London Calling - James Craig [24]
Miles frowned. ‘That’s a bit harsh, Inspector. I’ve never experienced anything like this before.’
‘I suppose it makes a change from them trashing hotel rooms, shitting out of windows and beating up hookers,’ Carlyle mused, referring back to a previous incident, where one member of the entourage of a visiting American actor had ended up making the short trip from the care of Mr Miles into the care of Mr Carlyle, and back again … before either the judiciary or, more importantly the media, had become involved.
‘There’s not a lot of that kind of stuff either, these days.’ Miles sounded almost disappointed. ‘It’s one of the consequences of the credit crunch.’
‘I’ve read about that.’ Carlyle smiled the sickly smile of a public servant who knew that the shortcomings of the international credit markets remained someone else’s problem. At least until some bastard politician started hacking away at his pension. If this crash took some rich tossers down with it, that had to be a good thing. But the sense of schadenfreude was fleeting, knowing that people like that always seemed to get by. ‘It must be tough for your customers …’
Miles raised his eyes to the heavens. ‘It’s squeezing us quite hard.’
‘Anyway,’ Carlyle continued, ‘let’s keep it to ourselves ’til I’ve had a proper look. Who gave you the note?’
Miles jerked one shoulder in the direction of the desk. ‘It was left on the blotter. Twenty quid on top of it. I was in the bar at the time, so I didn’t see who put it there.’
‘Cameras?’ Carlyle asked. He couldn’t immediately see any, but there had to be some. ‘Will they have recorded anything?’
‘Maybe.’
Carlyle told Burgess to make a note about checking the closed-circuit television later, if it became necessary, and turned back to the concierge. ‘How long ago was this?’
Miles made a face. ‘Maybe a couple of hours.’
‘And you didn’t bother to read it.’
‘Never thought about it.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘A surprising lack of curiosity,’ Carlyle mused.
‘You get something like that,’ Miles reasoned, ‘how likely is it to be something that I am really going to want to know about?’
Carlyle acknowledged his point and changed tack. ‘So it took you an hour to get it round to us?’
‘We were busy. A party of Chinese tourists arrived late, after their plane was delayed six hours. Their luggage was sent to Reykjavik, and the Heathrow Express was up the spout. You know the sort of thing.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Carlyle, who cared not a jot about the totally shit nature of Britain’s transport infrastructure. Rising from the recesses of his memory, Gang of Four’s ‘At Home He’s A Tourist’ started playing in his head. Leave home to see the sights and you’re asking for trouble. The sensible thing was just to stay at home, surely there was more than enough for them to see in the People’s Republic – was it still a People’s Republic? – anyway. He looked expectantly at Miles. ‘Have you still got the twenty?’
Miles shook his head. ‘I nipped up the road to Epoca for a quick macchiato and bought a packet of Marlboro at the same time.’
Par for the course, thought Carlyle. It would have been far too straightforward for him to have just kept the bloody thing. At least it should still be in the café’s cash register, as no one would be asking for a twenty in change at this time of night. He quickly despatched Burgess to try to recover the note from Epoca. It was only twenty yards down the road, so hopefully the young PC would not get lost, mugged, raped, or otherwise distracted on the way.
Carlyle watched Burgess leave the premises and then looked around the lobby one more time. It was fairly quiet now. The noise from the Light Bar had subsided to a gentle murmur, and even the party animals seemed to have called it a day. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘let’s go see the manager.’
Miles danced around from behind the desk and led Carlyle past the sofa and the pillar, and various other eclectic furnishings, as he headed further into the lobby. ‘The night manager is Anna Shue,’ he said, nodding in the direction of a tired-looking brunette in the hotel’s uniform,