The Hanging Tree (PC Peter Grant Book 6) by Ben Aaronovitch

Author:Ben Aaronovitch [Aaronovitch, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ORION
Published: 2016-11-02T23:00:00+00:00

9

The Tiger Hunting Committee

The main purpose of an administrative meeting is to establish collective guilt for whatever fuck-up arises out of its decisions. That way, when the wheels come off you can’t pretend you didn’t know what was happening – because you were there, weren’t you? – when those decisions were made. And we’ve got the minutes to prove it.

In the normal course of events a lowly PC like me, if they’re sensible, finds themselves something better to do – paperwork, house to house inquiries, searching a landfill. Anything. Unfortunately, the Folly’s flat management structure, viz there only being two of us, and its specialist nature, meant that not only was I at the meeting, but I was expected to make a valuable contribution.

So here we were, in a sparsely furnished meeting room on the fourteenth floor of the Empress State Building at Olympia with representatives from the DPS, Belgravia MIT and the National Crime Agency. All chaired by one Deputy Assistant Commissioner Richard Folsom, who apart from being a wholly owned subsidiary of the Tyburn Preservation Society had it in for me personally on account of that business at Covent Garden.

Ask not for whom the buck stops, I thought, it stops for thee.

I noticed that Guleed had made herself scarce.

Folsom glanced at me – the tic over his right eye causing a twitch – before turning to Seawoll and asking him to bring us all up to speed on the current state of the investigation and our operational posture.

Which could be summarised as ‘confused’ and ‘ready to spring into action’ – just as soon as we had the faintest idea where to spring.

We’d held Phoebe Beaumont-Jones on Friday night because Bromley Crime Squad wanted a word about the MDMA. But since they couldn’t lay their hands on Aiden Burghley, the guy who allegedly sold her the gear, she walked out of the nick on Saturday afternoon without a charge.

DAC Folsom, to nobody’s surprise, suggested that since there was no indication that Christina Chorley had been coerced into taking the pills and that Olivia Thames-MacAllister had retracted her statement, not to mention the complete lack of corroboration that she or her friend Phoebe had been involved, it was probably best to close down Operation Marigold and pass the file to the CPS.

‘Especially given the number of other pressing concerns that have come to light,’ said Folsom.

For a second, I thought Seawoll was going to fight it just on general principles, but then he shrugged. You don’t get to DCI without knowing a losing proposition when you see one, and Folsom was right – there were more important things to worry about.

‘La majestueuse égalité des lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain,’ said Nightingale later when we were preparing our case notes. Which is French for ‘Them that has, gets.’

So, goodbye Operation Marigold.

Which left Operation Carthorse, the hunt for Lesley May, Operation Wentworth, which was

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