by James Craig
Decisions, decisions.
Making his way gingerly back down the stairs, Carlyle stopped on the second-floor landing. In front of him were two doors, one painted an off-white colour, the other not painted at all. On his toes, he stepped quietly up to the first door and listened, trying to separate out the background noise from the traffic outside from anything that was going on behind the doors. After several seconds he was sure that he could make out no voices, no TV or other signs of life. Carefully, he turned the handle and pushed. The door was locked. He tried the second one and found the same thing. ‘That would explain why Safi was so relaxed about letting me have the run of the place,’ he told himself, ‘if everywhere is locked.’
Back on the ground floor, he found Safi sitting at a table by the door with a cup of tea and a copy of the local freesheet. The kid behind the counter had once again abandoned his position. Aqib, his mate and the girl in the leather jacket had gone; the back booth was now occupied by a couple chatting happily over a pizza.
‘Find anything?’ Safi asked, not looking up.
‘Nah. Like you said, it’s all been cleaned out.’ Carlyle pulled up a chair and sat down. ‘What can you tell me about his friends?’
‘He didn’t have any,’ Safi said firmly.
‘C’mon,’ Carlyle said, failing to keep the irritation from his voice. ‘He must have had some.’
‘Look,’ said Safi patiently, ‘like I told the other guys, he knew a few of the kids that came into the shop, but he never really hung out with any of them.’ Glancing at the couple in the back booth, he lowered his voice. ‘He certainly didn’t belong to any bloody terrorist cell or any nonsense like that.’ The kid behind the counter announced his reappearance by turning up the radio. ‘Mushudur,’ Safi snapped, ‘leave that alone.’ Without acknowledging his boss, Mushudur reduced the volume to a more acceptable level. The owner returned his attention to the policeman. ‘Your mates spend too much time watching Hollywood movies.’
They’re not my mates, Carlyle thought. ‘Anyway,’ he said, moving the conversation along, ‘you don’t seem too stressed by everything that’s happened.’
Returning his attention to the newspaper, Safi carefully turned the page. ‘Look, I told you, the kid’s not been right in the head for a long time. I’m just glad that he didn’t manage to kill anyone.’
‘That remains to be seen.’
‘The guy had a heart attack, right?’ Safi looked back up from his paper. ‘But that was after Taimur had been arrested.’
‘Who knows what the experts might decide in terms of cause and effect. The CPS will offer him some kind of deal, but it may still be in relation to a murder charge.’
‘He wouldn’t have done it.’ Letting his mask slip for the first time, Safi’s face showed the all too familiar strain of an anguished parent. ‘If he’d caught the guy, Taimur wouldn’t have buried that axe in his head. He didn’t have it in him.’
‘We’ll never know one way or the other.’ It irritated Carlyle, the manner in which people would always try and mutate hope into fact. In his own pendantic way, he knew that, obviously, Taimur Rage could have planted his axe in Joseph Belsky’s skull. Would he have done it if the cartoonist hadn’t escaped into his panic room? That could only ever be a matter of speculation. In Carlyle’s book, speculation wasn’t worth anything much.
Safi let out a deep breath. ‘Anyway, whatever happens he can claim diminished responsibility.’
‘Maybe.’ Despite everything, the inspector felt a pang of sympathy for Taimur. Everyone was so keen to write him off as a sad nutter, the lad really didn’t have a hope. ‘It will be a struggle for him in prison,’ he said. ‘You really should go and see him.’
Safi made a face but the inspector sensed that the earlier hostility had dissipated. For whatever reason, the kebab shop owner no longer seemed so annoyed by the policeman’s presence. ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘That’s his mother’s job.’
‘Couldn’t the pair of you manage to put on a united front?’ Carlyle asked. ‘Under the circumstances?’
‘Ha.’ Safi tossed the paper on to the table. ‘Have you met Elma?’
‘Not yet,’ Carlyle admitted.
‘What you’ve got to realize is that she is even crazier than he is.’
You married her, Carlyle thought.
‘It wasn’t like that to start with,’ said Safi, as if reading his mind. ‘But after Taimur was born she had a complete personality change. Totally lost the plot.’
‘Ah.’
‘She got religion, big time.’ Safi grimaced at the memory. ‘It was like her brain went completely haywire. In the end, when she did a runner, it was a bit of a relief, to be honest.’
‘So Taimur got into religion from his mother?’ the inspector asked.
Safi looked at him blankly.
‘She exposed him to Islamic fundamentalism?’ The words made him sound like one of those MI5 berks, but he ploughed on. ‘Got him into the life that led him to go after Joseph Belsky with an axe?’
‘Islamic fundamentalism?’ Pushing his chair back against the window, Safi began to laugh. ‘No, no, no. You’ve got it all wrong.’
Wouldn’t be the first time, Carlyle thought.
‘Elma is a kind of . . .’ Safi waved his hand in the air as he tried to find the right words, ‘a born again Christian. An evangelist. Started preaching sermons, stuff like that. She has her own church down in South London now, trying to convince people that she can work miracles.’ Seeing the look of confusion on the inspector’s face, he shrugged. ‘I know, I know. There are people who not only believe that rubbish, they’ll pay good money for it.’
‘I thought that kind of thing only happened in America,’ Carlyle said. ‘Still, there are fools everywhere.’
‘That’s true enough. Anyway, the one thing that little Miss Born Again could most definitely not have was a Muslim husband.’ Safi prodded himself in the chest with his index finger. ‘That is to say, me. Not that I was practising or anything, but it sure as shit wouldn’t have looked good on the promotional literature. Anyway, she divorced me for God and I’ve hardly seen her since.’
‘Bummer,’ said Carlyle, getting to his feet.
‘To be honest, I stopped caring long ago. Like I said, when she finally left, it was more of a relief than anything else. I’m sure it didn’t do Taimur any good. But I didn’t expect he’d do anything like this, though.’
The inspector extended a hand and they shook. ‘You should go and see him.’
Safi sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Inspector, but I think I’ll leave that to his mother. She’s probably trying to arrange Bible classes as we speak.’
‘Up to you,’ Carlyle said. ‘If I need anything else . . .’
Safi spread his arms wide. ‘I’m always here. Open or closed.’
‘Thank you. We’ll be in touch.’ Carlyle reached for the door.
Safi scowled at Mushudur, who was sprawled across the counter, picking his nose. ‘You wanna kebab to go?’
‘I’m good.’ Pulling open the door, the inspector made a break for the relatively fresh air of the street. ‘Thanks.’
TWENTY-ONE
Grimacing, Carlyle dropped the two plastic bags full of groceries onto the kitchen floor and set about massaging the circulation back into his fingers. Plastic bag technology; one thing that hadn’t apparently evolved all that much over the years. When he had finally recovered feeling in both hands, he stepped over to the fridge and pulled out a well-deserved bottle of Tiger beer. Taking a bottle opener from the drawer next to the sink, he flipped off the cap and drank deeply. ‘Aah.’
‘So you’re back then?’
Smiling, Carlyle offered his wife the bottle.
Keeping her expression neutral, Helen shook her head. ‘No, thanks.’
‘Tough day?’
‘Just the usual,’ she sighed. ‘Arguing over how to spend the money we don’t have. Deciding who lives, who dies. That sort of thing.’
Not for the first time, Carlyle wondered if it was perhaps time for Helen to think about a change of job. Twenty years of working for a medical charity where – literally – you had to take life and death decisions almost every day was enough to take its toll on anyone. Placing the beer bottle by the sink, he stepped over to give her a kiss. As he did so, she bent down to pick up the shopping, leaving him to brush past the top of her head.
‘What did you get?’ she asked.
He watched nervously as she hoisted the bags onto the worktop next to the cooker and began decanting his purchases. This domestic ritual was like having your homework marked – except that you always knew in advance that you had failed. ‘Er,’ he stammered, ‘I got most of what you wanted.’ I hope.
Helen pulled out a jumbo box of Jaffa Cakes and waved them at him accusingly. ‘What about these?’
‘You can’t beat a nice Jaffa Cake,’ Carlyle observed, well aware that they had not been on her list.
‘Hm.’ Next out of the bag came the jumbo tin of fruit cocktail, one of his favourites, followed by a large can of baked beans. ‘And these?’ He shrugged helplessly as she began rummaging through the bags with increasing exasperation. ‘Bloody hell, John, where’s the spinach I asked you to get? And the onions?’
Christ. He knew he’d forgotten something. ‘They didn’t have any,’ he lied.
She looked at him suspiciously. ‘Why is it that a man of your age can’t even go to the supermarket and get some simple—’ Grabbing his choice of toilet roll, she looked like she was going to cry. ‘And what is this?’
The apparent simplicity of the question made him nervous. ‘It’s . . . er, loo paper.’
‘Yes, but it’s the wrong colour.’
The wrong colour? Walking down the aisle of the supermarket, the inspector had just picked up the first thing that had come to hand. ‘It is?’
‘Of course it is,’ she wailed. ‘It’s blue.’
For the first time in his life, the inspector pondered the issue of the right colour for toilet paper. ‘What would be the right colour, then?’
Resisting the urge to throw it at him, she dumped the pack back down on the counter. ‘I wanted white.’
‘Ah.’ Attempting to defuse the situation, he tried to pull her towards him for a cuddle. But Helen was having none of it and she pushed him brusquely away. ‘For God’s sake, you are so useless! Why is it I have to do everything around here?’
Jesus, he thought, here we go again. It was a familiar refrain and he was wearied by it. Overall, he reckoned that he did his share of the family chores – but what he saw as a daily point-scoring exercise was increasingly driving him mad. We’re both getting older, he thought, and more crotchety. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whined, ‘but they just didn’t have any.’
‘Hm.’ Helen started putting the food away. ‘Did you get some butter?’
‘Yes.’ Thank God for that.
‘Salted?’
‘Er.’ He held his breath as Helen pulled a small block wrapped in golden foil from one of the bags and carefully inspected the labelling.
‘Salted.’ Shooting him a rueful smile, she pulled open the fridge and placed it on one of the shelves on the inside of the door. ‘Very good.’
Phew. Carlyle reached for his bottle.
‘By the way, I spoke to Christina today. She’d love us to do some babysitting.’
I’m sure she would, thought Carlyle unhappily, sucking down the last of the beer before dropping the empty bottle in the waste bin under the sink.
‘So I said we’d take Ella tomorrow night.’
Shit.
‘Christina wants Umar to take her to a Chinese restaurant in Soho that they liked to go to before Ella was born.’
‘Okay.’ He tried not to grimace.
‘What’s happening tomorrow night?’ Alice appeared in the doorway. She was wearing jeans and a Stiff Little Fingers ‘Nobody’s Hero’ T-shirt. Carlyle smiled. His daughter’s interest in punk rock had lasted far longer than he would ever have expected. Having expropriated Carlyle’s collection of Clash, Jam and Elvis Costello CDs, she had moved on to the likes of SLF and the Buzzcocks, happily mixing Ian Dury and Graham Parker with whatever pop fluff was currently flavour of the moment among teenage girls. God knows what her friends at school made of it, but her father was chuffed to bits.
Alice caught him staring at the T-shirt. ‘Cool, eh?’
‘Great.’
She started into a tuneless rendition of ‘Alternative Ulster’, bobbing and weaving like a miniature facsimile punk. Carlyle wondered if she had the first clue what the song was actually about.
‘Where did you get it?’
She stopped pogo-ing. ‘I found it in the vintage shop on Drury Lane last week.’
‘Result.’ He didn’t dare ask how much it had cost.
‘They’ve got a concert coming up soon, in Kilburn. I thought maybe we could go?’
Carlyle glanced at Helen. It was a long time since he had been to a rock concert.
‘Don’t look at me,’ his wife smirked. ‘All this stuff was after my time.’
‘As if . . .’ Carlyle snorted.
‘The tickets are only twenty-five quid,’ Alice persisted. ‘And Spear of Destiny are the support act.’
Spear of Destiny? Bloody hell, he thought, are they still going as well? Don’t any of these bands ever die? ‘Well, maybe. We’ll see.’
Alice seemed happy enough with that response. ‘Okay,’ she said cheerily. ‘And in the meantime, what’s happening tomorrow night?’
‘We’re babysitting Ella for Christina and Umar,’ Helen explained, carefully putting the last of the groceries in a cupboard and stuffing the empty plastic bags under the sink. ‘So they can have a night out.’
‘Maybe you could give us a hand,’ said Carlyle hopefully.
‘Ha.’ Alice laughed. ‘No way.’
‘I’ll pay you.’
‘Sorry, I’m going round to Martha’s house tomorrow night. We’re revising for a history exam.’
‘Oh.’ Martha Railton was one of Alice’s schoolfriends. Her father was an entrepreneur of some description and the family lived in a massive pile in Bloomsbury. She was also Alice’s get out of jail free card – a 24/7 excuse for getting out of unwanted Carlyle family activities.
‘That’s great,’ said Helen, filling the kettle and fishing a box of white tea from a cupboard behind Carlyle’s head. ‘Anyway, I’m sure that your father and I will be able to manage.’ She gave Carlyle a gentle poke in the ribs. ‘Just make sure that you’re home at a reasonable time.’
TWENTY-TWO
Taking a deep breath, Melville Farasin took a step forward and hesitantly offered the envelope to his boss.
‘What’s this?’ Elma Reyes asked, making no effort to take it from him.
Melville could feel his pulse throbbing in his neck and his heart was racing faster than he had ever felt it before. His mum would be mad as hell when she heard what he’d gone and done, but he was sure that she would be all right when he explained it to her and told her of the job waiting for him at Tesco. She wouldn’t be too impressed about him stacking supermarket shelves, but at least it was a start. If he stuck with it, there would be other opportunities down the line.
Elma, however, was another matter altogether. Only God Himself could explain things to her. Melville looked down at the letter in his shaking hand. It was too late to back down now. Take it, he silently urged his boss. Just take it. Bracing himself for the inevitable volley of abuse, he did a little jig from foot to foot. All he could hope for was to get through this conversation without wetting himself.
In no mood for any nonsense, Elma glanced at Michelangelo Federici. Not knowing what Meville wanted, the lawyer just shrugged, so turning back to her assistant, she said curtly, ‘Spit it out, boy.’
‘It’s my letter of . . . resignation.’ As the words settled, Melville was relieved not to feel a damp warmth spreading across his crotch. ‘I’m sorry, but I don�
�t want to work for the Christian Salvation Centre no more.’
‘What?’ Grabbing the letter from the boy’s hand, Elma tore it into little pieces, tossing them up in the air. Once they had fluttered to the floor, she pointed to the door. ‘Get outta here, you ungrateful little creature. Your resignation is refused.’
‘But—’
‘But nothin’,’ Elma snorted.
‘Elma . . .’ Federici said, trying not to laugh.
Keeping her gaze firmly on her underling, Elma waved away the interruption. ‘Wait till I speak to your mother about this.’ When Melville hesitated, she grabbed his shoulder and pushed him towards the door. ‘Get back to work. Go.’
Reluctantly, the boy did as he was told.
‘My, my,’ Federici chuckled as Melville disappeared and the door clicked shut behind him. ‘You really do have a way with the staff.’
Elma shot him a dirty look. ‘Great help you are.’
‘Elma,’ the lawyer pouted, ‘I didn’t come here to do your HR.’ Dressed in Boss Jeans and a lime-green Fred Perry polo shirt under a Paul Smith pinstripe jacket, Federici settled back into Elma’s chair. From behind her desk, at the Salvation Centre’s Global HQ, he had a fine view of the number 96 bus stop across the road. Two teenage schoolgirls were sitting in their uniforms, backpacks at their feet, scoffing packets of crisps while they waited for their bus. Federici glanced at his watch. You two should be in class, he thought, rather than bunking off.
‘That boy simply doesn’t know what he’s sayin’,’ Elma scoffed. ‘He’s a bit simple in the head.’
Seems okay to me, Federici thought. Just a bit quiet. And not that daft. I wouldn’t want to be your gofer either.
‘His mother’ll have to sort him out – again.’ Elma stepped around the desk and shooed the lawyer out of her chair. ‘The things I have to put up with! It’s not like Melville could get a job with anyone else.’
‘No.’ Federici retreated to a ratty sofa – a gift from a recently deceased parishioner – that took up most of the far wall.