Carlyle sat on a very nice two-seater cream sofa in the living room of Ian Blake’s small but perfectly presentable one-bedroom flat in Lennox Gardens in Chelsea. One of the most upmarket neighbourhoods in the city, it was only a mile, give or take, from where Carlyle himself had been born. The flat was smaller than Carlyle’s present home, but it was easily worth two or even three times as much. Even with the recent sharp fall in house prices, the place had to be worth around a million quid. Solid, understated, it was the type of property that would never go out of fashion.
The policemen and technicians who had spent the last three hours going over the place had packed up and headed back to the station. They had given no indication of finding anything of note, but they would be doing their job thoroughly and diligently, all the same. In line with the toxicology report on the corpse, they had found a small stash of cannabis which had been inexpertly hidden in a shoebox in the closet. There was nothing to suggest that Mr Blake was anything other than a standard middle-class dabbler.
Last night’s exertions were catching up with Carlyle and his attention wandered. He tried to focus on what he might want for dinner since, by the time he got home, Helen and Alice would have eaten and he would be fending for himself. He went through a mental list of what was stored in the fridge, and the likelihood of it still being there when he returned. Nothing grabbed his attention, so it looked like a trip to the supermarket beckoned.
In the corner of the room, a large plasma screen flickered silently, the sound muted while Carlyle waited for the local news to appear. The sofa was very comfortable. Sitting back, he yawned and closed his eyes.
‘Wake up! It’s on.’ Joe grabbed a large remote control from the coffee table and turned up the sound. He flopped down next to Carlyle and dropped the remote in the space between them.
Just over a minute later, it was all over. The highlight was a breathless piece to camera from Rosanna Snowdon, standing outside the Garden Hotel. Carlyle noticed she had undone an extra button on her blouse, providing an enhanced view of her seriously impressive decolletage. So this is why people watch local news, he thought. The piece also included a passport-style photograph of the victim, and a ten-second clip of a suitably dour-looking Simpson describing it as a ‘violent and senseless crime’.
‘She looks tired,’ Carlyle commented.
Joe grunted.
Snowdon signed off with: ‘The investigation continues.’ Carlyle did not have a speaking role, although he did appear on screen, nodding intently as he listened to Simpson’s wise words. Of Sergeant Joseph Szyszkowski, the man in the Marks amp; Spencer suit, there was neither sight nor sound. Nor was there any mention of the mayor.
Carlyle switched off the television and looked again round the room. ‘Like you said… spurmo.’
‘Huh?’
‘Not exactly a gay shag pad, is it?’ Lost in thought, they both studied the Helmut Newton ‘big nude’ which dominated the far wall: a black-and-white photo of a naked Amazonian blonde posing beside a motorcycle.
‘I wouldn’t mind one of those at home,’ Joe mused.
‘The woman? Or the photo?’
‘I’d settle for the photo.’
‘I’m sure Mrs Szyszkowski would be delighted to hear you say that.’
Joe shifted in his seat, but made no attempt to stand up. ‘A boy can dream. By definition, you don’t want your dreams to become reality, otherwise they wouldn’t still be dreams.’
‘Mmm… good try, soldier.’
‘Anyway, Anita knows that I understand my limitations… almost as well as she does.’
‘Just as well,’ Carlyle sniffed. He made a half-hearted attempt to get out of the sofa. ‘So where do you think we are now? Have we found anything useful?’
‘Not really. Not much of the personal touch here, is there? No photos, address books, stuff like that. His phone was in his hotel room. His BlackBerry is missing.’
‘Are we sure that he even had one?’
‘Yeah, his office confirmed that. You can’t be a proper PR man without one, apparently.’
‘So it was taken by the killer?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Can we track it?’ asked Carlyle, operating at the extreme limits of his technological knowledge. ‘It’s just like a mobile, right?’
‘Yeah, but it’s switched off. I’ve checked.’
Carlyle thought about that. ‘But if someone took it, presumably they want it for something. So, at some point they might be expected to switch it on?’
‘Not necessarily. You can switch it on but keep the wireless turned off. You can then access all the information already on the machine, though you won’t be able to send or receive any emails. That way businessmen can play with them on planes without causing a crash.’
‘That’s good to know,’ said Carlyle listlessly. He’d had his own BlackBerry up and running for little more than three weeks now and he hadn’t quite managed to work that kind of facility out yet. He wasn’t the kind of guy to bother consulting the user manual: a gadget either worked straight away or it went in a drawer. With the BlackBerry, once he had worked out how to use the email and check the latest football news (not necessarily in that order), as far as he was concerned he was away. In his book, whatever else the machine did was over-engineering – the curse of the modern consumer electronics industry.
He stood up and took a step over towards the window. ‘This place feels like a hotel suite, or one of those serviced apartments. It doesn’t look like we’ll get much here. What did the people employed at his company have to say?’
‘The usual: shock, horror, surprise.’
‘Could it have been a colleague that killed him?’
‘Doesn’t look like it, but we’re still taking statements. Nothing much has jumped out, so far. There are only thirty-five people working there and we haven’t heard any suggestion of grudges. The victim was reckoned to be very straightforward: good with clients, good at networking, relatively good with junior staff. Not too pushy. Basically, he seems to have kept his work life and his private life separate. They knew he wasn’t married, otherwise he’s a bit of a blank sheet of paper.’
‘OK, go and have another chat with the Alethia people tomorrow morning and see what you can find out about his clients.’
‘No problem.’ Joe nodded. ‘They don’t start early, these folks, so I can take the kids to school for once. Anita will be chuffed.’
‘Nice,’ Carlyle smiled. ‘What about ex-colleagues?’
‘Doubtful. The company has only been going a few years, and none of the top people has left yet. Apparently, the way these things work is that you build up the business and then sell it off to someone bigger. You probably get tied in for a while, but then you can bugger off as soon as the cash hits your bank account. They haven’t got to that stage yet.’
‘What about the more junior staff?’
‘Again,’ Joe sighed, ‘nothing’s really come up. It’s the kind of place where the secretaries save a bit of money and then go backpacking in Australia. The others are all bright young things, very career-focused.’
Carlyle kept throwing out the questions as they popped into his head. ‘What was Blake doing before this job?’
‘Dunno. Still checking.’
‘Next of kin?’
‘Nope. Parents dead. No brothers or sisters.’
‘Partner?’
Joe gestured around the sparse room. ‘Apparently not.’
‘Neighbours?’
‘There are six flats in this building. We’ve managed to speak to someone in three of them so far. Two more are still being chased.’
‘And?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Fucking hell.’ Carlyle sighed. ‘Give me something!’
Joe shrugged. ‘They didn’t seem that interested, to be honest. Apparently he’s been living here for about eight years, but that’s about it. Like the people at his work, they found him fairly quiet and polite.’
‘Car?’
‘Nice motor, an Audi Q7. It’s downstairs. There’s a garage in the basement.’
‘Has it been checked?’
‘Yeah. A preliminary search threw up nothing.’
‘What about cameras?’
‘None. Neither inside nor outside.’
Carlyle raised his eyebrows.
‘I know,’ said Joe. ‘Some of the residents thought it would lower the tone, apparently.’
‘Typical.’ Carlyle yawned. ‘Half a million security cameras all over London, and not one where we actually fucking need it.’
‘It’s always the way.’ Joe struggled out of the sofa. ‘We are where we are, then. Let’s call it a night.’
‘That’s a plan,’ agreed Carlyle, as he went back to thinking about what he might have for dinner.
The remote control missed the screen by about two feet and exploded on impact with the wall behind it, switching the television off as it did so. A few deep breaths saw the frustration subside, but only a little. From the moment she had appeared on the screen, it was clear that the Snowdon woman was one of those bimbo journalists who shouldn’t be let loose on anything more taxing than a Hello! magazine interview. Even then, it was a shocking performance: no background, no insight, no bloody context. No wonder more and more people were refusing to pay their licence fees.
Breathe!
How difficult could it be for these people to see what was going on?
Breathe!
On the other hand, these journalists only regurgitated whatever the police told them. If the police themselves were clueless, why should the journalists be any better?
Breathe!
There was no point in wailing about what had happened. If people couldn’t yet put the pieces together, they could always be given more help. Next time, it would be spelt out so clearly that even this bunch of idiots couldn’t miss it.
Eva Hollander stood in the kitchen with a large glass of Chateau Puysserguier Saint Chinian in her hand. Dominic Silver wasn’t too keen about his wife drinking before the children had gone to bed – he didn’t want them to see alcohol as something to be consumed as a matter of routine every evening – but he wasn’t going to make an issue out of it. Their five kids weren’t around to see Mummy’s teatime boozing, anyway. They had now fled to various parts of the house in order to avoid teeth brushing, face washing, bedtime stories, etc., etc. If he listened carefully, he could hear the sound of Modern Warfare 2, interspersed with bits of Abba. Everyone was safe and happy under one roof. Domestic bliss personified, it was the best feeling in the world.
Should he have a bowl of pasta? Or a bowl of cornflakes? Dom was still undecided as Eva tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Look,’ she was pointing at the small television screen fixed below one of the kitchen cupboards, ‘there’s John Carlyle.’
She turned up the sound and together they watched the rest of the news report. By the time it had finished, Dom had decided on the pasta.
‘He looked very grumpy,’ Eva observed, bringing the glass to her lips without taking a sip.
‘He always looks grumpy,’ said Dom, as he poked around in the fridge for some tortellini.
‘It sounds like he’s working on a particularly nasty case.’
‘That’s his job.’ Dom finally pulled out a packet of pasta and closed the fridge door. ‘He’s been doing it for long enough now. It’s his choice, and it always has been. It’s what he likes doing.’
‘I wonder how Helen and Alice are getting on,’ Eva mused. ‘We haven’t seen them for a while.’
Dom carefully opened the packet with a knife and dropped half the contents into a pan. ‘Give them a call,’ he said, over his shoulder. ‘Get them to come over sometime. I’m sure all the kids would love a play date.’
‘I think that was fine…’
For now, thought Christian Holyrod. He eyed the callow adviser hovering beside him. Should I have told him about Blake? There was no use worrying about it now.
‘… and the important thing was that your name was kept out of it.’
The boy’s fruity aftershave was giving him a headache. ‘Give me a minute alone, will you?’ he said, and it wasn’t a question. ‘And close the door on your way out.’
With just the slightest pout, the aide did as he was told. Alone for the first time that day, the mayor turned down the sound on the television and pulled a bottle of Tullibardine 1994 out of a desk drawer, along with a small shot glass, before filling the glass almost to the brim. Sitting back in his chair and lifting his feet up to the desk, he savoured the toffee-apple and sherry smell of the whisky before taking a gentle sip. The bittersweet taste tickled his throat, reminding him of candyfloss. Holyrod took another sip and then drained his glass in one long swallow. Closing his eyes, he contemplated the silence.