by James Craig
Sounds all too plausible, Carlyle thought.
‘It looks like it’s gonna take a while longer to get him out.’
‘Yeah, but how much longer?’
‘No idea.’
‘Great.’
‘Look at it this way,’ Umar chuckled suddenly, ‘it’s a good advert for the people who make the panic rooms. No one can get into the bloody thing.’
‘No,’ Carlyle mused, ‘but the issue here is how you get out of it. Are you sure that Belsky won’t suffocate in there?’
‘He’s fine. He’s got food and water in there. Even some books. His mobile can’t get a signal but he has a landline. I spoke to him an hour or so ago and he sounded very chipper.’
‘Okay.’
‘Meanwhile, how are you getting on with the axe man?’
‘Axe boy, more like.’ Carlyle talked the sergeant through the highlights of his interview with Taimur Rage.
‘That’s great,’ Umar observed, ‘that he’s confessed.’
‘We’ll see,’ Carlyle said.
‘It’s a total result!’ Umar exclaimed, ignoring his boss’s grumpiness. ‘A nice, quick win. Good news.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘I can feel a press conference coming on.’
‘I’ll leave that to you.’ Carlyle thought of Seymour Erikssen and Bernie Gilmore. ‘But let’s try and keep this little drama out of the media for the moment.’
‘Too late for that,’ Umar said. ‘The press have turned up already.’
‘What?’ Carlyle groaned. ‘How did they find out?’
‘Belsky rang up the BBC and gave them an interview.’
‘What a genius. I hope you told him to shut up.’
‘I’ve asked him not to speak to any more press until we get him out. So far, we’ve got a couple of TV crews and half a dozen reporters on the street outside.’ Umar yawned. ‘At least the uniforms managed to stop them getting into the building.’
‘Mm.’
‘Are you coming back over here?’
You’ve got to be kidding, Carlyle thought. I’m going to bed. ‘I’ve got stuff to do here,’ he lied. ‘Anyway, sounds like you’ve got things well under control.’
Umar registered his displeasure with a grunt.
‘What about the girl?’ Carlyle asked, ignoring his sergeant’s obvious dismay at the way in which his night had unfolded.
‘Her mother finally made an appearance and picked her up. They’ve gone home. She seemed to be fine.’
‘Children can be remarkably resilient,’ Carlyle mused. ‘What’s her name?’
‘Joanne . . . Joanne Belsky. Nine years old. She fell asleep after you left. Seems a nice kid.’
Joanne Belsky. Carlyle thought about that for a moment. ‘Mother not married?’
‘Maybe not. Does it make a difference?’
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘Anyway, you can ask her yourself. I told her to bring the girl to the station so that she could make a statement.’
‘Fine.’ Carlyle glanced at the clock on the wall. It was already a lot closer to 10 a.m. than he would have liked. As he got older, the inspector found that a lack of sleep could seriously impede his performance on the job. Eight, or even nine hours, was the minimum required if he was going to trot into work fresh and ready to go. Tonight he was only going to get a fraction of that. On the other hand, he was going to get a lot more than Umar. The realization made him feel a little better. ‘Let me know when you finally get Grandpa Belsky out of Fort Knox.’
Umar laughed. ‘Will do.’
‘Seeing as we’ve supposedly “solved” the case already, there’s no rush.’
He was woken by his daughter flopping onto the bed. ‘Da-ad. Get up. Mum says you’re taking us out for breakfast.’
‘Urgh,’ Carlyle groaned, burrowing deeper under the duvet.
‘Get up,’ Alice demanded, stripping off the covers.
‘Bloody hell.’ Yawning, he scratched himself. ‘Shouldn’t you be off to school?’
‘It’s Saturday,’ Alice trilled. Grabbing her father by his ankle, she made a half-hearted attempt to pull him off the bed.
‘Bugger off,’ he hissed, his eyes clamped shut against the light streaming through the window.
‘It’s almost ten o’clock,’ Alice laughed, letting go of his foot. ‘Mum says you’ve got one minute to get out of bed.’
‘Yes, it’s time for you to get up.’ Helen appeared in the doorway waving his mobile in her hand. ‘Your phone’s going mental and I need some coffee. So hurry up.’
‘Okay, okay, you win.’ Slowly, slowly, Carlyle edged himself off the bed. Opening one eye, he stumbled towards the bathroom. ‘Give me five minutes.’
TWELVE
Entering the Caffé Nero at the top of Long Acre, the inspector wished he was back in bed. It was hot, noisy and, as usual, the place was full of tourists who couldn’t find the piazza. Luckily, his arrival had coincided with an elderly couple getting up to leave. Plonking himself down in an armchair, Carlyle commandeered a third chair and settled in to guard the table while Helen and Alice went to buy the drinks. In his hand was a bag of goodies smuggled in from the Patisserie Valerie next door. The neighbouring café did the best pastries, Nero did the best coffee and the inspector liked to mix and match. Sticking his hand in the bag, he pulled out a chunk of almond croissant and slipped it into his mouth under the bored gaze of the wan-looking girl who was briskly clearing the used cups, plates and empty packaging from the table. Alice and Helen were chatting away in the queue, stuck behind a family who seemed incapable of agreeing on their order. Muttering unhappily, Carlyle pulled out his mobile. The screen told him he had eight missed calls, annoying him even further. Grumbling, he hit 901 and pulled up the first message.
It’s Bernie Gilmore, call me.
Grimacing, Carlyle hit 3 to delete the call and waited for the next message to play.
It’s Umar, nothing much to report—
3.
Inspector, it’s the front desk at Charing Cross. There’s a guy here wanting to speak to you called Chris Brennan—
3.
After an almost interminable delay, Helen appeared with a coffee in each hand. Behind her, Alice was drinking an outsized orange and mango smoothie through a straw. Under her arm was a copy of the Daily Mirror. Carlyle noted the front page headline – MY SEX GANG SHAME – and sighed. When’s she going to start reading a proper paper? he wondered. Long of the view that they would all be better off if they didn’t read any newspapers at all, the inspector really didn’t like the thought of his daughter reading that kind of stuff. But she was growing up and he realized that there simply wasn’t anything that he could do about it. Like so many things, if he made it an issue, he made it a problem.
‘Here you go.’ Helen placed his cup carefully on the table as Alice jumped into the next chair. Kicking off her sandals, she swung her legs over the side of the chair and began reading her paper.
‘Thanks.’ Taking a cup, Carlyle took a mouthful of coffee – nice and hot, just how he liked it – and checked out the rest of his missed calls. Umar had called him another three times, most recently just before nine. Looks like he’s had to pull an all-nighter, Carlyle thought. Grabbing the remains of his croissant, he handed the Patisserie Valerie bag to his wife.
Taking a seat opposite him, Helen pulled a chocolate muffin out of the bag and began cutting it into quarters with a plastic knife.
Mm, Carlyle thought, that looks good.
‘Tough night?’ Helen asked, popping a sliver of muffin into her mouth.
Chewing on the last of his croissant, Carlyle told her, ‘More for Umar than for me.’ Keeping his voice low, he explained the situation with Belsky and the axe man.
‘Yeah. I heard about it on the radio this morning. He jumped in a panic room and can’t get out.’
‘Some problem with the lock, apparently. At least the panic room did the job it was supposed to do.’
‘Se
ems like it – a bit too well, maybe. Is he still stuck in there?’
‘As far as I know.’ Relaxing into his armchair, Carlyle was in no hurry to check in with Umar to find out.
‘Will he be okay?’
‘Belsky? Yeah, he should be fine. He could probably survive in there for weeks, if not months, if he had to.’
‘In a prison of his own making.’
‘Kind of. If the worst comes to the worst, I suppose they can smash through the outside wall or something.’
Picking up her cup, Helen took a sip and settled back in her chair. ‘Serves him right.’
Carlyle frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, it was a deliberately provocative thing to do.’
‘What? Drawing a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad?’
‘Under the circumstances, it was a rather juvenile, male thing to do.’ A look descended on Helen’s face that Carlyle knew only too well. Stupidly, he had risen to the bait and she was going to educate him on a few basic facts of life. ‘Publishing a cartoon that they knew would cause offence and wind up a whole cross-section of nutters was just self-indulgent and totally irresponsible.’
‘Ha.’ Carlyle laughed. Working for an international medical aid charity, his wife was the social conscience of the family. However, that did not mean that she was a stereotypical, lentil-sucking liberal. Helen judged everything – and everyone – on their merits, as she saw them. And her husband liked the fact that she could regularly surprise him with her trenchant views on random subjects. ‘What about freedom of speech?’
‘It has its limits,’ Helen declared, ‘like everything else. A greedy publisher publishes a controversial cartoon, in order to sell newspapers. It’s a commercial business decision, nothing to do with free speech.’
‘Mm.’
‘And you have a willing dupe like Joseph Belsky, who is more than ready to play along, in order to get his fifteen minutes of fame.’
‘Rather more than fifteen minutes,’ Carlyle said. ‘This palaver has been going on for years.’
‘You know what I mean. It’s just a way of saying look at me. Like,’ she waved a hand in the air, ‘like the American author who shot himself in the head to get publicity for his book.’
That sounds like a good idea, thought Carlyle. Maybe it’ll catch on.
Tuning into their conversation, Alice looked up. ‘Did he kill himself?’
‘No, I think he survived.’ Helen took a sip of her coffee. ‘It was in the paper last week; some guy you’ve never heard of.’
‘Not really serious then, was he?’ Not waiting for a reply, Alice ducked back behind the pages of her paper.
Looking at her husband, Helen raised an amused eyebrow. ‘That’s exactly the point. It’s just dilettantism.’
‘Either way, the police still have to clean up the mess.’
Reaching across the table, Helen gave him a consoling pat on the arm. ‘Poor you.’
Yes, Carlyle thought, poor bloody me. He was momentarily distracted by two pretty girls in short skirts wandering into the café.
‘I’ve met him a couple of times.’
‘Eh?’ Worried that his gawping had been noticed, he quickly turned to meet his wife’s gaze.
‘Belsky.’ If Helen had noticed his wandering eye, she was too polite to mention it. ‘He’s a regular donor and has attended a couple of Avalon’s fundraising events. He was at the Congo event a while back. Even gave us some drawings for the charity auction. They raised a few hundred quid.’
‘If he’s a supporter of the charity, shouldn’t you be supporting him, rather than biting the hand that feeds you?’
Finishing her coffee, she gave him a stern look. ‘We don’t support people willy-nilly, just because they give us some cash. You can be a berk and still manage to support a good cause.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Belsky struck me as being more than a bit smug. He knew what he was doing when he drew the cartoon. In the blink of an eye, he went from being an anonymous cartoonist to some kind of poster boy for western democracy, which, as we all know, is a long way from being perfect.’
‘True.’ With the conversation veering off at a tangent, the inspector glanced at his watch, wondering if he really shouldn’t be getting on his way.
‘At the charity do, I was on his table and he was holding court all night,’ Helen explained. ‘It was all about him, if you know what I mean. He’s a man with a monster ego.’
‘Umar will get him out. By the way, before I forget, it will be baby Ella’s birthday soon. What shall we get her?’ i.e. Can you organize a present from us? He flashed what he hoped was a winning smile.
‘God. Is it a year already?’ Reaching into her bag, Helen pulled out a diary and a biro. Scribbling down a note, she put both pen and diary back into the bag. ‘Time flies.’
‘Yeah.’ Instinctively, they both looked over at Alice, still engrossed in her paper, and exchanged a knowing smile. There was nothing that accelerated the passage of time like being a parent.
‘Alice and I can see about getting something in the market this morning.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I’ve got plans,’ said Alice flatly.
Her mother took a deep breath. ‘Well, it won’t take long. I can give Christina a call and see what she thinks might be good to get.’
Carlyle brushed the remains of his pastry from his shirt. ‘That would be great. Umar says she’s having a bit of a hard time right now.’
‘It’s a hard time for anyone, after having a baby.’
‘Sure.’
‘Maybe she’s missing work.’
‘She’s hardly going to go back to Everton’s, is she?’ Everton’s was a strip club round the corner from the Carlyle family’s flat, close to Holborn tube. Christina, an American student, had first met Umar there when the Met had raided the place, looking for illegal immigrants.
‘No,’ said Helen, her voice tart, ‘but she might want to do something.’
‘Who works at Everton’s?’ Alice asked.
‘No one,’ said her father.
‘Maybe we should do some babysitting,’ said Helen. ‘Give them some time off to go and see a movie or something.’
I don’t know about that, Carlyle thought. As far as the inspector was concerned, his babysitting days were long gone. ‘Er, yes,’ he replied, trying to hide his lack of enthusiasm. ‘Why not?’
‘It would be nice to at least offer,’ his wife replied, picking up on his downbeat tone.
‘Yes.’ Just as long as they don’t take us up on it.
‘It’s been a long time since you changed a nappy,’ Helen pointed out.
‘Not that long.’
‘Dad,’ Alice protested, not looking up from her reading.
‘Well . . .’ Suddenly his brain disengaged from his mouth as he recalled the voicemail from the desk sergeant at the station. Chris Brennan. Chris bloody Brennan. What did he want? Jumping to his feet, he was in two minds. Should he head for the station, or head back across the river to Belsky’s apartment? Making a decision, he reached over and kissed his wife on the top of her head. ‘I’d better get going.’
‘Okay.’ Reaching down, Helen picked up the Celebs section from Alice’s newspaper, which had fallen on the floor as she waved him on his way. ‘See you later.’
‘See you, Dad.’ Standing over his lounging daughter, he could see that Alice had reached the newspaper’s problem page and was checking out the agony aunt’s response to the question Is my boyfriend gay?
That’s one question I don’t have to worry about, he cheerily told himself as he headed for the door.
THIRTEEN
Sitting in the gloom of the VIP Room at Everton’s, he watched Christina, naked from the waist down, slowly remove the bra from a slender blonde girl that he didn’t recognize. His breathing accelerated as the two smiling women moved towards him . . .
‘Sergeant.’
‘Huh?’ He felt a hand on his shoulder.<
br />
‘Sergeant, wake up.’
Slowly opening his eyes, Umar focused on the WPC standing over him. She was neither blonde, nor smiling. Fortunately, she didn’t seem to notice the monster erection in his jeans as she stepped away from him.
‘Sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘I just dozed off.’
‘Don’t worry, you haven’t missed much. But it looks like problem solved. They’re just about to get Belsky out of the panic room. The engineering guy says it should be open in a couple of minutes.’
‘Good. Thanks. I’ll be there in a moment.’ Waiting for the uniform to turn away and head back towards the cartoonist’s study, Umar pushed himself up from the sofa and got unsteadily to his feet. Half-lifting an arm, he tentatively sniffed his armpit. Urgh, not good. His body ached with tiredness and all he wanted was a piss and a drink, in that order. Both, however, would have to wait.
Pulling out his phone, he checked the time, calculating that he’d managed about forty minutes’ sleep. Tapping a few buttons, he checked his missed calls. There were two from Christina but none from Carlyle. Umar shook his head.
Big surprise. The boss was happy enough to hide when it suited him.
Pulling up Carlyle’s number, Umar hit call.
He was still waiting for the inspector’s voicemail to kick in when the WPC reappeared in the doorway with an excited look on her face. ‘We’re on.’
‘Okay. I’m coming.’ Quickly ending the call, Umar followed her inside.
At least his erection had quickly subsided. Too tired to feel frustrated, Umar let the Senior Security Director of Triple RXD Security Systems explain at some length the reasons for the unfortunate technical fault that had resulted in Joseph Belsky being locked in his panic room overnight. None of it made any sense to the policeman but the guy – a small bloke with a nervous twitch that was exacerbated by a lack of sleep and too much caffeine – clearly had to get it off his chest.
‘So,’ the policeman asked when the man finally stopped spouting technical gibberish laced with excuses, ‘is it open?’
‘It is now.’ With a flourish, the engineer tapped a couple of keys on a temporary pad that had been wired up to the door. After a moment’s silence, there was a satisfying metallic click, signalling that the lock had finally disengaged.