London Calling (18 page)

Inspector Sam Sparrow worked out of the Enfield station in north London. He was a straightforward, no-nonsense policeman maybe five or six years younger than Carlyle, with almost as many commendations and considerably better career prospects. The two men had worked together in the late 1990s, when Sparrow had been leading an investigation into Turkish drug dealers in the Wood Green neighbourhood of north London. After the Turks had begun invading rivals’ turf to the east, Carlyle, stationed at Bethnal Green at the time, had been drawn into what became a violent and bloody mess, with body parts randomly strewn across both neighbourhoods. Sparrow had proved very easy to work with, and Carlyle had come out of six months’ hard slog with both a commendation and a promotion. For a while, he was on a roll. It even looked as if all his ‘career issues’ might have been sorted out for good. A subsequent run-in with a particularly stupid superintendent quickly put paid to that hope, but it still ranked as Carlyle’s most successful period on the force and he remembered it fondly.

He brought up Sparrow’s mobile number, and listened to it ringing.

‘Yes?’ a voice asked sharply.

‘Sam?’

‘Yes.’ There were voices in the background: kids, maybe a television.

‘It’s John Carlyle. Sorry to bother you at home.’

‘No problem. How are you?’ Sparrow sounded tired, distracted.

‘Fine. And you?’

‘All good. What can I do for you?’

Carlyle could sense that it was not a good time, so he got straight to it. ‘George Dellal.’

Sparrow waited for more. When it didn’t come, he asked: ‘What about him?’

‘I might have something similar.’

‘Oh?’ Sparrow gave no indication of being in any way intrigued.

‘Yes … this Blake thing?’

‘Sorry,’ said Sparrow wearily, ‘I’ve been off the last few days. The mother-in-law’s been in hospital. Family drama.’

‘Sorry to hear that.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Sparrow, with the air of a man who wished he was busy raking through other people’s shit rather than dealing with his own. ‘These things happen. What’s the Blake thing?’

Carlyle wanted to keep it vague, hedging his bets. ‘Basically, it’s another knife murder. What’s the background to Dellal?’

Carlyle listened to Sparrow breathing down the line as he parked his domestic drama for a moment and slowly dredged the basic details of that earlier case out of his memory. ‘George Dellal. Found dead in his flat. The neighbours reported the smell. It was very messy.’ Sparrow paused as if he’d run out of things to say.

Carlyle prompted him gently. ‘I don’t remember reading about it in the papers.’

‘We kept it low-key. It only made the local paper and a couple of paras in the
Standard
. Since then there’s been nothing. Happily, the family didn’t want to make a meal of it in the press.’

Again, Sparrow stopped abruptly. Carlyle knew that, if that case was still open, it couldn’t be looking too good. He didn’t want to rub Sparrow’s nose in it – no one wanted to be associated with any of the small minority of murders that didn’t get solved – but he wanted to elicit what he could. ‘How’s it looking now?’ he asked, gently.

‘No weapon. No leads. We haven’t made much progress, so we haven’t exactly been shouting about it from the rooftops.’

‘No,’ said Carlyle.
You’re lucky you don’t have Simpson hovering at your shoulder
, he thought. Sparrow’s boss, Superintendent Jack Izzard, was far less high-maintenance. ‘One other thing,’ he asked, as casually as possible, ‘was there a note?’

Sparrow laughed. ‘It definitely wasn’t a suicide,’ he said, misunderstanding the question. ‘No, there wasn’t a note.’

‘OK.’

‘Is there a possible connection with your guy?’ Sparrow asked.

The noise in the background increased. Carlyle could clearly hear a child crying and a woman shouting at it to go to bed. ‘I dunno,’ he said.

‘Look, John,’ Sparrow said hurriedly, ‘I gotta go. I’ll be back at work in a couple of days. If you need anything, you know where to find me. And if you find out anything interesting, let me know. Good luck.’

‘Thanks.’ Carlyle put down the phone and scribbled three points on his pad:

1. Merrion Club

2.
6 possibles – Carlton×2, Holyrod, Sebastian Lloyd, Nicholas Hogarth, Harry Allen

3.
Total shitstorm

Then he called Joe Szyszkowski.

After five, six, seven rings, Joe answered. ‘Hello, boss.’

‘Are you sitting down?’ Carlyle asked.

‘Sure. Why?’ Joe sounded relaxed, as if he’d had a glass or two of wine with dinner. Unlike the Sparrow call, there was no background noise. Joe’s kids would be in bed by now.

‘Things have moved on a bit,’ Carlyle said. ‘There’s good news and bad news.’

‘I’ll have the good news first, then, please,’ said Joe cheerily.

‘We know who the next victim will be.’

‘Excellent!’ said Joe, waiting patiently. He knew that Carlyle would get to the point eventually and, relaxing at home, he didn’t feel the need to hurry him along.

‘At least,’ Carlyle continued, ‘I can narrow it down to six people.’

‘From seven million to just six, that’s not bad,’ Joe agreed, suspending his disbelief. ‘So what’s the bad news?’

‘One of them is the mayor.’

‘The mayor?’ Joe groaned. ‘Of London?’

‘No, the mayor of fucking Cairo,’ Carlyle deadpanned. ‘Of course, the Mayor of London!’

‘The Mayor of London.’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘Tell me that you’re joking,’ said Joe, ‘
please
.’

‘Sadly not, and—’

‘Jesus,’ Joe cut in, ‘there’s an
and
?’

‘Of the six,’ Carlyle said slowly, ‘one of them is our own dear mayor. Another – according to current opinion polls – is our next prime minister.’

‘Are you sure this isn’t a wind-up?’ Joe asked. ‘How do we know all this?’

‘Ian Blake went to Cambridge University, right?’

‘Right,’ Joe agreed. ‘He got a 2.1 in PPE, Philosophy, Politics and Economics, the standard-issue degree of our governing classes.’

‘Good for him,’ said Carlyle. ‘Beats my A level in General Studies. Anyway, while he was stuffing his head full of knowledge en route to obtaining that excellent qualification, he was a member of something called the Merrion Club.’

‘Never heard of it,’ said Joe.

‘Me neither until about fifteen minutes ago,’ said Carlyle.

‘I’m guessing it’s not the kind of club we’d get invited to join.’

‘No, the Merrion Club was – is, for all I know – a drinking club for rich young wankers.’

‘Rules us out, then.’

‘Damn right. In this case, rich means
really
rich, as in absolutely fucking loaded.’

‘Lovely.’

‘The aim was to get blind drunk, have a food fight, smash some furniture and maybe fuck the hired help, if they could still get it up later in the evening. At the end of it all, they’d pay for all the damage with fifty-pound notes.’

‘When was this?’

‘The early eighties.’

‘Blake graduated in 1984?’

‘Right. The Merrion class of ’84 included Blake and a guy called George Dellal. Plus Holyrod and the Carlton brothers and a few others. Dellal got chopped up in similar fashion to Blake a few months ago.’

‘Coincidence?’ Joe asked.

‘Hardly,’ Carlyle replied. ‘You’ve got a 1-in-25,000 chance of being murdered in this city, in any given year. What we have here is two out of this group of eight getting brutally murdered in less than six months.’

‘So what have we got?’ Joe asked. ‘Sounds like
Brideshead Revisited
meets
Friday the 13th
.’

‘Something like that.’

‘Well, well, well,’ Joe chuckled. ‘Edgar Carlton and Christian Holyrod? The joint dream ticket of dream tickets.’

‘Maybe,’ Carlyle snorted, ‘if you’re a mentally incontinent,
Daily Mail
-reading fascist.’

‘Hey,’ Joe chided him, ‘Anita reads the
Mail
.’

‘She should know better,’ Carlyle growled.

‘What are the odds of those ending up in our investigation?’ Joe asked, moving the conversation on.

‘About as good as our own chances of getting murdered,’ said Carlyle glumly.

‘Simpson will most definitely not be happy,’ Joe pointed out.

‘A silver lining,’ Carlyle agreed, ‘however faint.’

‘So what do we do now?’ Joe asked.

‘Let’s sleep on it,’ said Carlyle. ‘Keep all this strictly to yourself, for now. We will have to be extremely discreet, especially when it comes to writing things down. No written reports, no emails … at least until we know what the fuck is going on here.’

‘Of course.’

‘I’ll go and see Simpson tomorrow. It’s better to do it face to face. Then we’ll have to reach out to the gentlemen in question, and see if they can shed any light on why someone might want them dead.’

SEVENTEEN

Heading for Paddington Green police station, Carlyle walked out of Edgware Road tube station. At the station entrance, he paused to let his eyes adjust to the gloom. There was no need to hurry, as Simpson regularly stayed holed up in her office to late into the night. She was not the best when it came to handling bad news, and therefore Carlyle was in no rush to give it to her.

As he approached the station, he was struck by its shameless ugliness. Paddington Green police station was a brutalist cube from the 1960s that almost made its Charing Cross counterpart seem elegantly designed. Straight out of the couldn’t-give-a-flying-fuck school of architecture fashionable at the time, it eroded his spirit still further. Five minutes later, waiting in the anteroom outside her office, he picked up a magazine that had been discarded on the seat next to him. Flipping the pages, he realised it was the same magazine he’d been reading in the clinic on Harley Street while waiting for Ferruccio Pozzo to come round from his operation. Finding the correct page, he picked up the article about
The Golden Twins
, Edgar and Xavier Carlton, where he’d left off before arresting the now-deceased Mafioso.

Both brothers have worked hard to cultivate their voter-friendly image. Each is physically imposing (Edgar is 6’1” and Xavier 6’2”), with the looks of a pair of matinee idols. Both have the regulation exotic political wife (Russian for Edgar, while Xavier’s is Italian) and an impressive number of suitably cute and precocious children (four and three respectively).

The third leg of this proto-political dynasty is provided by half-sister Sophia, who is married to close political ally Christian Holyrod, the former soldier whose election as Mayor of London last year was very much seen as a forerunner of Edgar’s assault on No 10. Sophia has her hands full with the five children she has popped out for Holyrod in the course of their eight-year marriage, but she is still seen as a powerful behind-the-scenes influencer. Last year’s Christmas card, a group shot of the three families at a polo match under the legend
Wishing You a Carlton Christmas
, was, in effect, the party’s manifesto encapsulated in full.

The door to Simpson’s office opened, and a young woman stepped out. She didn’t introduce herself, but Carlyle assumed she must be his superior’s assistant.

‘Sorry for keeping you waiting.’

‘That’s fine,’ Carlyle smiled. He had already resigned himself to a long wait, so it was relatively easy to be gracious. The PA was a chunky girl, in her twenties, with mischievous grey eyes and an arresting lime-green bra clearly visible under her transparent white blouse.

She let him gawp at it for a few seconds. ‘Can I get you anything?’

‘No, I’m fine.’

‘If you
do
need anything, just let me know.’ She smiled before disappearing back into the office.

Carlyle filed the bra in his bank of happy thoughts, and returned to reading his article.

The brothers are poster boys for ‘the new posh’, the fashionable, knowing,
ironic
elite who can beat the liberals at their own game. So, by and large, they keep their fancy cars in the garage (Edgar has a Porsche Cayenne 4×4 and Xavier not one but two Maseratis), but they make sure that they are only ever photographed driving their matching, environmentally friendly Prius hybrids.

Xavier has also embraced a bicycle, some say at his brother’s behest, regularly cycling to work at the Commons. ‘It takes me back to my days at Eton,’ Xavier said recently, ‘the happiest days of my life, obviously. And, at the end of the day, when you look at the big picture, you can see howit’s also about freedom of the individual and taking one’s own action over an overbearing nanny state which wants to kill our spirit and rob us all blind.’

Camping (it’s not like the boy scouts; instead think drinking Chablis in a £5,000 yurt while barking down your iPhone at your PA and complaining about your WiFi), music festivals and British seaside holidays have all got the Carlton thumbs-up. Times may be tough, but they are laughing in the face of recession. It’s all therefore about the quality of life. Is it all bogus, though? Of course it is. But if everything is bogus, then nothing is. What is a dream if it’s not reality?

The door opened again. This time, Simpson herself dashed out, bouncing along the corridor without even acknowledging him. Less than a minute later, she bounced back.