London Calling

by James Craig

  ‘I don’t know, mate,’ Dom sniffed, ‘and really I don’t care. That’s your job.’

  ‘Apparently.’

  Dom eyed at him carefully. ‘I know that you must understand just what a tricky situation you currently find yourself in.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So it doesn’t need me to tell you how careful you need to be in dealing with people like this.’

  ‘Why not?’ said Carlyle, smiling. ‘Everyone else has.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Dom grinned. ‘It means people are looking out for you. Be grateful, you dumb fucking plod, and accept their advice.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘I’ll look out for your case on the news. Let me know how it goes.’ The mobile in the back pocket of Dom’s jeans started ringing, but he ignored it. ‘And remember …’

  ‘Yes?’

  Dom cranked up his air guitar. ‘Keep on rockin’ in the free world, baby!’

  Neil Young started playing inside Carlyle’s head as he watched Dom saunter out of the garden, and back into the hustle and flow of the city. What should he do next? He had started making a list in his head, when his own phone went.

  ‘Inspector?’

  ‘Rosanna, how are you?’ He was happy enough to get the call, since it delayed the need for him to do anything else.

  ‘You recognised my voice!’ she chirruped happily.

  Carlyle stretched out on the bench and stifled a post-prandial yawn. For most people, lunch hour was now over and the garden had largely emptied. Carlyle had the place pretty much to himself, aside from a bag lady asleep on a nearby bench and a couple of tourists who stood consulting a guidebook. ‘I don’t have that many celebrity contacts,’ he replied.

  ‘So that’s what I am?’

  ‘To me, everybody is another contact.’

  She laughed. ‘Then I guess that’s something we have in common. How did your meeting with Edgar go?’

  Christ Almighty, Carlyle thought. Did everyone know all of his business? In real time? He proceeded with caution. ‘It was fine. I saw him earlier today. He was very helpful.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘Yes. Thank you for introducing me the other day. It was very kind of you.’

  ‘My pleasure.’

  Meaning: What are you going to do for me in return?

  Carlyle ploughed on. ‘One thing I was wondering …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘How do you know him?’

  ‘Edgar?’ She seemed surprised by the question.

  No, the bloody Queen of Sheba, he thought. ‘Yes.’

  ‘We go back a long way …’ He listened patiently to a pause, while she wondered whether what she said now might be significant. ‘I went to school with his wife Anastasia and his sister Sophia who is now Mrs Christian Holyrod.’

  ‘I see,’ said Carlyle. ‘Isn’t that all a bit, well, incestuous?’

  ‘Do you think?’ she asked. ‘It’s a very close social set, but that’s fairly common, I think.’

  Carlyle tried a bit more fishing. ‘Mr Carlton is really quite impressive,’ he lied.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she gushed. ‘I’ve known Edgar since I was eight or nine, and he really is a lovely man. Very charming and thoughtful.’

  ‘And Xavier?’ Carlyle asked.

  ‘Less of a charmer,’ she mused.

  ‘More impetuous?’

  ‘He’s more the kind of man to dominate you by force of will and the power of his emotions,’ she said, with a strange kind of relish. ‘He sweeps you off your feet.’

  ‘Is that a good thing?’

  ‘There’s a time and a place for both. Edgar’s the boss, of course, but I think they complement each other quite well.’

  ‘I can see what you mean.’

  ‘So how’s your investigation going?’

  ‘Nothing to report at the moment,’ replied Carlyle stiffly. ‘We are making progress.’

  ‘That’s a very straight bat you’re playing, Inspector.’

  ‘You wouldn’t really expect me to say anything different, though, would you?’

  ‘No,’ she laughed, ‘I wouldn’t. But you know that I want the exclusive when something big happens.’

  ‘Even if it’s a story that your friend Edgar wouldn’t like?’ Carlyle asked.

  ‘What?’ Her voice changed as the tone of the conversation went up a couple of gears. ‘Is Edgar a suspect?’

  ‘No, no,’ Carlyle said, hastily trying to backtrack. ‘But, inevitably, this case may throw up things that are embarrassing.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Who knows?’ said Carlyle, trying to sound as casual as possible. ‘The investigation still has to run its course.’

  ‘Well, when it does, I definitely want a heads-up, whatever the outcome.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘You have to remember two things,’ she said primly. ‘A story is a story, so it will get out somehow, and, just as important, I am a journalist first and foremost. I don’t burn my contacts. Rule number one from journalism school is that you always protect your sources.’

  It sounded a well-rehearsed spiel. ‘You went to journalism school?’ he asked.

  There was a pause. ‘No … but I respect the rules of the game. Therefore I respect you.’ She sounded quite annoyed at having to spell it out for him.

  ‘I’ll bear all this in mind,’ said Carlyle, happy to get off the subject.

  ‘Jolly good,’ she said, recovering her brighter tone. ‘You’ve got my mobile number. Give me a ring. It’s always switched on.’

  ‘I bet it is,’ Carlyle said with a smile.

  With no other distractions, he finally had to get on with things. First, he called Joe Szyszkowski and told him to find out whatever he could about Susy Ahl. Then, in a newly found spirit of openness and co-operation, he called Superintendent Simpson to let her know what the day had so far revealed. For once, Simpson was not ensconced in a meeting.

  His update to her, while leaving out any reference to Dominic Silver, was comprehensive. ‘This woman Ahl,’ he concluded, ‘appears to be the link between Ashton then and the Merrion people now.’

  ‘Do you think she can explain it?’ Simpson asked.

  ‘You would have to hope so. She – or somebody else – has been carefully leading us down this path of inquiry. There has to be an explanation.’

  ‘Is she a suspect, then?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Carlyle said evasively. The reality was that he had no clue. ‘We have no physical evidence. I want to see what she has to say first, and then we’ll take a view.’

  ‘All the same, let’s keep an open mind.’

  ‘Always,’ said Carlyle. ‘Are you intending to speak to Carlton about this?’

  There was a pause. ‘I promised that I’d keep him informed.’

  ‘It would be a help if I could speak to the Ahl woman first.’

  ‘I understand.’

  Was that a yes? Carlyle wondered. Promising, as always, to keep Simpson updated, he ended the call. His thoughts turned next to paying Ms Ahl a visit. He looked again at Dom’s piece of paper. In addition to a home address, it had a landline number and a mobile number. He tried them both. Each time he got voicemail. He didn’t leave a message on either. Presumably the woman had a job, so he decided to wait until the evening before paying her a visit at home. Reluctant to go back to the station, he called Helen and scored a few brownie points by promising her that he would head over to the Barbican and pick Alice up from school.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Fulham Palace Gardens, the grounds of the former official residence of the Bishop of London, lay just north of Putney Bridge in west London. It was barely a ten-minute walk from where Carlyle had grown up, on Peterborough Road. Even after becoming a policeman, he had lived at home for almost three years. His parents still lived there, in the same modest council flat in a small block called Sullivan Court. Tonight, however, he wouldn’t be paying them a visit.

  Enjoying the last warmth of t
he summer evening, he watched the planes as they made their final descent into Heathrow, further to the west. Every two minutes without fail, another one appeared overhead, following the one in front, leading the one behind. Back when he was a kid, in the 1960s and 1970s, he couldn’t remember much about watching any planes, although there certainly must have been some.

  Heading further away from the river, he slipped into Stevenage Road, passing Craven Cottage football ground on his left. Details of Fulham Football Club’s first pre-season game of the summer were posted on a wall by the Putney End turnstiles. It was less than two weeks since the last season had ended, but the euphoria of the team’s last-gasp escape from relegation was long since dissipated. Carlyle had yet to renew his season ticket for the Riverside Stand, and he wondered if this time he would actually get round to it. He had been going to watch Fulham ever since he had been eight years old, but every year it seemed harder to justify the cost. If he put his mind to it, he could doubtless think of a dozen other things to do with the six hundred pounds, while Helen could probably think of a few dozen more.

  Walking fifty yards on past the football ground, he turned right into Harboro Street. It was the same as dozens of other roads in the area, and hundreds of residential streets in the surrounding inner suburbs. There was a long row of two-storey terraced houses on either side, with a cross-section of cars, from tiny Fiats to huge Porsche 4×4s – parked tightly together against the pavement.

  Crossing the road, he walked about halfway down before he found number 99. This was the address that Dominic Silver had given him.

  The house was set back no more than twelve feet from the street, behind a small paved front garden. It appeared clean and in good repair, with a newish-looking coat of white paint on the brickwork and a flower box on the ledge of the ground-floor bay window. Three bedrooms, Carlyle guessed, and probably worth about half a million, if not more. Not for the first time, he felt a deep pang of regret that his parents had shown no interest in getting on to the London property ladder forty-odd years ago.

  The front gate stood ajar, so he stepped quickly up to the front door and rang the bell. When there was no reply, he stepped forward to give it another ring, then noticed that the door was slightly open. Gingerly he gave it a push and stood peering along the hallway.

  ‘Hello?’

  There was no reply.

  Carlyle stepped inside the narrow hall. In front of him rose the stairs: to his right was what must be the living room. The hall continued alongside the stairs towards presumably a kitchen located at the rear.

  As he took another step forward, he could hear voices coming from the back of the house.

  ‘Hello?’ he called again, louder.

  Still no answer. Hearing some movement in the living room, he moved a couple of paces further along the hall and stuck his head round the door. An immaculate-looking Labrador immediately jumped off the sofa and padded over to give him a friendly sniff. Carlyle indulged it with a quick tickle behind the ears and moved back into the hallway. He moved slowly towards the voices, with his new friend now in tow.

  ‘HELLO!’ he shouted. ‘This is the police!’

  The voices instantly stopped, and a woman stepped out of the kitchen. There was a large cook’s knife in her hand.

  Instinctively, he took a small step backwards. ‘I’m Inspector Carlyle of the Metropolitan Police.’

  ‘Yes, you are,’ she said, letting the knife drop to her side.

  ‘I tried calling from the door, but got no reply,’ he explained, still keeping his distance.

  She smiled. ‘Apologies, Inspector, I didn’t hear you back there. I was listening to the radio: an interesting report on the current conflict in northern Uganda.’

  ‘Uh-uh,’ said Carlyle, who was blissfully unaware of that particular war.

  With her free hand, she reached into the pocket of her shirt and tossed the dog a biscuit. ‘I see you’ve met Arthur.’

  ‘Yes.’

  A thought suddenly struck her. ‘How did you get in, by the way?’

  He gestured back down the hall. ‘The front door was open.’

  ‘God, I’m always forgetting to close it properly. I’ve got to stop doing that, haven’t I, Arthur?’ The dog wagged his tail happily, perhaps anticipating another biscuit. ‘Maybe I’m losing my marbles.’ She looked past Carlyle, down the hall. ‘I didn’t also leave the keys in the lock, did I?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Thank goodness for small mercies.’

  She was a striking woman, in good shape with an athletic build and easily a couple of inches taller than Carlyle, even in her bare feet. Well preserved, she looked around his age, or maybe a few years younger. He noticed how her striking green eyes shone with what looked like the effects of no little alcohol.

  A few minutes later, he was sitting on the sofa recently vacated by Arthur, nursing a small cup of black coffee. Susy Ahl sat in an armchair opposite him, with a large glass of Château Miraval Rosé. The three-quarters-empty bottle stood on the wooden floor by the foot of her chair.

  ‘Were you expecting me?’ Carlyle asked, once they were both sitting comfortably. ‘You seemed to know who I was.’

  ‘I saw you on the television,’ she said matter-of-factly, though not making eye contact. ‘I assumed that you’d want to speak to me sooner or later.’

  He didn’t see a television in the room, but that didn’t mean anything. Maybe she had one in the kitchen or up in her bedroom. Anyway, there were plenty of other ways she could have seen Superintendent Simpson’s press conference.

  ‘That was a few days ago,’ he said.

  She smiled weakly. ‘Was it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Time flies.’

  ‘You didn’t think of coming to see me?’ he asked gently.

  ‘I’ve been busy. Out of the country.’

  ‘On business?’

  ‘Yes.’ Gingerly she stood up and lifted a business card from the mantelpiece above the empty fireplace, in which stood some kind of potted plant. Handing the card over to Carlyle, she continued. ‘My firm has a number of clients in the Middle East, so I’ve been shuttling between here and Dubai every couple of weeks for the last nine months.’

  She sat back down, as he studied the card. In navy script, it said: Susy Ahl, Partner, Escudo & Caspian LLP.

  ‘What’s LLP?’ he asked.

  ‘Limited Liability Partnership. Escudo & Caspian is a law firm.’

  ‘What kind of law?’ he asked, tensing slightly.

  ‘Property. We mainly help investors buying and selling commercial property in London.’

  How boring, thought Carlyle, suppressing a smile. ‘Isn’t that quite tough at the moment?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s not as easy as it was, but at least my clients still have some cash. Thank God for dumb Arab money.’

  ‘Dumb?’

  ‘That’s the stereotype, that they always get suckered into paying tourist prices. In reality, they’re very smart; very smart indeed. They tend not to overpay and they now own large chunks of London lock, stock and barrel.’

  Carlyle could not care less about that, one way or another. What he needed now was to get this conversation back on track. ‘I’ll need the precise dates of your business trips.’

  ‘Of course. Call me at my office in the morning and I can give you a full list.’

  ‘I’ll do that.’ Carlyle slipped the card into his jacket pocket. Enough of the preliminaries, he thought. ‘Tell me about Robert Ashton.’

  This time she kept her eyes directly on him, as she took a large mouthful of wine. ‘What exactly do you want to know?’

  ‘Just let me hear your version of it.’

  ‘Well,’ she put her glass down on the floor, ‘I assume you know that Robert was my boyfriend at Cambridge.’

  Carlyle said nothing.

  ‘We had been going out for a couple of years before he killed himself.’ She said it quietly but calmly, without any emotion in her voice.
>
  Very controlled, thought Carlyle, but, then again, it’s been a long while.

  ‘We were going to get married.’ She snatched up the glass and took another slug of wine.

  Fuck! Carlyle thought. It’s soap-opera time.

  ‘I was pregnant.’

  Fuck! Fuck! He quickly scanned the room. There were no photographs. No sign of any children. No sign of any family at all.

  ‘It was not a good time.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Carlyle gently. The reality was that he couldn’t begin to imagine, but what else could he say? He watched her drain her glass and fill it up immediately with the remainder of the bottle. Keep on drinking, he thought, the more the better. He waited to let her take another sip.

  ‘Why did he kill himself?’

  A look of genuine surprise crossed her face. ‘Don’t you know by now?’ She put her glass back on the floor, next to the now-empty bottle. ‘I thought that’s why you were here.’

  Me? I don’t have a clue, he thought. ‘I want to hear it in your own words.’

  ‘They killed him.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Merrion Club.’

  Here we go, thought Carlyle. He placed his coffee cup carefully on the arm of the sofa, trying not to look too keen to hear her story. ‘How?’

  Suddenly, Susy Ahl looked quite pale, as if she was going to be violently sick. ‘Excuse me a minute,’ she said, standing up. ‘I just need to use the bathroom.’

  As his hostess went up the stairs, Carlyle counted to five and quickly slipped into the kitchen. A quick look around showed it to be cramped and unremarkable, not much bigger than his own kitchen in Winter Garden House. The knife that Ahl had been brandishing when he arrived was now slotted in a glass and metal knife block, alongside four others. The brand on the blade read ‘evolution’, which was different from the ones that they had found at the murder scenes. A quick look through various drawers didn’t offer up anything else of interest. Face it, he thought, if she’s smart enough to get this far, she’s not going to make it that easy for me. He stepped in front of half a dozen photographs stuck to the fridge door. Curiously, only one of them included Susy Ahl herself – Ahl from maybe ten or so years ago, posing in front of a pyramid alongside a young boy. Was that her son? Maybe, but it was impossible to tell.