Time of Death

by James Craig

  ‘It’s a zebra crossing!’ the woman shouted, seemingly oblivious to Carlyle’s arrival.

  ‘The silly old fucker just walked straight out,’ the driver snarled, looking like he wanted to reach out of the window and grab her by the throat. He revved the engine, but couldn’t move with the man still sprawling out in front of him. A taxi now pulled up behind the van, the cabbie giving an extended blast on his horn, just in case anyone had missed the fact that he was there.

  ‘If you hadn’t been going so fast,’ the woman replied, ‘this wouldn’t have happened.’

  ‘Mind your own fucking business, you stupid bitch,’ the man shot back, his attention now focusing on Carlyle, who was writing down his registration number.

  ‘Oi! Fuckface!’ The driver stuck his head further out of the window of the van. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Sweat was beading on his shaven head. He was wearing a replica of the new Spurs away strip for next season, a fetching mocha and brown number in a retro style. Carlyle thought about arresting him just for that. Instead, he showed the driver his ID and told him to switch off his engine. That prompted the taxi driver behind to let loose with another long blast on his horn. Carlyle ignored him. Already the traffic was backing up towards Great Queen Street and beyond, but that wasn’t his problem. They could wait. He turned back to the old man and helped him up.

  ‘Are you okay, Harry?’ Carlyle asked.

  Harry Ripley dusted himself down and fiddled with a button on his coat. He smiled sadly, like a man who fully expected to find himself dumped in the middle of the road every now and again. ‘Hello, Inspector.’

  ‘Did he hit you?’

  The old man gazed at the tarmac. ‘No. I’m all right.’

  ‘Was it his fault?’

  ‘I’d say fifty-fifty.’

  Carlyle nodded back in the direction of the café. ‘I’m just having a coffee in Il Buffone, so why don’t you come and join me?’ The old man nodded and shuffled back on to the pavement, before heading slowly towards Carlyle’s table. The driver took this as his cue to restart his engine. Carlyle stepped back in front of the van, holding up his hand as if he was a traffic cop. ‘Not so fast, sunshine. Hold your horses.’

  The queue of traffic was now well into double figures and the cacophony of complaints was growing. The woman who had remonstrated with the driver was hovering on the pavement outside the Sun, as if unsure whether to stay or go. Carlyle turned to her and smiled, which only seemed to make her more uncomfortable. ‘Don’t worry. It’s all right now, I can sort this.’

  ‘Don’t you want a statement or something?’ the woman asked.

  No, I bloody don’t, thought Carlyle. The paperwork would be the kiss of death; his day would be over before it had even started. How come members of the public only wanted to be helpful when it wasn’t necessary? ‘No, it’s fine.’ He tried to sound grateful. ‘I’ll be able to handle it. Thanks for stopping.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Well . . .’ Carlyle looked down at his shoes, trying not to smile. Are you sure? How many times over the years had he been asked that question? He was a policeman. Of course he was sure. ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘Well, if you change your mind,’ the woman said, ‘I work at the launderette at the far end of Betterton Street.’ She gestured over her shoulder. ‘You can get me in there.’

  ‘I know it,’ Carlyle said, which was true. When the Carlyle family washing-machine had exploded earlier in the year, he had been a regular customer. ‘Thanks.’

  Reluctantly, the woman turned and walked away, leaving Carlyle to return his attention to the van driver. He moved to the driver’s door. ‘Name?’

  The man couldn’t have looked any more pained if someone was poised to stick a red-hot poker up his arse. ‘Smith.’

  Carlyle raised an eyebrow.

  ‘No, really,’ the man said, pulling his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans, ‘it is Smith. Dennis Smith.’ He fished out his driver’s licence and flashed it through the window.

  Ignoring the card, Carlyle leaned towards the window. ‘Okay, Dennis, you seem to have violated various traffic laws here, as well as behaving in a way that could easily have led to a breach of the peace.’ Talking bollocks, of course, but getting his attention. ‘And that’s before we talk about any actual injury to the victim’s person. Or about you calling me “fuckface”.’

  ‘But,’ Smith complained, ‘you just sent him off to get a coffee. He’s not hurt at all. Anyway, it was his fault.’

  Carlyle let his gaze wander round the inside of the van. ‘Are you up here often?’

  Smith shifted in his seat. ‘A bit.’

  ‘Well, I’m round here all the time and I don’t want to see any more boy-racer shit from . . .’ he stood up to look at the name on the side of the van ‘. . . Fred’s Fabulous Fruit ’n’ Veg.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘But nothing. If I see this van doing more than twenty miles an hour up Drury Lane, you’ll be nicked and I’ll make sure that your boss knows about it. Now fuck off and drive carefully. Try not to knock over any more pensioners today.’

  Scowling and muttering under his breath, Smith rammed the van into first gear, revving the engine as he pulled away. Stepping back on to the pavement, Carlyle heard the jeers of the other drivers who had been caught up behind this spat. As he walked back towards the café, he caught a couple of basic hand gestures reflected in the window of the William Hill betting shop, but chose to ignore them. As he reached the table, Marcello appeared with Carlyle’s second macchiato and a mug of tea for Harry Ripley. Without saying a word, Carlyle sat down, drained the cup and methodically ate the quarter slices of his Danish, one after another.

  Harry lived three floors below the Carlyles, in Winter Garden House. He had been a close friend of Carlyle’s late father-in-law for many years and had known Helen since she had been born. Now in his late seventies, Harry had served in Korea in 1952 as part of the City of London Regiment of the Royal Fusiliers, for which he had received both UK and UN Korea medals. Although he didn’t have a clue what Harry had been doing in Korea, Carlyle had admired both honours on several occasions. Harry had followed his twenty years in the military with another twenty as a postman, working out of the Mount Pleasant sorting office on Farringdon Road, near King’s Cross. He had been retired almost fifteen years now and a widower for more than a decade. He had no kids and, as far as Carlyle knew, no other family. Now all he wanted to do was die – ‘while I still have my health’ as he put it. His fantasy, articulated many times over a pint of Chiswick Bitter in the Sun, was to keel over while watching Arsenal win the Premier League, which was how he had come by the moniker ‘Heart Attack Harry’.

  Carlyle fought a powerful urge to demolish another Danish. ‘What was that all about, Harry?’ he asked casually.

  The old man slurped his tea and gazed into the middle distance. ‘The bloke should have stopped. He was going too fast.’

  ‘You should be grateful he wasn’t going any faster,’ Carlyle sighed. ‘Anyway, that guy was a Spurs supporter. You should have known he was going to miss.’

  Harry chuckled.

  ‘It’s not funny, mate. Have you ever tried anything like that before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, don’t do it again, or I’ll bloody kill you.’

  Harry looked at him soulfully. ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘Bollocks, Harry, you did it on purpose. You gave that bloke a hell of a scare, even if he was a prize twat. You just can’t behave like that.’ He gazed up at the blue sky. It was already pushing 70 degrees; not London weather at all. Clearly, the day was going to be an absolute scorcher. ‘And what’s with the raincoat?’

  Harry shrugged. ‘You never know when it might rain.’

  Carlyle glanced at his watch. He really should be on his way to the station. ‘For fuck’s sake, it’s supposed to be more than eighty degrees today; the hottest day of the year. And knock it off with this morbid shit. There�
�s nothing wrong with you. I’ll probably kick the bucket before you do. In fact, I’ll bet you twenty quid that you get to a hundred, no problem at all. Your telegram from the Queen is guaranteed.’ Did they still do the telegrams? Carlyle wondered. He hoped so. Harry was as much a Royalist as he himself was a Republican, and if the thought of a ‘Well done’ message from Buckingham Palace couldn’t cheer him up, nothing would.

  Somehow, Harry managed to slip an even more downbeat expression on his battered mug. ‘It doesn’t just turn up, you know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The telegram from Her Majesty.’

  ‘Oh?’ Carlyle realised he shouldn’t have gone there.

  ‘Someone has got to ask her for it.’

  The grumpy old sod was making the inspector feel like the world’s biggest optimist. Taking a deep breath, he made a determined effort to remain cheery. ‘At least they don’t charge you for the privilege,’ he said, wondering if they did.

  ‘And you’ve got to prove your age.’

  ‘Give Helen a copy of your bloody birth certificate then,’ Carlyle snapped, his patience gone. ‘She’ll send it off to the powers-that-be, when the time comes.’

  ‘She’ll be dead by then.’

  ‘Who?’ said Carlyle, unsure whether to be concerned. ‘Helen?’

  ‘No,’ said Harry, ‘the Queen. She’s older than me, you know.’

  Carlyle felt irritated and relieved at the same time. ‘Whatever. Anyway, you’ll be fine.’

  ‘Come on, Inspector,’ said Harry, a slight tinge of anger appearing in his voice, ‘don’t try and kid me. I’ve had a decent innings and I don’t need to drag it out. “Quit while you’re ahead”, my old dad always used to say, and he was right. I don’t want to leave it too late and turn into a vegetable in some horrible care home. Or be left forgotten and starving on a trolley in a hospital corridor. I’ve no family and it should be my choice. Assisted suicide, they call it. It’s all the rage these days. They had a guy die on the telly the other night.’

  Carlyle grunted. He knew about the programme that Harry was referring to. The thought of it made his squeamishness flare up like an ulcer and also depressed the hell out of him. When Helen had insisted on watching it, he’d gone off to bed with a book. Even now, he shivered at the ghoulishness of it all. ‘The bloke on the telly had some incurable disease. And he spent three grand to go to Switzerland to have it done in some Alpine clinic.’ He looked directly at Harry. ‘Then there’s another seven grand, at least, to come home again and get buried. Do you have ten grand?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, you can’t bloody die, then,’ Carlyle grinned, ‘can you?’

  ‘There are other ways,’ Harry said evenly. ‘You don’t have to go to Switzerland. Didn’t some copper in Wales walk up a mountain with a bottle of Scotch and freeze to death?’

  Carlyle remembered it well, as it had been the talk of the station for days. ‘Yeah, I should imagine Wales is a good place for that. They have plenty of mountains.’

  Out of the glare, came merciful relief in the form of an angel. A pretty blonde girl in a very short skirt turned off Drury Lane and began sauntering down the other side of Macklin Street, talking into her mobile phone as she did so. Her toned legs were very long and tanned and she had a portfolio stuck under one arm. He guessed she was looking for the model agency a block away on Parker Street. Like Keats once said: a thing of beauty is a joy forever. It was the best cure for depression he knew.

  Harry caught him staring and smirked. ‘Too young for me.’

  Carlyle said nothing as the girl did a U-turn and disappeared back down Drury Lane.

  ‘Too young for you too.’

  ‘Harry . . .’

  ‘I read about it in the paper,’ said Harry, returning to his theme, all thoughts of playing chicken with the traffic abandoned.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘The policeman who walked up a mountain to kill himself.’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ If Keats was alive today, a thing of beauty would be a joy for about ten seconds, Carlyle thought sourly.

  ‘He had a complicated love-life, or something.’

  ‘It must have been bloody complicated.’ Carlyle reached inside his jacket for his wallet. ‘For him to want to top himself.’ He groaned when he realised how little cash he was carrying, barely enough to pay the bill. ‘Anyway, I really have to go.’

  ‘You didn’t know him, did you?’

  ‘No, funnily enough, he’s one of the one hundred and forty thousand police officers in this country that I don’t know personally.’ As if by magic, Marcello appeared to clear away their cups. Carlyle handed him a tenner, signalled that he didn’t need any change, and stood up.

  ‘According to the papers, he had serious women trouble.’ Harry struggled out of his chair.

  ‘Don’t we all?’ Carlyle grinned, delighted to have finally got the conversation on to something other than death.

  ‘Nah,’ Harry said absent-mindedly. ‘He wasn’t henpecked like you. His problem was that he was shagging too many of them – way too many of them. Couldn’t keep it in his trousers.’

  Carlyle looked at the cheeky old codger. Henpecked? He thought about saying something, but let it go. Waving goodbye to Marcello, he stepped into the road. ‘I’ll see you soon. Pop in on Helen and Alice – they’d love to see you. In the meantime, don’t cause any more trouble. That’s an order.’

  ‘Or I could get arrested?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  The old man’s face lit up. ‘I could die in custody. Fall down some stairs.’

  Carlyle laughed as he started down the road. ‘You never know, Harry. You never know.’

  FIVE

  ‘Where the bloody hell have you been?’

  Leaning back in his chair, Carlyle looked blankly at his sergeant.

  ‘I called you on the mobile,’ Joe complained, the exasperation clear in his voice.

  Carlyle fished his phone out of the breast-pocket of his jacket. The screen said he had missed four calls. Four bloody calls. That was about par for the course with Carlyle and his mobile phones. He looked up and tried to appear apologetic. ‘Sorry.’

  Having just returned from a week’s holiday in Portugal, Sergeant Joseph Szyszkowski was tanned and, despite his current irritation with his boss, extremely relaxed. He looks like he’s lost a bit of weight, Carlyle thought idly. And caught up on his sleep.

  Lucky bugger.

  Carlyle was glad to have his sergeant back. Joe was not your average copper. He was second-generation Polish and somewhat unworldly. But they had been working together for more than five years, and he was one of the few people – the very few – on the Force with whom Carlyle enjoyed working and, more importantly, trusted.

  ‘Well, now that you’re here, we have to go.’ Joe casually dropped a piece of paper on Carlyle’s desk.

  Carlyle picked up the sheet of paper but he didn’t read it, and didn’t move from his seat. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Agatha Mills.’

  ‘Who’s she then?’

  ‘She,’ Joe grinned, ‘is the little old lady who was brained last night in her flat up by the British Museum.’

  ‘Nice place to live,’ Carlyle sniffed.

  ‘Not for her. Not any more. The husband called it in earlier.’

  Carlyle glanced at the sheet of A4. ‘Serious?’

  ‘Dead.’

  Carlyle felt a wave of indifference sweep over him. He held the paper up to the light, as if he was checking a twenty-pound note for its watermark. ‘And it’s come to us? Shouldn’t it be for one of the geniuses at the Holborn station? They’re closer to the British Museum than we are.’

  ‘Well, it’s come to us.’ Joe was used to Carlyle’s initial lack of interest. His boss often took his time to get warmed up and become involved in a case. By the time he did, the matter was often either solved or the inspector was off on a mission, with his sergeant in tow. Either way, Joe knew that he would buck up eventually.


  Carlyle exhaled dramatically. ‘Okay then,’ he said, bouncing out of his chair with mock enthusiasm. ‘Let’s go and take a look.’

  Coming out of the police station, Carlyle sidestepped a couple of winos sitting on the pavement and took a left turn, heading north. After cutting down Henrietta Street, he led Joe at a brisk pace through Covent Garden piazza and up Endell Street in the direction of Bloomsbury. A little more than five minutes later, they arrived at Ridgemount Mansions, a solid, six-storey apartment block facing the British Museum on Great Russell Street.

  Agatha Mills had lived – and died – in flat number 8, on the first floor. After being buzzed into the building, Carlyle nodded to a couple of uniforms who were canvassing the neighbours, before ignoring a rickety-looking lift and climbing the stairs. He reached the front door of the flat just as a couple of forensic technicians, laden down with bags and the tools of their trade, came struggling out. Carlyle recognised one of them, but couldn’t remember his name.

  ‘The body’s in the kitchen,’ the techie explained. ‘Bassett’s in there too.’ Sylvester Bassett was a pathologist working out of the Charing Cross station so Carlyle knew him reasonably well. They had worked together three or four times during the last year.

  ‘Thanks.’ Stepping past the technicians and into the flat, Carlyle sniffed the air. There was the usual mix of cooking and people smells. There was no obvious scent of death, but that was not unusual. Death, in his experience, kept itself to itself.

  The front door opened on to a hallway that ran the entire length of the apartment, leading to rooms on either side. Moving further inside, Carlyle noted a bathroom, a living room – where a big-boned WPC he didn’t recognise was babysitting some older bloke, presumably the husband – and two bedrooms. At the far end of the hall, on the right, he came to the kitchen. His first thought was that it was surprisingly large, easily twice the size of his own kitchen at home. There was a round dining table in the middle, surrounded by three chairs. Like the rest of the place, it had a wooden floor and the white tiles on the walls helped make the place feel clean and bright.