London Calling - James Craig [120]
‘Yes,’ Carlyle nodded. ‘Particularly for the next twenty-four hours.’
Holyrod made a face that was part saint, part executioner. ‘For the next twenty-four hours, for the next twenty-four years – and longer even than that. We are men of honour, do you understand?’
How can people believe this kind of bullshit? Carlyle wondered. But, for once, he bit his tongue and nodded. ‘I do.’
‘I wonder.’ Holyrod looked him up and down. ‘This has been handled pretty well, so far. Now it needs to be finished. Do your job, Inspector, no more, no less.’
Without waiting for a reply, Holyrod turned on his heel and headed for the exit. Carlyle listened to footsteps echoing on the stone floor as Holyrod marched out of the church. After the mayor had gone, he quietly said to himself: ‘Well done, John, that worked perfectly. Exactly as planned. Another triumph beckons.’
Trevor Miller gently returned the phone to its cradle and looked up. ‘OK,’ he said quietly, ‘we’ve found her.’
‘You know what you’ve got to do?’ Edgar Carlton inquired dreamily.
‘Yes.’
‘Good. That’s very good.’
Passing the Garden Hotel, Carlyle glanced inside and caught sight of the concierge, Alex Miles, making a fuss of some newly arrived guest. It was little more than a fortnight since Ian Blake’s body had been found in a hotel room upstairs. Carlyle tried to recall the details. What was the number of the room? How many people had slept in there since? He also wondered if they had installed a new bed; they would have had to replace the mattress at the very least.
He tried to remember what it had been like on walking through that door to see the blood, the empty eyes, to smell the stench of death. None of it came back to him. Nothing had lingered in his memory any longer than last night’s television. Already, Ian Blake had become a dim and distant memory, a minor footnote in his own murder investigation. After only a couple of weeks, did anyone miss him? Did anyone even remember that he had ever existed? The inspector felt a sense of melancholy descend on him that he knew would be hard to shake. Don’t be a victim, he thought to himself as he hurried on. Don’t ever be a victim.
Avoiding a return to the Station, he went home, had a shower and then a cheese sandwich. When Helen got home from work, they took Alice to the polling station at Dragon Hall, just off Macklin Street. It was something of a family tradition that they all went voting together: Alice would hand over the polling cards and collect the voting papers, then she would take each of her parents in turn into the booth and put a cross beside their chosen candidate. Then she would fold the papers and put them in the ballot box. The place was quite empty when they arrived, so they were in and out of there in minutes. Carlyle had very mixed feelings about the whole thing: he knew that his vote counted for nothing; on the other hand, he didn’t want his daughter to grow up as cynical as himself.
He left them at the door to Winter Garden House, with a hug and a kiss.
‘When will you be home?’ Helen asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Carlyle shrugged. ‘Late … maybe very late.’
‘OK,’ she sighed. ‘Do what you have to do, but be careful.’
‘I will,’ he said, shuffling off round the corner, into Drury Lane.
THIRTY-FOUR
It was well after six o’clock when he got back to Charing Cross Police Station. Joe Szyszkowski had not yet reappeared, so Carlyle sat at his desk and watched the BBC’s rolling news on a monitor suspended from the ceiling. The sound was off, but subtitles scrolled across the bottom of the screen, allowing him to follow what was being said. The stock market wasn’t waiting for the result of the election, before it collapsed. Some know-nothing news pixie was explaining how share prices were plunging, the capitalist system was doomed, and everyone would be living in caves by Christmas.
‘You don’t want to listen to that rubbish,’ said Joe, wandering across his line of vision. ‘It’ll only make you depressed.’
‘There