London Calling - James Craig [121]
‘That’s handy,’ Joe grinned.
Carlyle tossed the remote back on his desk just as he felt his mobile start vibrating in his pocket. For once he had managed to pick up a call! Recognising Ahl’s mobile number on the screen, he hurriedly pushed the receive button.
‘Hello?’
The line immediately went dead.
He rang back but got a ‘network busy’ signal.
Bastards!
He tried again, but got the same thing.
Bastards! Fucking shit technology!
He somehow resisted the temptation to throw the handset at the wall. At the third attempt, he got through, but it went straight to voicemail. Once again, he didn’t leave a message. Why was she ringing him? Maybe she had come to terms with the fact that the game was up.
In anticipation of their evening’s work, Joe had booked a Mitsubishi Shogun from the station garage. The previous user had still to bring it back in, however, and the car pool was empty apart from a couple of Smart electric cars that were currently being trialled by the Met. No self-respecting copper, including Carlyle and Joe, would be seen dead in one. Carlyle thought about catching the tube, but he couldn’t be arsed to slog his way through the rush hour. Anyway, they still needed a car to bring Ahl back to the station. It was time to wait.
Waiting had always been a key part of the job, and by now Carlyle was quite good at it. For the next hour and a half, he and Joe kicked the case around, looking at what they had, what they lacked and what they had missed. In the end, they called a halt, finding themselves back where they had started. As far as anyone could tell, Susy Ahl had killed three members of the Merrion Club in revenge for what they had done to Robert Ashton all those years ago.
Was the woman crazy? That was for a doctor to decide. It was not for Carlyle himself to judge. Crazy or not, he had to admit that taking down four members of the Merrion Club was a hell of a result, far better than a lone, middle-aged, female lawyer could have hoped for at the outset of her killing spree. The icing on the cake would be to destroy the political careers of the Carltons and also Holyrod. To do that, she needed to be caught. She wanted her fifteen minutes of fame.
And who, Carlyle thought, are we to deny her that?
The journey across London had taken the best part of an hour, so it was after 8 p.m. when they parked on Atlanta Street, at the south end of Fulham Cemetery. With the end now in sight, Carlyle felt shattered. He got out of the car and stamped the ground, trying to rid his body of the lethargy. The street was quiet and the air was still. The edge had come off the mugginess and the sky was getting darker by the minute. That meant it was going to rain very soon. Unprepared, as usual, he knew that a soaking beckoned.
Atlanta Street was just across the Fulham Palace Road from Susy Ahl’s house on Harboro Street. Access to Harboro Street itself was blocked by roadworks. A twenty-yard stretch of it was littered with the usual items of machinery scattered around a trench about a foot wide and three feet deep, which had been cut into the tarmac along the middle of the road. It was all cordoned off behind temporary metal fencing on which hung a notice informing them that the thoroughfare would remain closed until late July. Pedestrians could still squeeze past by using a three-foot gap left open on the pavement to his right.
Carlyle heard a growl of thunder. It was quickly followed by a large raindrop landing on his head. Cursing, he tried to shrink inside his jacket, while lengthening his stride. Almost immediately, the rain came spearing down, bouncing off the road and drenching him. He had planned on making his dramatic entrance rather differently, but nothing could be done about that now. Trusting that Joe was keeping pace behind him, he began jogging towards the house.
Only when he was about fifty yards away from his destination did he look up.