Free Buckingham Palace Blues by James Craig Page B

people-trafficking and prostitution. They come from all over, including the Ukraine. Kids are less common, but not unheard of.’ He coughed. ‘There is one guy we’ll go and talk to, name of Ihor Chepoyak.’
    ‘Who he?’ Carlyle asked.
    ‘A bad guy straight out of Central Casting. He is reputed, among other things, to have decapitated two of his girls with a blowtorch.’
    ‘Nice.’
    ‘Never been able to lay a finger on him,’ Shen said wistfully. ‘So far, at least.’
    ‘Do you think you’ll get anything out of him?’
    ‘No idea,’ Shen said, ‘but he’s just about the only Ukrainian I know.’
    Carlyle gave Shen a quizzical look.
    ‘You’ve got to start somewhere.’ Shen grinned. ‘Anyway, how many Ukrainians do you know yourself?’
    Fair point, Carlyle thought. ‘Can I tag along,’ he asked, ‘when you go and see him?’
    ‘Why not. I’ll let you know when I get an appointment.’
    An appointment? Carlyle wondered.
    ‘Thanks.’
    ‘No problem.’ Shen patted the inspector on the shoulder and headed for the door. ‘Meantime, I need to go and sort out these shitheads we’ve just nicked.’

SEVEN
    Sitting at his desk on the third floor of Charing Cross police station, Carlyle flicked through the autopsy report on Joe Dalton, the decapitated part-time cabbie. It was clear that the case had been written off as a straightforward suicide, so the investigation had been perfunctory in the extreme. Both cocaine and ecstasy had been found in Dalton’s system, but this had attracted no comment whatsoever, either from the pathologist or from the officer investigating the case. For his part, the inspector could let that slide. Getting coked up before you topped yourself seemed quite reasonable. The thing that really surprised Carlyle was that this case had been closed as a result of the intervention of SO14. Chief Superintendent Charlie Adam himself had signed off the final report, whereupon it had been completed and sent off to the central archive within less than a week.
    Joe Szyszkowski ambled up to the desk, grazing on a chocolate doughnut. ‘I checked the newspapers,’ he explained, once the last of the sugary snack had been polished off and he’d licked his fingers clean in a frankly disagreeable manner. ‘There were a couple of mentions of the . . .’ he paused, grasping for the right word ‘. . . accident at the time when it happened. But no follow-up. And, bizarrely, no one mentioned that Dalton was a copper.’
    ‘It seems unusual that SO14 got involved in the investigation,’ Carlyle mused.
    ‘Very,’ Joe agreed.
    ‘Why not just leave it to the locals?’
    ‘Maybe they just wanted to sit on the drugs thing. That could have come back on them. I’m sure a spate of ‘‘random’’ drugs tests over at the Palace wouldn’t have gone down too well.’
    ‘Maybe not.’
    Joe scratched his ever-expanding belly. ‘I spoke to the original investigating officer, down at Elephant and Castle. He arrived on the scene about twenty minutes after it was called in. Also spoke to the guy who saw it happen. Even though there was no suicide note, it sounds like that is definitely what it was.’
    ‘Yes,’ Carlyle said. ‘The question is, why did Dalton feel the need to top himself? He had no problems that anyone seemed to know about – no money worries, no history of mental illness. Okay, so he did some drugs, but plenty of coppers do. In Dalton’s case, it seems to have been purely recreational, and kept well under control. He turned up for work when he was supposed to and always put in a regular shift.’
    ‘Hadn’t taken a single sickie this year, apparently,’ Joe put in.
    Carlyle raised his eyebrows. They both knew that a copper who didn’t take regular sick leave was a rare creature indeed. Slack rules and a ‘sick-note culture’ meant that the average British policeman took as much as an extra three weeks a year off for supposed illness. And then, at the end of it all, around