London Calling (10 page)

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.

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 didn’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.