Acts of Violence (Inspector Carlyle)

by James Craig

  ‘Lucky he made it across the Euston Road then,’ Carlyle said through a mouthful of Fiorentina, ‘without being run over.’

  ‘Da-ad.’

  ‘His owner is an alternative comedian.’ Helen mentioned the name of a guy Carlyle assumed had died years ago. ‘I didn’t even know that he lived in our building.’

  ‘Obviously not making much money,’ Carlyle observed.

  ‘What’s an alternative comedian?’ Alice asked.

  ‘One who isn’t funny,’ both parents chirped in unison.

  Once they had demolished the pizzas and a selection of desserts, Alice dragged Alexander off to Foyles bookstore on Charing Cross Road so that her grandfather could have the honour of buying her the latest L.J. Smith novel. On the TV, Trooping the Colour was still in full swing.

  Helen turned to her husband as he stirred his double macchiato. ‘It was a nice thing that you did for Naomi Taylor.’

  ‘It won’t bring her husband back,’ he said, taking a sip of his coffee. Feeling more than a little full, he signalled to a waitress for the bill.

  ‘No, but still, it was a good idea, to get Chase Race to give her that cash. It will help tide them over for a bit.’

  ‘It’s money out of your pocket though,’ Carlyle said.

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ But the frustration in his wife’s face told another story.

  ‘I’m sure Avalon could have put it to good use.’

  ‘Oh, hell, yes.’ Lifting her cup to her lips, Helen blew on her tea and took a cautious sip. ‘But the Board were never going to accept his money. They thought it was tainted.’

  ‘All money is tainted.’

  Helen grinned. ‘Maybe I should have got you to come and talk to them. Make them see sense.’

  ‘Ha.’ Reaching over, he gave her a peck on the cheek. ‘As if that would have done any good.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Helen sighed, ‘the papers will lap it up. Chase probably gets better PR this way than if he had given the cash to Avalon.’

  ‘It’s a nice picture story,’ Carlyle agreed, ‘rapper with the grieving widow. Charity begins at home and all that. Once Bernie Gilmore starts weaving his magic, we’ll probably discover that Marvin was a big Chase Race fan on the quiet and that Chase is big on law and order.’

  ‘Don’t believe the hype.’

  ‘You gotta fight the power.’

  ‘Seriously though, well done. The money has been put to a good use – even if it wasn’t my good use.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Finishing his coffee, he took the bill from the approaching waitress and glanced at the total, trying not to wince.

  Helen reached into her bag and pulled out her purse. ‘Let me.’

  ‘OK,’ Carlyle shrugged. ‘It’s all from the same pot, anyway.’

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ Helen said, checking the total before dropping her Visa card onto the plate, ‘is what Sammy Baldwin-Lee gets out of all this. I mean, Naomi gets the cash, Chase gets some good PR, but his club still needs some investors.’

  ‘He’s getting a good deal. Chase is going to improve his standards of behaviour and stop lowering the tone at the Racetrack.’

  The waitress appeared with the card reader and Helen typed in her PIN. ‘That simply means his champagne sales will take a hit. It doesn’t seem like such a good deal to me.’

  ‘I also said that I’d introduce him to Dom.’ Dominic Silver was a former copper turned drug dealer. He was also a mate, a family friend for more than thirty years. ‘He always has cash burning a hole in his pocket that he can use for suitable investments.’

  Retrieving her card, Helen waited for the waitress to retreat to the till before commenting. ‘Yeah,’ she said finally, ‘I can see how that would be the case. Cash generation is pretty good in the drugs business. And you don’t have to pay any taxes.’

  ‘Pur-lease,’ Carlyle protested. ‘Dom’s straight these days.’

  Helen shot him a doubtful look.

  ‘I spoke to him not so long ago. His art gallery is doing really well. He’s thinking about opening another one, in Shoreditch.’

  ‘Shoreditch?’ Helen raised an eyebrow. ‘Handy for the hipster trade, I suppose.’

  ‘Art is his thing now,’ Carlyle insisted, ‘but he’s looking for other opportunities as well.’

  Still looking less than convinced, Helen put the card back in her purse and stuffed the purse back in her bag.

  ‘It’s just an introduction,’ he pointed out. ‘All I’m doing is bringing the two of them together. It will be up to them whether they want to take it any further.’

  ‘John Carlyle,’ his wife grinned, ‘mover and shaker.’

  THIRTY-NINE

  His foot had started hurting again. Carlyle grimaced as he hobbled down the road. Turning off Northington Street, his phone began vibrating in his jacket pocket. Checking the number on the screen, he let out a heavy sigh.

  ‘How’s it going, Bernie?’

  ‘Not bad, Inspector – how about you?’

  ‘Fine, fine,’ Carlyle muttered. Ignoring the pain in his foot, he quickened his pace.

  ‘Did your boss enjoy Trooping the Colour?’ Bernie Gilmore asked.

  ‘Dunno. Haven’t spoken to her about it.’

  ‘At least she managed to keep her hat on.’

  That’s £800 of taxpayers’ money well spent, then. ‘You’re not thinking about running the story, are you?’

  ‘No, no, no,’ the journalist reassured him. ‘That’s been and gone. The public only have the attention span of a dying gnat. We must move on.’

  ‘Good.’ Feel free to get to the point.

  ‘I hear,’ said Bernie, ‘that your friend and mine, Seymour Erikssen, has returned to his natural habitat.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘The silly old bugger is back behind bars.’

  ‘Oh, right. Yes, he is.’

  ‘What has he done this time?’

  ‘The usual.’ Carlyle explained the background to the master criminal’s latest arrest. ‘He confessed to a dozen or so burglaries in Bloomsbury.’

  ‘The legend continues,’ Bernie opined. ‘Virginia Woolf will be turning in her grave.’

  ‘Ach. Who’s afraid of her?’ Carlyle replied, pleased with his speedy quip.

  ‘Yes, yes. Very good. But getting back to the matter in hand, I just need a nice quote for my story, from sources close to the investigation. You know the kind of thing.’

  The inspector thought about it for a moment. ‘What did you have in mind?’ Dodging an old man walking his dog, he listened to the journalist outline a few frothy soundbites.

  ‘What do you reckon?’

  ‘Sure,’ Carlyle smiled. ‘That sounds fine. No problem at all. You go for it.’

  Ending the call, the inspector realized that he hadn’t asked Bernie whether he would be interested in doing a feature on Chase Race and Naomi Taylor. Ah well, it could wait.

  With Seymour taking the fall for his little spot of breaking and entering, Carlyle felt comfortable in the familiar surroundings of the back parlour of 46 Doughty Street.

  Looking up at the peaceful visage of Ulrike Meinhof, Carlyle wondered if his father might not be right, after all. The inspector could see how, when the game’s finally over, all life’s hassles just melt away. Knowing that no minor irritant can really stress you out any more must be very liberating.

  His morbid musings were interrupted by his host taking a seat on the sofa opposite.

  ‘It was quite a shock to come home and find that our home had been,’ Barbara Hutton paused, searching for the right word, ‘violated.’

  Automatically, the inspector slipped into pseudo-social worker mode. ‘I can imagine,’ he purred, sitting forward and clasping his hands together. ‘This type of event can be very upsetting. It can take a while for people to get over it, for them to again feel confident and secure in their own home.’

  ‘Yes, I can see that.’ Placing her hands on her knees, Hutton did not appear either insecure o
r lacking in confidence. Poised and relaxed, she was dressed in a pale blue dress underneath a grey cardigan. ‘Derek was furious when we got back. I thought he was going to have a fit.’ For a moment, Carlyle thought she was about to giggle but she quickly got her amusement under control. ‘It was as if all the benefit of the yoga workshop had been undone within five minutes of us getting home. He stomped off back to work wound up as tightly as ever.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘And a Blue Spirit Retreat doesn’t come cheap, I can tell you.’

  ‘No, I suppose it doesn’t,’ the inspector said blandly.

  ‘Now I think I’m going to have to take the poor soul back to Costa Rica again quite soon. Otherwise, he will struggle to make it through the winter.’

  The inspector’s mind turned to his upcoming summer holiday – five days at his mother-in-law’s place in Brighton – and tried not to feel too sorry for himself.

  ‘But I suppose these things happen,’ Hutton said, injecting a little brightness into her voice. ‘And the good news is that I hear that you caught the man responsible?’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’ Carlyle offered up a summary of Seymour Erikssen’s confession.

  ‘Quite a fellow,’ Hutton observed. She glanced around the room, as if doing a quick inventory. ‘The thing is, apart from making a bit of a mess, he didn’t seem to take anything.’

  Ah. Carlyle made a face.

  ‘He went rooting around in Derek’s study. I don’t know what he thought he would find in there.’

  ‘Seymour’s not the sharpest tool in the box,’ Carlyle ventured.

  Hutton looked at him, uncomprehending.

  ‘He’s not very smart,’ the inspector explained. ‘That’s why he gets caught so often.’

  She nodded. ‘Still, you would have thought he would have taken something, wouldn’t you? After all, that was the whole point of the exercise, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Maybe he was disturbed when the police turned up.’

  ‘Ah, yes. That might be it.’ Getting up, Hutton signalled that the conversation had run its course and it was now time for him to leave. ‘Of course, you did warn us of the dangers, Inspector.’

  ‘Just part of the job,’ Carlyle replied, struggling to his feet.

  ‘Thank you for keeping such a close eye on things while we were away.’

  She began ushering him towards the door. ‘And thank you for coming back to check on everything.’

  ‘No problem. Maybe you should look at upgrading your alarm system.’

  ‘That is a very good idea. Derek said the same thing. He was particularly annoyed that the security cameras didn’t work.’

  ‘Technology can be tricky,’ the inspector observed. Reaching the entrance to the hallway, he paused. ‘There was just one other matter.’

  A brittle smile crept across the woman’s face. ‘Yes?’

  He gestured towards the painting. ‘I was just wondering, given your interest in recent German history, whether you knew a woman called Sylvia Tosches?’

  Staring at the front door, Hutton appeared lost in thought. ‘I know of her,’ she said quietly. ‘She was an associate of Baader, Meinhof and the rest. Not a major player, but part of the wider ensemble.’

  The inspector eyed her carefully, waiting to see if she would say more.

  ‘She escaped from police custody, as I recall.’ Hutton restarted along the hall, walking like a deep-sea diver edging along the sea bed. ‘Vanished.’

  ‘That’s a hard trick to pull off.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’ With an excess of concentration showing on her face, Hutton reached for the door handle. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘I had a run-in with her son recently.’

  ‘Oh?’ Opening the door, she took a moment to compose herself. ‘I didn’t know that she had children.’

  ‘No reason that you would.’ Carlyle stepped past her, out onto the street.

  ‘And what was the son doing in London, Inspector?’

  ‘He was looking for his mother.’

  ‘And did he find her?’ Standing on the doorstep, Barbara Hutton wrapped the cardigan tightly around her chest, scanning the heavens as if searching for Divine salvation.

  ‘I’m afraid not.’ Carlyle gave a rueful smile. ‘Some things just don’t get resolved, do they?’

  Table of Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine