by James Craig
He found Roche upstairs, typing up her report. ‘I just popped in downstairs to see Mr Dyer,’ he grinned.
‘Uh-huh,’ she said, not looking up.
‘I see you’re making a habit of losing your temper.’
Roche stopped typing and gave him a hard stare. ‘I didn’t lay a finger on him,’ she said. ‘He tripped up while trying to flee arrest.’ She resumed her typing, hitting the keys a bit harder this time.
Carlyle couldn’t resist winding her up a little more. ‘That’s not what Colin says.’
Tap, tap, tap. ‘Colin is a thief and a fucking liar.’ Tap, tap, tap. ‘Not to mention a murder suspect.’ Tap, tap, tap. ‘He also broke the nose of one of the constables.’
‘Yes, yes.’ Carlyle held his hands up in mock surrender. He pulled up a chair and sat down. ‘Where’s the mother?’
‘We didn’t have the space, so she was taken to Shoreditch.’
Carlyle raised an eyebrow.
Roche shrugged. ‘That’s where they took her. We’ll get a statement and hold her while the flat gets searched.’
‘What’s she like?’
Roche scratched her head. ‘The usual white-trash nightmare. Exactly what you would expect from Colin’s mum.’
‘I told him he could have fifteen minutes with the lawyer and then we want him to talk. This is first and foremost a murder investigation and there is no way he is just going to sit there and deny everything.’
Roche nodded. ‘Are we going to charge him if he tries to tough it out?’
Carlyle hadn’t thought about that. ‘Yes.’
The phone on her desk started ringing and she immediately picked up the handset. ‘Yes, fine. Take him down. I will be there in a few minutes. Thanks.’ She put down the phone and looked at Carlyle. ‘That was the front desk. Dyer’s lawyer is here.’
‘It’s a guy called Kelvin Jenkins. Know him?’
Roche shook her head.
‘Kelvin’s a little gobshite. Middle-aged journeyman, you know the type.’
‘A middle-aged journeyman?’ Roche laughed. ‘You mean a bit like you?’
‘Ha fucking ha,’ Carlyle deadpanned. ‘Thank you very much.’
Roche at least had the good grace to seem a little embarrassed at the rather flat joke. ‘Sorry.’
‘Anyway, he’s nothing to worry about but he does like the sound of his own voice. He can drag things out forever if you let him, so don’t let him. Let me know how it goes. I need to get started on the Leyne investigation.’
‘I heard about that,’ Roche said. ‘Messy.’
‘Not really,’ Carlyle quipped. ‘The professor had the good sense to fall in the pool. Clean that out and the place can go straight on the market.’
Roche tutted. ‘You know what I mean. What do you think happened?’
Carlyle sighed. ‘What happened is that someone shot him twice in the chest. Why? No idea.’
A not my problem look drifted across Roche’s face and she returned to her typing. Taking the hint, he sloped off to pursue his enquiries about the dead man.
TWENTY
Courtesy of Wikipedia, it took Carlyle less than ten minutes to bone up on Roger William Leyne, Fellow of the Royal Society and Professor of Culture and Ethics at the London School of Economics. In his mid- fifties, Leyne had an impressive list of academic jobs on his CV. He also had three marriages under his belt, resulting in five children. Armed with this knowledge, Carlyle strolled out of the station and headed east along the Strand. Five minutes later, he was standing on the Aldwych, looking up Houghton Street towards the LSE’s main entrance. Knots of students wandered along the pedestrianized thoroughfare, heading to and from lectures or generally just mooching about. Beneath the School’s motto, rerum cognoscere causas – to know the causes of things – he skipped up the steps and headed inside.
Sitting under the logo of an industrious beaver, a bored receptionist eyed him suspiciously as he approached.
Carlyle couldn’t be bothered to give her a smile. ‘I am here to see Professor Webb.’
The young woman tapped on her computer. ‘The Professor is giving a lecture at the moment,’ she said, talking to the screen.
Carlyle looked at his watch. It was twenty to the hour. Presumably he wouldn’t have to wait long. ‘Where is the lecture taking place?’ he asked, keeping the irritation from his voice.
She hesitated, reluctant to give up any more information.
Not wishing to cause the Professor any embarrassment, Carlyle kept his ID in his pocket. He gave the girl a hard stare. Finally she glanced back at the screen. ‘It’s in the New Theatre,’ she pointed outside, ‘in the East Building, across the street.’
‘Thank you,’ said Carlyle, already halfway to the door.
A notice pinned next to the door informed the inspector that the subject of the lecture was Religion and Pluralism. Slipping inside, he took a seat on the otherwise empty back row. It was warm in the theatre and lethargy descended on him almost immediately. He tried to shake his head clear and scanned the room. The theatre, which he guessed could take maybe 400 people, appeared barely 10 per cent full. Groups of tragically young-looking students were scattered across the front rows, with only a few antisocial types sitting further back. On a platform raised six inches off the floor, Professor Webb spoke with the aid of a lapel mike, which gave her voice a slightly distorted quality.
‘. . . to this day,’ she said slowly, with the air of a practised performer, ‘there is an active debate about religion’s ability to withstand a plurality of ideas.’
Even at this distance, he could see that the Professor was a striking woman. Easily six foot tall, with a mop of snow-white hair, she paced the stage, eyeing her students with piercing grey eyes as she moved steadily through her lecture without the aid of a script. Even so, to Carlyle’s ear, her words quickly became just background noise. The clock on the wall behind her head showed that it was not yet quite ten to the hour and Carlyle had to clamp tight his jaw in order to stifle a yawn. Closing his eyes, he let his mind wander.
‘Excuse me, young man?’
Slowly, Carlyle became aware, first of his own snoring, then of someone poking him on the arm. Pushing himself up in the chair, he shook himself awake and met Professor Webb’s stern gaze. ‘Ah . . .’ he said, embarrassed.
‘What are you doing,’ she asked sharply, ‘asleep in my lecture?’ A couple of female students sniggered as they walked past.
Carlyle felt himself blush. ‘Well, em . . .’
‘I think that you have to leave now, or I will be forced to call Security.’ As if on cue, a uniformed guard appeared in the doorway. Webb signalled the way out.
Not yet sure whether he was more irritated with his own sleepiness or Webb’s haughtiness, Carlyle got to his feet and held up a hand. The bouncer took a threatening step forward. With his free hand, Carlyle fumbled in his pocket. He managed to pull out his ID before facing the ignominy of getting his collar felt.
Webb reached for the spectacles resting on the top of her head. ‘Good heavens,’ she said with an amused smile. ‘A sleeping policeman!’
‘Sorry.’
The smile widened. ‘Am I under arrest, Inspector?’
‘Not at all,’ Carlyle smiled, recovering a little graciousness, ‘but I do need to speak with you quite urgently.’ He glanced at the guard. ‘In private.’
‘Yes, yes, of course.’ Webb addressed the guard. ‘Thank you, Jonathan, I think we’ll be fine now.’ As the guard took his leave, Webb handed Carlyle the pile of books she had been carrying. ‘Here, you can carry these for me,’ she said, leading him out of the theatre, ‘and we can go and get a drink.’
Webb had her office on the tenth floor of the imaginatively named Tower One on Clement’s Inn. Showing Carlyle inside, she gestured to a bookcase by the window. ‘Just drop the books over there, thanks, and make yourself at home.’
Putting the books down, he took in the panorama of the Royal Courts of Justice on the other
side of the road. ‘Nice view.’
‘Isn’t it,’ Webb agreed, dropping into the chair behind her desk. ‘I think it’s the least I deserve after almost thirty years of living in a cupboard in the Old Building. They moved us here three years ago. It’s heaven.’ Pulling open a desk drawer, she took out a bottle of whisky and a couple of shot glasses.
Carlyle gave her a quizzical look.
Webb shrugged. ‘After that lot, I need a little something. When you’ve been giving the same lecture for more than a quarter of a century you inevitably need some form of artificial stimulation.’
‘What is it?’
‘Glenfarclas. A twenty-one-year-old Highland single malt.’ She handed him the bottle to inspect. ‘Very nice.’
Turning the bottle in his hand, Carlyle read the back label: A single malt with intense aromas of tropical fruit, almonds, nutmeg, citrus and vanilla . . . to the end. Nodding appreciatively, he handed the bottle back. ‘It looks very nice, but I’m afraid I’ll have to pass.’
Pulling out the cork, she gave him a sly look. ‘Does that mean you are on duty?’
‘Sadly,’ Carlyle replied with a wry smile.
‘Shame.’
Carlyle watched enviously as Webb poured herself a generous measure.
‘So,’ she said, placing the glass on the desk without taking a sip, ‘what is it you want to talk about?’
‘Roger Leyne.’
Webb rolled her eyes. ‘I see.’
‘You’re not a fan?’
Webb shrugged. ‘The LSE likes to think of itself as “the place where the world comes to think”, which is fair enough. After all, we are one of the foremost social science universities in the world, alongside Harvard, Berkeley and Stanford. In our world, Roger Leyne is something of a name. Not necessarily an A-lister like Dawkins, you understand, but a draw for some of our students.’
‘But—’
‘Professor Leyne isn’t really an academic any more. For a long time, I’ve felt that he’s been too focused on developing his own career to give his students the time and attention that they deserve.’
‘So you weren’t surprised when he launched his campaign to have the Pope arrested?’
‘Is this what your visit is about?’ Picking up her glass, she looked at him closely. ‘You’re not a secret policeman are you, Inspector?’
‘Not at all,’ Carlyle smiled. ‘I’m just a regular member of the Met. Professor Leyne was found dead this morning.’
Webb’s eyes widened as she took her first slug of whisky. ‘Do I need to supply you with an alibi?’
Carlyle chuckled. ‘No. Not at the moment, anyway. I just wanted to talk to you about the type of man he was.’
‘And who his enemies were?’
‘Quite.’
Webb gave him a grim smile. ‘Roger Leyne was a shallow and vain man, Inspector. I should imagine that he had plenty of enemies.’
Carlyle nodded and waited for her to continue.
‘He wanted to be the next Richard Dawkins, the new champion of rationalism. He wanted the book contracts and the lecture tours and all the side benefits that come with being a minor celebrity, the party invitations, the groupies and so on.’
Carlyle raised an eyebrow. ‘Groupies?’
Webb laughed. ‘Yes, I know. But to the extent that Leyne took an interest in his students, he focused on the attractive females. In many ways, he was a caricature of the louche academic.’
‘So his death may have been a domestic incident of one sort or another?’
She gave him a funny look. ‘Isn’t that the case in most of these type of . . . situations, Inspector?’
‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘We will always take a close look at friends and family in any murder investigation.’
‘That will keep you busy,’ she said. ‘Roger had three wives and God knows how many children, of all different ages. Then there were the various girlfriends and—’
‘But I can’t ignore the political angle to all this,’ he interjected.
Webb drained her glass. ‘Political?’ Pouring herself another generous measure, she waved the bottle at Carlyle.
Reluctantly, he raised a hand to signal that he still couldn’t partake. ‘I mean his opposition to the Catholic Church and his campaign to have the Pope arrested when he visits the UK.’
‘Hah!’ Webb snorted. ‘Such ridiculous posturing.’
‘By whom?’
‘By Roger, of course.’
‘Presumably,’ Carlyle said evenly, ‘it was something that he took seriously.’
‘Roger didn’t take anything seriously, other than perhaps maintaining his levels of sexual conquest.’ She looked at him, added: ‘Anyway, what is religion?’
Knowing that he was not supposed to provide any kind of answer, Carlyle waited.
‘I like to use the term “belief in the absence of data”. There is absolutely no scientific proof that God exists, nor can He, or She, be defined. People who have faith simply believe in God. You might as well believe in fairies at the bottom of your garden. What is the point of trying to argue with people like that?’
‘That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take a stand against child abuse.’
‘No, no, of course not. But Roger couldn’t have cared less about the Church or about the Pope. And when you talk about taking advantage of children, some of his conquests were fairly, well, borderline.’
‘I see.’
‘No, Inspector, this was just the particular bandwagon that Roger had chosen to jump upon. The whole thing was just another vehicle for self-promotion. He liked to call it “feeding the media machine”. It had nothing to do with justice, it was all about his ego.’
‘That may be the case, but it is still a line of enquiry that I have to pursue.’
Webb put down her glass and gave him a stern look. ‘Inspector, the Catholic Church has been going for hundreds of years. There have been two hundred and sixty-six Popes. This one, by the way, is only the fifty-fifth who is not Italian. He is also the oldest person to have been elected Pope since Clement XII in 1730 which is, perhaps, a factor in the current mess. Nevertheless, the Church is still, arguably, the most successful institution in the history of the world, and its senior members can get away with just about anything. Why would they care two hoots about a nobody like Roger Leyne?’
‘He must have caused some concerns ahead of the Papal visit.’
‘I very much doubt it,’ Webb replied. ‘They’ve got far bigger things to worry about.’
‘Oh?’
‘The Pope,’ said Webb, slipping into lecture mode, ‘advocates strict orthodoxy. He sees the Church as a citadel of truth and righteousness against the realms of atheism and deceit. Britain’s Catholics are rather more liberal, and enthusiasm for his visit is, by all accounts, lukewarm at best. Of course, the child-abuse scandals have not helped either. Some relatively senior people in the Vatican, meanwhile, try to argue that it is a problem caused by gays.’
Carlyle frowned. ‘How do you mean?’
Webb laughed. ‘Cardinal Ignazio Acerbis, the Vatican Secretary of State, one of the Pope’s most senior advisers, claimed last year that psychiatrists have demonstrated that there is no relationship between celibacy and paedophilia, but that there is a relationship between homosexuality and paedophilia.’
Carlyle felt a familiar anger rising in his throat. He had a brief flashback to his performance with Father McGowan in the basement of the police station. ‘These people . . .’ he ground out.
Webb took another mouthful of Scotch and sighed appreciatively. ‘You have to understand the mindset, Inspector. If you are the Pope, you see yourself as a descendant of the Apostle Peter.’
Carlyle, ever the happy, ignorant, atheist, stifled a yawn.
‘Catholicism has set itself up as the Church Christ intended to build. This allows it to claim a monopoly of the deepest truths of humanity and the universe.’
‘Jesus!’ Carlyle mumbled.
‘Quite.’
Webb waved a hand airily in front of her face. ‘This place can be annoying at times but we have a simple and decent goal, which is to improve society and to understand the causes of things.’ Leaning forward, she gave Carlyle the kind of stern look that had doubtless put the fear of God into many a poor undergraduate over the years. ‘The LSE has always been about engagement with the wider world. In that sense, we are an institution completely at odds with the ways of the Church.’
Carlyle said nothing, happy to let the Professor say her piece.
‘There is an old joke,’ Webb continued, ‘that says everything is foreign policy to the Vatican. It exists to do three things: maintain the primacy of the Pope, define and sustain doctrine, and appoint bishops. The bishops do the rest. There is a widespread view that civil authority must be kept out of Church affairs, however criminal they might be. Obsolete canon law means that the Vatican appears in grave breach of the convention on the right of the child, and an enemy of human rights. This leads to lots of difficult questions. Is the Pope legally liable for the system that has allowed terrible crimes to go unpunished? Should the Holy See continue to enjoy immunity from prosecution in matters such as this?’ Finally, she saw the glazed expression on Carlyle’s face and eased off on the rhetoric. ‘You see what a difficult situation it is.’
‘Yes,’ he lied.
‘So you can also see,’ Webb chuckled, ‘why Roger Leyne doesn’t really feature as a major player in this holy mess.’
Carlyle suddenly felt hugely weary.