Feeling remarkably refreshed after less than five hours’ sleep, Carlyle jogged up the steps of Charing Cross police station just before eight-thirty the next morning, clutching a double espresso in one hand and one of Marcello’s finest Danish pastries in the other. He still didn’t have the remotest clue how he was going to handle the Hooper problem, but at least he had got laid last night, and that always made the world seem a better place.
Inside the main door, the desk sergeant – a new guy whom he didn’t know but who seemed to recognize Carlyle – eyed the inspector carefully. ‘There’s someone to see you,’ he announced, by way of introduction, ‘down in room B2.’ He gestured towards the stairs leading to the basement interview rooms.
Carlyle’s heart sank. ‘Who?’
‘IIC,’ the sergeant replied, before quickly looking down at his paperwork.
Internal Investigations Command: the perfect way to start the day.
‘Great,’ Carlyle said, heading for the stairs.
Arriving outside the room, he knocked on the door. There was no reply, so he stepped inside. Cold and damp, B2 was one of four essentially identical interview rooms occupying the basement of Charing Cross – a rectangular space, with a striplight on its low ceiling but no windows. Most of the floorspace was taken up by a table, with a couple of chairs on either side. He knew it well, having conducted many of his own interviews there over the years.
Apart from a briefcase on the table, next to a half-empty cup of steaming coffee, the room was empty. Resisting the urge to snoop inside the case, Carlyle took a seat and began eating his pastry. He was two-thirds of the way through it when the door opened and a large man wearing a grubby pinstripe suit bustled in. Carlyle put the remainder of his Danish down on the table, quickly finished chewing what was in his mouth and swallowed. Getting to his feet, he extended his hand. ‘Ambrose . . .’
‘Inspector.’ Ambrose Watson looked at the hand suspiciously, gave it the briefest of shakes and quickly retreated to the opposite side of the table, behind the safety of his briefcase.
It was chilly in the interview room, but the IIC man was still sweating profusely as he lowered himself into the chair facing Carlyle, carefully checking its robustness before letting it take his full weight. If anything, Watson’s waist had expanded further, and his hair gotten thinner, since their paths had previously crossed, a year or so earlier. On that occasion, the IIC man had been investigating the murder of a policewoman who had been burned alive while she was at home in bed with her girlfriend. Between them, the two officers had more or less worked out what had happened there.
God
, Carlyle asked himself,
was that only a year ago?
More like eighteen months, he decided as he watched Ambrose pull an A3 pad out of his bag and place it on the desk. At least he had a relationship of sorts with the man, which meant something. He briefly wondered if Simpson had had a hand in Ambrose getting this case. Maybe she was still trying to help him despite her obvious and, he had to admit, well-founded doubts about his possible involvement in Hooper’s murder.
Once he had finally located a suitable pen and checked that it was working, Ambrose Watson looked up at Carlyle and said, ‘I assume that you know why I’m here?’
‘In general.’ Carlyle sat back and stuck the last of his pastry into his mouth. His game plan, such as it was, was to let Ambrose do as much of the talking as possible.
‘Well,’ Ambrose cleared his throat, ‘you doubtless know that Sam Hooper was killed last night?’
‘Yes,’ Carlyle graciously admitted.
‘Good,’ Ambrose replied, relieved to have finally got the interview off the ground. ‘I am interested in his connection with Rollo Kasabian, the fashion designer.’
‘Okay,’ Carlyle nodded. Normally, he had no patience with people going round the houses in such a way, but this morning he was quite happy for the IIC man to tiptoe round the main issue for as long as he liked.
‘So . . .’ Ambrose paused to scratch somewhere behind his left ear with his pen. ‘What I want to know is . . .’
‘Yes?’ Carlyle smiled, helpfulness personified.
‘The nature of
your
connection to Mr Kasabian. And also, what did you talk to Hooper about?’
Carlyle adopted a look of confusion. ‘Isn’t all that contained in Hooper’s reports?’
A pained expression spread over Ambrose’s face. ‘There was a bit of a backlog in the inspector’s paperwork, at the time of his death.’
That
’
s a result
, thought Carlyle. It was the first bit of good news he’d received about Sam bloody Hooper since he had first met the little bugger.
‘In fact,’ Ambrose grimaced, ‘there are quite a few things regarding our ex-colleague that are in need of some . . . clarification.’
‘Oh, are there?’ Carlyle pulled his chair closer to the table, and sat up straighter. ‘Tell me more.’
Once they had compared notes, Carlyle was feeling a lot happier about the current situation. Ambrose had unleashed upon him a tale of woe – missing drugs, questionable arrests, dodgy associates and expensive lifestyle choices – that clearly signalled that the IIC now thought it was Sam Hooper who was bent. Whatever Simpson had seemed to think the night before, Carlyle himself felt that he was merely being lined up as a witness to Hooper’s various character defects. Under the circumstances, that was a role he would be more than happy to play.
However, none of this got him any closer to resolving the issue of Silver’s possible involvement in Hooper’s execution. Not for the first time recently, Dom had loomed large over a conversation in which his name had not even been mentioned. That didn’t mean that he wouldn’t end up on the IIC’s radar sooner rather than later. What it did give him, though, was a bit of time.
As he left, Ambrose offered a more substantial handshake. ‘Thank you for your time, Inspector,’ he smiled. ‘I’m sure that we will speak again on this.’
‘My pleasure,’ Carlyle smiled in return, striving to keep the relief from his voice. ‘Let me know if I can be of any further assistance.’
‘I will.’ Ambrose dropped the notepad back into his briefcase and Carlyle was gratified to see that, apart from a single doodle in the top corner, it was as blank as it had been at the beginning of their conversation.
Just as Carlyle himself was about to get to his feet, there was a knock at the door. ‘Come in,’ he called.
It opened and a young black WPC popped her head round the door. ‘There’s someone to see you upstairs, Inspector,’ she said.
‘Who is it?’ he asked warily.
‘Tall bloke, didn’t give a name,’ she replied. ‘He just said that it was very important and, quote, “that you were the most useless bugger he’d ever met when it came to answering your bloody phone” unquote.’
‘Fuck!’ Carlyle sighed, his good humour evaporating.
The WPC gave him a worried look.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘I’ll be up in a minute.’
Carlyle made his way quickly up the stairs to find Dominic Silver leaning casually on the front desk, chatting away happily to the WPC and the desk sergeant. In no mood for small talk, Carlyle took Dom by the arm and guided him swiftly towards the front door of the police station.
‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ he hissed through gritted teeth.
‘I needed to get hold of you,’ Dom grinned, amused by the inspector’s obvious embarrassment, ‘and, of course, as always, you are not answering your phone.’
‘I always answer,’ Carlyle protested, ‘eventually.’ Dom was one of the very few people who knew the number for his private, pay-as-you-go phone: the one that Carlyle used for his more sensitive communications. The problem was that he forgot to answer it, more often than not. ‘Let’s go for a coffee,’ he said, pushing open the door and heading outside.
‘Let’s not,’ said Dom, following him down the steps. He pointed to the silver Porsche 911 Turbo parked across the street on a double yellow line. ‘We’re going for a drive. Sol Abramyan has called.’
‘Could you contrive to be any more conspicuous?’ Carlyle complained, staring at the hundred-grand motor with dismay.
Dom rolled his eyes to the heavens. ‘God, you really are a moaner. Most people would kill for a chance to get a ride in a magnificent car like that.’
‘When did you become such a flash bastard?’ Carlyle sneered. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a traffic warden approach the Porsche and begin typing the licence-plate number into his handheld computer.
Dom gave Carlyle a gentle punch on the shoulder. ‘Hey,’ he cried, ‘get him to stop that. I don’t want a ticket!’
‘Sorry, sunshine,’ Carlyle chuckled, ‘you’re on your own. That’s beyond my jurisdiction. Those guys are a law unto themselves.’
Dom gestured towards the police station. ‘Do you really want a record of me being here?’
‘Fair point,’ Carlyle conceded. Stepping across the road, he flashed his warrant card at the warden and explained that the car was there on police business.
The traffic warden, a pale-looking man, doubtless a veteran of innumerable kerbside confrontations, listened patiently. ‘I completely understand,’ he smiled, tapping the screen of his computer as he spoke, ‘but the car is illegally parked and you’ve got a ticket.’ Moments later, he handed Carlyle an £80 fixed-penalty notice.
‘Fuck!’
‘There’s no need for that, sir,’ the warden said testily.
‘But I’m a fucking policeman!’
‘And this is a police car is it,
sir
?’
‘Well, no,’ Carlyle stammered, ‘but . . .’
‘I didn’t think so.’ The traffic warden’s smile became more of a leer. ‘And anyway, no one is above the law, you know.’ His victory complete, he stalked off towards the Strand, in search of his next victim.
Biting his tongue, Carlyle turned to face Dom, who was standing by the driver’s door.
‘Good job!’ Dom shook his head sadly. ‘Well done.’
‘At least I bloody tried,’ Carlyle growled, tossing the fine notice at Dom and snatching open the passenger door.
Dominic Silver might be sitting behind the wheel of a deluxe driving machine with a top speed of more than 180 miles per hour, but that didn’t mean he could do anything about the routine London traffic. As they edged their way round Trafalgar Square, Carlyle watched a woman on a bicycle wobble nervously past them and brooded on the statistic that traffic in Central London moved at an average speed of just 10 miles per hour, which was about the same speed as the horse-drawn carriages of a century earlier. Personally, he thought 10 miles per hour was an exaggeration, as most of the time it was quicker to walk.
Beside them, a taxi moved forward in the bus lane, squeezing the space left available for the woman on the bike. For a moment, it looked as if she would fall over onto the bonnet of the Porsche.
‘Oi!’ Dom shouted angrily. ‘Watch the motor!’
Ignoring him, the woman gamely kept going.
I hope your life insurance is up to date, love
, Carlyle thought. Only an idiot with a death wish would get on a bike in London. There should be a law against it.
Yawning, he turned to Dom, who was still fretting about the possibility of someone crashing into his precious car. ‘So, where are we going, then?’
‘Where do you think, Mr Policeman?’ Dom said, still keeping his eyes peeled for dangerous road-users. ‘Back to the scene of the crime, of course.’
It took almost exactly an hour for them to reach Peel Street, and then find somewhere to park. Getting out of the car, Carlyle estimated that the tube could have got them here in less than half the time. Keeping that thought to himself, though, he followed Dom along the road.
The police tape had gone from outside number 17 now and the house looked completely normal.
‘They got the place back quickly,’ Carlyle said, as much to himself as to Dom.
‘The police had no reason to keep holding it,’ Dom replied. ‘Sol’s lawyer – or rather a lawyer for the shell company that nominally owns the property – gave a statement saying that the place was not being occupied by the owners at the time of the murder, and that the corpse was inside illegally.’
‘How convenient.’ Standing on the pavement while Dom rang the doorbell, Carlyle hoped that their arrival would not be noticed by any of the neighbours. At this time of the day, however, there seemed little to worry about. The street looked deserted.
Dom smirked. ‘Happily the rule of law still applies in this country – some of the time, anyway. Once Forensics had finished with the place, the police handed back the keys and Sol was free to move back in. He had the place thoroughly cleaned, of course, first.’ The door was finally opened for them, and Dom slipped inside first. Carlyle quickly skipped up the steps and went after him.
In the hallway, as the front door closed behind him, Carlyle turned to be confronted by one of Sol Abramyan’s Somalian bodyguards, a giant who was at least six inches taller than the inspector and almost as wide as the passage. In silence, he submitted to a thorough search of his clothing before being shown towards the back of the building.
Apart from an absence of blood on the floor, the kitchen looked the same as Carlyle remembered it. Sol Abramyan sat at the far side of the table, nibbling at a cheese sandwich, with an open can of Diet Coke standing next to his plate. Another massive bodyguard lounged beside the back door. Still chewing, Sol invited his visitors to sit. Swallowing, he took a long swig from his can. ‘There’s more Coke in the fridge,’ he said. ‘It’s nice and cold. Help yourself.’
‘Thanks.’ Dom jumped up and fetched a couple of cans. He handed one to Carlyle, who pulled the ring and took a mouthful. It tasted good.
Sol dropped his sandwich back on the plate and looked up. ‘You pair took your time?’
‘The traffic,’ Dom shrugged. ‘It’s terrible.’
‘The traffic in London is always terrible,’ Sol said. ‘Even I know that. You live here. You should know better.’
Dom bowed his head. ‘Yes, sorry.’
The inspector looked on, bemused. He wasn’t used to Dom appearing so meek. Then, again, he didn’t usually sit in on meetings with the guy’s clients.