London Calling - James Craig [107]
‘All the same, let’s keep an open mind.’
‘Always,’ said Carlyle. ‘Are you intending to speak to Carlton about this?’
There was a pause. ‘I promised that I’d keep him informed.’
‘It would be a help if I could speak to the Ahl woman first.’
‘I understand.’
Was that a yes? Carlyle wondered. Promising, as always, to keep Simpson updated, he ended the call. His thoughts turned next to paying Ms Ahl a visit. He looked again at Dom’s piece of paper. In addition to a home address, it had a landline number and a mobile number. He tried them both. Each time he got voicemail. He didn’t leave a message on either. Presumably the woman had a job, so he decided to wait until the evening before paying her a visit at home. Reluctant to go back to the station, he called Helen and scored a few brownie points by promising her that he would head over to the Barbican and pick Alice up from school.
THIRTY-ONE
Fulham Palace Gardens, the grounds of the former official residence of the Bishop of London, lay just north of Putney Bridge in west London. It was barely a ten-minute walk from where Carlyle had grown up, on Peterborough Road. Even after becoming a policeman, he had lived at home for almost three years. His parents still lived there, in the same modest council flat in a small block called Sullivan Court. Tonight, however, he wouldn’t be paying them a visit.
Enjoying the last warmth of the summer evening, he watched the planes as they made their final descent into Heathrow, further to the west. Every two minutes without fail, another one appeared overhead, following the one in front, leading the one behind. Back when he was a kid, in the 1960s and 1970s, he couldn’t remember much about watching any planes, although there certainly must have been some.
Heading further away from the river, he slipped into Stevenage Road, passing Craven Cottage football ground on his left. Details of Fulham Football Club’s first pre-season game of the summer were posted on a wall by the Putney End turnstiles. It was less than two weeks since the last season had ended, but the euphoria of the team’s last-gasp escape from relegation was long since dissipated. Carlyle had yet to renew his season ticket for the Riverside Stand, and he wondered if this time he would actually get round to it. He had been going to watch Fulham ever since he had been eight years old, but every year it seemed harder to justify the cost. If he put his mind to it, he could doubtless think of a dozen other things to do with the six hundred pounds, while Helen could probably think of a few dozen more.
Walking fifty yards on past the football ground, he turned right into Harboro Street. It was the same as dozens of other roads in the area, and hundreds of residential streets in the surrounding inner suburbs. There was a long row of two-storey terraced houses on either side, with a cross-section of cars, from tiny Fiats to huge Porsche 4×4s – parked tightly together against the pavement.
Crossing the road, he walked about halfway down before he found number 99. This was the address that Dominic Silver had given him.
The house was set back no more than twelve feet from the street, behind a small paved front garden. It appeared clean and in good repair, with a newish-looking coat of white paint on the brickwork and a flower box on the ledge of the ground-floor bay window. Three bedrooms, Carlyle guessed, and probably worth about half a million, if not more. Not for the first time, he felt a deep pang of regret that his parents had shown no interest in getting on to the London property ladder forty-odd years ago.
The front gate stood ajar, so he stepped quickly up to the front door and rang the bell. When there was no reply, he stepped forward to give it another ring, then noticed that the door was slightly open. Gingerly he gave it a push and stood peering along the hallway.
‘Hello?’
There was no reply.
Carlyle stepped inside the narrow hall. In front of him rose the stairs: to his