by James Craig
Again, Sparrow stopped abruptly. Carlyle knew that, if that case was still open, it couldn’t be looking too good. He didn’t want to rub Sparrow’s nose in it – no one wanted to be associated with any of the small minority of murders that didn’t get solved – but he wanted to elicit what he could. ‘How’s it looking now?’ he asked, gently.
‘No weapon. No leads. We haven’t made much progress, so we haven’t exactly been shouting about it from the rooftops.’
‘No,’ said Carlyle. You’re lucky you don’t have Simpson hovering at your shoulder, he thought. Sparrow’s boss, Superintendent Jack Izzard, was far less high-maintenance. ‘One other thing,’ he asked, as casually as possible, ‘was there a note?’
Sparrow laughed. ‘It definitely wasn’t a suicide,’ he said, misunderstanding the question. ‘No, there wasn’t a note.’
‘OK.’
‘Is there a possible connection with your guy?’ Sparrow asked.
The noise in the background increased. Carlyle could clearly hear a child crying and a woman shouting at it to go to bed. ‘I dunno,’ he said.
‘Look, John,’ Sparrow said hurriedly, ‘I gotta go. I’ll be back at work in a couple of days. If you need anything, you know where to find me. And if you find out anything interesting, let me know. Good luck.’
‘Thanks.’ Carlyle put down the phone and scribbled three points on his pad:
1. Merrion Club
2. 6 possibles – Carlton?2, Holyrod, Sebastian Lloyd, Nicholas Hogarth, Harry Allen
3. Total shitstorm
Then he called Joe Szyszkowski.
After five, six, seven rings, Joe answered. ‘Hello, boss.’
‘Are you sitting down?’ Carlyle asked.
‘Sure. Why?’ Joe sounded relaxed, as if he’d had a glass or two of wine with dinner. Unlike the Sparrow call, there was no background noise. Joe’s kids would be in bed by now.
‘Things have moved on a bit,’ Carlyle said. ‘There’s good news and bad news.’
‘I’ll have the good news first, then, please,’ said Joe cheerily.
‘We know who the next victim will be.’
‘Excellent!’ said Joe, waiting patiently. He knew that Carlyle would get to the point eventually and, relaxing at home, he didn’t feel the need to hurry him along.
‘At least,’ Carlyle continued, ‘I can narrow it down to six people.’
‘From seven million to just six, that’s not bad,’ Joe agreed, suspending his disbelief. ‘So what’s the bad news?’
‘One of them is the mayor.’
‘The mayor?’ Joe groaned. ‘Of London?’
‘No, the mayor of fucking Cairo,’ Carlyle deadpanned. ‘Of course, the Mayor of London!’
‘The Mayor of London.’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘Tell me that you’re joking,’ said Joe, ‘ please.’
‘Sadly not, and-’
‘Jesus,’ Joe cut in, ‘there’s an and?’
‘Of the six,’ Carlyle said slowly, ‘one of them is our own dear mayor. Another – according to current opinion polls – is our next prime minister.’
‘Are you sure this isn’t a wind-up?’ Joe asked. ‘How do we know all this?’
‘Ian Blake went to Cambridge University, right?’
‘Right,’ Joe agreed. ‘He got a 2.1 in PPE, Philosophy, Politics and Economics, the standard-issue degree of our governing classes.’
‘Good for him,’ said Carlyle. ‘Beats my A level in General Studies. Anyway, while he was stuffing his head full of knowledge en route to obtaining that excellent qualification, he was a member of something called the Merrion Club.’
‘Never heard of it,’ said Joe.
‘Me neither until about fifteen minutes ago,’ said Carlyle.
‘I’m guessing it’s not the kind of club we’d get invited to join.’
‘No, the Merrion Club was – is, for all I know – a drinking club for rich young wankers.’
‘Rules us out, then.’
‘Damn right. In this case, rich means really rich, as in absolutely fucking loaded.’
‘Lovely.’
‘The aim was to get blind drunk, have a food fight, smash some furniture and maybe fuck the hired help, if they could still get it up later in the evening. At the end of it all, they’d pay for all the damage with fifty-pound notes.’
‘When was this?’
‘The early eighties.’
‘Blake graduated in 1984?’
‘Right. The Merrion class of ’84 included Blake and a guy called George Dellal. Plus Holyrod and the Carlton brothers and a few others. Dellal got chopped up in similar fashion to Blake a few months ago.’
‘Coincidence?’ Joe asked.
‘Hardly,’ Carlyle replied. ‘You’ve got a 1-in-25,000 chance of being murdered in this city, in any given year. What we have here is two out of this group of eight getting brutally murdered in less than six months.’
‘So what have we got?’ Joe asked. ‘Sounds like Brideshead Revisited meets Friday the 13th.’
‘Something like that.’
‘Well, well, well,’ Joe chuckled. ‘Edgar Carlton and Christian Holyrod? The joint dream ticket of dream tickets.’
‘Maybe,’ Carlyle snorted, ‘if you’re a mentally incontinent, Daily Mail -reading fascist.’
‘Hey,’ Joe chided him, ‘Anita reads the Mail.’
‘She should know better,’ Carlyle growled.
‘What are the odds of those ending up in our investigation?’ Joe asked, moving the conversation on.
‘About as good as our own chances of getting murdered,’ said Carlyle glumly.
‘Simpson will most definitely not be happy,’ Joe pointed out.
‘A silver lining,’ Carlyle agreed, ‘however faint.’
‘So what do we do now?’ Joe asked.
‘Let’s sleep on it,’ said Carlyle. ‘Keep all this strictly to yourself, for now. We will have to be extremely discreet, especially when it comes to writing things down. No written reports, no emails… at least until we know what the fuck is going on here.’
‘Of course.’
‘I’ll go and see Simpson tomorrow. It’s better to do it face to face. Then we’ll have to reach out to the gentlemen in question, and see if they can shed any light on why someone might want them dead.’
SEVENTEEN
Heading for Paddington Green police station, Carlyle walked out of Edgware Road tube station. At the station entrance, he paused to let his eyes adjust to the gloom. There was no need to hurry, as Simpson regularly stayed holed up in her office to late into the night. She was not the best when it came to handling bad news, and therefore Carlyle was in no rush to give it to her.
As he approached the station, he was struck by its shameless ugliness. Paddington Green police station was a brutalist cube from the 1960s that almost made its Charing Cross counterpart seem elegantly designed. Straight out of the couldn’t-give-a-flying-fuck school of architecture fashionable at the time, it eroded his spirit still further. Five minutes later, waiting in the anteroom outside her office, he picked up a magazine that had been discarded on the seat next to him. Flipping the pages, he realised it was the same magazine he’d been reading in the clinic on Harley Street while waiting for Ferruccio Pozzo to come round from his operation. Finding the correct page, he picked up the article about The Golden Twins, Edgar and Xavier Carlton, where he’d left off before arresting the now-deceased Mafioso.
Both brothers have worked hard to cultivate their voter-friendly image. Each is physically imposing (Edgar is 6’1” and Xavier 6’2”), with the looks of a pair of matinee idols. Both have the regulation exotic political wife (Russian for Edgar, while Xavier’s is Italian) and an impressive number of suitably cute and precocious children (four and three respectively).
The third leg of this proto-political dynasty is provided by half-sister Sophia, who is married to close political ally Christian Holyrod, the former soldier whose election as
Mayor of London last year was very much seen as a forerunner of Edgar’s assault on No 10. Sophia has her hands full with the five children she has popped out for Holyrod in the course of their eight-year marriage, but she is still seen as a powerful behind-the-scenes influencer. Last year’s Christmas card, a group shot of the three families at a polo match under the legend Wishing You a Carlton Christmas, was, in effect, the party’s manifesto encapsulated in full.
The door to Simpson’s office opened, and a young woman stepped out. She didn’t introduce herself, but Carlyle assumed she must be his superior’s assistant.
‘Sorry for keeping you waiting.’
‘That’s fine,’ Carlyle smiled. He had already resigned himself to a long wait, so it was relatively easy to be gracious. The PA was a chunky girl, in her twenties, with mischievous grey eyes and an arresting lime-green bra clearly visible under her transparent white blouse.
She let him gawp at it for a few seconds. ‘Can I get you anything?’
‘No, I’m fine.’
‘If you do need anything, just let me know.’ She smiled before disappearing back into the office.
Carlyle filed the bra in his bank of happy thoughts, and returned to reading his article.
The brothers are poster boys for ‘the new posh’, the fashionable, knowing, ironic elite who can beat the liberals at their own game. So, by and large, they keep their fancy cars in the garage (Edgar has a Porsche Cayenne 4?4 and Xavier not one but two Maseratis), but they make sure that they are only ever photographed driving their matching, environmentally friendly Prius hybrids.
Xavier has also embraced a bicycle, some say at his brother’s behest, regularly cycling to work at the Commons. ‘It takes me back to my days at Eton,’ Xavier said recently, ‘the happiest days of my life, obviously. And, at the end of the day, when you look at the big picture, you can see howit’s also about freedom of the individual and taking one’s own action over an overbearing nanny state which wants to kill our spirit and rob us all blind.’
Camping (it’s not like the boy scouts; instead think drinking Chablis in a?5,000 yurt while barking down your iPhone at your PA and complaining about your WiFi), music festivals and British seaside holidays have all got the Carlton thumbs-up. Times may be tough, but they are laughing in the face of recession. It’s all therefore about the quality of life. Is it all bogus, though? Of course it is. But if everything is bogus, then nothing is. What is a dream if it’s not reality?
The door opened again. This time, Simpson herself dashed out, bouncing along the corridor without even acknowledging him. Less than a minute later, she bounced back.
‘Sorry to keep you waiting, John. I won’t be long.’
She didn’t wait for his reply. He didn’t utter one, being too busy worrying because she had used his first name.
Such is this picture of domestic and political perfection that even ‘the race issue’, the one thing that some of the more antediluvian political commentators speculated could halt their blitzkrieg through the establishment, has been completely neutralised. In a recent pressyour button. co. uk poll for Political Stud magazine, 42 per cent of respondents didn’t even realise that they were black. As Edgar himself put it recently: ‘I’m not black, I’m privileged.’
Carlyle felt a familiar vibrating feeling against his chest, and pulled out his phone. Seeing that it was Joe, he hit the receive button.
‘How’s it going?’
‘There’s not a lot to report, boss,’ Joe replied. From the sounds in the background, he had either gone home already or he was watching the Cartoon Channel in the office. ‘Did you speak to Simpson?’
‘Still waiting. Anything new in the media?’
‘No, it’s all gone quiet.’
‘Good. I’ll give you a call right after the meeting.’
‘OK.’
‘Give my best to Anita and the kids.’ Carlyle ended the call and put the phone back in his pocket. Lucky sod, he thought. I wish I was at home, too.
Of course, neither brother has ever worked in the real world, moving seamlessly from Cambridge to safe seats, one in London, one in the country, after a few years spent travelling and setting up their respective families. At that time, Edgar spent a year at the Society for Freedom, Progress and Innovation, currently the party’s favourite policy think-tank. Colleagues at the time have suggested that he was a stranger to the concept of a five-day working week, but he still managed to be credited as the co-author of a pamphlet called ‘ Heading South: The case for internal migration in the UK ’, which argued that northern cities like Liverpool and Newcastle have ‘lost much of their raison d’etre’, their private sector economy and their ability to generate wealth. It argued that the citizens in such godforsaken places should head south to places like Oxford and Cambridge, offering better job prospects. Needless to say, this paper caused a storm of protest. The idea has now been disowned and it is not expected to appear in the party’s election manifesto.
His phone went again. This time it was a text from Helen: We’ve eaten, so you’re on your own for tea. x
Carlyle ignored his rumbling stomach and focused on finishing off the article.
With the election looming, it seems that nothing can stop Edgar and Xavier Carlton from realising their political ambitions. According to a former colleague: ‘There was never any doubt that they were ultimately going to run the country.’ A bold statement, but an accurate one. If there ever was any doubt before, there isn’t now.
He closed the magazine and let his gaze lose focus. Nothing he had read made him feel any happier. What the hell was he going to do with these people? The Carltons wouldn’t want to be seen anywhere near his case, even if it turned out that they were right in the middle of it. People like that didn’t get to where they were by worrying about little things like a murder enquiry. At best, they would ignore him. At worst…? Well, who knew?
It was the ultimate no-win situation.
Having been made to wait for more than an hour, it was almost 7.45 p.m. when he was finally invited to enter Simpson’s office. The assistant had put her coat on and was ready to leave. This time round, she did not grace him with a smile, merely pointing in the general direction of her boss, while grabbing her bag and heading in the opposite direction.
As he walked through the door, he realised that he had never been inside this particular office before. However, if he had been looking for clues as to the content of her character, he would have been sorely disappointed. Aside from the furniture, it was spectacularly bare save for a photograph of a middle-aged man who Carlyle assumed was her husband. Sitting at her desk, scribbling some notes on a pad, she gestured him to sit with a curt wave of the hand, without even looking up. Prim, proper and poised, Carlyle thought she had the air of someone who had already done a full day’s work, thank you very much, and now had a top-notch dinner party to go to, offering the chance to mingle with people far more interesting than himself.
Five minutes later, once he had explained the situation, the same dinner party was off. As expected, Simpson did not take the news well. Listening to him in silence, she clasped her hands together as if in prayer, while gnawing on her lower lip. In fact, she seemed to have aged ten years during the short time that he had been speaking.
Carlyle thought she might burst into tears at any moment. All in all, that made him feel a lot better.
After taking a moment to compose herself, Simpson spoke. ‘John, you know how careful we must be here?’
‘Yes.’
‘You realise just how… sensitive this is?’
No fucking shit, thought Carlyle. ‘Absolutely.’
‘Who else knows about this?’
‘My sergeant,’ Carlyle replied. ‘No one else.’
‘Good. It goes no further than that,’ Simpson said quietly, a steely determination colouring the words. ‘If the press get hold of this, I will have your balls… and Szyszkowski’s.’
Spare me the macho bullshit, thought Carlyle. �
��Understood,’ he replied, in his most clipped, no-nonsense manner.
She looked him up and down. ‘Do you have any idea who is doing this? Or why?’
It was a tricky question that called for a straight answer. ‘No.’
Simpson gave no indication of being surprised. ‘Well, maybe I should see what I can do to help you move this along, Inspector.’
‘That would be very kind. I would be most grateful for any assistance.’
‘Let my office reach out to the remaining Merrion Club members, appraise them of the situation, and then we can take it from there.’
My office? She even talks like a politician, Carlyle thought, not a policeman. He nodded and said nothing as he watched the light bulb coming on above Simpson’s head. It was clearly beginning to dawn on her that this case might not prove a total pile of shit after all. It could offer her the chance to do some favours for some of the most important men in the capital, and therefore in the country. And, if everything turned out well, another promotion beckoned.
‘Once I have made the initial contact,’ Simpson continued, ‘it will become easier for you to speak to them.’
Carlyle kept his expression neutral. ‘Thank you.’
‘These are very important men, so we have to approach them correctly.’
‘Of course.’
Simpson looked him up and down, searching for evidence of sarcasm or unreliability in one of her least favourite officers. Carlyle gave her none. Having laid down the rules of engagement, she switched tack. ‘On the plus side, at least the mayor and the prime minister and his brother will have their own security already.’
‘He’s not the prime minister,’ Carlyle pointed out evenly.
‘Yes,’ said Simpson, clearly put out at being pulled up. ‘A Freudian slip.’
‘Easy to make,’ Carlyle smiled.
‘Yes, indeed. He will be prime minister, of course. And sooner rather than later. Do you look at the polls?’
Carlyle made a non-committal gesture.
‘He’s got the biggest lead since polling began.’ She seemed quite excited.