‘What’s he doing here?’ Gordon Elstree-Ullick turned in his seat, eyeing Carlyle up and down.
Sitting behind the gilded cherrywood desk in his spacious office on the ground floor of the west wing of Buckingham Palace, looking out on to the central quadrangle, Sir Ewen Mayflower spread his hands wide. ‘I asked the inspector to come,’ he said evenly, ‘because I thought that he might assist in our conversation.’
Falkirk couldn’t have looked any more disgusted. ‘This po-liceman,’ he hissed, in his best Eton-meets-Harlem accent, ‘tried to arrest me.’
Carlyle glanced at Mayflower and said nothing.
‘The point is-’ Mayflower persevered.
‘The point is,’ Falkirk interrupted sharply, but in a voice tinged with fear, ‘that you have got me here under false pretences.’ He stood up and stared Carlyle in the eye. ‘This is the second time this. . incompetent officer has harassed me.’
Carlyle couldn’t resist the slightest of grins. ‘Dolan has given you up, Gordon,’ he said quietly. He then looked theatrically at his watch, hoping that Ambrose Watson had completed the interview by now. ‘It’s all over.’
‘Damn you,’ said Falkirk, pushing past Carlyle and heading for the door. ‘I will be speaking to my lawyer about this, once again.’
Enjoying the show, Mayflower raised his eyes to the ceiling.
‘Yes, you will,’ Carlyle agreed, placing a hand on Falkirk’s shoulder. ‘However, that will be after I have arrested you and charged you with people-trafficking, controlling prostitution — and murder.’
Mayflower let out a tiny gasp.
Falkirk shrugged off the inspector’s grasp, before jumping towards the door. Pulling it open, he bolted down the corridor.
Sighing, Carlyle headed after him.
‘Be careful with the antiques,’ Mayflower yelled after him.
In no particular hurry, Carlyle followed Falkirk down a corridor into the Blue Drawing Room, a cavernous space with chandeliers hanging from the ceiling like distended jellyfish. Trying desperately to place a call on his mobile, Falkirk tripped on the thick red carpet and went sprawling, dropping the handset as he did so.
Stepping past the Earl, Carlyle stomped on the mobile several times. ‘That’s the one phone call you’re allowed,’ he growled, trying not to enjoy himself too much.
Falkirk staggered to his feet and swung a kick at Carlyle, catching him right on the thigh.
‘You fucking bastard,’ Carlyle snarled, reaching out and grabbing a vase from a table just to his left. Fitting his grasp perfectly, the blue and white vase was about twelve inches tall, thin at the neck and round at the bottom. In one fluid, elegant movement, he smashed it down on Falkirk’s head, sending him back to the carpet in a haze of fragmenting porcelain and blood.
‘Oh my!’ Mayflower panted. ‘Oh my, oh my, oh my.’
Waiting for his adrenaline rush to wear off, Carlyle looked at the Head of the Royal Household, who was on his knees picking pieces of vase off the carpet. ‘Chinese,’ he mumbled. ‘Seventeenthcentury. . Qing Dynasty.’
‘Take it out of their Civil List money,’ Carlyle quipped.
Blood oozing from his scalp, Falkirk groaned as he tried to get up. ‘Stay still!’ Mayflower slapped him sharply on the top of his head. ‘Don’t move!’ He gestured for Carlyle to help. ‘We have to keep all the fragments.’
Carlyle stood exactly where he was, saying nothing.
With both hands now full of shards, Mayflower looked up. ‘You can’t arrest him until we’re sure that we’ve recovered all the pieces. I need to call in the specialist restorers.’
‘I suppose you’ve got them available on speed dial,’ Carlyle grinned.
Mayflower fixed him with a hard stare. ‘Don’t be flip, Inspector, that vase was priceless.’
‘Bill me,’ said Carlyle, suddenly feeling weary of being in the presence of all this wealth.
But Mayflower was talking to himself. ‘We will have to get another from storage while we glue this one back together.’
‘Storage?’ Carlyle asked.
Falkirk emitted another groan. Carlyle took a half-step closer and gave him a sly kick.
Busy building a pile of his precious vase fragments on the carpet, Mayflower pretended not to notice. ‘We have plenty more works in storage,’ he explained. ‘There is far too much to put on display.’
‘Why don’t you sell some of it?’ Carlyle asked. ‘It could help pay down the national debt or something?’
‘Oh, no! That would never do.’ Mayflower looked at Carlyle as if he was even more stupid than a policeman should be. ‘The family would never stand for that.’
‘I suppose not.’ Carlyle fell to his knees and handcuffed Falkirk. ‘Hoarding loads of expensive shit in the basement makes so much sense, after all.’
‘I think that maybe it does,’ Mayflower grinned cheekily, ‘if it happens to be your shit, Inspector.’
Carlyle bundled Falkirk into the back of the police BMW already waiting in the quadrangle, taking care to bounce his head firmly off the frame of the door as he did so. Falkirk grunted, but did not complain. The driver gave him a questioning look, but Carlyle just glared back at him and the man said nothing.
Joe Szyszkowski sat impassively in the front passenger seat. Walking round, Carlyle bent down to the window: ‘Get him back to the station and make sure to leave him in a cell for an hour. Then we’ll go and talk to him. He sees nobody. And he’s already had his one phone call.’
Joe gazed through the windscreen at a young woman walking a gaggle of Corgis. ‘Understood.’
‘Good. I want as few people as possible to know that he’s in custody.’
Joe gestured at the bloodied, sullen figure visible in the rear-view mirror. ‘Shall I get him cleaned up?’
‘Leave him.’
‘Are you sure, boss? It could become an issue.’
‘Okay,’ Carlyle sighed, ‘whatever you think. I’ll be back in an hour or so.’
‘See you then.’ Joe buckled up his seat belt and turned to the driver. ‘Let’s go.’
Carlyle stepped back from the car and watched it pull away. He then turned to Mayflower, who had been hovering at a discreet distance. ‘Thank you for your help.’
‘My pleasure, Inspector.’ The Head of the Royal Household held out his hand, and they shook. ‘I just hope this matter can be concluded speedily, and with a measure of discretion.’
‘I think that there is relatively little chance of that,’ Carlyle replied, wiping cold sweat from his brow. ‘However, I assure you that I will make every effort to see that you are not inconvenienced unnecessarily, and that the Royal Household is embarrassed by any forthcoming revelations as little as possible.’
Mayflower’s eyes sparkled. ‘My, what a very diplomatic answer!’
Carlyle shrugged. ‘I promise that I will do my best.’
‘Don’t worry, Inspector. There are always some things that are beyond our power and control. In such circumstances, all one can do is try to do one’s job. The really bad apples have to be dealt with, and if it all gets a bit messy, well. .’ he gestured back inside the Palace, ‘it’s not as if these good people don’t know a thing or two about scandal.’
‘I suppose not,’ Carlyle laughed. ‘And sorry again about the vase.’
‘These things happen.’ Mayflower patted him gently on the arm and began guiding him across the quad. ‘It will take many months and quite a bit of superglue, but that artefact will be back on display by this time next year.’ He gave Carlyle a searching look. ‘Of course, I’ll have to tell the Queen about what happened.’
‘Really?’
‘No,’ Mayflower chuckled, ‘she’ll never notice. Why should she? She owns hundreds of the damn things.’
At the North Centre Gate, they parted company. Mayflower was already on his way back inside when Carlyle had a further thought. ‘Sir Ewen!’
Mayflower stopped and turned. ‘Yes?’
‘One final thing.’ Carlyle jogged over to explain his request.
Mayflower considered it for a second. ‘That is something that I would definitely have to check with Her Majesty.’
‘Is it. . do-able?’ Carlyle asked.
‘I can at least ask,’ Mayflower said thoughtfully. ‘I will ask. I don’t know if such a thing has ever been done before, but under the circumstances, I think it is a very reasonable request. And it is a very good idea on your part. I myself will support it and suggest it is the very least we can do.’
‘It would be a very private thing.’
‘I understand,’ Mayflower nodded. ‘Let me see what I can do. I am sure that we can sort something out.’
On his way back to the station, Carlyle took a detour into St James’s Park, sitting himself on an empty bench. Watching the tourists feeding the ducks, he let his mind wander. The skies were leaden and he shivered in the cold. St James’s was by no means his favourite park, but with the Palace to his left and the London Eye rising over the Downing Street skyline to his right, it was one of the places where he felt most conscious of being in London with a capital ‘L’. He was in the heart of his city, his home — the place where bad things were not supposed to happen; where it was his job to make sure that those responsible were punished.