London Calling (6 page)

‘Fuck off, pig!’

Carlyle looked up. Almost twenty feet away, he saw a kid of maybe ten or eleven flipping him the finger. Laughing at the disorientated policeman, the kid turned on his heels and started sprinting off down the road. Almost immediately, he tripped over his feet and crashed on to the tarmac, skidding along the street in a ball of blood, snot and tears.
Serves the little shit right,
Carlyle thought. Resisting the temptation to go over and give him a kick, he kept on walking.

What he wanted was some shade, but there was none to be found. He was in a regular terraced street of straightforward two-up, two-down red-brick houses, each with a cobbled yard at the back and a small garden at the front. It was a typical Northern working-class neighbourhood, the kind of road where trees were in short supply.

In the end, he settled for the shade provided by an overgrown hedge, about five feet tall and seven feet wide, bordering a garden maybe eight doors along from the ambulance. He slipped through the open gate and slumped down on the threadbare grass, before crawling under the bush in search of a little respite from the relentless sun and the blinding light.

Carlyle was woken by a man’s scream, followed by the sounds of a struggle nearby.

‘Get off me you, bastard …’

‘Bite me, would you?’ the male voice growled.

‘Stop it.’

‘C’mon …’

‘Fuck … right … OFF!’

‘Bitch!’

He slowly realised that they were somewhere behind him, in another garden, three doors further along. Getting to his feet, he squinted through the intervening hedge. Unable to see anything, he stepped back into the street and moved towards the arguing voices.

He saw the woman first. She was wearing worn blue jeans and a grubby white V-neck T-shirt. Behind her stood a policeman, sweating profusely in the same protective gear as Carlyle. His helmet had been knocked to the ground, and he had one arm wrapped around her neck. His other hand was firmly clamped on her left breast, which he was pawing slowly in a clockwise direction.

As he stepped closer, Carlyle could see that the woman was not wearing a bra. Her nipples were erect, clearly visible through her T-shirt. He had not had sex – of any description – for more than a fortnight, and now felt a sharp twinge in his groin. The stirring of it brought him a welcome distraction from the headache, but he was embarrassed all the same and felt his cheeks flush.

Looking up, both of them eyed Carlyle warily.

She was about 5’4”, with short blond hair. This was clearly one of the enemy within, one of the women that supported the strikers on the picket line; probably someone’s wife or girlfriend. Her grey eyes were hard and blazed with hatred. Aged anything from twenty-five to fifty-plus, she looked pinched, tired and thin, with the same washed-out, grubby, bleached complexion they all had.

The absence of any badge numbers didn’t stop Carlyle from recognising Trevor Miller. They had come up from London together at the beginning of the tour and, although the two of them didn’t always end up working on the same picket line, Carlyle had noticed him on each of the last three days. Maybe five years older than Carlyle, Miller was far too full of himself, a mouthy so-and-so only too eager to hold forth on what he was going to do to these ‘stupid Northern wankers’. Carlyle had last seen him earlier the same day, chasing some bloke over a patch of waste ground in the no man’s land intervening between the police and the pickets. The striker had been wearing a toy police hat covered in union stickers, as he flipped Miller the finger and headed off like a scalded cat. Trevor, truncheon at the ready, struggled to catch up with him through a barrage of catcalls and the occasional missile hurled by other strikers.

That had been several hours ago. So what was Miller doing here, now?

Recognising Carlyle, he sized up the situation for a second or two, preparing an explanation. ‘It’s OK,’ he said, his expression blank, ‘I’ve got this sorted.’ He glanced down at his hand, which remained clamped on the woman’s breast, rising and falling with her breathing.

‘What’s going on, Trevor?’

The woman belatedly piped up: ‘He’s touching me up, the dirty bastard.’

Carlyle took a step closer. Miller automatically took a step back, half dragging the woman with him. ‘Just fuck off out of it, Carlyle,’ he snarled. He was six foot plus, which Carlyle knew gave him about four inches in height and probably about forty pounds in weight. Miller could beat him to a pulp with one hand tied behind his back, but Carlyle knew that he was all front. He could face him down.

The woman started squirming again. ‘Get him off me!’

Carlyle stepped through the gate and into the garden. ‘What did she do?’

‘She assaulted me.’

‘Fuck off,’ the woman spat in fury. ‘You assaulted me, put me in a headlock, grabbed my tits and started squeezing them. Fucking pervert.’

Unbelievably, Trevor started grinning.

‘Trevor,’ Carlyle sighed, ‘she’s half your size.’

‘So?’ He seemed genuinely surprised by the idea that there might be a problem with what he was doing.

‘So,’ Carlyle shouted, ‘the only way she could have assaulted you is with a loaded AK47. Let her fucking go!’

Miller looked at him blankly, a bead of sweat hanging from the tip of his nose.

‘Now!’

Stepping sideways, Miller tramped some flower or other into the dirt. Maybe it was even a weed. Staring off into the middle distance, he gave Carlyle’s request several seconds’ thought. ‘Mind your own business, you wanker,’ was his considered reply.

It was time for a change of tack. Carlyle spread his arms wide and adopted what he hoped was his most philosophical tone: ‘Mate, think about it. You don’t want a complaint. It could seriously hurt your career.’

Trevor grunted. ‘I’m making an arrest.’

‘This is the kind of thing that could cost you your job.’ Carlyle was about five feet away from them now, edging closer.

‘I’ve done nothing wrong here, Carlyle.’ Trevor looked and sounded like a little boy. A
monster
of a little boy.

‘Let her go … c’mon we have to get back.’

‘No!’ Trevor shook his head.

Carlyle took another step towards him, trying not to stare at the woman’s nipples which seemed to be getting even bigger.
Maybe I’m becoming delusional
, he thought. ‘You have to.’

At last, Trevor recognised that Carlyle wasn’t going to just walk away. Finally, he let go of the woman’s breast and loosened the neck hold slightly. The woman immediately sank her teeth into his arm and bit him as hard as she could.

‘Fuck!’ Trevor grunted.

With all the gear he was wearing, Carlyle doubted if she even broke the skin, but Miller instinctively recoiled and pushed her away. The woman took this as her cue to make a dash for freedom. She bolted past Carlyle, a bottle-blonde blur that was out of the garden and down the road before he could react. Showing a nice turn of speed, and, Carlyle noticed, a very shapely arse, she was round a corner and out of sight in a matter of seconds.

Trevor struggled with his options as he tried to decide whether or not to give chase. In the end, the final decision was no decision. He shrugged, and the spell was broken.

Carlyle stood there, wondering what to do next. His headache was returning with a vengeance, and he needed again to find some shade.

Eventually, Trevor picked up his helmet and slowly trudged out of the garden. ‘You stupid bastard,’ he hissed, pushing past Carlyle. ‘You stupid bloody bastard, next time try to remember which fucking side you’re on.’

SIX

Not wishing to dwell on his rampant stupidity any longer than was absolutely necessary, Inspector Carlyle headed back in the direction he’d come from only ten minutes earlier. The fact that it was such a short walk did nothing to improve his mood. Grinding his teeth in frustration, he lengthened his stride and tried not to think about the bed he could already be lying in. There was no one about to catch a middle-aged policeman talking to himself like a demented dosser, and so he took the opportunity to curse himself loudly. Tonight wasn’t the first time this year that he’d arrived outside his flat, stuck his hand in his jacket pocket and realised that he had left his house keys at the station and, therefore, couldn’t get in. There was no way he would dare wake his wife at this time of night, so he turned round and headed back to Charing Cross Police Station.

Keeping up a brisk pace, Carlyle cut across the north side of Covent Garden piazza, whose cobbles felt hard and unyielding under the soles of his shoes. This was his home territory, just three blocks north of the biologically dead waters of the River Thames at Waterloo Bridge.

Carlyle passed an imposing mansion standing at number 43 King Street, in the north-west corner of the piazza, which was now home to a flagship shoe store. Back in the nineteenth century it has been one of London’s first boxing venues. Then, as now, the prizefight game was so bent that many of the bouts descended into farce. One of the most famous King Street matches ended in chaos after
both
fighters took a dive even before a single punch had been thrown. Not surprisingly, the disgruntled punters sought to take out their frustrations on the two boxers, one of whom found the presence of mind to feign blindness in order to escape a beating from the mob. Legend had it that this ‘blind’ boxer was declared the winner, and awarded the purse as well.

Glancing up at a poster advertising a new computer game, Carlyle stumbled on a loose cobblestone. He steadied himself in front of the life-size image of a cartoon commando letting fly with a machine-gun in each hand. The game’s strapline promised ‘a new kind of war’. That’s just what the world needs, Carlyle thought sourly, as he resumed walking. Almost immediately, he was passing in front of St Paul’s Church. Known as the actor’s church, it was currently flanked on one side by an Oakley sunglasses store, and on the other by a Nat West bank. Inigo Jones, the architect, would doubtless be proud, Carlyle thought, to see his celebrated creation now keeping such august company. God would probably be quite chuffed, too.

In front of the church’s outsized portico, an acne-scarred youth wearing last season’s Arsenal away shirt sat on the kerb, with his head buried in his hands. Oblivious to his suffering, a couple of insomniac pigeons pecked at the large pool of golden vomit shimmering under the orange street lights nearby. Behind him, a very young-looking girl in an insubstantial silver dress stood motionless, expressionless, apparently disinclined to comfort him or to leave him, as their night on the town struggled to die.

The pair paid Carlyle no heed as he walked on. For his part, Carlyle gave the girl a hard stare, saying a silent prayer that his own daughter wouldn’t be found in a similar situation in seven or eight years’ time.

Reaching the corner of Agar Street, Carlyle looked up and took in the hulking mass of Europe’s largest police station. Covering a whole block of some of the most expensive real estate in the world, it stood a couple of blocks north of the eponymous train station. It was a squat, featureless building, rising to six economical storeys, bristling with CCTV cameras on every corner, peppered with windows too small for its bulk; windows for seeing out of rather than for looking in through. The half a dozen old-fashioned blue police lamps placed in random locations around the building looked just as fake as they actually were. The same blue lamp used to be found outside every police station, reminding the public that the police were always ready to serve. Now they were just design accessories.

The station building was painted in an off-white colour that always looked grubby. The finishing touch was a small portico, as if copied from the nearby church in the piazza, framing the front entrance and making it look more like a provincial town hall than a major cop shop.

Charing Cross was one of a hundred and forty Metropolitan Police stations located across London, and Carlyle had been stationed at this one for almost ten years now, making it his longest posting by a considerable margin. In the previous decade and a half, he had made various random stop-offs around the capital in the fairly random circuit of stations that had constituted his ‘career’ – including Shepherds Bush, Southwark, Brixton, Paddington Green and Bethnal Green. He had moved slowly through the ranks, from constable to sergeant to inspector, having a go at most things: vice, drugs, fraud, homicide and even a short and inglorious spell at Buckingham Palace in the Royal Protection Unit.

Despite picking up more than his fair share of commendations, Carlyle knew that he had never really been considered as part of the team. He was not ‘one of us’, nor was he a ‘safe pair of hands’. Somehow, he had survived, though, without ever becoming part of the family. How had that happened? The powers that be were doubtless as surprised as Carlyle himself that he was still around. Over the years, he had evolved into a jack of all trades and master of none. He had put down roots of a sort, like a tree stuck in the pavement: stable but not necessarily happy.

Climbing the steps, he glanced at the rather modest Charing Cross Police Station sign, which sat below a small and very grubby royal crest. Above the crest, a chaotic rainbow-coloured flag hung limply from its pole, the usual Union Jack having been replaced in recognition of Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Month, whatever that was. Inside, the place was unusually empty, save for a lone figure slumped comatose in the corner.

Walter Poonoosamy, commonly known as ‘Dog’, was a drunk, a regular nuisance or a local mini-celebrity, depending on your point of view. Dog’s moniker came from his habit of approaching tourists who were aimlessly wandering about the piazza and asking for their help in finding his pet Labrador, called Lucky. Lucky, he explained, was his one companion in life, and as luck would have it he had gone missing that very day. As far as anyone knew, there never had been any such animal, but he fitted the stereotype of a down-and-out’s faithful friend, which, combined with Dog’s not inconsiderable acting ability and persistence in the face of a raging thirst, was usually sufficient to tug at the heartstrings of the gormless enough to easily cover the cost of a couple of 1.5 litre bottles of Diamond White cider, which was his preferred tipple. It was urban legend that one tear-stained performance had prompted a middle-aged American lady from Wyoming to hand over a fifty-pound note and tell the bemused tramp to ‘Go get yourself a new dog’.