by James Craig
The toilet flushed upstairs. Carlyle quickly retreated to the sofa. Less than a minute later, Susy Ahl was back in the armchair in front of him, looking more composed now. ‘So …where were we?’
‘You were explaining Robert Ashton’s involvement with the Merrion Club.’
‘Ah, yes,’ she said, trying to inject a little levity into her tone. ‘Robert, he was a brilliant student. A lovely, gentle boy but a little shy.’
Carlyle said nothing. He looked her directly in the eye, but didn’t move a muscle. It was now or never.
She picked up her wine glass, but didn’t drink from it. ‘We took a first-year philosophy class together. I had to almost force him out on our first date. If I’d waited for him to make the first move, it never would have happened.’
For a nanosecond, he felt acutely jealous of Robert Ashton. No girl had ever forced Carlyle out on a date. He’d literally had to beg Helen to go to the cinema with him.
‘He lacked self-confidence,’ Ahl continued, ‘which at Cambridge was a very bad thing. I suppose it still is. You don’t get very far unless you think you’re God’s gift to the entire universe, and are not afraid to let everyone know it.’ She finally took another sip. ‘But they took him under their wing.’ A bigger sip this time. ‘I don’t know how it started, but he managed to become friends with a couple of them, Xavier Carlton in particular. He wasn’t a member of their club, but they kind of adopted him.’ This time she drained the last of the wine in one gulp. ‘For a while that seemed like a good thing. It boosted his confidence. He became less shy, but without becoming the kind of stereotypically smug little git which Cambridge is far too full of.’ She lifted the glass to her lips again, not seeming to realise that it was empty. ‘Then they destroyed him.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It was the end of the academic year in which Xavier and the others were graduating. They were going out in style with the party to end all parties, a monster binge lasting days. At the end of it, they were all off their heads on all kinds of drink and drugs … and they raped him.’
Looking at her sitting there with eyes now blazing, Carlyle tried to process what she had just told him and quickly put the pieces together. She was fast losing her composure, so he knew that he would only get away with a few more questions. There was a clock on the mantelpiece, and he watched the second hand count off a minute before he spoke again. ‘Who raped him? Xavier?’
‘All of them. They held him down and took turns. It was brutal. Xavier Carlton was the most vicious, apparently. He did the most damage. Robert was half-dead when I found him.’
‘Why did they do that to him?’
‘I don’t know. Because they could, I suppose. For fun, even? I spent a lot of time afterwards wondering whether it was already planned or just a spur-of-the-moment thing.’
‘Does that matter,’ asked Carlyle, ‘as far as you’re concerned?’
‘No,’ she said firmly.
‘Did you go to the police?’
‘When we got to the hospital, one of the nurses called the police. Robert was in such a terrible state, one of the doctors insisted that they got involved. After an hour or so, a couple of young constables arrived. They were even younger than us, and they treated it just like it was a joke. One of them whispered something about unsafe sex, then the other one got the giggles so badly he had to leave the room.’
Sounds about par for the course, thought Carlyle.
‘Not that Robert would have made a complaint anyway. Under the circumstances, who would?’
‘No.’
‘I can understand his reasoning,’ she said. You’re not going to go up against guys like those. You’re not going to hold up your hand and admit to anyone that it happened. Everyone would assume – like those policemen at the hospital did – that you let it happen, even if you couldn’t have fought them off. They were leaving Cambridge, anyway, but he had to go back. And he did go back. I was very proud of him for that.’
‘Yes.’
‘I was proud of us for sticking together.’
‘I can understand.’
She looked as if she was desperate for another drink, but she kept going. ‘We had a quiet summer and put it behind us – or so I thought. When we returned in September, Robert had gone back into his shell, somewhat. He was a bit more clingy, but it wasn’t all that different to how he’d been before hooking up with those guys in the first place.’
Carlyle nodded to signal that he was keeping up.
‘I felt that he must be getting over it. He was attending all his classes, enjoying his studies. And we started having sex again.’
Carlyle blushed slightly. ‘Yes?’
‘Yes,’ she said, almost defiantly. ‘It wasn’t the full-on, greedy, needy fucking of the early days, but that goes anyway, doesn’t it?’
‘Er …’ Carlyle’s brain had temporarily stopped sending signals to his mouth, which remained stuck, immobile, in a slightly open position.
‘I always had to take the lead, and it took us about four or five months, but he was able to perform again. At least he made the effort, and we were getting back to something like you might call a normal relationship. Or so I thought. And then I found out that I was pregnant, during the January …’
She suddenly stopped.
Carlyle managed to re-establish lines of communications between his brain and his vocal cords, but he still couldn’t bring himself to ask about the kid.
‘So … when Robert dies …?’
She slowly met his gaze. ‘So, when he threw himself off that balcony, it was a hell of a shock, yes.’ She put her empty wine glass back on the floor and stood up.
‘Did you make another complaint after his death?’ Carlyle asked, trying to move the narrative along.
‘I made as much fuss as I could, but I was in a bit of a state.’
‘Not surprising.’
‘And then I thought to hell with it. One morning, I just got up, packed my bag and left Cambridge. It took me a while to get my act together, but the baby helped. After our son was born, I was able to move forward. Eventually, I went back to university.’
‘To Cambridge?’
‘No, I couldn’t face going back there, so I ended up studying Law at UCL. Being in London was a lot easier, and I was able to get on with my life.’
‘And now?’
‘And now,’ she smiled, ‘I have a very boring life.’
‘And your son?’ Carlyle asked casually.
‘Travelling.’ She eyed him carefully.
‘Where?’
She smiled. ‘Right this moment, I’m not exactly sure. Somewhere in Thailand, I expect.’
Another Trustafarian waster, no doubt, Carlyle thought. He changed tack. ‘Do you have any photos of Robert?’
‘Just the one. I keep it upstairs in my bedroom.’
‘Can I see it?’
‘Of course.’
What she handed him a couple of minutes later was a slightly faded photograph in a simple oak frame. It showed a younger, slimmer Susy Ahl sitting outside a café with Robert Ashton, his pretty-boy good looks preserved there for all time. She had one arm round his shoulders and they were laughing in a way that didn’t look at all posed for the camera. It was clearly not the same photograph that had been left beside Nicholas Hogarth’s corpse.
‘That was the Easter before it all happened,’ she explained, as Carlyle handed the picture back to her. ‘We took a holiday in France, near Lake Annecy. It was incredibly beautiful and serene – the Venice of the Alps and all that. We had the most perfect time.’ She gave him a fleeting, fragile smile. ‘It was probably the happiest moment of my life, but I suppose you don’t realise things like that ’til much later, do you?’
‘No.’ Carlyle left her reflection on the transient nature of happiness hanging in the air for a few seconds. Now it was time for the sharp end of the conversation. ‘And, with what happened afterwards, the past is the past?’
‘The past is
the past,’ she agreed.
‘And your son?’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘What about him?’
‘Does he know about what happened to his father?’
Susy Ahl blanched, but quickly composed herself. ‘He knows about Robert’s suicide, yes.’
‘And the rest?’
‘No,’ she said sharply, ‘absolutely not. What would be the point of that?’
‘I understand,’ Carlyle nodded.
‘That is the one thing I ask of you, Inspector,’ she said slowly. ‘He is a sensitive boy, like his father in many respects. I do not want him to have to face all that being dug up after all this time.’
‘I understand,’ Carlyle repeated. Good luck, he thought. ‘So what about the Merrion Club now?’ he asked, edging the conversation forward.
‘What about them?’
‘It’s the General Election tomorrow,’ Carlyle mused.
‘So?’
‘It must be galling to see Robert’s attackers having such power, sitting smugly there at the top of the tree.’
She grimaced. ‘Let them do what they like. The past always catches up with people, don’t you think?’
‘Do you want them dead?’ he asked quietly.
She stared at him quizzically. ‘Do you expect me to answer that?’
‘Yes,’ he said firmly, ‘I do.’
‘Am I a suspect?’
‘I should say so,’ Carlyle said gently. ‘You are connected to all the people involved, and you have a motive. A very good motive, if I may say so.’
‘I do?’ she said, almost coyly.
‘If revenge is a dish best served cold,’ said Carlyle, ‘it might appear that you are taking your meal out of the freezer.’
‘What a tortuous metaphor, Inspector.’
It struck Carlyle how people always addressed him as ‘Inspector’ when they were patronising him. He took a deep breath and vowed to rise above any slight. ‘Let me ask it another way,’ he continued. ‘Do you care that some of them are dead?’
‘No.’ She did not flinch from the question. ‘It really doesn’t make any difference to me.’
‘And if the others were to be killed?’
‘The same. Inshallah, as my Arab clients might say. It is the will of God.’
‘That is not an answer that encourages me to look elsewhere for suspects,’ he reproached her, as sternly as he could manage.
‘I guess you have to use your professional judgement,’ she sighed.
‘Yes, yes, I do.’
She looked at him carefully. ‘But maybe they deserve to die.’
A lot of people deserve to die, Carlyle thought. ‘Maybe,’ he replied, ‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘Someone has to judge them.’
‘No, they don’t.’ He strove to sound reasonable. ‘They haven’t yet been arrested or charged with any crime.’
‘That means nothing,’ she pouted.
‘Life is not about right and wrong,’ he shrugged. ‘It’s about who gets to choose. You don’t get to choose … neither do I, for that matter.’
‘You have to set your sights higher than that, Inspector. Remember Jeremy Bentham: “Publicity is the very soul of justice. It is the keenest spur to exertion, and the surest of all guards against improbity. It keeps the judge himself, while trying, under trial.”’
Carlyle was lost. ‘Who?’
‘Jeremy Bentham. He was a philosopher and jurist who lived two hundred years ago.’
‘Ah.’ Carlyle didn’t have a clue who she was talking about. Philosopher and jurist? The only Jeremys he could think of were a couple of TV presenters.
‘At UCL they still have his skeleton on display,’ she grinned, ‘dressed in his own clothes, and with a wax head on top.’
‘Lovely.’
‘It’s what he said he wanted.’
‘Maybe I’ll go for something similar myself,’ Carlyle joked, ‘but in the foyer at New Scotland Yard.’
All trace of her smile vanished as the lawyer inside took over. ‘I can see I’m wasting my time here,’ she said sharply, ‘so let’s cut to the chase. What evidence do you actually have?’
I wish people would stop asking me that, thought Carlyle. ‘The investigation is proceeding in a fairly normal manner,’ he replied lamely.
‘So how can I actually help you?’ she asked neutrally.
‘Are you assuring me that you had absolutely nothing to do with the deaths of Hogarth, Blake and the others?’
She stared at him blankly. ‘I’m telling you that those types of questions will require the presence of my lawyer.’ She took a second business card from the mantelpiece and handed it to Carlyle.
He looked at the name on it. ‘Different firm?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘At our place, we don’t have anyone who specialises in … this type of thing. And, anyway, it is not something that you really want to discuss with your colleagues.’
‘No.’
Arthur the Labrador reappeared, looking for another biscuit. Susy Ahl gave the dog a big smile and idly patted his back. ‘Are you arresting me?’
‘No.’
‘Not yet?’
‘Not yet.’
The smile grew bigger. ‘No evidence?’
Carlyle said nothing.
She headed towards the door. ‘I need another drink. Can I get you anything?’
‘No,’ said Carlyle, ‘I’ll be going now. Just one final question: are you planning on leaving the country on any more business trips?’
Under the effects of the wine, she took a few moments to mentally flip through her diary. ‘I am due back in Dubai in something like ten days’ time. Let me know soonest if that’s not allowed.’
‘I will. We may also ask for your passport. And, we might need to take your fingerprints and a DNA sample.’
‘Don’t worry, Inspector,’ she said, waving an ever so slightly inebriated hand in his direction, ‘I know that you have a job to do, and I will not impede you in any way.’
‘Thank you.’
Her eyes suddenly focused on him sharply. ‘But I won’t do your job for you, either.’
She then showed him to the front door. Standing there on the doorstep, she turned to him and said: ‘What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you, Inspector?’
Exhaling deeply, Carlyle thought about it. ‘I don’t know,’ he said eventually. ‘Nothing really springs to mind. I suppose I’ve been quite lucky.’
‘You can’t really judge me, then, can you?’
‘No, that’s true. It’s not my job to judge, though, is it?’
‘Maybe, maybe not.’
‘It’s not,’ he said firmly. ‘All I would say is that, even when terrible things happen, the world doesn’t stop turning. That may sound callous, but it’s the truth. If you’ve still got a life, get on with it. Don’t crucify yourself. Don’t become a victim. No one else really gives a toss.’
‘Good night, Inspector,’ was the only reply he got.
He heard the front door click as, this time, she closed it properly.
As he walked back down Stevenage Road, the procession of planes above his head continued unabated. Lost in thought, Carlyle paid them no heed.
THIRTY-TWO
The restaurant Kami no Shizuku, translated ‘Drops of God’, aimed to provide diners with a thoughtful, almost spiritual environment that would ensure the emotional calm required to spend thousands of pounds on a single meal. The celebrated Italian designer Simone Mestaguerra had chosen the finest natural materials to provide the place with a sophisticated image of timeless luxury that kept just on the right side of decadence. Drawing on the aura of a medieval monastery, the main dining area was a serene space detached from the wearisome realities of the everyday world. Exactly the right marble, the perfect limestone, the best hardwoods, they had all been sourced from around the globe to create a template for perfection.
Owner Kanzaki Carew thought about Mestaguerra’s €250,000 consultancy fee and
uttered a silent prayer for his salvation. This evening, however, the timeless luxury didn’t make the place look any less empty. Business was slow, whereas this time last year it could have easily taken diners up to four months to secure a table. Back then the joke had been that reservations were so sought after that they were traded on the futures market. Well, no one was joking now: this market, like so many others, had collapsed.
Like everyone else, Kanzaki had become a victim of the recession. The private dining-room bookings from American finance houses had completely dried up over the last few months. The lunchtime trade – made up largely of City wives, media creatives, spin doctors and entrepreneurs – had similarly evaporated. And the days when bankers would spend tens of thousands on wine during a meal – a common enough occurrence for Kanzaki to have then instituted a house rule that the food was always free when the wine bill climbed beyond twenty thousand pounds – were a very distant memory indeed.
With a nervous sadness, he glanced at a framed bill displayed behind the cash register and vowed to take it down. It was undoubtedly bad karma. The highest bill ever charged in Kami no Shizuku’s history now mocked the penury of the present. It had been run up by a dozen bankers at the height of the boom, celebrating the closing of a monster deal by indulging in a nine-hour beano. The bill had once excited him and he could still recite it from memory, like his very own Lord’s Prayer:
Four bottles of 1995 Dom Pérignon at £6,750 each;
A magnum of Mouton Rothschild 1945 at £20,000;
Three bottles of 1982 Montrachet at £2,400 each;
A 1945 Pétrus at £15,600, a 1946 Pétrus at £11,400;
A 1947 Pétrus at £13,300; and
A 1900 Château d’Yquem at £10,700.
The tip alone had come to thirteen thousand pounds – half of which had gone straight into Kanzaki’s own pocket. The bankers had all been regular customers, but six of them had since been sacked. Of those still in a job, two were now working in Hong Kong and another two in Dubai, while another was trying his luck in Mumbai. Only one of them was still managing to keep his head above water in the bombed-out London market, and he, Kanzaki reflected bitterly, hadn’t been seen in the restaurant for more than three months.