didn’t.”
“When did you last clean it?”
“I mean, I didn’t call the police.”
“You didn’t?”
“No.”
“Who did?”
“I don’t know.”
“What were you doing there?”
“I was trying to decide what to do. Then you arrived.”
This threw him. Belsey called the control room.
“Do you have details of the person who called in a missing person report on the morning of Thursday the twelfth?”
It took them three minutes to get the record up.
“Yes, the details are here.”
“Was it a cleaner?”
“No.”
“Who was it?”
“Detective Inspector Philip Ridpath.”
“It was called in by police?”
“Yes.”
“Who’s Ridpath?”
“Someone in the Yard.”
Belsey felt himself pitched deeper into uncertainty. He wrote the name on the back of an envelope.
“What department?”
“The Financial Investigation Development Unit.”
“Financial Investigation?”
“That’s correct.”
Belsey thanked the control room and put the phone down. Things suddenly felt a lot more dangerous. He had walked into a scene that already had Yard attention. His first instinct was to walk away again, fast. But a deeper, more insistent voice told him he had a lead to follow. Finally he reasoned that he would be safer knowing what he had stumbled upon. It was seven-thirty. He tried the number for the Financial Unit, just in case anyone was still around. A man answered with a nasal drawl.
“Sergeant Midgley speaking.”
“I’m looking for an Inspector Philip Ridpath. Is he still in the office by any chance?”
“I believe so.”
“Can you put me through?”
“Not right now.”
“Why?”
“He’s not answering his phone.”
“He’s not answering his phone?”
“He’s busy.”
“We’re all busy,” Belsey said. “What the hell is this?”
15
B elsey drove through Victoria, through the glum suburbs of government. Whitehall’s outlying muscle clustered inelegantly alongside the cheap hotels and chain restaurants. Belsey had never liked the area. Buildings either crouched to the ground or were the size of cruise ships. Humans shuffled in the cracks between public-sector slabs as if it was the buildings they were serving. Belsey turned onto Broadway towards New Scotland Yard.
The Kremlin, they called it. But Rome would have been a closer analogy. Like Rome, it was regarded with suspicion by its satellite districts, as a place where nothing actually happened, and to which everything was bound. To most police it was a still point in the centre of the machine, endless paper jammed in its endless wheels. The twenty featureless floors of mirrored windows enhanced the impression. From the outside it always looked empty. It never was.
Belsey parked around the corner, far enough away not to have the car bomb-disposed. He straightened his hair and tie in the rearview mirror, then approached the Yard, stepping over the slabs of anti-terrorist concrete, past armed guards in bulletproofs.
All white-collar departments got high security. Belsey knew it wasn’t going to be easy. They operated a system called sterile corridors, which meant even officers from other Yard departments needed permits to get through. He went through the visitors’ entrance, signed his name and department at the front desk and said he had an appointment with Ridpath. He was given a pass “to be worn around the neck at all times” and taken up to the fourth floor, where he showed the pass to get through the outer security of Economic and Specialist Crime. Then he had to talk his way into the warren, past Film Piracy, Stolen Vehicle, Computing, until the corridors were narrower, the pot plants thick with dust, and he was in the Financial Investigation Development Unit. The Yard has odd-shaped hollows worn by operational requirements, by a need for obscurity. It has nooks and byways into which careers fall, or lead themselves, away from daylight.
At the front desk for Financial Crime he used Ridpath’s name
“When did you last clean it?”
“I mean, I didn’t call the police.”
“You didn’t?”
“No.”
“Who did?”
“I don’t know.”
“What were you doing there?”
“I was trying to decide what to do. Then you arrived.”
This threw him. Belsey called the control room.
“Do you have details of the person who called in a missing person report on the morning of Thursday the twelfth?”
It took them three minutes to get the record up.
“Yes, the details are here.”
“Was it a cleaner?”
“No.”
“Who was it?”
“Detective Inspector Philip Ridpath.”
“It was called in by police?”
“Yes.”
“Who’s Ridpath?”
“Someone in the Yard.”
Belsey felt himself pitched deeper into uncertainty. He wrote the name on the back of an envelope.
“What department?”
“The Financial Investigation Development Unit.”
“Financial Investigation?”
“That’s correct.”
Belsey thanked the control room and put the phone down. Things suddenly felt a lot more dangerous. He had walked into a scene that already had Yard attention. His first instinct was to walk away again, fast. But a deeper, more insistent voice told him he had a lead to follow. Finally he reasoned that he would be safer knowing what he had stumbled upon. It was seven-thirty. He tried the number for the Financial Unit, just in case anyone was still around. A man answered with a nasal drawl.
“Sergeant Midgley speaking.”
“I’m looking for an Inspector Philip Ridpath. Is he still in the office by any chance?”
“I believe so.”
“Can you put me through?”
“Not right now.”
“Why?”
“He’s not answering his phone.”
“He’s not answering his phone?”
“He’s busy.”
“We’re all busy,” Belsey said. “What the hell is this?”
15
B elsey drove through Victoria, through the glum suburbs of government. Whitehall’s outlying muscle clustered inelegantly alongside the cheap hotels and chain restaurants. Belsey had never liked the area. Buildings either crouched to the ground or were the size of cruise ships. Humans shuffled in the cracks between public-sector slabs as if it was the buildings they were serving. Belsey turned onto Broadway towards New Scotland Yard.
The Kremlin, they called it. But Rome would have been a closer analogy. Like Rome, it was regarded with suspicion by its satellite districts, as a place where nothing actually happened, and to which everything was bound. To most police it was a still point in the centre of the machine, endless paper jammed in its endless wheels. The twenty featureless floors of mirrored windows enhanced the impression. From the outside it always looked empty. It never was.
Belsey parked around the corner, far enough away not to have the car bomb-disposed. He straightened his hair and tie in the rearview mirror, then approached the Yard, stepping over the slabs of anti-terrorist concrete, past armed guards in bulletproofs.
All white-collar departments got high security. Belsey knew it wasn’t going to be easy. They operated a system called sterile corridors, which meant even officers from other Yard departments needed permits to get through. He went through the visitors’ entrance, signed his name and department at the front desk and said he had an appointment with Ridpath. He was given a pass “to be worn around the neck at all times” and taken up to the fourth floor, where he showed the pass to get through the outer security of Economic and Specialist Crime. Then he had to talk his way into the warren, past Film Piracy, Stolen Vehicle, Computing, until the corridors were narrower, the pot plants thick with dust, and he was in the Financial Investigation Development Unit. The Yard has odd-shaped hollows worn by operational requirements, by a need for obscurity. It has nooks and byways into which careers fall, or lead themselves, away from daylight.
At the front desk for Financial Crime he used Ridpath’s name
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