London Calling

by James Craig

  Just over a minute later, it was all over. The highlight was a breathless piece to camera from Rosanna Snowdon, standing outside the Garden Hotel. Carlyle noticed she had undone an extra button on her blouse, providing an enhanced view of her seriously impressive décolletage. So this is why people watch local news, he thought. The piece also included a passport-style photograph of the victim, and a ten-second clip of a suitably dour-looking Simpson describing it as a ‘violent and senseless crime’.

  ‘She looks tired,’ Carlyle commented.

  Joe grunted.

  Snowdon signed off with: ‘The investigation continues.’ Carlyle did not have a speaking role, although he did appear on screen, nodding intently as he listened to Simpson’s wise words. Of Sergeant Joseph Szyszkowski, the man in the Marks & Spencer suit, there was neither sight nor sound. Nor was there any mention of the mayor.

  Carlyle switched off the television and looked again round the room. ‘Like you said … spurmo.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Not exactly a gay shag pad, is it?’ Lost in thought, they both studied the Helmut Newton ‘big nude’ which dominated the far wall: a black-and-white photo of a naked Amazonian blonde posing beside a motorcycle.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind one of those at home,’ Joe mused.

  ‘The woman? Or the photo?’

  ‘I’d settle for the photo.’

  ‘I’m sure Mrs Szyszkowski would be delighted to hear you say that.’

  Joe shifted in his seat, but made no attempt to stand up. ‘A boy can dream. By definition, you don’t want your dreams to become reality, otherwise they wouldn’t still be dreams.’

  ‘Mmm … good try, soldier.’

  ‘Anyway, Anita knows that I understand my limitations … almost as well as she does.’

  ‘Just as well,’ Carlyle sniffed. He made a half-hearted attempt to get out of the sofa. ‘So where do you think we are now? Have we found anything useful?’

  ‘Not really. Not much of the personal touch here, is there? No photos, address books, stuff like that. His phone was in his hotel room. His BlackBerry is missing.’

  ‘Are we sure that he even had one?’

  ‘Yeah, his office confirmed that. You can’t be a proper PR man without one, apparently.’

  ‘So it was taken by the killer?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Can we track it?’ asked Carlyle, operating at the extreme limits of his technological knowledge. ‘It’s just like a mobile, right?’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s switched off. I’ve checked.’

  Carlyle thought about that. ‘But if someone took it, presumably they want it for something. So, at some point they might be expected to switch it on?’

  ‘Not necessarily. You can switch it on but keep the wireless turned off. You can then access all the information already on the machine, though you won’t be able to send or receive any emails. That way businessmen can play with them on planes without causing a crash.’

  ‘That’s good to know,’ said Carlyle listlessly. He’d had his own BlackBerry up and running for little more than three weeks now and he hadn’t quite managed to work that kind of facility out yet. He wasn’t the kind of guy to bother consulting the user manual: a gadget either worked straight away or it went in a drawer. With the BlackBerry, once he had worked out how to use the email and check the latest football news (not necessarily in that order), as far as he was concerned he was away. In his book, whatever else the machine did was over-engineering – the curse of the modern consumer electronics industry.

  He stood up and took a step over towards the window. ‘This place feels like a hotel suite, or one of those serviced apartments. It doesn’t look like we’ll get much here. What did the people employed at his company have to say?’

  ‘The usual: shock, horror, surprise.’

  ‘Could it have been a colleague that killed him?’

  ‘Doesn’t look like it, but we’re still taking statements. Nothing much has jumped out, so far. There are only thirty-five people working there and we haven’t heard any suggestion of grudges. The victim was reckoned to be very straightforward: good with clients, good at networking, relatively good with junior staff. Not too pushy. Basically, he seems to have kept his work life and his private life separate. They knew he wasn’t married, otherwise he’s a bit of a blank sheet of paper.’

  ‘OK, go and have another chat with the Alethia people tomorrow morning and see what you can find out about his clients.’

  ‘No problem.’ Joe nodded. ‘They don’t start early, these folks, so I can take the kids to school for once. Anita will be chuffed.’

  ‘Nice,’ Carlyle smiled. ‘What about ex-colleagues?’

  ‘Doubtful. The company has only been going a few years, and none of the top people has left yet. Apparently, the way these things work is that you build up the business and then sell it off to someone bigger. You probably get tied in for a while, but then you can bugger off as soon as the cash hits your bank account. They haven’t got to that stage yet.’

  ‘What about the more junior staff?’

  ‘Again,’ Joe sighed, ‘nothing’s really come up. It’s the kind of place where the secretaries save a bit of money and then go backpacking in Australia. The others are all bright young things, very career-focused.’

  Carlyle kept throwing out the questions as they popped into his head. ‘What was Blake doing before this job?’

  ‘Dunno. Still checking.’

  ‘Next of kin?’

  ‘Nope. Parents dead. No brothers or sisters.’

  ‘Partner?’

  Joe gestured around the sparse room. ‘Apparently not.’

  ‘Neighbours?’

  ‘There are six flats in this building. We’ve managed to speak to someone in three of them so far. Two more are still being chased.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Fucking hell.’ Carlyle sighed. ‘Give me something!’

  Joe shrugged. ‘They didn’t seem that interested, to be honest. Apparently he’s been living here for about eight years, but that’s about it. Like the people at his work, they found him fairly quiet and polite.’

  ‘Car?’

  ‘Nice motor, an Audi Q7. It’s downstairs. There’s a garage in the basement.’

  ‘Has it been checked?’

  ‘Yeah. A preliminary search threw up nothing.’

  ‘What about cameras?’

  ‘None. Neither inside nor outside.’

  Carlyle raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I know,’ said Joe. ‘Some of the residents thought it would lower the tone, apparently.’

  ‘Typical.’ Carlyle yawned. ‘Half a million security cameras all over London, and not one where we actually fucking need it.’

  ‘It’s always the way.’ Joe struggled out of the sofa. ‘We are where we are, then. Let’s call it a night.’

  ‘That’s a plan,’ agreed Carlyle, as he went back to thinking about what he might have for dinner.

  * * *

  The remote control missed the screen by about two feet and exploded on impact with the wall behind it, switching the television off as it did so. A few deep breaths saw the frustration subside, but only a little. From the moment she had appeared on the screen, it was clear that the Snowdon woman was one of those bimbo journalists who shouldn’t be let loose on anything more taxing than a Hello! magazine interview. Even then, it was a shocking performance: no background, no insight, no bloody context. No wonder more and more people were refusing to pay their licence fees.

  Breathe!

  How difficult could it be for these people to see what was going on?

  Breathe!

  On the other hand, these journalists only regurgitated whatever the police told them. If the police themselves were clueless, why should the journalists be any better?

  Breathe!

  There was no point in wailing about what had happened. If people couldn’t yet put the pieces together, they could always be given mo
re help. Next time, it would be spelt out so clearly that even this bunch of idiots couldn’t miss it.

  Eva Hollander stood in the kitchen with a large glass of Château Puysserguier Saint Chinian in her hand. Dominic Silver wasn’t too keen about his wife drinking before the children had gone to bed – he didn’t want them to see alcohol as something to be consumed as a matter of routine every evening – but he wasn’t going to make an issue out of it. Their five kids weren’t around to see Mummy’s teatime boozing, anyway. They had now fled to various parts of the house in order to avoid teeth brushing, face washing, bedtime stories, etc., etc. If he listened carefully, he could hear the sound of Modern Warfare 2, interspersed with bits of Abba. Everyone was safe and happy under one roof. Domestic bliss personified, it was the best feeling in the world.

  Should he have a bowl of pasta? Or a bowl of cornflakes? Dom was still undecided as Eva tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Look,’ she was pointing at the small television screen fixed below one of the kitchen cupboards, ‘there’s John Carlyle.’

  She turned up the sound and together they watched the rest of the news report. By the time it had finished, Dom had decided on the pasta.

  ‘He looked very grumpy,’ Eva observed, bringing the glass to her lips without taking a sip.

  ‘He always looks grumpy,’ said Dom, as he poked around in the fridge for some tortellini.

  ‘It sounds like he’s working on a particularly nasty case.’

  ‘That’s his job.’ Dom finally pulled out a packet of pasta and closed the fridge door. ‘He’s been doing it for long enough now. It’s his choice, and it always has been. It’s what he likes doing.’

  ‘I wonder how Helen and Alice are getting on,’ Eva mused. ‘We haven’t seen them for a while.’

  Dom carefully opened the packet with a knife and dropped half the contents into a pan. ‘Give them a call,’ he said, over his shoulder. ‘Get them to come over sometime. I’m sure all the kids would love a play date.’

  ‘I think that was fine …’

  For now, thought Christian Holyrod. He eyed the callow adviser hovering beside him. Should I have told him about Blake? There was no use worrying about it now.

  ‘… and the important thing was that your name was kept out of it.’

  The boy’s fruity aftershave was giving him a headache. ‘Give me a minute alone, will you?’ he said, and it wasn’t a question. ‘And close the door on your way out.’

  With just the slightest pout, the aide did as he was told. Alone for the first time that day, the mayor turned down the sound on the television and pulled a bottle of Tullibardine 1994 out of a desk drawer, along with a small shot glass, before filling the glass almost to the brim. Sitting back in his chair and lifting his feet up to the desk, he savoured the toffee-apple and sherry smell of the whisky before taking a gentle sip. The bittersweet taste tickled his throat, reminding him of candyfloss. Holyrod took another sip and then drained his glass in one long swallow. Closing his eyes, he contemplated the silence.

  SIXTEEN

  Carlyle slurped at a cup of lukewarm black coffee, and happily munched on the pastry he’d saved from earlier in the day. The third floor of the police station was deserted apart from a couple of cleaners who were wandering from desk to desk, waving some feather dusters around in a desultory fashion, like a pair of bored performance artists from the piazza nearby. Dropping the remains of his Danish on a napkin, he picked up the pen lying on an A4 notepad next to his keyboard. At the top centre of the page, he wrote IAN BLAKE, drawing a neat box around the name. Below the box he wrote the name of Christian Holyrod.

  For several seconds, he studied the yellow paper, searching for inspiration. It was time to start putting the pieces together, and this was the part of the job he liked almost more than any other. After all his time on the Force, he still got a buzz of excitement as he embarked on that voyage of discovery that would inevitably take him to the heart of his case. How he conducted that journey – whether from behind a desk or out on the street – didn’t matter just as long as it took place.

  ‘Right …’ He pushed the remainder of the Danish into his mouth, washed it down with the last of his coffee, and started bashing the keyboard. Clicking on to Google, he typed in BLAKE+HOLYROD. The legend ‘Results 1–10 of about 12,000 (0.09 seconds)’ popped up and Carlyle reflexively hit on the first link, which was a newspaper article entitled The Merrion Club: Young, rich and drunk. Carlyle waited for the story to load before scanning it quickly. It informed him that Blake and Holyrod had both been members of an ultra-exclusive Cambridge University fraternity famous in equal measure for its hard drinking and bad behaviour. For reasons that were not explained, the club was named after the Dublin street in which the Duke of Wellington had been born. The story was a trail of booze-fuelled vandalism and famous old boys. Near the bottom of the piece, a quote from a hanger-on caught his eye: ‘It wasn’t considered a proper night out until a restaurant had been trashed. A night in the cells was par for the course for a Merrion man. So, too, was the debagging of anyone who incurred the irritation of the Club.’

  What was a ‘debagging’? Carlyle decided he could guess. He now contemplated the accompanying group photograph. Standing on the front steps of some stately pile, all floppy hair, morning suits and sophisticated sneers, they looked like extras from a Spandau Ballet video. In fact, he thought that they looked as though they were boys from a departed era. The picture was taken less than thirty years earlier but it could just as easily have been a hundred and thirty. The caption beneath the image listed the members of the Merrion Club of 1984: George Dellal, Ian Blake, Nicholas Hogarth, Edgar Carlton, Xavier Carlton, Christian Holyrod, Harry Allen, Sebastian Lloyd.

  Carlyle read and reread the eight names on the list. ‘Well, fuck me sideways!’ He continued to stare at the image for a long time.

  There was Blake at the back, over to the right. Holyrod, London’s current mayor, stood in the middle, waving a cigar. In front of him, the leader of the opposition, Edgar Carlton, was standing next to his brother Xavier, who, if Carlyle remembered correctly, was the shadow foreign secretary. Fuck knows who the rest of them are, Carlyle thought. At this rate, he wouldn’t have been surprised if the rest of them included the new Pope and some minor European royalty. He understood that the Establishment was tightly knit – after all, that’s what made it the Establishment – but this was surely ridiculous.

  Quickly scribbling those six new names on his pad, he added little crosses beside the Carltons and Holyrod. Switching his attention back to the keyboard and clicking out of the internet, Carlyle paused to roll up his sleeves. Taking a couple of deep breaths, he prepared to do battle with the Force’s internal IT network. The British police were notorious for their terrible computer systems, which were commonly assumed to have let an unknown number of serious criminals slip through the net over the years. A few years earlier, the high-profile failure to vet a school caretaker who subsequently murdered two schoolgirls had encouraged the introduction of a Police National Database linking all forty-three forces in England and Wales. But that was still quite some way off and, knowing that trying to search the whole country was too ambitious, Carlyle decided to stick to London – even if it was hard enough trying to extract information from the different computer systems run by the Metropolitan Police. Many old-school coppers simply could not be bothered trying to access them, but Carlyle realised that, for all their failings, they offered him access to a treasure trove of information of the kind that had helped him solve many cases in the past.

  Typing in a second username and password, he accessed a Met database that allowed him to view basic details of all the capital’s outstanding homicide cases. Blake he knew about, along with the Carlton brothers and Holyrod, who were all still very much alive. So, one by one, he slowly typed in the other four names: ‘Delal, Hogarth, Allen, Lloyd’. Asking for anything showing from the last six months, he waited five, six, seven seconds before NO RESULTS flashed up on the screen.<
br />
  Carlyle leaned back in his chair. Then he tried again, extending the search parameters, to cover the last two years.

  Another short wait.

  Again NO RESULTS appeared on the screen.

  So much for a quick hit. Carlyle looked at the clock and realised it was way past Alice’s bedtime, so it looked as if he wouldn’t be seeing her this evening. Don’t rush it, he told himself. This could crack the whole thing open. He remembered the note: ‘not the first and not the last’. Someone mentioned in this database had to be connected to Blake. It was worth the effort to try to find them. He pulled his mobile out of his jacket and sent Helen a text saying that he would be working a while longer, before getting up and going for a piss. After fetching another coffee from the machine, he walked twice around the office to stretch his legs and clear his head, before returning to his desk.

  Carlyle felt extremely tired but he forced himself to concentrate. ‘Third time lucky,’ he mumbled to himself, as he looked again at the scrawl on his pad. The handwriting was appalling, almost illegible even to himself. He flipped back to the newspaper story on the internet and ran his finger down the names, double-checking the spellings. With a groan, he realised that he’d missed one l out of the name Dellal. Quickly, he punched the correct spelling back into the database, and hit send. He was still cursing his carelessness when it popped up in front of him:

  Dellal, George Edward Hazlett

  DoB: 16/9/63

  Deceased: 12/02/10

  COD: multiple stab wounds

  Investigating officer: S. Sparrow

  Status: OPEN

  ‘Sam fucking Sparrow,’ Carlyle smiled, ‘come on down …’

  Inspector Sam Sparrow worked out of the Enfield station in north London. He was a straightforward, no-nonsense policeman maybe five or six years younger than Carlyle, with almost as many commendations and considerably better career prospects. The two men had worked together in the late 1990s, when Sparrow had been leading an investigation into Turkish drug dealers in the Wood Green neighbourhood of north London. After the Turks had begun invading rivals’ turf to the east, Carlyle, stationed at Bethnal Green at the time, had been drawn into what became a violent and bloody mess, with body parts randomly strewn across both neighbourhoods. Sparrow had proved very easy to work with, and Carlyle had come out of six months’ hard slog with both a commendation and a promotion. For a while, he was on a roll. It even looked as if all his ‘career issues’ might have been sorted out for good. A subsequent run-in with a particularly stupid superintendent quickly put paid to that hope, but it still ranked as Carlyle’s most successful period on the force and he remembered it fondly.