Sins of the Fathers (7 page)

She was a good-looking woman, though, Umar decided.

Enya caught him staring and smiled. ‘How are you doing with your breathing exercises, Mr Sligo?’

Busted. Gripping Christina’s hand tighter, Umar watched as his girlfriend did a passable impression of an asthmatic goldfish. According to the clock above the door, the hour had been up at least five minutes ago.

Following his gaze, Enya clapped her hands together. ‘All right, everybody,’ she said cheerily, ‘let’s finish there for tonight. Remember to keep practising the drills at home and I’ll see you next week.’

Jesus. How did anyone ever manage to have a kid before antenatal classes were invented? Struggling out of his orange bean bag, Umar got to his feet and helped Christina up. A pained expression crossed her face.

‘I need to go to the loo.’

‘Okay,’ Umar shrugged. Pulling out his mobile, he called Carlyle’s number as he watched her head for the door. As he let it ring, Christina fell into conversation with the only woman in the class – apart from the teacher – who didn’t seem to be pregnant. Together they disappeared down the corridor as the inspector’s voicemail kicked in. Umar left a perfunctory message and hung up.

‘What do you think of the class?’

Umar turned to see a heavily pregnant blonde standing by his shoulder. Her green eyes twinkled mischievously.

‘It’s . . . interesting,’ he said.

The room had emptied quickly. Apart from a Japanese couple talking to Enya, they were the only ones left. The blonde gestured towards the door. ‘What does your wife make of it?’

‘She’s not my wife,’ Umar blurted out.

The blonde grinned. ‘Karen thinks she’s very nice.’

‘Karen?’

‘My partner.’ The woman held out a hand. ‘I’m Joanna.’

‘Umar.’

They shook and she made a point of holding on to his hand longer than necessary. ‘The one thing they don’t tell you,’ Joanna giggled, checking to see that Enya wasn’t listening, ‘is how horny you get.’

‘Um.’ Umar was suddenly conscious of a dull ache in his groin. Christina certainly wasn’t horny and hadn’t been for some time.

‘I just want to have sex,’ Joanna whispered, ‘all the time.’

‘I see,’ he gulped.

‘I could do it right now.’ Reaching into her bag on the floor, Joanna pulled out a business card and thrust it into Umar’s hand. ‘But maybe it would be better if you called me.’

‘Er, right.’ Unable to take any more of this particular conversation, Umar stuck the card into his trouser pocket and bolted for the door.

The meeting with the Japanese had been as smooth as could have been expected. Still, Carlyle felt drained as he headed up to the third floor and sank into the chair in front of his desk. For the umpteenth time, his phone started vibrating in his pocket. Knowing that it would be Helen complaining about his tardiness, he let it go to voicemail.

In front of him was the impressively thick report Umar had compiled on the Schaeffer shooting. Flicking it open, Carlyle was surprised to see Susan Phillips’s preliminary report on the top. Leaning forward, he squinted at the contents, worrying that an eye-test was overdue. Trying not to think about how much a trip to the optician’s might end up costing, he flicked through the report which confirmed that Julian Schaeffer had died from gunshot wounds to the chest.

‘That usually does the trick,’ Carlyle mused.

The shots had come from a small-calibre weapon; the bullets had been recovered from the corpse.

‘Handy if we find a bloke walking down the street with a gun in his hand . . .’ Not wishing to wallow in the gory details of Phillips’s prose, he moved swiftly on. Umar had filed a preliminary report of his own, including details of the interviews collected at Coram’s Fields and background information on the victim and his family. A search of Schaeffer’s flat and office had turned up nothing of note. They would have to go back to both locations for a more thorough look tomorrow.

The mother of the still-missing Rebecca had been identified as one Iris Belekhsan. Ms Belekhsan was a dentist. Apparently she was out of the country on holiday and had yet to be contacted. One of her colleagues had confirmed that she had left London a week ago.

Handy for an alibi, was Carlyle’s first thought.

Picking up a pencil lying next to his landline, the inspector scribbled a note to check with Border Control. He noted with a wry smile that the co-worker had refused to speculate on Ms Belekhsan’s domestic arrangements. However, going on holiday without your husband, or your child for that matter, suggested its own story.

At the back of the report was a list of other names and telephone numbers, people that the police hadn’t been able to get round to speaking to on Day 1 of the investigation. Carlyle stopped counting when he got to twenty names. There was more than enough to be going on with – even before he thought about Mr Ninomiya. The work was piling up. That’s just the way it happened. Cases were like buses. Nothing would come along for a while and then they’d get three or four all at the same time. He felt both energized and swamped. At least Umar was stepping up to the plate. ‘Good effort, matey,’ Carlyle smiled. Maybe impending fatherhood was encouraging the boy to up his game. In any event, he hoped it continued.

Tidying up the various bits of paper, the inspector shoved them back in the folder and slipped it into a drawer. Then he composed an email to Ed Savage, Sophie Watkin’s sidekick, saying that he would call him in the morning. Sending that off into cyberspace, he got to his feet and at long last headed for home.

Paul Fassbender sat in the darkness in his study, steadily sipping from a large measure of Lagavulin Distillers Edition, a copy of
The Leopard
by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa lying unopened on his lap. In the distance, he could hear the wind whipping across Lake Garda and the Sirmio peninsula. Not yet 10 p.m. and Sirmione was closed for the night. Not for the first time, Fassbender asked himself why he had retired to Italy. It had been his wife’s idea – the folly of letting a woman tell you what to do. These days, she spent more time in Marbella with her sister than she did with him. All alone in Lombardy, he sometimes wondered if he was not dead already.

His morbid musings were interrupted by what he imagined was the sound of footsteps in the hallway. Getting old was a bastard; his hearing, like all of his senses, played tricks on him on a regular basis.

The footsteps came closer. Taking a large mouthful of whisky, Fassbender slowly turned his head towards the door just as it creaked open.

He squinted at the shadow in the doorway. ‘Who are you?’

The man stepped into the room. He didn’t look like much, but he had youth on his side.

Half-rising from his seat, Fassbender hurled his glass towards the intruder, covering himself in Lagavulin in the process.

The man easily ducked away from the missile. ‘You are the doctor?’ he reached forward and placed a firm hand on Fassbender’s shoulder, pushing him back down into his chair.

‘I
was
a doctor,’ Fassbender snapped, his English barely accented. ‘I have been retired for several years now.’ Nodding, the man took a step back, reaching into the breast pocket of his jacket as he did so.

‘What do you want?’ With his eyes accustomed to the darkness, Fassbender had no difficulty in making out the small syringe in the man’s hand. A sick grin crept across his face. ‘That stupid old fool,’ he hissed. ‘
He
sent you, didn’t he?’ Once again, he tried to force himself out of the chair, only for the younger man to hold him down with his free hand.

‘No more questions,’ he said calmly. ‘You need to relax.’

Fassbender hardly felt the needle as it sank into his thigh. Damn Italy, he thought bitterly, it really was like being dead already.

When the phone began ringing, Daniel Sands fumbled with the handset, almost dropping it. Recovering his composure, he was able to reply, ‘Yes?’

‘We have taken delivery of the package.’

Did he recognize the voice? He wasn’t sure.

‘Do you understand?’ the caller asked.

‘Yes, good. Thank you. This is quicker than I expected.’

‘You will receive another call in two days,’ came the terse instruction.

Daniel felt his hand shake violently. ‘I will be ready.’

Out on the street, the inspector made his way towards the Piazza, weaving through the thinning crowds in front of St Paul’s Church. Known as ‘the Actors’ Church’, it was currently flanked on one side by a sunglasses store, and on the other by a 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.

Cutting across the Covent Garden Piazza, he passed an imposing mansion standing in the north-west corner, at number 43 King Street. Back in the nineteenth century, it had been one of London’s first boxing venues. Then, as now, the fight game was so bent that many of the bouts descended into farce. One of the most famous King Street matches ended in chaos with
both
boxers taking a dive even before a single punch had been thrown. Not surprisingly, the disgruntled punters sought to take their frustrations out on the two pugilists, one of whom had the presence of mind to feign blindness in order to escape a beating from the mob. Legend had it that the ‘blind’ boxer was declared the winner and awarded the purse as well.

Carlyle spotted a poster of Iggy Pop advertising car insurance and tutted to himself. Whatever happened to live fast, die young? he wondered to himself as he thrust his hands in his pockets and upped his pace.

It took him less than five minutes to make the journey from police station to home, a two-bedroom apartment on the thirteenth floor of Winter Garden House, near Holborn tube station, at the north end of Drury Lane. Pulling the key from the lock, he stepped into the hallway, quietly closing the door behind him. From the far end of the hall, behind Alice’s bedroom door, he could make out the strains of the Clash’s version of ‘Police on My Back’. A couple of years ago, Alice had borrowed all of his old Clash CDs. Now she knew their back catalogue far better than he did. Carlyle wondered what her friends at school made of it. Smiling proudly, he slipped off his shoes.

‘Where the hell have you been?’

Carlyle smiled wanly at his wife who had appeared in the living-room doorway. Arms folded, she had a face like thunder.

‘Tough day,’ he told her.

Helen couldn’t have looked any less sympathetic as she ground out, ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you for hours.’

For God’s sake
, he thought,
give me a break
. Gritting his teeth, he said, ‘I know, sorry. But I—’

Not interested in his explanation, she turned and stalked off.

Down the hall, Joe Strummer had moved on to ‘Midnight Log’.

Rubbing his eyes, Carlyle counted to ten and followed his wife into the living room.

‘John.’ Alexander Carlyle placed his half-empty bottle of Peroni beer on the coffee table.

‘Dad.’ Carlyle looked his old man up and down. Short and wiry, he was clean-shaven, with his white hair longer than Carlyle remembered it. Wearing jeans and a grey Fred Perry polo shirt that Helen had bought for his last birthday, he looked considerably younger than his seventy-odd years. The inspector thought back to the last time he had seen him – not since a Fulham game at Craven Cottage before Christmas. A listless Fulham had been thumped by another bunch of no-hopers. His dad had insisted on leaving twenty minutes before the end. They had gone for a drink in the Lemon Tree on the New King’s Road but the conversation had been sparse and they had spent most of their time watching the football reports on the pub’s TV. There had been a mass brawl in the Man United–Arsenal game and the referee had sent off three players.

It’s funny what sticks in your memory.

Had he spoken to the old fella since then? Once, twice tops. Not about anything of note.

‘John,’ Alexander repeated, struggling out of the sofa.

‘What brings you here?’ It had to be more than a year since his father’s last visit to Covent Garden, despite the fact that he lived only twenty-five minutes away, in West London.

The old man stepped forward and placed a hand on his son’s shoulder. ‘It’s about your mother.’

Carlyle glanced at Helen, who was still scowling in the corner. She was his usual source of information about Lorna Gordon, his mother. As far as he was aware, his parents, who had divorced a few years earlier, hadn’t even spoken to each other for more than six months.

Alexander cleared his throat. ‘She’s dead, son.’

Carlyle looked at him blankly. There had been nothing wrong with his mother. She kept herself in reasonable shape and she had the best part of a decade to go, statistically speaking, before her time was supposed to be up.

‘What happened?’

Biting down on her annoyance, Helen came over and gave him a hug. ‘She had a heart attack.’

His father hovered close by. ‘She didn’t suffer.’

Feeling incredibly self-conscious, Carlyle stared at the floor. What was he supposed to do? Burst into tears? He just couldn’t play that game.

Alexander picked up his bottle and drained the last of the beer. ‘I’m about to get all the arrangements in hand.’

Stepping free from his wife, Carlyle smiled at his father. ‘Of course.’ In that moment, he felt a huge affection for the old man; the practical Scotsman getting on and dealing with the situation. He took the empty bottle from his father. ‘I think I’ll have a beer myself. Want another one?’

Alexander thought about it for a moment. ‘Just the one more,’ he said finally. ‘Thank you.’

Helen followed Carlyle into the kitchen. ‘Are you okay, John?’ she asked, watching him pull a couple of beers from the fridge.

‘Yes.’ Carlyle found a bottle-opener in the cutlery drawer and prised open the two bottles. ‘I’m sorry it took me so long to get back.’

She reached over and kissed him on the cheek, all anger now gone. ‘I understand.’

‘And I’m sorry to leave you stuck with all of this.’

‘It’s fine. Your father has been great.’