London Calling - James Craig [34]
Having made a half-hearted attempt to tidy up the remnants of his breakfast, Carlyle wheeled the trolley into the corridor and let the door close behind him. The door to 329 was also closed, with white-and-blue Police – Do Not Cross tape stuck across the surrounding frame. The police would keep the room for at least another few days, while the investigation progressed. It might even be a week or more before the hotel staff would be allowed to clean it up but, the economy and current occupancy rates being what they were, that was not really much of a problem. Carlyle glanced around the corridor one last time, before leaving. Silent and dark, it looked exactly the same as five hours ago, when he had first entered it.
Heading towards the lifts, Carlyle brought up a new number on his phone and hit ‘call’. There was a click and he waited for the inevitable voicemail. After the beep, he left a message: ‘Joe, it’s almost half-eight. Wstawaj ty leniwy draniu! Get up, you fat, lazy bastard. We have a new case. When you finally get out of bed, they’ll fill you in at the station. After that, can you give me a call? Things are under control, so I’m now leaving the scene, and will be back at Charing Cross in a few hours. Let’s catch up then. Otherwise, we could grab some lunch in Il Buffone. In the meantime, see if you can start chasing the obvious, and in particular any outstanding cases where the victim had a knife gratuitously stuck up his arse. That would be great. Say “Hi” to Anita and the kids for me. See you later.’
TEN
Shepherds Bush, London W12, March 1985
Slumped on the sofa, Carlyle tried to ignore Barbara Edwards, 1984’s Playmate of the Year, winking at him from the well-thumbed copy of Playboy resting next to his feet on the glass coffee table. With a heavy heart, he turned his gaze from Barbara’s incredibly perky breasts to a poster of the West Ham footballer Clyde Best on the wall behind the television, and then to the screen which was showing the BBC lunchtime news. The glum faces revealed that the miners’ strike was finally, officially, mercifully over. It had been a long slow death and the men trudging back to work could only muster the feeblest shouts of defiance. Having lost the war, they knew that they faced a slow, relentless defeat during the ensuing peace as well.
Not that the police were celebrating victory, for many officers had enjoyed the escape from home life, the camaraderie of the picket line and the excitement of the rucks. Even more of them had become nicely accustomed to the overtime pay. Now it was back to the basics of normal life.
At least, Carlyle thought dolefully, they had lives to go back to. Not all coppers could say that. A couple of days earlier, the Irish Republican Army had mortared a police station in Newry. Nine fellow officers from the Royal Ulster Constabulary had been killed. Northern Ireland was a long way off, but the IRA also regularly attacked London. There had been a steady stream of bombings in the city over the last few years, and the most recent, a car bomb at the Harrods department store in December 1983, had killed six innocent people. Being a policeman seemed more dangerous than ever.
The terrorists might not be beaten, but at least the miners were. Carlyle himself had not been on a picket line since before Christmas, so already, the strike felt like a distant memory. After several months pounding the streets around Shepherds Bush and Hammersmith, he was finally beginning to feel like a normal copper. And now he was on the cusp of being transferred south of the river, to Southwark. That suited him fine, as a new beat would offer a welcome change.
Between his postings, Carlyle had a week’s leave to use up. Two days in, though, and he was bored and restless. So when he got a message from Dominic Silver, saying that he wanted ‘a chat’, Carlyle was perfectly happy to oblige. He hadn’t seen Dom for about six months.
The last time they had