A Man of Sorrows (7 page)

‘Of course,’ she nodded. ‘The insurance company will have it for you first thing in the morning.’

Here we go
,
bloody insurance companies.
He made to stand and felt her hand on his shoulder, keeping him in his chair with some considerable strength. ‘There’s no need to get up, Inspector,’ she purred. ‘I can find my own way out.’

NINE

The young lad looked around to see if anyone was watching. Satisfied that he could proceed undetected, he pulled a half-bottle of Deer Park blended whisky from his jacket pocket, unscrewed the cap and took a cautious slug, grimacing as the cheap Scotch hit the back of his throat. Whisky wasn’t his drink, but the Deer Park had been the first thing to hand when he’d gone into the off-licence on the promenade. He had slipped it into his pocket and walked out while the Asian owner was arguing with a stroppy wino over the price of four cans of Special Brew. It was a piece of cake. He took another long drink. Now the bottle was half-empty and, as well as ill, he felt suitably woozy.

Unsteadily, he got to his feet and moved across to the rail of the Palace Pier. A gust of wind hit him in the face and he shivered in the cold. In the failing light, he looked along the pier to check if anyone was in sight. They weren’t, so he carefully climbed onto the railing. Swinging his legs over the side, he looked down into the darkness and the depth of the sea, and said a small prayer. Then he took a deep breath and jumped.

It took Carlyle the best part of two hours to write up his report. He kept things short and to the point, but still found himself rewriting it twice to make sure that his back was sufficiently covered. Once he was confident that it was as anodyne as possible, he attached the necessary forms to an email and sent it off into cyberspace. As he did so, he felt a familiar sense of unease in his gut. It came not from worries about the case itself but about the
politics
of the case.

It had taken Carlyle many years, and much goodwill on the Commander’s part, to establish a good working relationship with Simpson. Now she was gone and he was worried that Dugdale might try to use the robbery as an opportunity for payback. The robbers were still on the run, with no expectation that they would be caught, at least not in the next few hours. There was bound to be an issue about the speed and effectiveness of the police cordon, even if that wasn’t necessarily his responsibility. The main worry, however, was the woman. In a sense, it would be a lot easier if Paula Coulter was in on the robbery. Certainly, that would mean less chance of her being found dead by the side of a road somewhere. If that happened, the blame game would go into overdrive.

Sitting in the empty office, he castigated himself for being so self-indulgent. ‘Solve the case,’ he said out loud, getting slowly to his feet, ‘and no one can touch you.’

It was after midnight when he opened the front door to his flat. Taking off his shoes, he stepped into the darkened hallway and closed the door gently behind him. A quick check of the bedrooms told him that Alice and Helen were both asleep and he crept carefully back to the kitchen. Opening the fridge, he pulled out a two-litre bottle of Evian, unscrewed the cap and took a long drink.

‘Ahhh!’

Replacing the cap, he put the bottle back on the shelf inside the door and looked around for something to eat. Seeing nothing in the fridge that took his fancy, he checked out the rest of the kitchen. In the corner, next to the microwave, was a bunch of bananas. Crossing the tiny kitchen floor, he selected the largest banana and snapped it free. Unzipping it, he took a huge bite, gazing out of the kitchen window across the river to the London Eye, lit up in the darkness. When he’d finished, he dropped the skin in the bin beneath the sink. Yawning, he noticed a couple of letters on top of the microwave, one opened, one not. Carlyle made to pick them up then changed his mind. ‘Fuck it,’ he said quietly to himself. ‘It’s nothing that can’t wait until tomorrow.’

After taking a quick shower, he eased himself into bed, careful not to disturb his wife, who was snoring softly, the duvet pulled up under her chin. Lying still, he stared up at the ceiling, trying to make sense of the day. Only too well aware that he had overstepped the mark with the priest McGowan – even if he
had
told himself it had all been an act – he felt genuine regret for putting Roche in a position where she had to lie in order to cover for her boss. But the feeling was fleeting, quickly overridden by a sense of huge injustice on behalf of the missing boy, Simon Murphy. Carlyle had never met Murphy, and if he ever did, the inspector was fairly sure that he wouldn’t like the kid much. ‘
Give me a child until he is seven
,’ said the Jesuits, ‘
and I will give you the man.
’ On that basis, Simon Murphy, who had been abused and ignored for the first twelve years of his life, was pretty much a lost cause.
Well
,
maybe he was
–
but that didn
’
t mean his abusers should be allowed a free pass.

Was Father McGowan a Jesuit? Carlyle had no idea. As an avowed atheist, the inspector had no interest in what were really nothing more than fairy stories. As far as he was concerned, people could believe what they liked, as long as they respected the beliefs of others and obeyed the law. In his view, someone’s religion was about as significant as the football team they supported and considerably less interesting.

Somewhere deep in his brain, he recalled another Jesuit motto:
Ad majorem Dei Gloriam
– ‘for the Greater Glory of God’.
There
is
no fucking God
, Carlyle harrumphed silently in the darkness, wishing his brain would switch off and he could get some sleep.
And
,
even if there was
,
He wouldn
’
t gain any glory from the buggering of little boys.

TEN

He woke with a start. It was still dark and it took him a moment to focus on the LCD display on the alarm clock, which told him that it was 5.12 a.m. Carlyle looked over at Helen, who was still fast asleep. Yawning, he moved himself cautiously out of the bed and slipped into the bathroom. After a careful shave, he dressed quickly while running through a list of places where he might get some breakfast. At this early hour, Marcello would still be travelling into Town from his North London home, and Il Buffone would not open for another hour or so. However, there was a café at the Embankment end of Villiers Street, next to Charing Cross train station, that stayed open through the night, primarily for taxi drivers and, at weekends, for clubbers waiting for the first train home in the morning. Carlyle had been there a few times; the food was crap, but it would do.

Creeping into the kitchen, he found a pen in one of the drawers and scribbled a brief note on the back of one of the envelopes on top of the microwave:
Sorry I was so late
,
back early tonight. Give me a call when you get up. X.
Propping it up against the remaining bananas, he made his way out.

David Hogg yawned as he watched Boris, his bull-mastiff, race down the shingle of Brighton beach towards the sea. It was not yet 6 a.m. and there was no one else around, which was just the way Hogg liked it. Otherwise, Boris would have to stay on his leash. He was a good-natured animal, but the sight of 140 pounds of dog bearing down on them was enough to give most people the willies.

Covering his eyes against the bright light, Hogg gazed out towards the horizon. It was a beautiful morning, azure sky, bright sunshine but with a fresh, chill edge to the air. All the same, he’d rather be in bed. At the very least, he could do with some breakfast. Off to his right was the pier. If they headed that way, he could pop into Luigi’s café on Old Steine. Looking round, he struggled to pick out the dog against the glare. ‘Boris!’ There was no reply, save for the gentle crashing of the waves against the beach. Grumbling to himself, Hogg began walking towards the water. ‘
Boris!
’

Twenty yards from the water’s edge, Hogg finally caught sight of the dog. As he got closer, he heard a friendly yelp. Closer still, he saw that the dog was wagging his tail happily, standing over what looked like some kind of package that had been washed up on the beach. Pulling the leash out of his pocket, Hogg reached for the dog – who promptly ran off, in the opposite direction to which he wanted to go.

‘Boris!’ he shouted angrily. ‘Come back here!’ But the bull-mastiff had already raced away further down the beach.

‘Blasted dog!’ Annoyed, Hogg realized that he would have to wait for the animal to come back of his own volition. Meanwhile, he walked down to the water’s edge to inspect the package. Squinting against the sun, he was almost on top of it before he understood what he was looking at. ‘Bloody hell!’ Dropping the dog’s leash at his feet, Hogg fumbled in his pocket for his mobile. Ignoring the barking from down the beach, he quickly dialled 999.

It was way too early in the day to start on the green tea. After a terrible, weak mug of lukewarm coffee and a stale pastry in the all-night café under Charing Cross arches, Carlyle morosely made his way to the station. It was still barely 6.30 when he approached the front desk and he was insufficiently alert to acknowledge the man hovering at the corner of his vision.

‘Inspector Carlyle?’

Frowning, Carlyle turned to face a dapper man of similar height and age to himself, with a rapidly receding hairline and a pair of glasses that were too big for his face. He was well turned out for the early hour, in a pinstripe suit, with a white shirt and red tie. In his left hand was an oversized black leather briefcase.

Not waiting for a reply, the man extended his free hand. ‘Trevor Cole,’ he smiled. ‘Gotha Insurance. I’m here about the St James’s Diamonds incident.’

Stifling a groan, Carlyle shook the insurance agent’s hand. ‘Come with me,’ he said, gesturing towards the bowels of the building.

Parking the insurance assessor in interview room B3, the inspector went off in search of more coffee. After a few minutes, he returned with a couple of paper cups full of oily black liquid to find Cole happily ensconced behind a pile of paperwork three inches thick. On Carlyle’s side of the table he had placed a business card, giving an office address in EC4.

‘Sorry,’ said Carlyle, placing the cups carefully on the table, ‘there’s no milk, but at least it’s hot.’

‘That’s fine,’ Cole said politely. ‘Thank you.’ He peered into his cup but made no effort to pick it up. With a nod of his head, he gestured at the remains of the bullet camera hanging from the ceiling in the corner. ‘What happened to that?’

Carlyle shrugged. ‘Dunno.’ Taking a seat, he gingerly tasted the coffee and tried not to wince. ‘Okay,’ he said, once he’d regained his composure, ‘where do you want to start?’

Cole picked the top document from his pile and handed it to Carlyle. ‘This is a list of the items that are missing from St James’s Diamonds following the robbery.’

‘Thanks.’ Carlyle counted eight sheets of A4 paper stapled together in the top left-hand corner. He scanned the neatly typed, single spaced list of jewellery, with their prices attached:

A single stone diamond ring, the round brilliant-cut diamond weighing 4.05 cts of H colour, SI1 clarity, with Gemmological Laboratory certificate number 3001518968, eight-claw set to a platinum crown collet, with tapered D-section shank, cheniered shoulders, hallmarked
platinum London 2002, gross weight
5.3 grams – £98,000.

A
fin-de-siècle
dragonfly brooch, the two pairs of wings encrusted with rose and old brilliant-cut diamonds, silver set to a pierced gold mount, wingspan 6.1 cm, a curved tail of nine graduated oval pearls, set in gold and measuring 3.9 cm, the body of an oval shape faceted emerald, eight-claw set to a gold mount, the head encrusted with rose-cut diamonds and cabochon-cut ruby eyes, the legs of carved gold, gross weight 15.1 grams, circa 1860 – £18,250.

10 × Picos Chronograph Watch in stainless steel with black rubber and silver and black dial. Size large, 42 mm case, chronograph function, mechanical movement with automatic winding, date window, water resistant to 100 metres/328 feet (10 bars), Swiss-made – £5,300.

A single stone diamond ring, the round brilliant-cut diamond weighing 6.06 cts, of F colour, VVS1 clarity, Precious Stone Laboratory certificate number 4002318781, four double claw-set to a platinum collet, to a tapered D-section shank with tapered baguette-cut diamond-set shoulders, bearing the
Evelyn Shaw
sponsor mark, gross weight 7.1 grams – £495,580.

£495,580? It slowly dawned on him that the price was almost half a million pounds. For a fucking ring!
Holy shit!
Carlyle’s brain went into overdrive, bombarding him with questions. How much had he spent on Helen’s engagement ring? He couldn’t remember. How many years would he have to work, to earn that kind of money? After tax? He couldn’t work it out. Many, many decades was the best he could come up with. Resisting the urge to let out a low whistle, he looked up at Cole. ‘How much in total?’

Cole pointed to the papers in Carlyle’s hands. ‘It’s on page eight.’

Carlyle quickly flipped to the last page and the number in bold at the bottom. This time he did whistle. ‘My God,’ he said, dropping the list onto the table. ‘You mean to tell me that these comedians got away with almost forty million quid’s worth of gear?’

Cole clasped his hands together, as if in prayer. ‘Not exactly, Inspector,’ he said.

Carlyle frowned. ‘What do you mean, “not exactly”?’

‘Well,’ Cole explained, ‘a preliminary review of the security cameras seems to suggest that not all of the items went missing in the course of the robbery.’

How were you able to review the CCTV pictures already?
Carlyle wondered. However, he let the point slide as he waited for Cole to spell it out.

‘There are at least three items on that list,’ Cole continued evenly, ‘that we believe were in the store when the police arrived.’