by James Craig
Tuning out of the conversation, Carlyle watched the woman next to him stick the last of the pretzel into her mouth before letting his gaze slide across the room. It was well past the rush hour, but people were still flooding through the door faster than the staff could serve them. How many of these places were there in London? he wondered. Fifty? A hundred? Whoever set this place up was obviously a genius. There was more money in coffee than there was in crack. Thinking of drugs, his mind turned to his old ally, Dominic Silver. A retired drug dealer, Dom was in the process of reinventing himself as an art dealer. Gazing out of the window, Carlyle attempted to get his bearings. Dom’s gallery wasn’t much more than a couple of minutes’ walk away. Maybe he should pop in and say ‘hello’. They were overdue a catch-up; like Phillips and Naomi Taylor, he and Dom had rather lost contact recently. With Dom’s career change, their professional interests no longer intersected in the same way and it was more of an effort to hook up. Did he feel sorry about that? Carlyle wasn’t sure.
‘Sorry, I’ve got to run,’ Phillips sighed. ‘One of those mornings.’
‘Yeah.’
‘What did you want to ask me about?’
It took Carlyle a second to get his brain back on the right page. ‘Oh, yes. Marvin Taylor.’
‘Yes?’
Carlyle looked around. Pretzel Woman was lingering over her coffee. Staring vacantly into space, she showed no interest in their conversation. He lowered his voice anyway. ‘Everyone agrees Marvin was a nice bloke. But was he bent?’
NINE
Resplendent in a pair of baggy shorts and a truly hideous pink and yellow Hawaiian shirt, Umar Sligo was standing on the bottom step of the entrance to the police station, smoking a cigarette as he chatted to a youngish bloke in a Nirvana T-shirt and scruffy jeans. Carlyle vaguely recognized the guy, an undercover officer working out of the Waterloo station who had spent the last three years spying on a bunch of hippies who were opposing the building of a new power station somewhere near the Kent coast. The rumour was that the guy had gone so deep undercover that he’d had kids by two different women in the group. There had to be some sort of law against it. No doubt the tree huggers would sue the arse off the Met in due course.
Seeing the inspector approach, Umar said something to the scruffy Lothario, who nodded before scuttling off in the direction of the Strand. Taking one last drag on his smoke, the sergeant let the stub fall onto the pavement, grinding it into the concrete under the toe of his Puma trainers.
‘Boss . . .’
‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ said Carlyle by way of a greeting.
‘Pressures of married life.’
‘Dirty habit.’
‘Aren’t they all? It helps me deal with the stress.’
Stress, what fucking stress? Carlyle thought irritably. Maybe if you stopped chasing every piece of skirt that crosses your path, life would be a little less fraught. He was finding Umar’s juvenile behaviour increasingly annoying. The guy was in his thirties now, he had a wife and a kid; surely it was time that he grew up a bit. Instead, he just drifted along, all ambition seemingly gone. The idea of becoming a house-husband had apparently turned his head. He probably fancies a few years hitting on the mums at the school gates. An image of Umar hosting a coffee morning for a bunch of yummy mummies appeared in his head and Carlyle let out a small yelp of amusement.
Umar shot him the pissed-off teenager look that he had been perfecting over the last few months. ‘What’s so funny?’
‘Nothing, nothing.’ Carlyle let the smile fall from his face. After a couple of years establishing a decent enough working relationship with his colleague, the inspector felt like things had gone into reverse. He was losing the boy. Worse, he didn’t know if he had the will or the ability to retrieve the situation. He contemplated his sergeant in all his finery. Today, Umar looked more like an extra from Miami Vice than one of the Met’s finest. The silly bugger had never been undercover in his life. If Simpson caught sight of him like that she’d have a total fit. At times like this, the inspector just wanted to give the berk a good slap. But he knew that would only get him the sack. So Carlyle kept his mouth firmly shut, telling himself that it really wasn’t his problem.
Feeling thoroughly fed up with the situation, he nodded at a couple of uniforms heading down the steps and out on patrol duty before turning his attention back to Umar. ‘Busy?’
‘Not really. I had to go and see Mrs Miller about her bomb this morning, but that’s about it.’
‘Oh yes?’ Agnes Miller had lived in the neighbourhood since just after World War II. Her fiancé, a young police constable from Islington called Eric Davis, had fought and died for the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. His body had never been found. Agnes had swallowed her grief and got on with her life as best she could. Now well into her nineties, and never married, she refused to be moved from her flat on the tenth floor of a block just off Kingsway on the grounds that ‘this is my home and I’m going to die here’.
Carlyle had discovered all of this one night, a week or so earlier, sitting in Agnes’s tiny living room, nodding politely as the old woman gave him a potted history of Covent Garden over the last sixty years. He had been responding to her 999 call, regarding the explosion that had blown up her kitchen just before 1 a.m.
‘It’s the bloody council,’ Agnes had hissed, as they watched a procession of firemen stomp up and down the hall. ‘They want me out.’
Carlyle clucked sympathetically.
‘They say I’ve got too many bedrooms. The damn cheek. I’ve been here since this place was built in the sixties.’ Rocking gently in her chair, she pulled a shabby blue housecoat tightly around her shoulders. ‘Why decide now that I shouldn’t have a second bedroom?’
‘I think it’s something to do with the government,’ Carlyle mumbled. He vaguely recalled reading something about attempts to get tenants to give up properties that were deemed too big for them – the latest stab at crass social engineering by the over-privileged idiots who tried to run the country as if it were an edition of The Sims. ‘I don’t think they’d blow up your kitchen though.’
‘Why not?’ Agnes shot back. ‘Those buggers have got no shame. They want to put me in a home in Theydon Bois.’
Theydon Bois. A fate worse than death.
‘They say they’ll give me a thousand pounds to go and not come back. But this is my home.’
‘Yes.’ Carlyle stifled a yawn. Unable to think of anything else to say, he was rescued by the Fire Brigade Commander sticking his head round the door to give them the all clear. Promising to check in on the old woman in a few days, he had made his excuses and left.
A VW hatchback rolled past, windows down, rap music blaring from its speakers. The inspector felt a sudden urge to arrest the driver on the spot. As the car lurched round the corner, taking its aural pollution with it, he reluctantly let the idea slide.
‘She says that you promised to pop in and see her,’ Umar reminded him.
‘Yes, yes.’ Carlyle wondered if he could get Helen to do it, or maybe Alice.
‘Turns out that the “bomb”,’ the sergeant chuckled, ‘was a large jar of home-made rhubarb chutney that she’d been keeping in the fridge. Apparently there was a build-up of fermented gases – and boom.’
‘Ah well,’ Carlyle reflected solemnly, ‘just shows, you can never be too careful when it comes to fermented gases.’
‘It took the Fire Brigade a few days to work out what had happened.’
‘I’ll bet. On the bright side though, think of it as another case successfully closed. I just hope Agnes isn’t going to get any more of the stuff.’
‘It comes from her cousin in Kent.’
She never mentioned a cousin, Carlyle thought. Not that it mattered.
‘I told Agnes to have a word with her to be careful.’
‘Better send an alert to the Kent Constabulary,’ Carlyle quipped. ‘The stuff should carry a health warning.’
‘Ye
ah.’ Pulling a packet of Benson & Hedges from the back pocket of his shorts, Umar contemplated another cigarette.
The inspector glanced at his watch. ‘Look, if you’re not busy, you might want to join me for lunch.’
‘Oh?’ Umar’s eyes narrowed. It wasn’t like the inspector to make that kind of an offer without a reason. ‘What’s the catch?’
‘No catch,’ Carlyle said. ‘You can meet your predecessor.’
‘OK, sure.’ Umar still wasn’t convinced.
‘A woman called Alison Roche,’ Carlyle told him. ‘Good cop. She works for SO15 now.’
‘A Counter-Terrorism babe,’ Umar grinned. ‘Sounds good.’
Carlyle grimaced. ‘Just don’t call her a “babe”. Roche doesn’t stand for that kind of thing.’
The sergeant’s grin grew wider. ‘A feisty Counter-Terrorism babe.’
‘Fuck’s sake, Umar.’ This was turning into a bad idea.
‘OK, OK.’ Umar juggled his cigarette packet. ‘I’ll be on my best behaviour.’
‘You’d better be. We’ll just go round the corner. In about an hour.’ Heading up the steps, he wondered if Roche might have any advice on how he could get Umar back on the straight and narrow.
‘Oh,’ Umar shouted after him, ‘by the way. There’s a couple of guys inside waiting to see you. They’re in Interview Room Six.’
The inspector eventually found the men in Interview Room Four. Walking through the door, he was dismayed to discover two suits sitting behind the room’s only table, heads bowed, each tapping frantically on the screen of an iPhone as if their lives depended on it.
Communing with the great God, Apple.
Carlyle took an instant, irreversible dislike to both of them.
After a couple of seconds, each one looked up in turn. The inspector found himself confronted by two very unhappy faces. Clearly, these were men not used to being kept waiting. ‘Gentlemen.’
The younger man placed his iPhone on the table. ‘Inspector . . . Car . . .’
‘Carlyle. Pronounced like the town . . . well, technically, it’s a city, but spelled differently.’
All he got for his trouble was two uncomprehending looks.
‘We were told that you were expecting us,’ the older man said gruffly. His English was precise, with no trace of an accent. A deep tan offset the silver in his hair and he had the well-groomed look of a banker or some other form of highly paid low-life.
The George Clooney Eurotrash look, Carlyle mused. Pulling out a chair, he sat down at the nearside of the table. Out of habit, he glanced up at the CCTV camera hanging from the ceiling, in the far corner of the room.
The older man followed his gaze. ‘You’re not recording us, are you, Inspector?’
‘No, no,’ he said quickly. ‘Not at all.’
‘Good. Maybe we can begin, then. You have kept us waiting more than long enough this morning.’
‘Yes.’ The younger man had a pair of business cards lined up next to his phone. He slid them across the table towards Carlyle. ‘This one is me,’ he said, tapping the card to Carlyle’s right. ‘Sebastian Gregori.’ Again, his English was flawless, although his accent was evident.
Carlyle carefully studied each card in turn. After several moments, he looked up. ‘What is Max Drescher Associates?’
‘It is my company,’ Gregori said smugly.
‘What kind of company?’ Carlyle asked a little too sharply. These men were annoying him intensely; and it was almost time for lunch.
‘We are private security consultants,’ Gregori explained, ‘providing a wide range of range of services for—’
Carlyle cut him off. ‘You’re a private detective?’ In his experience these were creatures only suited to the pages of cheap thrillers.
‘We provide a range of services,’ Gregori repeated. He gestured towards the man sitting next to him. ‘We are representing Herr Kortmann and the family trust in this matter.’
Playing dumb, Carlyle looked at each man in turn. ‘And which matter is that?’
‘The murder of my uncle,’ Werner Kortmann said tersely. ‘Uli Eichinger.’
Eichinger. The inspector nodded as he recalled his conversation with Commander Simpson about the slain businessman.
‘And the long-overdue arrest of the murderer Sylvia Tosches.’ Kortmann gave his retainer a less than playful smack on the arm. Puffed up with anger, the older man looked to have aged a further ten years in the two minutes or so since Carlyle had walked through the door. ‘I thought that this . . . detective had been fully briefed on the matter and had been deployed as our local liaison.’
‘My Commanding Officer spoke to me about it yesterday,’ Carlyle stated, not wishing the tone of the conversation to degenerate further on the grounds that it could only delay his exit from the room. ‘However, I was under the impression that this was an official police matter.’
The atmosphere had become uncomfortably warm. Kortmann’s face was getting redder. Carlyle wondered if the man might be on the brink of a heart attack. In a fatuous show of goodwill, he got up and began fiddling with the air-conditioning control panel on the wall.
‘The police in Berlin have other priorities,’ Gregori explained. ‘They will not move on this until there is clear proof that this lady, Barbara Hutton, is who we think she is.’
‘We have proof!’ Kortmann slammed his palm down on to the top of the table. ‘We have had the damn proof for years now. More than enough to put this . . . this she-devil away for ever.’
Carlyle wasted a few more seconds pushing random buttons on the AC. He heard the faint sound of something wheezing into life, but it died almost immediately. Giving up, he sat back down and asked, ‘Can I see the evidence that you have?’
Gregori lifted an outsized black leather briefcase from the floor and hauled it on to the table. Opening the top of the bag, he pulled out a small bottle of Evian and handed it to his flagging client. Unscrewing the cap, Kortmann drank deeply while Gregori went on to produce a folder several inches thick, held together by a couple of thick rubber bands. ‘This is all the paperwork that we have brought with us.’
‘I see.’ Carlyle’s heart sank. Bloody Simpson. He would be speaking to her the moment he got out of this room.
Werner Kortmann finished his water, replaced the cap, and set the empty bottle on the table. ‘We were told,’ he said firmly, ‘that you would take us to see the Tosches woman tomorrow.’
‘I see.’
Gregori resumed rooting around in his case. ‘This,’ he said, pulling out an A4-sized photograph and offering it to Carlyle, ‘is Sylvia Tosches.’
Reluctantly, the inspector took the photo. The black and white image showed a painfully thin young woman, lounging against a wall. Dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt, she had cropped black hair and an intense but rather distant stare. It reminded Carlyle of Robert Mapplethorpe’s portraits of Patti Smith. Just Kids indeed. He handed the photograph back to Gregori. ‘A long time ago.’
‘That doesn’t matter,’ Kortmann snorted. ‘She’s still a killer.’
TEN
The inspector finally got rid of the Germans by promising to meet them at their hotel at 9 a.m. sharp the next morning, fudging the issue of a trip to see Hutton on the grounds that he didn’t have the remotest clue on what authority he was supposed to be acting. Retreating up to the third floor of the station, he passed Umar playing on his computer.
The sergeant looked up expectantly. ‘Time to go?’
‘In a minute. I just need to make a quick call.’
‘Check this out.’ Gesturing towards the screen, Umar offered Carlyle a set of headphones.
‘What is it?’ Carlyle squinted at the YouTube video. It looked like Lego.
‘It’s an animation of Eddie Izzard’s Death Star Canteen skit.’
‘Huh?’
‘Darth Vader is trying to get his lunch in the canteen of the Death Star.’ Pointing on the screen, Umar adopted the tone of an adult explaining somethin
g important to his dull five-year-old nephew. ‘But no one knows who he is. It’s brilliant.’
‘You’ve really got way too much time on your hands at the moment,’ his boss observed, ‘haven’t you? Maybe we should find you some traffic duty or something.’
‘Sod off,’ was Umar’s heartfelt response.
Taking the Sylvia Tosches file from under his arm, the inspector contemplated smacking his sergeant firmly across the back of his head with it. Once again, he reluctantly decided against resorting to physical violence on HR-related grounds. Instead, he dropped the papers on to his own desk, where they landed with a dismaying thud. ‘Five minutes.’
‘OK.’ Putting the headphones back on, Umar returned to his screen.
Grabbing the phone on his desk, Carlyle dialled Simpson’s mobile number. She picked up on the fourth ring. Big mistake. ‘Explain to me what the hell we are doing getting involved in this German thing?’ he demanded.
After years of dealing with his moods, the Commander took her underling’s brusqueness in her stride. ‘So I take it that you’ve met with Mr Kortmann?’ The noise in the background suggested that she had already made it to lunch.
‘Yeah. What an arrogant git.’
Over the clatter of the restaurant, he thought he heard her groan. ‘Hold on, let me step outside.’
‘This,’ Umar giggled, staring at his computer screen, ‘is not a game of do you know who the fuck I am?’
‘Shut up,’ Carlyle hissed, ‘I’m on the bloody phone.’
‘What?’ asked the Commander.
‘Nothing, nothing.’ Carlyle quickly ran through his meeting with the two Germans. ‘If their own police have got better things to do, why are we getting involved?’
‘There’s still an arrest warrant out for Tosches,’ Simpson informed him, ‘one of the oldest Interpol Red Notices still outstanding in Europe.’
‘Yeah,’ Carlyle replied sarkily, ‘and remind me, how much did we have to pay out to Hamzeh Kamalvand?’
Simpson bridled at mention of the recently revealed Interpol debacle. A young asylum seeker had been wrongly accused of premeditated murder, destruction of property, and possession of firearms, ammunition and explosives without a permit. After three years in detention, threatened with deportation, a judge had thrown the whole thing out. The Met had been left with a compensation bill of over £2 million.