London Calling

by James Craig

  After typing in his password, he went to the browser and Googled ‘Alethia’. Finding the company’s website, he then went to the homepage, which told him that it provided ‘strategic consulting services’ and had offices in New York and Dubai as well as London. Struggling with the small-size script, he brought up a list of directors and clicked on Blake’s biography.

  Ian Blake, 47, revolutionised the consulting paradigm when he founded Alethia Consulting in 1993. His experience (over twenty years in the industry) has been focused within reputation management and evolving business strategies specifically for dynamic companies and individuals. This experience includes a wide variety of capital markets and transaction-based activities including leading multiple corporate financings, M&A transactions, personnel management and global-issues management activities. Ian works extensively with the most senior executive management – from small to large corporations, as well as not-for-profit organisations – across all sectors and markets, focusing on integrated strategic communications. He holds an MBA in international business from London Business School and a Master of Entrepreneurial Leadership degree from INSEAD in Paris.

  Very informative, Carlyle thought. Maybe that’s why he was killed – someone took extreme offence at his ability to mangle the English language. After another few seconds of staring myopically at the screen, he hit the ‘clients’ link and watched as a list of names came up which included a football club, two universities, two banks and a handful of large retailers. There were also various names that Carlyle didn’t recognise, but all of these were quickly forgotten as he reached the three names listed at the very bottom: the Office of the Mayor of London, the Metropolitan Police, and the Police Federation. Fuck! Carlyle thought. That’s just what I need, a corpse with connections.

  The tiny screen – or maybe it was the caffeine – was now giving him a headache. He hit the ‘close’ button and dropped the BlackBerry back in his pocket. Resisting the temptation to take his shoes off again, which would almost certainly have proved fatal to his attempts to stay awake, Carlyle lay back on the bed and shut his eyes. Almost immediately, he felt a buzzing by his chest. He sat up and pulled his mobile out of the breast pocket of his jacket. The screen revealed ‘Helen’, which meant that it was his wife. Which meant that it would have to be answered.

  Carlyle pressed the green ‘receive’ button and tried to sound awake. ‘Hi.’

  ‘You didn’t come home last night?’ His wife sounded just as tired as he felt, perhaps even more so. Somehow, this energised him a little.

  ‘I know,’ he sighed. ‘I got waylaid.’

  ‘Anything interesting? Or just the usual?’ After all this time, Helen was used to the random nature of his working life, and the fact that it resulted in him going AWOL on a regular basis, so there was no edge to this conversation.

  ‘A dead man in a hotel room.’

  A yawn. ‘Suspicious?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Carlyle deadpanned. ‘Lots of blood and a murder weapon.’

  He could feel her waking up, and seriously wished he was lying there in the bed beside her. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Of course.’ He frowned. ‘Why else would I be here?’

  ‘Poor sod,’ said Helen, now totally alert. ‘Well, I suppose it’ll be an engaging case.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Carlyle smiled. ‘Engaging’ was not police language. He already knew where this conversation would be leading. His brain began to contract, and he felt the need to get off the phone.

  ‘At least it’s got to be better than the crap you’ve been dealing with lately.’

  ‘I’m sure that will make Mr Blake feel better.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The victim.’

  For some reason, the word ‘victim’ made her stiffen. ‘It’s not your fault he’s dead.’

  ‘No, I know that,’ Carlyle said softly. He wanted to avoid irritating his wife. There would be plenty of time for that later and, for now, he didn’t want to have to deal with domestic tetchiness on top of everything else. ‘It’s just that my heightened job satisfaction is not going to provide much of a silver lining for him, is it?’

  She thought about that for a second, letting the tension ebb from her voice. ‘He’s not likely to care much, one way or the other, but at least it should be interesting for you. Something a bit more high-profile?’

  ‘We’ll see.’ The conversation was a familiar one. It irritated him that she invariably demanded more from his job than he did.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ she said, with just a hint of crossness reappearing.

  ‘I do,’ he agreed quickly, ‘of course.’ And he did. A job is always just a job, whether you were a drug dealer or a postman, a fluffer or a priest. Being a policeman, the worse it got, the better it got.

  Helen’s voice softened again. ‘Are you OK?’

  He accepted the olive branch. ‘Sure, I’m fine.’

  That was clearly as much time as Helen was prepared to spend in getting Carlyle into the right mood. ‘Anyway,’ she said, moving the conversation along, ‘what about this morning?’

  This morning? Carlyle felt a slight wave of concern wash over him. What had he forgotten now? He tried to remain calm. ‘What about it?’

  Helen paused. ‘Will you still be able to take Alice to the Barbican? You know I’ve got an important meeting at work this morning.’

  Carlyle groaned, slumping back on to the bed as domestic life caught up with him. Today was supposed to be a day off. This morning he was supposed to be doing the school run. He had signed up to it several weeks ago. All the usual caveats had applied, but Helen always chose to ignore them. His Parent of the Week Award was in the post.

  Helen herself normally took Alice to school before turning round and heading back across town to Paddington and the international medical charity, called Avalon, where she worked as a senior administrative manager. Carlyle knew that she spent between two and three hours a day shuffling backwards and forwards across town. It was a bugger, but that was the deal. He therefore had to do his bit.

  This morning, Carlyle vaguely remembered, Helen had a very unpleasant disciplinary hearing to deal with: something involving a male doctor who, allegedly, had sexually abused a colleague. This type of problem was common in organisations like this. Apparently they attracted more than their fair share of people who hid under the cloak of liberal empathy to abuse either their co-workers or the locals, the very people they were supposed to be there to help. It had shocked Carlyle when his wife had first told him about it. On reflection, however, it made a lot of sense. Where else would you find a better balance of opportunity and risk?

  How on earth you could hope to shed any light on what had or had not happened between two people halfway up a mountain in Afghanistan, much less do anything about it, was beyond him. It was hard enough trying to deal with such cases in London: the complaint rate was pitiful and the actual conviction rate was much, much worse. It was impossible, therefore, to see how his wife could ever hope to get to the bottom of this particular mini-drama. The whole thing seemed like an exercise in liberal masochism, but he knew well enough to keep thoughts like that to himself.

  He didn’t envy Helen the job of trying to sort it all out, but where did that now leave him? Carlyle always looked forward to his thirty minutes with Alice as they meandered towards the Barbican arts complex, home to the City School for Girls, that celebrated private school that soaked up a distressing proportion of their household income. On an intellectual level, Carlyle wasn’t in favour of private education, but the idea of an all-girls school quite appealed, since anything that helped keep the boys at bay for as long as possible had to be a good thing.

  Not that the decision had been much to do with him. It was too important for that. Even before Alice was born, Helen had insisted that they would go private if they (i.e. she) decided that it was the best thing to do. As they (she) had. So Carlyle waved goodbye to around fifteen thousand pounds a year (after sodding bloody tax) that they di
dn’t really have, and Alice attended City.

  At least she loved it, and for that Carlyle would have happily paid much more than fifteen thousand pounds. His principles, after all, had to coexist with the realities of being a parent. All he could do now was to hope and pray that she would be able to apply for – and win – the biggest possible scholarship when the opportunity arose. At City you had to reach the age of eleven before you could apply, and so he was counting down the days till then, much to Helen’s scorn.

  On the way to school, they would pick up breakfast, then he would listen to Alice’s musings on a random selection of topics, ranging from pets (and why she wasn’t allowed any) to the Second World War (why did Japan support the Germans?) to vampires (why don’t they die?) to mouthwash (Alice had informed him one day that she liked to try the different colours because she was an ‘adventurous girl’). Carlyle could not think of anything in the entire world he would rather do than walk through the streets while listening to the random thoughts of his daughter. He lived in dread of the inevitable day – at most, he guessed, three or four years hence – when she would refuse to let either of her parents take her to school, and demand to be allowed to go on her own or with her friends. God only knew what her sense of adventure might involve her in then.

  So, meanwhile, his family duties were clear. On the other hand, his brain was struggling to process the current situation and come up with an answer. Preferably the right answer.

  Helen knew what this pause meant. ‘John?’

  The threat of retaliation hung in the air, so he took a deep breath. ‘Sure. Give me half an hour or so. I’ll be there in plenty of time. I’ll even bring you a coffee.’

  ‘Good. Thanks.’ His wife sounded wary rather than grateful. ‘A latte would be great … and a pain au chocolat.’

  ‘No problem. See you soon.’ Carlyle switched the phone off and tossed it on the bed. With monumental force of will, he pushed himself off it and headed into the bathroom. Could he maybe take a shower? He hated the feeling of intense grubbiness that he was left with after a night spent on the job. In the end, he decided that would be taking a bit of a liberty. And also it would involve too much time. Instead, he made do with a long and satisfying piss. Afterwards, he looked in the bowl. Too dark, he thought. I need to drink more water. Zipping himself up, he took a half-step to the sink and splashed some tap water on his face. After drying himself, he took a look in the mirror, where the usual quizzical, plebeian features stared back at him. He pushed his shoulders back and made an effort to stand up straighter. Stroking the stubble on his jaw, he noticed that it was flecked with an increasing amount of grey. I won’t bother shaving today, he decided. It’ll do my skin good. Carlyle looked himself in the eye, holding his own gaze for several seconds. He was well aware that he was a man who often felt quite uncomfortable in his own skin, but not this morning. Now was not the time for any of that introspective bollocks. Despite the tiredness, he felt good. Not bad for someone who’s been up all night, he reckoned, lingering in front of the mirror. At any rate, not bad for someone of my age who’s been up all night.

  Having made a half-hearted attempt to tidy up the remnants of his breakfast, Carlyle wheeled the trolley into the corridor and let the door close behind him. The door to 329 was also closed, with white-and-blue Police – Do Not Cross tape stuck across the surrounding frame. The police would keep the room for at least another few days, while the investigation progressed. It might even be a week or more before the hotel staff would be allowed to clean it up but, the economy and current occupancy rates being what they were, that was not really much of a problem. Carlyle glanced around the corridor one last time, before leaving. Silent and dark, it looked exactly the same as five hours ago, when he had first entered it.

  Heading towards the lifts, Carlyle brought up a new number on his phone and hit ‘call’. There was a click and he waited for the inevitable voicemail. After the beep, he left a message: ‘Joe, it’s almost half-eight. Wstawaj ty leniwy draniu! Get up, you fat, lazy bastard. We have a new case. When you finally get out of bed, they’ll fill you in at the station. After that, can you give me a call? Things are under control, so I’m now leaving the scene, and will be back at Charing Cross in a few hours. Let’s catch up then. Otherwise, we could grab some lunch in Il Buffone. In the meantime, see if you can start chasing the obvious, and in particular any outstanding cases where the victim had a knife gratuitously stuck up his arse. That would be great. Say “Hi” to Anita and the kids for me. See you later.’

  TEN

  Shepherds Bush, London W12, March 1985

  Slumped on the sofa, Carlyle tried to ignore Barbara Edwards, 1984’s Playmate of the Year, winking at him from the well-thumbed copy of Playboy resting next to his feet on the glass coffee table. With a heavy heart, he turned his gaze from Barbara’s incredibly perky breasts to a poster of the West Ham footballer Clyde Best on the wall behind the television, and then to the screen which was showing the BBC lunchtime news. The glum faces revealed that the miners’ strike was finally, officially, mercifully over. It had been a long slow death and the men trudging back to work could only muster the feeblest shouts of defiance. Having lost the war, they knew that they faced a slow, relentless defeat during the ensuing peace as well.

  Not that the police were celebrating victory, for many officers had enjoyed the escape from home life, the camaraderie of the picket line and the excitement of the rucks. Even more of them had become nicely accustomed to the overtime pay. Now it was back to the basics of normal life.

  At least, Carlyle thought dolefully, they had lives to go back to. Not all coppers could say that. A couple of days earlier, the Irish Republican Army had mortared a police station in Newry. Nine fellow officers from the Royal Ulster Constabulary had been killed. Northern Ireland was a long way off, but the IRA also regularly attacked London. There had been a steady stream of bombings in the city over the last few years, and the most recent, a car bomb at the Harrods department store in December 1983, had killed six innocent people. Being a policeman seemed more dangerous than ever.

  The terrorists might not be beaten, but at least the miners were. Carlyle himself had not been on a picket line since before Christmas, so already, the strike felt like a distant memory. After several months pounding the streets around Shepherds Bush and Hammersmith, he was finally beginning to feel like a normal copper. And now he was on the cusp of being transferred south of the river, to Southwark. That suited him fine, as a new beat would offer a welcome change.

  Between his postings, Carlyle had a week’s leave to use up. Two days in, though, and he was bored and restless. So when he got a message from Dominic Silver, saying that he wanted ‘a chat’, Carlyle was perfectly happy to oblige. He hadn’t seen Dom for about six months.

  The last time they had been together was outside Maltby Colliery, east of Rotherham. After a long, exhausting shift, they had played marbles on the pavement, like two kids just out of school. The recently acquired marbles already had a certain sentimental value, since they had been catapulted towards police lines by the strikers during one of the more vicious scuffles of their conflict.

  ‘This is great,’ Dom had laughed, as he won another game, taking a couple of quid off Carlyle in the process. ‘If marbles are all they can fight with, we’ve got absolutely nothing to worry about. They are really, truly fucked.’

  Sitting in Silver’s new bachelor pad, enviously eyeing his stroke mags and watching his new twenty-inch Philips television, Carlyle wondered where the money to pay for all this luxury had come from. It certainly wasn’t from playing marbles, or even from police overtime payments. Carlyle himself was still living with his parents in Fulham, and couldn’t afford to buy as much as an outside toilet anywhere within two hundred miles of London. Renting wasn’t much easier. Dom’s place seemed way, way out of his league. Covering the top floor of a Victorian house, Carlyle reckoned that the flat must have cost him twenty grand, maybe more. That was a hell of a lot of money
for a twenty-something kid. For sure, no one would give you a mortgage for that amount on a constable’s salary.

  ‘Stupid buggers. They should have seen the writing on the wall long ago.’ Dom stood in the doorway, wearing a Van Morrison Wavelength tour T-shirt, as he waved a large spliff in the direction of the television. It struck Carlyle that Dom was turning into a right old hippy bastard. What ever happened to punk? It was almost as if The Clash, still struggling along in name only, had never happened,

  The smell was good, but Carlyle declined Dom’s offer of a toke. Dope wasn’t really his thing; invariably it would give him a splitting headache and make him puke. He liked his drugs to get him going, rather than slow him down.

  Carlyle watched the embers glow as Dom took another greedy drag. Back in television land, one of the union leaders appeared on the screen and started talking about ‘dignity’, ‘solidarity’ and ‘the need to keep fighting’. The man looked haggard, and so haunted that you almost expected him to burst into tears at any minute.

  ‘Idiots!’ Dominic snarled. ‘Donkeys leading lions.’

  ‘If the lions really were lions,’ Carlyle asked, ‘would they really allow themselves to be led by donkeys?’

  ‘Smart-arse.’ Dom took another puff.

  Carlyle shrugged.

  Dom failed to blow a smoke ring and coughed. ‘Seriously though,’ he said through the haze, ‘that’s a bloody good question, Johnny boy … now shift up.’

  Carlyle moved to one end of the sofa and Dom flopped down beside him. For the next few minutes, Dom stared at the television screen intently, without saying a word. Eventually the news bulletin moved on to other stories. Apparently, Nelson Mandela had refused a deal from the South African government which would see him released from jail in return for renouncing armed struggle.

  ‘Bad move, Nelson, old son,’ Dom remarked airily.