by James Craig
‘So let me get this straight.’ Yates tossed the sachet on to the table and leaned back in his chair. ‘I’m three hundred quid down, the woman nicked my cash, and I’m the one who broke the law?’
‘Soliciting is a crime,’ Umar pointed out, ‘under the Street Offences Act 1959.’
‘But I didn’t solicit,’ Yates protested. ‘I only looked at Sonia’s picture on the internet; her very flattering picture. I’m not even sure it was her. It was airbrushed to hell, at the very least. Or Photoshopped, whatever they do to pictures these days. And they say that the camera never lies.’
Let’s not go there again, Carlyle thought. ‘You contacted her. You met. You handed over the cash. It’s an open and shut case.’
Yates shifted uneasily in his seat. ‘But the bloody internet didn’t even exist in 1959,’ he wailed.
‘Even if we didn’t go for soliciting,’ Umar said cheerily, ‘there’s the Criminal Law Act of 1967.’
Carlyle looked at his sergeant in disbelief. When did you swallow a copy of Black’s Law Dictionary? he wondered.
‘Oh?’ Yates looked as if he might have a stroke at any moment.
‘Yes,’ said Umar, dropping a piece of chocolate chip muffin into his mouth. ‘If you’d taken a look at it, you’d have found out that wasting police time is a serious offence, one which carries a maximum sentence of six months’ imprisonment.’
Yates’s face crumpled and he looked like he was going to start crying. ‘But . . .’
Tiring of the conversation, the inspector held up a hand. ‘Don’t worry, Mr Yates,’ he said gently. ‘We are not going to take this any further.’
Hope battled with despair on Yates’s face. ‘No?’
‘No. But you need to put this down to experience.’
‘What would your wife think?’ Umar added.
‘Haven’t got one,’ Yates muttered. ‘We got divorced four years ago.’
Why am I not surprised? ‘Even so,’ Carlyle advised, ‘I think you should maybe give the escort agencies a rest for a while.’
Yates looked at each of the officers in turn. ‘So I’m not being prosecuted but I’m not getting my money back either?’
‘Get a few blank taxi receipts,’ Umar ventured, ‘claw it back on expenses.’
Yates thought that one through for a few moments, saying nothing. Then, glancing at his watch, he jumped to his feet. ‘Goodness, I’m going to be late for my next appointment.’
‘What is it you do?’ Carlyle asked.
A renewed look of concern passed across the man’s face. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘No reason,’ the inspector shrugged. ‘Just curious.’
‘I sell satellite capacity to telcos and ISPs.’ Pulling a business card from the pocket of his jacket, he handed it to the inspector.
‘I see,’ Carlyle nodded, none the wiser. ‘Anyway, good luck. And I don’t want to see you back here.’
‘Yes, well, quite.’ Skipping towards the door, Yates didn’t look back.
Umar watched him disappear before turning to the inspector. ‘Why did you let him go?’
‘Good old-fashioned customer service,’ Carlyle grinned.
‘Like the 15 bus.’
‘Something like that,’ Carlyle replied, surprised that Umar had been paying attention to their earlier conversation. We should be grateful to Mr Yates; he gave us a rare opportunity to use our common sense. Arresting him for time-wasting would simply have wasted more time. And it wasn’t like we were going to go after Sonia, was it?’
‘I wonder if she’s as bad as he made out?’ Umar asked, stuffing the last piece of the muffin into his mouth.
‘Not as far as I recall.’
‘You know her?’
‘I’ve met her a few times,’ Carlyle admitted.
‘And she’s a looker?’
‘She’s a pretty girl.’ Noting the wheels turning in his sergeant’s brain, the inspector quickly added: ‘Not that it should be of much concern to you.’ Now that Umar was married, with a kid, the inspector felt some kind of vague responsibility for trying to keep him on the straight and narrow when it came to the ladies. Never a player himself, the setting of the younger man’s moral compass made Carlyle distinctly uncomfortable. Still, he had been quite happy when the boy’s hopes of leaving the police were dashed; Umar was his third sergeant in quick succession and a bit of continuity was most welcome.
Umar wiped the corners of his mouth with a paper napkin, sending crumbs cascading on to his Kasabian T-shirt. ‘Just making conversation,’ he mumbled.
‘Better get on.’ Not wishing to discuss the matter any further, Carlyle got up and headed for the lifts.
FIVE
Reaching the third floor, Carlyle passed a red collection bucket that had been chained to an empty desk. A notice next to it read: Collection for family of Marvin Taylor (Charing Cross 2008– 2010) who died last week. Please give generously. Sighing, he took out his wallet and removed a twenty-pound note. Folding it up, he pushed it through the slot, while eyeing the anti-tamper seal on the lid suspiciously. I hope that holds up, he thought. I wouldn’t trust the buggers round here for a minute.
Umar appeared at his shoulder and scanned the notice. ‘Who’s Marvin Taylor?’
‘He was a sergeant here,’ Carlyle explained. ‘Nice guy. Took redundancy in one of the rounds of cost-cutting we had and went off to set up his own security business.’
‘OK. So what happened to him?’
‘Someone sawed his head off in Chelsea the other night.’
‘Ah,’ Umar replied, ‘so he was one of the guys in the massacre?’
‘The what?’
‘That’s what they’re calling it on TV – the Chelsea Massacre.’
‘Wankers,’ Carlyle hissed. ‘I bet they pissed themselves with excitement when they found out what had happened.’
‘That’s the media for you,’ said Umar philosophically.
‘Yes, it is,’ Carlyle agreed, heading for his desk. ‘But Marvin was a good guy, a family man, so put some money in the collection.’
‘Eh?’ A look of consternation crossed Umar’s face. ‘But I never knew the bloke; he was before my time. And, besides, I’m skint.’
‘Twenty quid minimum,’ the inspector added, dismissing his protests with a wave of the hand. ‘You never know, we might be doing it for you one day.’ Stumbling into his chair, he reached across the desk to switch on his PC, grabbing a Post-it note that had been stuck to the screen before slumping back into his seat. If anything, the pain in his sprained ankle was getting worse. He lifted his foot on to the table and tentatively wiggled his toes in the hope that it would somehow ease his discomfort.
‘You should get that seen to, you know.’ Standing at the next desk, Umar began sifting through a pile of mail that had been left in his in-tray.
‘Thank you, Dr Findlay.’
‘Who?’
‘Never mind.’ Eschewing his glasses, Carlyle squinted at the square of yellow paper in his hand. Naomi 0203 405 5958.
Naomi? His foot throbbed angrily as he tried to put a face to the name.
Naomi? Who the fuck was Naomi?
Giving up, he turned back to his sergeant. ‘Do we know a Naomi?’
Umar thought about it for a moment and chuckled. ‘I don’t know about you, but I know a couple.’
Exasperated, the inspector waved the Post-it note at his minion. ‘I mean, professionally speaking. Some woman called Naomi wants me to give her a call.’
‘Give her a call then,’ Umar shrugged, going back to his mail.
‘I’ll give her a call then,’ Carlyle parroted. With his computer still struggling to come to life, he reached across the desk and picked up the receiver on his landline and punched in the woman’s number. The call was answered on the second ring.
‘Naomi?’ Carlyle demanded, settling back into his seat.
‘Yes.’ The voice sounded small and distant.
‘This is Inspector John Carlyle at Charing
Cross police station. I got a message to give you a call.’
‘Yes.’
And? His hackles rising, Carlyle said nothing.
‘You don’t remember me, do you?’
‘Should I?’ Carlyle asked, his voice rather more brusque than he intended.
‘I am . . . was Naomi Sage. I’m a friend of Susan Phillips.’
‘Ah, yes,’ Carlyle nodded, none the wiser. Susan Phillips, a police pathologist working out of the Holborn station, was an old friend. He couldn’t place the other woman, however.
‘Susan suggested that I give you a call.’
‘OK,’ said Carlyle warily, wondering what he was going to be lumbered with now. His computer finally made it through its start-up routine and a prompt appeared on the screen demanding his username and password. His mind ran through the overdue reports that needed to be written and the other crap that he should be dealing with.
‘My married name is Taylor,’ her voice wavered.
Taylor. The inspector glanced across the room in time to see one of the uniforms drop a handful of coins into the collection bucket.
‘You worked with Marvin, didn’t you?’
‘Er, yes,’ Carlyle coughed, ‘yes, I did.’
‘I’m his wife.’
Putting down the phone, the inspector scratched his head. Feeling listless and unable to focus on matters of a professional nature, he pondered a quick return to the café for another snack but ruled it out on the grounds that he wasn’t hungry in the slightest. Looking across the room, he was dismayed to see his sergeant hard at work on his Facebook page.
Crime-fighting really can be a bitch. He was just about to chide Umar when he was distracted by a whiff of expensive perfume. Sniffing the air like some small animal in the desert, he watched Amelia Elmhirst float by.
Carlyle cleared his throat. ‘Morning.’
‘Good morning, Inspector.’ She eyed him with the wry amusement of someone who knew that she would be the boss around here soon enough, before taking up a perch on the corner of Umar’s desk. Sergeant Amelia Elmhirst was the talk of the Charing Cross station. Six foot one, blonde, with deep blue eyes, the sergeant had the kind of über-healthy, Leni Riefenstahl-approved look that belonged on a catwalk, rather than walking the beat on the grimy streets of WC2. A graduate of King’s College, with a first in Psychology and an MA in Social Anthropology, Elmhirst was being fast-tracked through a graduate trainee programme that would see her make inspector well before her thirtieth birthday. The fact that she lived with her long-term boyfriend – a social media entrepreneur called Simon – in a loft in Shoreditch did nothing to stop her from being an object of desire for every man in the station.
‘Hi, Amelia,’ Umar grinned, quickly abandoning Facebook in order to give the new arrival his full attention.
Careful, Carlyle thought, you don’t want your tongue dragging on the floor.
Never slow when it came to the opposite sex, Umar was a man on a mission. At a conservative estimate, the inspector calculated that around a quarter of his sergeant’s working day was currently devoted to flirting with his colleague or devising strategies to try and get into her knickers. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Fine. Nothing particularly exciting.’ Pushing a strand of hair behind her ear, Elmhirst glanced at Carlyle, who was settling in to shamelessly eavesdrop on their conversation. Keen to assess the state of Umar’s quest, the inspector smiled sweetly, making no effort to pretend to be working. ‘Had to deal with a landlord yesterday, who tried to evict his tenant by shooting him.’
‘It’s a way of speeding things up, I suppose,’ Carlyle quipped.
Umar shot him a look that said Get lost.
‘Anyway, he missed. Or things could have been much worse.’ Elmhirst turned away from Carlyle to give Umar her full attention. ‘About that photo . . .’
‘Did you like it?’ Umar grinned.
Leaning forward, Elmhirst lowered her voice. ‘Don’t do it again. If Si saw it, he would have a fit.’
‘I thought he was in San Francisco,’ Umar protested.
‘Yeah, but if he came back and picked up my iPhone . . .’ Elmhirst got to her feet. ‘I’ve deleted it, but just don’t do it again. It’s not very funny. And,’ she giggled, ‘I was really quite surprised. It’s not very big, is it?’
Umar sat up in his chair. ‘It was just the angle,’ he said stiffly.
‘Whatever.’ She began walking away but stopped after a couple of paces and turned back to face him. ‘Look, Umar, I know it’s just supposed to be a joke. But some people might not be so . . . broad-minded as me.’
‘Mm.’ Umar squirmed in his seat as he contemplated Elmhirst being broad-minded.
‘Just be careful.’
‘What do you mean?’
Elmhirst smiled. ‘I know you’ve sent pics to some of the other girls. If someone were to make a complaint, you could be in big trouble.’
‘Fancy a drink tonight?’ he called after her as she finally walked away.
‘Sorry. I’m going to meet Si at Heathrow. Next time.’
‘Lucky bugger,’ Umar muttered under his breath. ‘And he’s such a total waste of space. Completely useless. I don’t know what she sees in him at all.’
Not your problem, is it? Carlyle took one last breath of Elmhirst’s scent as she disappeared. ‘What was all that about?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ said Umar glumly, before returning his attention to the computer screen. ‘Nothing at all.’
The inspector couldn’t resist twisting the knife just a little. ‘She’s not responding to your charms, then, eh?’
‘Sod off,’ was all he got by way of reply.
SIX
Sitting in a Lebanese café on the Edgware Road, an occasional haunt over the years, Carlyle reluctantly put on his glasses, the better to inspect himself in the mirror that covered the entire wall opposite. Groaning inwardly, he noted every line on his sagging face and every additional grey hair on his head. It seemed that just as he had reconciled himself to uncomfortable middle age, he was exiting that stage of his life at some speed. At what time would he formally become old? Not for the first time, thoughts of retirement flitted through his head. The idea seemed as ridiculous as ever.
The grumpy old sod staring back at him seemed equally unimpressed with what he saw. The inspector had to resist the considerable temptation to flick him a few angry V-signs. At least he didn’t seem to be going bald. If nothing else, the Carlyle family genes should ensure he kept a full head of hair well into his advancing years. His father was testament to that. It wasn’t much of an inheritance but he supposed that it was better than nothing.
‘Inspector?’
Reluctantly, he returned his attention to the woman in front of him. Naomi Taylor was a small, fragile-looking woman, with short auburn hair and black rings under her eyes, which stood testimony to the stress she had been under, the last few days. If he had ever met her before now, Carlyle couldn’t recall it; she wasn’t the type of person you were likely to remember unless you had a particular reason to do so.
‘Susan said you might be able to help me.’
‘Yes.’ Bloody Phillips. From a radio behind the counter came the sounds of Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky’. The song was a current favourite of Alice’s and he liked to listen to her mooching around the flat singing the chorus to herself. It was well past time for his daughter to start developing her own tastes in music – she could only limit her interests to The Clash, The Jam and the rest of his old CD collection for so long. A question popped into his head. ‘Did you . . . I mean, do you have kids?’
Naomi nodded and her eyes filled with tears.
You moron. Surely you should be better at this by now. Grabbing a napkin from the table, he handed it over.
‘Thanks,’ she mumbled, before blowing her nose with surprising force. ‘A girl. She’s with my mother.’
‘Yes.’
She waited patiently until it became obvious that he wasn’t going
to say anything else. ‘Did you work with him?’ she asked finally.
‘Marvin? Er, yes, a few times.’ It was a complete lie. During Taylor’s time at Charing Cross, the two of them had barely spoken to each other. It was a period when Carlyle seemed to be landed with endless night shifts, and his interaction with the majority of his colleagues had been severely curtailed. Convinced that night shifts were very bad for your physical and mental health, the inspector had nothing but unhappy memories of that time. He had known the sergeant by sight but they were barely on nodding terms when they passed in the corridor or on Agar Street. ‘We covered a few cases together when Marvin was at my station. He was a good man, a valuable colleague . . . very dependable.’
Her eyes filled again and a large tear rolled down each cheek. Stifling a sob, she rocked forward until her face was barely two inches from the top of the table. Carlyle reached for another napkin. On the radio, ‘Get Lucky’ had been superseded by another cheery tune. This one he didn’t recognize. Time seemed to slow down and he was conscious that the other customers were looking at them, their own conversations put on hold while they tuned in to the human drama nearby. Clearly, a café had been the wrong choice of venue for this meeting. He offered her the napkin but she waved it away, wiping her nose on the sleeve of her jacket. Fair enough, Carlyle thought. This is not the time to be standing on ceremony.
‘They say . . .’ her voice quavered and she fought for a breath. Carlyle glared at a couple on the next table who were shamelessly eavesdropping until they reluctantly went back to their own conversation. Naomi Taylor placed her elbows on the table and leaned forward. ‘They say,’ she whispered, ‘that his head . . . was almost sliced off.’
Squeamish at the best of times, Carlyle grimaced. ‘Who told you this?’
She shuddered, as if someone had just stuck a blade through her ribs. ‘I overheard someone joking about it.’