by James Craig
‘Okay,’ Dom said cheerily. ‘Why don’t we go and get some culture? Take the Northern Line up to Euston and we’ll meet at the Wellcome Collection.’
‘Humankind cannot bear very much reality.’
And I cannot bear very much bullshit, Carlyle thought. Condemned to live in a wasteland of soundbites, jargon and empty words, he offered the most grudging of smiles. ‘What is that? The wit and wisdom of Dominic Silver?’
‘T. S. Eliot, actually.’ They were at the exhibition called ‘High Society: Mind-Altering Drugs in History and Culture’. Dom stepped in front of a poster for ‘Hall’s Coca Wine – The Elixir of Life’ and looked it up and down. A middle-class Victorian woman in a yellow cape and dress gazed into space, blissed out, clearly doped up to the eyeballs.
‘Whatever,’ Carlyle scowled, adopting the tone he used with Alice when she was pissing him off. Vague memories of double periods of English Lit at school flitted through his mind. Did they still teach poetry? He sincerely hoped not. What was it that Sherlock Holmes had said? ‘I crave for mental exultation.’ Something like that.
Carlyle leaned forward to read the caption next to the black-and-white drawing he’d been staring at vacantly for the last few moments. Struggling to get the text in focus, he stuck his hand inside his jacket pocket.
‘Shit!’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ said Carlyle, cursing under his breath as he tried to remember where he had left his specs. The thought of three hundred quid being casually misplaced filled him with mortal terror but, try as he might, he couldn’t recall where he’d last seen them. Unable to do anything about it, he took a step closer to the picture and stuck his nose right in front of the description: A busy drying room in the opium factory in Patna, India, After W. S. Sherwill, lithograph, c. 1850. It looked like a multi-storey car park with no cars in it. A handful of workers were placing what looked like row after row of footballs on the floor. The print shows one of the stages in the processing of opium at the factory in Patna, the centre of the British East India Company’s opium plantations in Bengal. The raw opium was formed into a ball about 3½ lb in weight and wrapped in poppy petals to protect it from damage. The balls were then dried on shelves and boxed into chests each containing 25–40 balls before shipping to China and Europe.
Dom appeared at his side. ‘They could make the text a bit bigger,’ he said. ‘I’ve left my reading glasses at home.’
Grunting in sympathy, Carlyle eased himself back into a standing position. He tapped Dom on the arm. ‘I always said you were a man out of time.’
Guessing what was coming, Silver indulged his friend. ‘Go on.’
Carlyle pointed at the print. ‘A hundred and fifty years ago, you could have been a respectable businessman.’
Dom grinned. ‘I am a respectable businessman.’
‘Yeah, right.’ Carlyle felt his stomach grumble. ‘There’s a café back at the entrance. I could do with something to eat.’
‘Me too. Let’s go.’
After a sandwich, Carlyle was feeling just a little bit less grumpy. Dom sipped his green tea and graciously acknowledged his friend’s belated willingness to resume polite discourse.
‘Not bad here, is it?’ They’d chosen a table in the corner by the window, well away from other people and from the browsers in the adjacent bookshop.
Carlyle made the effort to agree. ‘Very interesting.’
‘And this exhibition,’ Dom grinned, ‘well, it could have been put on especially for me.’
‘I suppose so.’ It was true enough. The show looked at the use of drugs through the ages, from the Ancient Egyptians through to the British Empire. It was a reminder that prohibition was not always the status quo. Carlyle looked at the blurb on a flyer for the exhibition which had been left on their table: it informed him that alcohol, coffee and tobacco had all been illegal in the past. And the use of psychoactive drugs dated back millennia.
‘I love coming to this museum,’ Dominic said. ‘It’s probably my favourite in the whole of London; a haven for the incurably curious.’
On autopilot, Carlyle lifted the demitasse to his mouth even though it was empty. ‘Quite.’
‘Sir Henry Wellcome was a fascinating guy. The son of an itinerant preacher, he helped create one of the first multinational pharmaceutical companies, funded medical research and was a great collector. He was a great philanthropist too.’
‘You sound jealous.’
‘I am,’ Dom shrugged, ‘I don’t mind admitting it. It’s an amazing story.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Carlyle. In his book, amazing stories were ten a penny, but he didn’t want to rain on Dom’s parade. His friend had a point and Carlyle felt a bit of a philistine. The Wellcome Collection, hidden behind an imposing façade of what looked like an office building, stood on the six-lane, smog-choked Euston Road, opposite the eponymous station. It was maybe ten minutes’ walk from his home in Covent Garden and Carlyle was loath to admit to Dom that this was his first-ever visit. He was even more loath to admit that he was quite chuffed at being introduced to such a gem on his doorstep. He would have to bring Helen and Alice.
‘So,’ he said, placing his cup back in its saucer, ‘what did you want to talk to me about?’
‘The Samurai,’ Dom beamed.
‘The Samurai?’
Dom explained about Eli Wallach and Tuco, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and Forest Whitaker, in Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai and ‘the Samurai’.
Carlyle was puzzled. ‘So what’s his real fucking name?’ he asked quietly.
‘No idea,’ Dom replied. ‘I suppose he doesn’t really need one.’ Then he went on to explain about Alain Costello.
Carlyle poked a bony index finger in the direction of his friend. ‘You’ve got yourself into a really dodgy situation here.’
Dom ran a hand round the neck of his black T-shirt. It had a drawing of a guitar amplifier underneath the legend SAL’S TUBE AMP REPAIR. ‘That’s what Eva says.’
‘Well, guess what?’ Carlyle growled. ‘She’s right. This kid is going to jail for a long, long time. I hear that it’s going to be a fast-track trial. If I were him, I would just plead guilty and try to get the best deal I could.’
‘Tuco isn’t going to like that,’ Dom mused. ‘He wants his boy back in France.’
‘What can I say?’ Carlyle shrugged. ‘Life is a bummer, get used to it.’
Dom stared morosely into his tea cup.
‘There’s nothing I can do to help you on this one, Dominic,’ Carlyle added quietly.
‘I know.’
‘And even if I could, I wouldn’t.’
Spreading his hands in supplication, Silver smiled weakly. ‘Fair enough.’
‘This is too far over the line, even for me. There is a point where even pragmatism can be taken too far.’
Dom looked up, grinning despite himself. ‘And we’ve found it.’
‘Yes, we have,’ said Carlyle, exhaling deeply. ‘What are you playing at?’
‘The thing is, there are more opportunities than ever. After this Royal Oak thing, there’s a lot of unmet demand out there.’
‘Operation Eagle?’ Carlyle asked. The Met’s PR machine had been busy talking up the arrest of fifty-odd criminals accused of conspiracy to supply cocaine, money laundering and firearms offences, by forces under the command of the Special Intelligence Section (SIS). Their operation had been based out of Royal Oak Taxis, a black-cab repair garage under the Westway, the elevated motorway leading out of West London. Millions of pounds of drugs, smuggled across the Channel and up to London through Kent, moved through the specially fortified garage every month, with the cash being laundered through a nearby foreign exchange for a five per cent commission.
‘Yeah,’ Dom nodded.
‘Good result.’
Dom raised his eyebrows. ‘It’s all very well crowing that you’ve smashed a major Class-A supply network. How long do you think it will be until the nex
t lot move in?’
‘Dunno. Six months?’
‘Six weeks, tops,’ Dom informed him. ‘The investigation has taken years. Cost millions. What’s the point? Everyone worked together well, ran professional operations, with next to no violence. The idea that you have dealt a huge blow to the UK Class-A drug industry is bollocks. It’s just basic capitalism – you can’t buck the market.’
Carlyle wasn’t in the mood for one of Dom’s rants on the stupidity of drugs policy. He might well be right – but so what? Nothing was going to change any time soon. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘think of it as just another wake-up call. The SIS guys have got time on their hands now. Stick your head back above the parapet and they may come after you.’
Dom looked at him suspiciously. ‘You gonna give them a tip-off?’
‘Maybe I should,’ Carlyle replied, holding his gaze.
For a moment, they sat there in exasperated silence, both of them knowing that would never happen.
‘You’ve always played it so well,’ Carlyle said finally, keeping his voice low, ‘for a criminal.’
‘Thank you,’ Dom said tartly.
‘You know what I mean. You had actually managed to quit while you were ahead and now you’ve put yourself in the firing line again.’
Dom shot him an angry look. ‘You know what?’ he hissed, tapping the table with his index finger. ‘I was getting bored. Everything was too easy. There was no one to compete against.’
Carlyle frowned. ‘Who were you competing against?’
Genuinely annoyed by the question, Dom slumped back in his chair. ‘Everyone . . . anyone.’
‘It doesn’t matter what you do, Dominic. You are always on borrowed time.’ Carlyle wagged an admonishing finger across the table. ‘There’s always someone younger, prettier, richer, more driven.’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’
‘Or in your case,’ Carlyle said grimly, ‘more ruthless, more willing to screw you over.’
Taking his time, Dom looked his friend up and down. ‘So, who do you compete against?’
Carlyle was puzzled. ‘No one.’
Looking genuinely angry, Dom snapped, ‘That’s bullshit. Don’t pretend to be so bloody soft.’
‘Seriously, who would I compete against? Only myself, really.’
Dom let out a bitter laugh. ‘You’re gonna make me puke.’
‘C’mon,’ Carlyle grinned, trying to take the edge off the conversation, ‘who would I compete against? Nobody in the Met. All of my peers—’ he nodded at Dom – ‘including you, have moved up or moved out. Why should I measure myself against them?’
Dom grunted but said nothing.
‘If I did,’ Carlyle went on, lowering his voice, ‘I could only conclude that I was fucked. Look – my card was marked by the Met a long, long time ago, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I can do a decent job, but it’s still just a job; if I think of it as anything more than that, then I’m a real mug, aren’t I?’
‘You should have come and worked for me when you had the chance,’ Dom said quietly. ‘You’d have made a packet.’
Carlyle lowered his gaze to the table. Back in the 1980s, not long after leaving the police force, Dom had offered him a job. Carlyle didn’t say yes; he didn’t say no either, he just let it slide. The whole thing had been a non-starter. Instinctively, Carlyle knew that, while he could live with Dom being on the wrong side of the law, it was not a move he could ever make himself. Not if he wanted to sleep at night.
‘That was a long time ago. And we both knew I wasn’t up for it.’ He looked up. ‘Anyway, we’d have probably both ended up in jail.’
‘Maybe.’ Dom laughed, easing the tension.
‘I don’t compete against you,’ Carlyle went on, ‘and I don’t compete against anyone in the Met. It’s the only sensible way.’
Dom’s eyes narrowed. ‘But you compete against yourself.’
‘Yeah.’ Carlyle was worried that he really was beginning to sound like a total plonker. ‘I want to be a good husband and a good father.’
‘Who doesn’t?’
‘Well,’ said Carlyle gently, ‘that’s another reason for not putting yourself into the middle of this mess.’
Dom grimaced. ‘Too late for that now.’
TWENTY-FIVE
When Carlyle finally returned to the station, Angie Middleton was waiting for him behind the front desk.
‘Why haven’t you gone to Paddington Green?’ she demanded.
Carlyle gave her what he hoped was a confused look.
‘Commander Simpson wants to speak to you,’ Angie boomed, ‘urgently.’
‘Okay.’
‘In her office.’
As he headed down the corridor, Middleton shouted after him, ‘There’s good news as well!’
‘Oh?’ Carlyle turned, but made no effort to move back to the desk.
‘The Everton’s guy,’ Angie explained. ‘Clive Martin. He’s dropped his complaint.’
‘That’s not much of a shock,’ Carlyle shrugged, ‘given that he didn’t have a bloody leg to stand on, but welcome news nonetheless.’
‘And,’ Angie’s face broke into a toothy smile, ‘there’s a message from Christina O’Brien. She says she’ll be working from ten if you want to pop round to Everton’s for your private dance.’
‘What?’ Carlyle scowled. ‘I thought she was being deported.’
‘Those charges have been dropped too. Martin’s brief came round earlier and we had to release her.’
That damn lawyer, Abigail Slater. ‘But she assaulted a police officer,’ Carlyle protested.
Amused by his annoyance, Middleton chewed the end of her biro. ‘PC Lea’s very happy about it. Everyone’s been taking the mickey out of him something rotten.’
‘What the fuck’s that got to do with anything?’
‘I’m just saying . . .’ Middleton began doodling on the pad in front of her. ‘The word is,’ looking past Carlyle, she lowered her voice, ‘that she was allowed to skate in exchange for Martin going away.’
Carlyle made a disgusted noise and turned back towards the stairs.
‘So,’ Middleton called after him, ‘are you going to get your dance?’
Walking away, Carlyle grinned and blushed at the same time.
‘Well?’
‘Maybe,’ he said, over his shoulder, ‘but only if she brings her Earth Angel.’
‘Triste?’
Tuco grunted. The smell of her sex permeated his nostrils, filling his heart with lust, but his dick was so soft he couldn’t even get it inside her. It offended his sense of self but maybe it was time to get some help.
Monica smiled sadly. ‘Triste comme un jour sans pain . . .’ Taking his shrivelled member between her fingers, Monica began massaging it gently. Tuco watched in horror as it shrank even further. He tried to remember when exactly she had graduated from whore to mistress. After they had returned from Marseille, Monica had just moved in. He hadn’t suggested it, it had just happened. He felt old – too old to run his own household; too old to fuck.
Giving up, Monica idly scratched her left breast.
‘Alain tu as comme ça.’
Tuco knew she was right. The situation with the boy was driving him mad. He needed to do something about it. Getting to his feet, he looked around for a pair of boxer shorts to cover his microscopic nakedness. ‘J’ai besoin d’être seul. Je vais regarder un film.’
‘I’ve got some dope . . .’
Standing at the gates of City School for Girls, Alice pulled her bag over her shoulder. ‘I told you,’ she said firmly, ‘I’ve given up.’
‘But that was days ago,’ Olivia objected. ‘Weeks. This is good stuff; even my mother liked it.’
‘You get blasted with your mum?’
Olivia frowned. ‘It was strictly a one-off. It gave her something to write about for her next column. Anyway, do you want some?’
Ignoring the offer, Alice wearily took the first step on the long march home. �
�I’ve had it for today. Two hours with Sherwood is a killer.’
‘Yeah.’ Olivia nodded. Everyone agreed that Mr Sherwood’s French lessons were one of the most effective forms of torture that the Headmaster had ever managed to inflict on his pupils.
‘Are you Alice Carlyle?’
Looking up, the girls were confronted by a tall young man in his early twenties, dressed in trainers, jeans and a brown leather jacket. His long dark hair reached his shoulders and he had a couple of days’ worth of stubble on his chin. Although it was a dreary, grey day, he wore a pair of Ray-Ban Aviators.
Olivia let out a low whistle. ‘Whoa! Who are you?’
Ignoring the panting girl beside her, the boy gestured at Alice. ‘Are you?’
Dropping her bag at her feet, Alice nodded. ‘Yes.’
The guy pulled a small padded envelope from his back pocket and thrust it towards her. ‘Give this to your father.’
‘Okay.’ Taking the packet, she watched as he turned on his heel and headed off in the direction of Moorgate.
‘What a hunk,’ Olivia gushed. ‘Do you know him?’
‘Never seen him before in my life.’
Olivia snatched the packet from her hand and gave it a shake. ‘What is it?’
‘How the bloody hell should I know?’ Alice scowled.
‘Are you going to open it?’
Taking it back, Alice turned the envelope over in her hand. No name or address had been written on the outside and it was sealed with sellotape at both ends so there was no way she could get into it without her father knowing.
Olivia prodded her gently on the shoulder. ‘Go on!’
‘Nah.’ Alice opened her bag and dropped it inside. ‘I’d better just give it to my dad.’ Deciding she would walk home through Smithfield, she hoisted the bag on to her shoulder for a second time. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
Carlyle bought a juice and a cheese sandwich from the station canteen and headed back upstairs. Relieved to find his spectacles sitting just where he’d left them on his desk, he slipped into his chair and swung his feet onto the desk. Polishing off the sandwich in about ten seconds, he looked around for something else to eat. On Umar’s desk, he spotted a king-size Mars Bar. After a moment’s contemplation, he reached over and swiped it. Tearing open the wrapper, he took a happy bite while reading a story in the evening paper about an undercover copper who had gone native. PC Marcus Bingle had been a tattooed, ponytailed eco-warrior. Operating as a green campaigner, he had been shagging his way through the ranks of the ideologically unwashed for years while diligently reporting to his case officer along the way. But ‘police sources’ were now claiming that Bingle had gone native. It was a classic bit of attempted damage limitation when a £2 million trial of environmental activists collapsed, allegedly after Bingle offered to give evidence on their behalf.