by James Craig
Holyrod gave no indication of being spiritually inclined, however. ‘I don’t recognise the name.’
‘She was Robert Ashton’s girlfriend.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Holyrod nodded. He raised his hands in a gesture maybe supposed to signify sincerity. ‘I’m with you now. I am aware of the person you are referring to. Her name never registered because I don’t know that I ever actually met her.’
‘I suppose that’s progress,’ said Carlyle.
‘Why do you ask, anyway?’ A sly smile crossed the mayor’s face. ‘Is she a suspect? Have you arrested her?’
‘The investigation is proceeding.’
‘I’ll take that as a no, then. If she’s your woman, I would suggest that you just get on with it, Inspector.’ Holyrod finally stopped staring at nothing in particular and turned to face Carlyle. ‘That is your job, after all.’
‘Is what she claims happened to Robert Ashton true?’
‘What did she say?’
‘That he was brutally raped, and driven to suicide.’
‘Do you really believe that?’
Carlyle shrugged. ‘It’s not my job to believe anything.’
Holyrod dropped his pseudo-patrician demeanour and showed the hard-faced soldier that still lived underneath. ‘Either way, it’s not much of a defence for committing multiple murder, is it?’ He affected a shrill, girlish voice: ‘My boyfriend was on the wrong end of some rough sex.’
Carlyle looked at him, nonplussed.
‘What happened to Ashton wasn’t exactly unique,’ Holyrod resumed his normal tone, ‘even if it did drive him to kill himself. Which, of course, is a matter of complete conjecture and speculation on your part. It might get your woman some extra counselling, while she spends the rest of her life in jail, but that’s about it.’
My woman? thought Carlyle. ‘That’s an interesting perspective on things,’ he persisted. ‘It’s not quite how Ms Ahl explains it.’
‘I’m sure it isn’t.’ Holyrod now threw his hands open wide. ‘Come on, Inspector. When you get to our age, it doesn’t count for much, one way or another. What about all the shitty things you got up to at university, yourself? The things that still make you embarrassed today?’
‘I didn’t go to university.’
Holyrod started to reply, but thought better of it, making do with a look that said: I’m finished wasting my time here. He stood up. Carlyle did the same. This time, the Mayor put his hand on the policeman’s shoulder and gripped it firmly. ‘What you’ve got to remember is that she wasn’t there.’
‘No, but-’
‘Neither were you.’
‘No-’
‘And neither was I.’ Holyrod let go of Carlyle’s shoulder, which began throbbing slightly. ‘Not for the meat of the matter, anyway.’ He smiled. ‘Whatever happened, I was not a party to it. Neither, for that matter, was Edgar Carlton.’ He paused. ‘You know how important our reputations are to us.’
‘Yes,’ Carlyle nodded. ‘Particularly for the next twenty-four hours.’
Holyrod made a face that was part saint, part executioner. ‘For the next twenty-four hours, for the next twenty-four years – and longer even than that. We are men of honour, do you understand?’
How can people believe this kind of bullshit? Carlyle wondered. But, for once, he bit his tongue and nodded. ‘I do.’
‘I wonder.’ Holyrod looked him up and down. ‘This has been handled pretty well, so far. Now it needs to be finished. Do your job, Inspector, no more, no less.’
Without waiting for a reply, Holyrod turned on his heel and headed for the exit. Carlyle listened to footsteps echoing on the stone floor as Holyrod marched out of the church. After the mayor had gone, he quietly said to himself: ‘Well done, John, that worked perfectly. Exactly as planned. Another triumph beckons.’
Trevor Miller gently returned the phone to its cradle and looked up. ‘OK,’ he said quietly, ‘we’ve found her.’
‘You know what you’ve got to do?’ Edgar Carlton inquired dreamily.
‘Yes.’
‘Good. That’s very good.’
Passing the Garden Hotel, Carlyle glanced inside and caught sight of the concierge, Alex Miles, making a fuss of some newly arrived guest. It was little more than a fortnight since Ian Blake’s body had been found in a hotel room upstairs. Carlyle tried to recall the details. What was the number of the room? How many people had slept in there since? He also wondered if they had installed a new bed; they would have had to replace the mattress at the very least.
He tried to remember what it had been like on walking through that door to see the blood, the empty eyes, to smell the stench of death. None of it came back to him. Nothing had lingered in his memory any longer than last night’s television. Already, Ian Blake had become a dim and distant memory, a minor footnote in his own murder investigation. After only a couple of weeks, did anyone miss him? Did anyone even remember that he had ever existed? The inspector felt a sense of melancholy descend on him that he knew would be hard to shake. Don’t be a victim, he thought to himself as he hurried on. Don’t ever be a victim.
Avoiding a return to the Station, he went home, had a shower and then a cheese sandwich. When Helen got home from work, they took Alice to the polling station at Dragon Hall, just off Macklin Street. It was something of a family tradition that they all went voting together: Alice would hand over the polling cards and collect the voting papers, then she would take each of her parents in turn into the booth and put a cross beside their chosen candidate. Then she would fold the papers and put them in the ballot box. The place was quite empty when they arrived, so they were in and out of there in minutes. Carlyle had very mixed feelings about the whole thing: he knew that his vote counted for nothing; on the other hand, he didn’t want his daughter to grow up as cynical as himself.
He left them at the door to Winter Garden House, with a hug and a kiss.
‘When will you be home?’ Helen asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Carlyle shrugged. ‘Late… maybe very late.’
‘OK,’ she sighed. ‘Do what you have to do, but be careful.’
‘I will,’ he said, shuffling off round the corner, into Drury Lane.
THIRTY-FOUR
It was well after six o’clock when he got back to Charing Cross Police Station. Joe Szyszkowski had not yet reappeared, so Carlyle sat at his desk and watched the BBC’s rolling news on a monitor suspended from the ceiling. The sound was off, but subtitles scrolled across the bottom of the screen, allowing him to follow what was being said. The stock market wasn’t waiting for the result of the election, before it collapsed. Some know-nothing news pixie was explaining how share prices were plunging, the capitalist system was doomed, and everyone would be living in caves by Christmas.
‘You don’t want to listen to that rubbish,’ said Joe, wandering across his line of vision. ‘It’ll only make you depressed.’
‘There’s never been a better time to be poor,’ Carlyle said mirthlessly, grabbing a remote from the desk behind his own and turning the news pixie to black, with a flourish.
‘That’s handy,’ Joe grinned.
Carlyle tossed the remote back on his desk just as he felt his mobile start vibrating in his pocket. For once he had managed to pick up a call! Recognising Ahl’s mobile number on the screen, he hurriedly pushed the receive button.
‘Hello?’
The line immediately went dead.
He rang back but got a ‘network busy’ signal.
Bastards!
He tried again, but got the same thing.
Bastards! Fucking shit technology!
He somehow resisted the temptation to throw the handset at the wall. At the third attempt, he got through, but it went straight to voicemail. Once again, he didn’t leave a message. Why was she ringing him? Maybe she had come to terms with the fact that the game was up.
In anticipation of their evening’s work, Joe had booked a Mitsubishi Shogun from the station garage. The previ
ous user had still to bring it back in, however, and the car pool was empty apart from a couple of Smart electric cars that were currently being trialled by the Met. No self-respecting copper, including Carlyle and Joe, would be seen dead in one. Carlyle thought about catching the tube, but he couldn’t be arsed to slog his way through the rush hour. Anyway, they still needed a car to bring Ahl back to the station. It was time to wait.
Waiting had always been a key part of the job, and by now Carlyle was quite good at it. For the next hour and a half, he and Joe kicked the case around, looking at what they had, what they lacked and what they had missed. In the end, they called a halt, finding themselves back where they had started. As far as anyone could tell, Susy Ahl had killed three members of the Merrion Club in revenge for what they had done to Robert Ashton all those years ago.
Was the woman crazy? That was for a doctor to decide. It was not for Carlyle himself to judge. Crazy or not, he had to admit that taking down four members of the Merrion Club was a hell of a result, far better than a lone, middle-aged, female lawyer could have hoped for at the outset of her killing spree. The icing on the cake would be to destroy the political careers of the Carltons and also Holyrod. To do that, she needed to be caught. She wanted her fifteen minutes of fame.
And who, Carlyle thought, are we to deny her that?
The journey across London had taken the best part of an hour, so it was after 8 p.m. when they parked on Atlanta Street, at the south end of Fulham Cemetery. With the end now in sight, Carlyle felt shattered. He got out of the car and stamped the ground, trying to rid his body of the lethargy. The street was quiet and the air was still. The edge had come off the mugginess and the sky was getting darker by the minute. That meant it was going to rain very soon. Unprepared, as usual, he knew that a soaking beckoned.
Atlanta Street was just across the Fulham Palace Road from Susy Ahl’s house on Harboro Street. Access to Harboro Street itself was blocked by roadworks. A twenty-yard stretch of it was littered with the usual items of machinery scattered around a trench about a foot wide and three feet deep, which had been cut into the tarmac along the middle of the road. It was all cordoned off behind temporary metal fencing on which hung a notice informing them that the thoroughfare would remain closed until late July. Pedestrians could still squeeze past by using a three-foot gap left open on the pavement to his right.
Carlyle heard a growl of thunder. It was quickly followed by a large raindrop landing on his head. Cursing, he tried to shrink inside his jacket, while lengthening his stride. Almost immediately, the rain came spearing down, bouncing off the road and drenching him. He had planned on making his dramatic entrance rather differently, but nothing could be done about that now. Trusting that Joe was keeping pace behind him, he began jogging towards the house.
Only when he was about fifty yards away from his destination did he look up. The rain had driven everyone from the street except for a couple of kids and an old bloke sheltering under a tree with its roots in the pavement. One of the kids was using his mobile phone to record video of an ambulance as it slowly pulled up at the kerb, the siren off but its blue lights illuminating the gloom. Switching the lightbar off, the paramedics pulled on their anoraks. They showed no desire to get out of the cab in a hurry, which told Carlyle that they were not here to deal with a living patient. Eventually, they stepped down into the street and jogged back to the vehicle’s rear. Opening the doors with a flourish, they pulled out a trolley and carried it past the thoroughly pissed-off-looking constable still standing at the front gate.
Feeling a bit like a man who had just turned up late for his own funeral, Carlyle headed across to the opposite side of the street, with Joe following immediately behind. He was no longer worried about the rain, focusing rather on the sinking feeling in his stomach. It was clear that he had overplayed his hand, and now wasn’t the time to go rushing inside.
After a couple of minutes, the ambulance crew reappeared. They stowed the draped body in the back of the ambulance and slammed the doors shut, before climbing aboard and moving off. Ten yards down the road, the driver realised that his exit was blocked by the roadworks ahead. He performed a tortuous three-point turn and headed back the way he had come.
The gawkers took this as their cue to leave. Watching them depart, Carlyle tried to snap himself out of his funk. Then, just as he was about to step across the road, Trevor Miller emerged from the house. He stood on the pavement for a second, pulling up the collar of his raincoat. Looking up, he caught Carlyle’s eye. Acknowledging him with the slightest of nods, Miller stuck his hands into his pockets and hurried off in the direction of the river.
The rain began easing as Carlyle showed his ID to the copper posted on the gate. He was just sticking it back in his pocket when Simpson herself walked out of the front door, carrying an umbrella.
‘Ah, there you are, Inspector.’ She stopped to put up the umbrella before stepping towards him. Nodding a greeting to Joe, who was hovering a yard away, she placed a gentle hand on Carlyle’s elbow and guided him a few yards back along the street, to where a driver was waiting for her in a BMW. She stopped by the passenger door and looked Carlyle up and down.
‘Why are you looking so glum, John?’
Partly sheltered under the umbrella, he was even more conscious of the rain slipping under his collar and trickling down his spine. ‘What happened?’
Simpson pursed her lips, ignoring the question. ‘You’ve got a result… one way or another. It’s job done, and case closed.’
‘What are you doing here?’ Carlyle asked, struggling to keep any trace of emotion from his voice. The sick feeling in his stomach had dissipated. It was now being replaced by the kind of gentle numbness that came at times when things were going spectacularly tits-up.
A small, brittle smile appeared on Simpson’s lips. ‘Mr Miller called me personally, after he found the body. Apparently, Ms Ahl had called up Edgar Carlton to demand a meeting.’
‘What kind of meeting?’
Simpson shrugged. ‘It looks like we shall never know that. Carlton decided to send Miller. He arrived here about 6.30 and found the door was open.’
‘Miller? Carlton’s head of security? On Election Day?’
Simpson paused there, eyes shining, saying nothing further. The rain had now stopped and the air suddenly felt fresher than it had for weeks.
‘Was there anything suspicious about the death?’ Carlyle asked, trying and failing to keep a hint of desperation from his voice.
Simpson executed a small hop on the spot, like a small child desperate to go to the toilet. ‘Not as far as I could see.’ She lowered the umbrella, giving it vigorous shake before closing it. ‘When Miller went in, he found her hanging from the banister, so he rang 999, and then he rang me.’
‘Suicide?’
She let her gaze fall to the pavement. ‘Yes, I’d say so.’
Carlyle clamped his jaw tight and fixed his gaze on a point in the middle distance, before nodding at her carefully rehearsed answer.
‘Why wasn’t I called?’
‘I tried your mobile,’ Simpson said gently, ‘but I couldn’t get through. The network was busy. I rang the station, and they said you were on your way.’
He tried to work it through in his head, to see if that timing made sense. It was difficult to say.
Simpson radiated calm. She glanced towards Joe, still standing on the pavement outside Susy Ahl’s house. ‘You must pass on my congratulations to your sergeant, as well, John. It’s excellent work that we’ve managed to clear this thing up without too much… fuss. Good for our performance stats as well. You know that it all comes under SCD in the end, but I will make sure that you both get the proper recognition you deserve.’
Carlyle shivered. As far as he was concerned, the Specialist Crime Directorate could take whatever credit they wanted. He sneezed.
‘Bless you,’ said Simpson, reaching down to open the car door. ‘I know that you’ll have some more questions, but don’t
hang around here any longer than is necessary. The officer in charge of the scene is a Sergeant Longmead, and she seems very efficient.’ Simpson gestured towards the house. ‘She’s inside right now. Go and speak to her, and let me have your final report first thing in the morning.’
‘Final’ meaning final. Meaning: Kindly fuck off back to the day job, the muggers and the drunks, and try to stay off my radar for a while. A long while.
‘Any loose ends?’ he asked, giving it one last push, more in hope than expectation.
‘Not really.’ Simpson had already lowered herself into the car and seemed keen to close the door. ‘Not really. There was an empty vodka bottle on the floor. The provisional time of death is around five p.m.’
Carlyle thought about his missed call. His brain was now slowly getting into gear. ‘What about a suicide note?’
‘No note,’ said Simpson, with just the slightest hint of levity in her tone, as if she might have just taken a stiff drink herself. ‘But that’s not unusual. After all, she knew that we were closing in.’
‘I should have arrested her yesterday.’ He said it to himself more than to Simpson, but he saw the first sign of irritation flash across her face.
She looked up at him sharply. ‘People hang themselves in jail, too, as you well know. Who’s to say that she wouldn’t have done exactly the same thing inside? Look at it this way, you’ve saved the taxpayer the cost of a trial. That could mean hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of pounds. Not to mention the thirty thousand or more a year necessary to keep Ms Ahl in prison for the rest of her life.’ Simpson did the mental arithmetic in her head. ‘Let’s say a couple of million pounds – one and a half minimum. That more than pays your way.’ She grabbed the inside door handle firmly. ‘Not a bad night’s work, I’d say. Once again, well done. I’ll call you once I’ve read your report.’ With that, she finally pulled the door shut and allowed herself to be driven off into the night.