mountain opened up into a series of valleys, their slopes clad in dark green firs and pines. In the cool under the umbrella Tingley looked for the glint of a scope attached to a sniper’s rifle.
Three girls at the next table were discussing a boy. An old David Bowie song, The Man Who Sold The World, was playing on the radio. Tingley sipped his beer. It was warm. He looked over as the cages bobbed up and on to the landing stage.
He went cold inside his shirt; his mind and his heart both raced. He watched Drago Kadire drop off the cage and walk into the cafe.
FORTY-FOUR
‘DI Gilchrist, come in.’
Sarah Gilchrist noted the formality as she stepped into the chief constable’s office. Karen Hewitt usually addressed her as ‘Sarah’.
‘Ma’am.’
Hewitt looked at her over her glasses.
‘We have a problem.’
Gilchrist said nothing.
‘The weapon Miss Simpson used to defend herself is illegal in this country.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘And I gather you have admitted that the weapon is yours.’
‘I have, ma’am.’
Hewitt shook her head, her long blonde hair swaying as she did so. Her skin was pale and tired.
‘You understand that when you lost your right to carry arms after the Milldean incident, those arms included the taser legally issued to British police officers.’
Gilchrist shuffled her legs.
‘I do.’
‘So the fact that a serving police officer in such a situation has an illegal volt gun, illegally imported. .’ Hewitt shook her head. ‘For God’s sake, Sarah — what were you thinking?’
Gilchrist bit back what she wanted to say. That at the time she was thinking someone had just burned down her flat and she felt her life to be in danger.
‘I’m sorry, ma’am.’
‘So am I, Sarah, so am I.’ Hewitt looked weary. ‘I think this might cost you your job.’
‘It was used in self-defence-’
‘I know that,’ Hewitt said fiercely. Her sour breath wafted across Gilchrist. Last night’s garlic and too much coffee today. ‘But I need to distinguish between that fact and the fact that you, not Miss Simpson, had illegally imported this weapon.’
Gilchrist bowed her head.
‘You are under immediate suspension-’
‘But, ma’am, DI Williamson and I-’
‘-pending a tribunal to consider your dismissal.’
Gilchrist left the office red-faced. She considered going back to tell Williamson but decided simply to go home.
Back at her flat, Kate was fast asleep on top of her bed. Gilchrist stood by the balcony looking over the square, her mobile phone in her hand. She got through to Reg Williamson on the first ring. She told him what had happened.
‘I’m sorry to hear that, Sarah. Damned sorry. But, listen, we can turn this to our advantage.’
‘I don’t see how.’
‘Take a holiday. Take a friend with you. I’d go myself but I wouldn’t get the leave now you’re not in the office.’
‘Reg-’
‘I hear Homps is very nice at this time of year.’
Tingley reached mechanically for his beer. Kadire emerged from the cafe carrying a coffee cup, looked around for somewhere to sit. Tingley turned his head away and watched out of the corner of his eye. Kadire found an empty table between Tingley and the cable railway and sat down, facing the platform. Tingley noted he had dispensed with his cane.
Renaldo di Bocci had told Tingley where Kadire was going to be just before he died. Tingley didn’t kill Di Bocci — well, unless the shock he’d given him hustling him into the stairwell had brought upon the old criminal’s heart attack.
Tingley put his glass back heavily on the table. Just do it and get out, he advised himself. Just walk over and put the silenced gun in his ear, pull the trigger and walk away. Except that there was nowhere to walk. There was no way off this mountain except by the cable car.
Then leave. Tingley got to his feet. His chair scraped loudly on the concrete floor. Kadire was sitting quite still about fifteen yards away.
Tingley didn’t hurry, choosing a route as much out of Kadire’s line of vision as possible. He itched to look back but resisted the temptation. He felt sure he could feel cold eyes boring into his back.
In the cafe he made a pretence of looking at postcards whilst watching Kadire. He was sitting as before, except that now he was reading a newspaper, ankles crossed. According to Di Bocci, he was waiting to meet an important drug dealer.
Tingley went out of the side door of the cafe, skirted the edge of the terrace and watched the queue of people waiting to take the cable car back down the mountain. A basket arrived every forty-five seconds so a queue of six groups cleared in about six minutes. A fuck of a long time to be standing on the top of a mountain with a dead man slumped at a table twenty yards away.
Tingley was hidden from Kadire, but even if he abandoned his assassination of the sniper, once he stepped forward on to the platform he would be directly in front of his intended victim. Kadire had only to glance up to see him. Then all hell would break loose.