London Calling

by James Craig

  The note had not been a joke.

  EIGHT

  Cambridge University, June 1984

  Life is short, but the day is long.

  There were signs. Signs everywhere. It was the hundred and sixty-ninth day of the year. It was one hundred and sixty-nine years to the day since the English had triumphed at Waterloo. It was a time for history. A time for destiny. And, above all, a time for pain.

  In the here and now, it was the end of the summer term, the end of the academic year and the end of life at university. The big, wide world was out there waiting for them, ready to shower them with money, status and power. Of course, they would make it wait until they were damn well ready. That was their right. They had been taught from birth that the world waits for gentlemen, not the other way round.

  Liberty was being traded for power. All of this would be missed.

  The celebrations had lasted for more than thirty hours now, an endless tour of bars and parties, running into the same people again and again. Now, drawing deep on their second wind, they had returned to his rooms for the unspoken, much anticipated finale.

  The club was in session.

  It had started to rain. A heavy summer downpour at the end of a baking day was accompanied by the rumble of distant thunder. The weather only added to the fin de siècle feel of it all. They were washing away the past, preparing the ground for the future. Sad, weary, but expectant.

  The sight laid out before him was like a porno version of Tom Brown’s Schooldays directed by Tinto Brass – less Flashman, more Fleshman. The Italian smut king’s Caligula had pride of place in his porn collection in one corner of the room: a stack of quality VHS tapes almost five feet high that had been accumulated over the years. On the television screen next to them, Salon Kitty played silently to the sound of ‘She Works Hard For The Money’ by Donna Summer coming out of his fantastically expensive Bang & Olufsen Beocenter stereo system.

  All eyes were fixed on a space of about eight feet by four that had been cleared in the centre of the room and on the body that lay there, face down. The atmosphere was thick with the clashing scents of body odour, excrement, semen and cannabis. Despite opening all the windows, the blue smoke that had settled around head height was still thick enough to effectively obscure the print of Hockney’s Mulholland Drive on the far wall. Someone had crashed through a glass coffee table, the remains of which had been pushed into a corner. Empty champagne and Absolut vodka bottles littered the floor. A half-eaten pizza was left peeking out from under the sofa.

  Their quarry was three years in the grooming. The networking, the lobbying, the oiling, it had all led up to this night. Now, he would be three hours, three minutes, in the destroying. Their pretty boy Icarus, flying too close to the sun. Now he had to fall to earth, to reclaim his place among the peasants. To realise that he had been flying too high.

  The day is short, but life is long.

  A mini-roar went up as he stepped forward, feeling like a gladiator entering the arena, confident of victory, assured of respect. Preliminaries over, he pushed the prostrate Icarus’ legs apart, lent forward and eased his way inside. Gently at first, a little tentatively, and then with more confidence and some swagger, he began thrusting. His breathing soon synchronised with that of the other man as he found his rhythm. Feeling a response beneath him, he let his speed increase. This was going to be good. Better than good. This was going to be … perfection.

  Sine metu. Without fear.

  Reaching down for Icarus’ penis, which was warm, velvety and pleasingly firm, he made a half-hearted attempt to bring him to climax, which did not survive the first jeers of the audience. Ignoring the catcalls, he tossed back his majestic black mane and felt the sweat beading on his forehead. His mouth was dry. His heart felt as if it could jump out of his chest. He sensed every beat of it as if it could be his last. He had to remember to breathe in and breathe out. The combination of Krug, Lebanese Gold and amyl nitrite coursing through his system helped relax him and further heightened the sense of satisfaction. He knew he was grinning madly, and he couldn’t stop. This was what he had always wanted. This was where he was supposed to be. At the centre of things. In charge. On top. Going deeper, where he no longer had to contemplate his actions.

  This was being, not doing.

  Now it was just about the two of them. Everything else had dissolved into nothingness. Duran Duran, blaring out ‘The Reflex’ from the tape machine on the stereo, sounded as if they had retreated far into the upper atmosphere, along with the laughter and cheers of the others watching. The shining semi-darkness of the room was left far behind as he floated out of his body and looked down on the indistinguishable mass he had become.

  A pained whimper from below brought him back to something approaching consciousness. Trapped wind escaped from the boy’s anus like a spectacular fart, prompting more laughter from the surrounding gloom. The smell of shit rising from his conquest disgusted and excited him. It smelt of fear. Of corruption. Of defeat. He lent forward and breathed in deeply.

  He tickled the boy’s balls, pushing down on the back of his neck with his forearm at the same time. He had never felt this hard, or this strong, or this much in control. This was it, his John Travolta moment.

  He was Tony Manero.

  He had read somewhere that filming Saturday Night Fever had been such a buzz for Travolta that when he finished he wanted to head right out and fuck Jane Fonda, at that time the biggest sex symbol in the world. He knew the feeling. But she was getting on a bit now, so bring on Helen Mirren. For that matter, bring on Kathleen Turner. Bring them both on. And all the rest. Bring them all on. Line them up into the night and lay them down in front of him. At that moment, there was not a single person in the world that he did not want to fuck; to fuck them right apart.

  He could go on forever. He wanted to go on for ever.

  ‘Get on with it!’ shouted a drunken voice.

  Someone else giggled. ‘Others are waiting, you know!’

  ‘Hurry up!’

  Something bounced off his back. A bottle of beer was poured over his head.

  ‘He’s fucking for England!’

  ‘It’s the rape of Lucretia … part two.’

  ‘I think he’s enjoying it too much.’

  ‘Fucking pervert.’

  ‘Come on you … you poofter!’

  More giggles. ‘Use it or lose it!’

  It was time to concentrate. To cross the finish line, get it done. Holding on for dear life, he had to force himself still further inside his new-found soul mate, in search of that twitch in the groin that told you there was no way back. The moment when you were ready to shoot your load, and would have happily fucked a rabid pit bull to make it happen. A few more thrusts and he found it. He grunted and let go. Stars exploded before his eyes and behind his brain. The cheering reached a crescendo. He collapsed into one final caress, before various hands dragged him away.

  Crawling on to a couch in a corner of the room, he closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of the next man taking his turn. His dick, smeared with shit, was still throbbing. He lovingly squeezed it with his right hand and felt the blood pumping through it. Gently caressing it, he felt it begin to harden again before letting it go. Reaching down to the floor, he picked up a crumpled tailcoat, pulling it over his nakedness.

  He lay there feeling at one with the universe. The signals going to his pituitary gland prompted the release of a flood of endorphins, the body’s own form of morphine, into his bloodstream, sending a flood of exhilaration and well-being through his body. This truly was bliss. Even if he lived for another sixty … or seventy … or eighty years, he knew that this could never be bettered. However, wherever, whenever he lay on his deathbed, he would remember this moment with a smile on his face, while his wife – some pretty young thing, wife number two, or maybe number three – and his gaggle of children and grandchildren looked on, distraught as their world crumbled around them.

  A cheer went up as the
next man dismounted, still in a state of considerable excitement, his right arm pumping furiously. He looked up and saw an arc of semen heading towards the door. ‘The cleaner’s not going to like that!’ someone squeaked, as it splashed across the wooden floor.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the amused expression on his brother’s face. The place was wrecked. Food, booze, glass and god knows what else everywhere. It looked like a bunch of coked-up, incontinent chimpanzees had run amok with Uzis. Not that it mattered. Like it or not, his cleaning lady could sort it out tomorrow. That’s what he paid her a more than generous £1.50 an hour to do. Tonight he cared not a jot. Oblivious to tomorrow, he lay there, panting like a dog, basking in the glow of the best sex that he had ever had. The best sex that he would ever have.

  The day had gone; life is short.

  NINE

  With money to burn, the average world traveller of The Garden Hotel’s itinerant tribe of global travellers would probably not expect to swing even a small cat for somewhere north of three hundred pounds a night, and in room 329 they would not have been disappointed. The room was small, but perfectly formed. ‘Simple, serene, practical and pure – but full of wit, style and surprise’, had been the description of the décor, in the hotel’s brochure. Someone had certainly got a surprise here, thought Carlyle, as he pulled out his mobile phone and called for reinforcements.

  Ending the call, Carlyle shivered. The air-conditioning had been left fully on, so the room temperature was now easily below sixty degrees. The man in front of him was naked, lying face down on a queen-sized bed that was almost too big for the room. It was hard to tell, but the victim looked about Carlyle’s age, maybe just shy of six feet tall and in reasonable shape. Apart from the fact that he was dead, of course. He had a bit of a mullet, Carlyle noted, and was thinning on top. His clothes had been draped over the back of the chair (an ‘École Nissim de Camondo designed Lucite chair’ no less) in one corner. A pair of expensive-looking loafers, Charles Church or a similar brand, had been placed neatly beside the chair, in front of drawn curtains which were now splattered with blood.

  Scanning the room, Carlyle decided that he had seen much worse. The most arresting touch was the knife gleaming, as if self-satisfied, in the room’s twilight. It looked like a standard kitchen item. It was, however, sticking out of the victim’s backside, in a way that set a new benchmark for London knife crime. Unable to resist, Carlyle mumbled to himself: ‘That must be a real pain in the arse.’ With his nose hovering about three inches away, he squinted to read the writing on the handle. It contained an image of two matchstick men, side by side, with just two arms and three legs between them. The man on the right had his arm in the air in a walk-like-an-Egyptian type of pose. Bloody strange logo, thought Carlyle. Next to it was the brand name Zwilling and J.A.Henckels. Otherwise, it looked like a normal knife, one you could probably buy anywhere. Nevertheless, its provenance was something to have checked later.

  At a gentle knock at the door, Carlyle stepped back past the foot of the bed and into the vestibule. He pulled open the door to find a friendly blond woman called Susan Phillips smiling at him. Phillips was based at the Holborn police station, which was barely five minutes away by car at this time of night. She had been a staff pathologist with the Met for more than fifteen years now, and they had worked together several times before. ‘Good morning, Inspector,’ she said with an annoying cheerfulness. ‘I hear you have something for me.’

  ‘Thanks for coming,’ Carlyle said, holding the door wider. He thought she was looking tired and quite a bit older than her thirty-seven years, but sensibly he kept such thoughts to himself. After all, it was the middle of the night, and Carlyle knew that he was no oil painting himself, whatever the hour.

  ‘No problem,’ Phillips nodded. ‘Shall I come in?’

  ‘Let me move out first,’ said Carlyle, ‘then you can get at him more easily. I won’t spoil your fun, but it looks fairly straightforward.’

  He stepped out into the corridor and nodded a greeting at a pair of forensic technicians he didn’t recognise. A couple of yards along, Anna Shue had also returned, with PC Burgess in tow. Burgess was looking quite pleased with himself, having successfully fully tracked down the twenty-pound note tendered by Alex Miles in the Epoca cafe.

  Stepping forward, Carlyle had a quiet word with both, and watched them set off to deal with their allotted tasks. Phillips and the technicians had already taken over the room and there would be little for Carlyle to do for the next couple of hours.

  He could have been dozing, or he could have been thinking. Either way, Carlyle’s reverie was ended by a knock at the door. Without waiting to be invited in, room service appeared with a breakfast trolley bearing scrambled eggs, coffee, toast, a generous selection of Danish pastries and some fruit. The waiter pushed the trolley as far into the room as possible, then turned on his heel to leave. Almost before Carlyle had the chance to mumble ‘Thank you’, the man was gone, seeming careful, for whatever reason, to avoid eye contact – or any other kind of contact – with the forces of law and order.

  Realising that he hadn’t eaten for more than twelve hours, Carlyle salivated as he eyed the spread provided. He was extremely grateful indeed to Anna Shue for opening up the empty room right next to 329, where he could park himself and organise the start of an investigation, but he was even more grateful for the breakfast. Pouring himself a cup of steaming coffee, he sucked it down in one go, letting it scald the back of his throat. Hot was how he liked it, hot and strong, and he felt the caffeine spread through his system as he poured himself a second cup, and contemplated a sugar rush to go with it. Carlyle had a sweet tooth – he could easily name ten favourite patisseries within a one-mile radius of the piazza – so he passed on the eggs and went straight to the pastries. Sitting on the rather lumpy bed, he took another slurp of coffee and took a large bite out of a cherry Danish before enjoying a contemplative chew. Not up there with the best of them but not at all bad, Carlyle decided happily, while polishing it off and reaching for a second.

  While forensics commandeered the victim’s room, Burgess had taken formal statements from Alex Miles and the rest of the hotel staff. For the record, they had reiterated what was previously said, i.e. not very much. The guests in the rooms immediately surrounding number 329 were also roused, to general dismay and annoyance, in order to confirm that they had seen and heard nothing too. To the night manager’s obvious relief, Carlyle agreed that they wouldn’t knock on any further doors on the third floor before seven-thirty. He knew that such activity wasn’t likely to yield anything, so he was happy to make her that concession. Anyway, it was just a matter of ticking a particular box for the record.

  There had since been few other developments. The twenty quid rescued by PC Burgess from the Epoca café had been given a quick once-over by the technicians on site. With no signs of blood, it hadn’t yielded anything of immediate interest, so had been sent to Scotland Yard’s Forensic Science Laboratory, at Hendon in north London, for further tests. Finally, Alex Miles had taken Burgess and Carlyle through the hotel’s CCTV footage to see what they could glean from that.

  At one point, it struck Carlyle that Miles seemed to be very much leading the hotel’s response to the incident. For such a high-profile hotel, in-house security was conspicuous by its absence. After some probing, Shue admitted that the chief security officer was off site, ‘auditioning’ a pair of Costa Rican hookers who wanted permission to work the premises.

  The body itself had left for the morgue about half an hour ago. Having done her thing, the pathologist, Susan Phillips, had returned to Holborn police station to consider her findings and come up with a preliminary report. Meanwhile, the forensics guys had taken turns in going through the room with their own particular fine toothcombs. The remains of the victim’s room-service meal had been bagged up and sent to Hendon, too, along with the murder knife, clothing and a few other bits and pieces found inside the room. Details of anything of interest
would arrive on Carlyle’s desk at Charing Cross later in the day, probably sometime in the middle of the afternoon. Business cards found in the victim’s jacket pocket, as well as a driving licence in his wallet, had confirmed the man’s name as Ian Blake.

  It appeared that Blake had been managing director of a company called Alethia Consulting, whatever that was. Alethia herself, Carlyle vaguely remembered from various conversations with his daughter Alice, had been some kind of Greek goddess. What the company actually consulted on wasn’t clear, and it was unlikely that it mattered that much right now. Blake’s colleagues, or rather his ex-colleagues, would be receiving a visit within a couple of hours. Doubtless they would express their shock and dismay, portray the deceased as a latter-day saint, and reveal nothing useful whatsoever.

  Carlyle drained his coffee cup and finished off the second pastry. He eyed a third but, after a few elongated seconds of emotional struggle and internal debate, he thought the better of it. Putting the empty cup back on the trolley, he sat back on the bed and let out a small burp.

  The caffeine left him recharged, if not refreshed. It also inspired a thought. Sitting on the bed, he rifled through his pockets, looking for his new toy, a BlackBerry 8820. The handheld computer, only slightly larger than a cigarette packet, was one of the first two hundred to be assigned to Metropolitan Police officers – at inspector level and above – on a trial basis. Carlyle wasn’t what you would call an early adopter of new technology, but then neither was the Met. It had taken him the best part of nine months to successfully apply for the thing, get his hands on the thing, and then cajole the IT guys to persuade it to talk to his desktop computer and the network at large. Even now, the little machine seemed to work only erratically, but he could see its possibilities, not least in terms of spending more time out of the office, and so had vowed to stick with it.