Acts of Violence (Inspector Carlyle)

by James Craig

  ‘Turn that crap off,’ Carlyle ordered, pulling open the door and climbing into the back seat. If nothing else, however, the music reminded him of his business with Mr Chase Race. Helen had yet to come good on her promise to set up a meeting. He sent a quick text, chivvying her along, before turning his attention back to the vehicle’s various shortcomings: ‘Is this the only bloody car we can get?’

  ‘ ’fraid so,’ Gapper shrugged. He pointed to the sat nav that had been installed on the dashboard since their last adventure. ‘At least they’ve given us that.’

  ‘Great. Not exactly the bloody Sweeney, is it?’

  Looking in the rear-view mirror, Gapper gave him a mystified look.

  ‘Never mind.’

  ‘Look on the bright side,’ said Elmhirst cheerily in the front seat, as she pulled on her seatbelt. ‘At least we’ll blend in with the locals.’

  ‘I don’t want to blend in,’ the inspector growled as Gapper slowly edged out of the garage, heading towards Charing Cross Road.

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ Elmhirst chirped.

  Her good humour was starting to grate. Carlyle wished he had Roche, or even Umar, joining him on the trip. He rested his head on the window and closed his eyes. If nothing else, at least he could catch up on his rest while they headed back to the provinces.

  In the event, the inspector found it impossible to sleep in the back of the car. Inevitably, the traffic was appalling and it was almost an hour before they had made it past Archway. Feeling a little sick, he opened the window a couple of inches, in order to let in some fresh fumes. Seeing that he was awake, Elmhirst passed a thin A4 manila envelope over her shoulder.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked suspiciously.

  ‘My homework,’ she smirked. ‘What I was busy finding out while you were AWOL.’

  ‘I wasn’t AWOL,’ Carlyle groused. Tearing open the envelope, he pulled out an A5 black and white photograph and two sheets of A4 paper, photocopies of some kind of official forms, written in German. He held up the picture. The headshot was maybe ten or even more years old, the face had fewer lines and the hair was longer, but it was immediately identifiable.

  ‘Sebastian Gregori.’

  Elmhirst shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘That is the guy who pretended to be Gregori. His actual name is Marcus Popp. The real Gregori is still in Port Elizabeth. When his boss got hold of him last night, he was completely unaware that Popp had stolen his identity.’

  ‘So who is Popp? Why is he playing this game? And how did you manage to identify him?’

  ‘The German police made the ID.’ The sergeant’s grin grew wider. ‘He was caught on CCTV getting on a flight to London with Kortmann. He was on some kind of a watchlist.’

  ‘Obviously a very effective one, if no one actually stopped him.’

  Elmhirst shrugged. ‘These things happen. Not everyone gets stopped all the time, even if they do get flagged. Popp travelled to London on his own passport. Not that Werner Kortmann knew that. He would have thought Popp was Gregori.’

  ‘One thing at a time.’ Carlyle held up a hand. It was all getting very complicated. He wanted to line up all the bits of information and see if they added up to a vaguely coherent story. ‘Why was Mr Popp on a watchlist?’

  ‘Marcus has been a person of interest to the police for a long time. Abandoned by his mother as a baby, he was in and out of care homes until he was adopted by the Popp family when he was nine. Hats off to them, they stuck at it, although he was a difficult child. First arrest at eleven, for shoplifting, then a string of petty crimes; he crashed a stolen car when he was thirteen.’

  ‘So far, so boring,’ Carlyle yawned.

  ‘He was bright though. Ended up going to university in Berlin. Became a student activist, racked up another four convictions, including one for arson and one for GBH. Then he dropped out of sight. I spoke to the Berlin police. They were surprised he had turned up in London.’

  ‘So why did he hoodwink poor old Kortmann and pretend to be a private eye?’

  ‘Because,’ Elmhirst said triumphantly, finally playing her joker, ‘he wants to find his mother – Sylvia Tosches.’

  Carlyle slumped back in his seat. ‘You are kidding me.’

  ‘No.’ The sergeant reached into her bag and pulled out a bright red apple. ‘That’s what the papers in the envelope say.’

  The inspector lifted one of the closely typed forms to his face. It was still in German. He was still none the wiser.

  ‘He’s looking for his mum,’ Elmhirst repeated.

  ‘His mum the terrorist,’ Carlyle said.

  ‘She’s still his mother.’

  ‘OK, so he’s looking for his dear old ma. The question is, why?’

  ‘Because he’s her son.’ Taking a large bite out of the apple, the sergeant watched the Astra get overtaken by a minibus full of football fans. Clocking Elmhirst, they treated her to a series of obscene gestures as they edged past in the outside lane. As they pulled in front of the Astra, she flipped them the finger and was rewarded by an unflinching view of the chalky cheeks of one of the fat bastards in the back row. Elmhirst and Gapper giggled in unison, much to the inspector’s irritation.

  ‘For Pete’s sake.’ He felt like a schoolteacher on a fifth-form school trip.

  Letting the minibus accelerate way from them, Gapper kept his eyes on the road. Elmhirst took another bite of her apple. ‘People are funny when it comes to these type of things. Maybe he wants a tearful reunion or something?’

  ‘He’s not making much of a job of it, anyway.’

  Devouring the apple core, Elmhirst dropped the stalk back into her bag. ‘What’s happened to the woman, by the way – the one that Kortmann thought was really Tosches?’

  ‘Barbara Hutton?’ Carlyle sniffed. ‘There’s still no sign of her or her husband.’ Conscious that his ‘to do’ list was getting ever longer, he made a mental note to check in with the daughter when they got back to London. ‘They’ll turn up.’

  ‘In Paraguay,’ Elmhirst ventured. ‘In twenty years’ time, or something.’

  ‘That was the Nazis, who fled to Latin America,’ Carlyle corrected her. ‘Tosches was a leftie.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘You know what I mean.’

  Not really, he thought coolly. Turning his attention to Gapper, he gestured at the road in front of them. ‘How far away are we from this place, Joel?’

  The driver looked at the sat nav. ‘Should be about another forty minutes, I reckon.’

  Elmhirst looked round at him expectantly. ‘So what’s the plan when we get there, boss?’

  Good question, Carlyle thought, saying aloud: ‘I’m working on it.’

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Letting the car coast to a halt at the side of the road, Gapper switched off the headlights. For several moments, the three of them sat in silence.

  ‘Is this it?’ Carlyle stared out into the darkness. ‘There’s nothing here.’

  The driver gestured down the single-lane road and into the night. ‘According to the sat nav, it is 750 metres further on.’

  ‘What is?’ the inspector asked with a sense of foreboding. He’d had more than his fill of pastoral adventures the last time around.

  ‘It’s a housing development called Voisin Towers,’ Elmhirst explained.

  ‘But it’s in the middle of nowhere,’ Carlyle argued. ‘You can even see the stars in the sky.’

  ‘It was supposed to be elegant living for commuters,’ the sergeant continued, ‘a proposed total of 350 units – 230 flats and 120 houses – at prices of up to £1.8 million.’

  ‘Nearly two million quid? Out here?’ Carlyle made a disgusted sound. ‘Bloody hell, those are almost London prices.’

  ‘You know what it’s like with the housing market,’ Elmhirst said. ‘Everyone talks it up and up – and then it crashes.’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose so.’ Carlyle gave silent thanks to his late father-in-law, who had conveniently keeled o
ver, leaving Helen a small but cosy ex-council flat in Covent Garden. If it wasn’t for that, they would have probably ended up living miles away from the centre of the city.

  ‘The developer went bust in the crash. One day, everyone was working away as normal and the next they just never came back. The place is owned by a consortium of banks. It was number six on a list of the top fifty worst speculative developments in the UK. No one thinks it will ever be finished. The council is trying to get it demolished and returned to green fields, but the banks don’t want to pay the twenty million that it is expected to cost. The whole thing is a bit of a mess, really.’

  ‘You don’t say. But how did they get planning permission in the first place? Aren’t they supposed to protect the Green Belt from this sort of thing?’

  ‘There’s an investigation into that, apparently. The local paper ran a campaign.’ Releasing her seatbelt, Elmhirst opened the door and got out of the car, while the inspector struggled out of the back of the Astra. Gapper, who seemed perfectly happy to stay behind the wheel, did not move.

  Dressed in a pair of skinny jeans, black Converse All Stars and a black leather biker’s jacket at least two sizes too big for her, the sergeant looked like one of the cool teenagers on the way to the village disco. Stuffing her hand in her pockets, she set off along the gentle incline. The inspector, definitely not one of the cool kids, lagged a respectful distance behind.

  After a couple of minutes, Elmhirst came to a stop. Once Carlyle had caught up, she pointed at the vaguest of shapes in the distance. Squinting, the inspector could make out a feeble splash of light coming from one of them.

  ‘That’s Voisin Towers,’ she told him. ‘Kortmann’s credit card was used yesterday at a petrol station three miles down the road. The CCTV shows that it was used by Gregori, aka Popp.’

  ‘Not very clever,’ Carlyle murmured, his mind already focusing on the shoeing that was going to be coming Marcus Popp’s way once he caught up with him.

  ‘He’s obviously under a lot of stress.’

  ‘We’re all under a lot of stress.’ He glanced back at the Astra. Gapper was happily ensconced inside, eating a Mars Bar and reading a newspaper; he didn’t look like he was under any stress at all.

  ‘With his mum and everything,’ Elmhirst ventured, ‘Marcus is under more stress than most.’

  ‘We don’t even know if she is his mum,’ Carlyle reminded her. ‘In fact, the more I understand about both of these two comedians, Popp and Kortmann, the less likely I am to believe anything that comes out of their respective mouths. I’m coming to the conclusion that poor old Barbara Hutton is nothing more than a posh Bloomsbury housewife with a rather unappealing husband.’

  ‘But we have to confirm that.’

  ‘Yes, we have to confirm that.’ Fumbling in his jacket pocket, Carlyle pulled out his glasses, slipped them on and scanned the horizon. Quickly deciding that the glasses weren’t helping him see any better, he put them back in his pocket. ‘So, to recap, Popp used the credit card not far from here.’

  ‘We got a copy of the receipt for his shopping: battery-operated lamps, blankets, a gas stove – like he was going camping or something.’

  Once again, Carlyle peered into the distance. ‘Which brought us to this place.’

  ‘Which brought us to this place,’ she echoed.

  ‘Because it’s not as if there are any other places they could go camping.’

  ‘He doesn’t have a tent,’ Elmhirst said. ‘At least, not as far as we know.’

  ‘Jesus. It’s all a bit thin.’

  ‘Simpson was very keen that we check it out,’ Elmhirst told him.

  ‘Yes, she was, wasn’t she? Very keen indeed.’

  ‘Maybe she knows something that we don’t.’

  ‘Perhaps. But that’s not really her style. The Commander is usually quite open. In my experience, she is very much a team player.’

  Elmhirst grinned. ‘You like her, don’t you?’

  ‘We work well together,’ was all Carlyle would concede before he resumed his stroll down the road. ‘For whatever reason, she wants the place checked out, so I suppose we’d better go down there and get on with it.’

  The two of them approached the ghost estate at a gentle pace, each lost in their own thoughts. For no apparent reason, Carlyle’s mind had turned to thoughts of 1980s music in general and Echo & the Bunnymen in particular. The chorus of ‘Villiers Terrace’ started playing on a loop in his head, growing in intensity with each repetition until he finally expelled it. Good band, he thought. They should have been more successful than they were. He wondered if, like everyone else, they had re-formed in recent years, to try and make some money on the nostalgia circuit. He vowed to find out; maybe he could persuade Alice to go to a gig with him.

  By the time they passed a sign warning trespassers that they would be prosecuted, the inspector realized that he had long since lost sight of the flickering light that had been apparent when they had first left the car. From behind an overgrown hedge, the partially built properties stood in sullen silence, illuminated only by the light of a half-moon. Carlyle came to a halt at the main entrance, trying to gauge the size of the overall site. How long will it take me to search this place? he wondered. With the possibility of another debacle looming large, he glanced at the sergeant.

  ‘A hundred and something acres,’ Elmhirst said, reading his mind.

  None the wiser, Carlyle nodded. ‘You wait here and I’ll go and see what I can find.’

  ‘That’s a lot of ground for one person to cover.’

  Carlyle grinned. ‘I don’t want us both to get lost.’

  ‘OK,’ the sergeant nodded. ‘Don’t be too long though.’

  ‘If I’m not back in an hour, go and get Gapper.’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘And remember, if things get out of hand again and there’s a problem you two can’t deal with, your first call is to Simpson. Leave the local plod out of this. They don’t even know we’re here.’ Registering her confused look, he added, ‘We’re not exactly playing this one by the book, are we?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘So let’s try and get in and out without anyone noticing.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Good . . .’ he was just about to say girl, then thought better of it. No need to make his dinosaur tendencies any more apparent than was absolutely necessary. It was just that she was so terribly young; it brought out the worst in him in so many ways.

  The sergeant looked at him solemnly, as if anticipating further pearls of wisdom.

  ‘Remember,’ the inspector joked, keen not to disappoint, ‘this is the how not to do it module of your training.’

  ‘I realize that,’ Elmhirst smiled patronizingly. ‘In fact, I think that’s one of the main reasons why Commander Simpson sent me to work with you in the first place.’

  ‘What?’ said Carlyle, suddenly affronted. ‘So that I could show you how to mess things up?’

  ‘No, no,’ she corrected him, ‘more to show me that there is still some leeway for independent action by mid-ranking officers within the often confusing and sometimes conflicting parameters set down by the organization for choosing a particular course of action in different circumstances.’

  Bamboozled by the gobbledygook, he frowned. ‘Eh?’

  ‘I think the Commander wants me to understand that you can’t always hide behind the rule book and Health & Safety. Sometimes you have to simply trust your own judgement.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ said Carlyle, somewhat mollified by her simpler explanation.

  ‘The Commander described you as “flexible, if occasionally reckless”.’

  We-ell. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’

  ‘That’s up to you.’ Reaching forward, she placed a hand on his shoulder, making him jump. ‘Just remember, however, that this is not the time to be reckless. Apart from everything else, we have to assume that Marcus Popp is armed.’

  ‘But not very dangerous,’ Ca
rlyle quipped.

  ‘That sounds like reckless talk to me. He’s got a weapon, for heaven’s sake.’

  ‘I’m not worried about that,’ Carlyle responded, stepping smartly away from her grasp. ‘The gun is not going to be a factor here.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ she scolded.

  ‘Look,’ he gestured towards the rotting buildings behind him, ‘if the two of them are holed up in this place, it really is game over. If he’s sitting here, with no idea about what to do with Kortmann, Popp has basically run out of ideas – assuming he ever had any in the first place.’

  ‘That’s a bit of an assumption.’

  ‘Always assume,’ Carlyle retorted. ‘You’ve always got to take an informed view, based on your experience. That’s what we’re paid to do, after all.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Standing here, right now, we have to ask certain questions. What the hell’s Popp doing way out here? What’s that got to do with finding his mother? What does he want to do next?’ Elmhirst started to say something, but he cut her off. ‘The answer to each of the above is “nothing”. If he didn’t have a screw loose at the start of this whole escapade, he’s certainly got one loose now. Sitting on the damp concrete, worrying about his piles, he’s just waiting to be caught.’

  ‘That’s a lot of assumptions.’

  ‘That’s what being flexible is all about.’

  ‘And if they’re not here?’

  ‘If they’re not, we go home and I’ll have a moan at Simpson in the morning.’

  Hands on hips, Elmhirst changed tack. ‘Maybe you should have brought a gun.’

  The inspector was adamant. ‘I don’t like guns. Anyway, I’m not authorized to carry one. I’ve never shot a gun in my life.’ If those first two statements were true, the last was an outright lie. Carlyle knew only too well what it felt like to pull the trigger with the blood pounding in his ears. But that was another time, another place; an operation that was so far off piste that none of his colleagues in the Met could ever know about it.