London Calling - James Craig [40]
Carlyle followed behind, hands full, no waste bin in sight – just in case some terrorist decided to hide a bomb in it, the better to take out the Helmut & Karl collection? ‘Careful on the stairs,’ he called automatically.
‘Yes, Dad!’ replied an exasperated little voice, as its owner disappeared from view.
Back on ground level, they stood in front of the extremely over-monikered St Giles-without-Cripplegate church. Named after the patron saint of beggars and cripples, it was one of the few medieval churches left in the City of London, having survived both the Great Fire of 1666 and the Blitz. Under the benign gaze of the saint himself, out of sight of the school gate, Carlyle gave his daughter kiss. This was the agreed spot for final shows of parental affection, being deemed far enough away from the entrance so that Alice wouldn’t be embarrassed in front of her friends.
‘Have a good time.’
‘Will you pick me up this afternoon?’ Alice asked, as she finished wiping the spot on her cheek where he had just kissed her.
‘No, I have to go back to work. I would love to be here, but things are a bit busy at work. It will have to be Mum.’
‘Good. I like it when Mum picks me up,’ said Alice happily, to Carlyle’s considerable disappointment. She skipped away, moving five yards towards the school before turning back to face him. ‘Was he dead?’
‘Who?’
‘The man last night. Mum says that’s why you didn’t come home.’
‘Yes.’ As usual in these situations, Carlyle kept it short, but he didn’t try to ignore her question or change the subject. Alice, like her mother, had little time for bullshit. She was a no-nonsense girl who, aged four, had informed her parents and, rather undiplomatically, her school chums that Santa was a ‘creature of myth and legend’. In terms of maturity and development, she was probably already three or four or five years ahead of where he’d been at a similar age. That was a hell of a big gap, and Carlyle knew that it would only get bigger.
‘Was he murdered?’ Her tone was matter-of-fact. Her look said: You can tell me the truth, it’s no big deal.
‘That’s TBC,’ Carlyle lied. ‘We don’t know yet.’
Alice looked at him more closely. ‘But you’ll find out?’
‘Yes.’
‘And then they’ll go to jail?’
‘The person who did it? Yes, that’s the idea.’
‘So that they can’t do it again?’
‘Yes,’ Carlyle nodded. ‘The idea is that they go to jail to protect the rest of us.’ He thought about it for a minute. ‘Maybe, when they are in jail, they learn that they did something wrong. That’s their best chance of making sure that they don’t do it again when they come out.’
Alice made a face. ‘But that doesn’t happen very often, does it?’
Carlyle laughed. ‘Hard to say, sweetheart. Hard to say.’
She thought about it some more. ‘It’s good that you’ll catch him. You can tell me about it tonight.’ She started moving away from him. ‘See ya!’
‘See ya!’
Alice skipped inside the school, waving at her teacher, Mrs Matterface, on duty at the front gate, while scanning the playground for any of her young friends. Carlyle stood there and watched his daughter go in, safe and sound. Sending Helen a text to say that he had successfully completed his mission, he loitered for a minute longer. A lone straggler managed to just sneak in before the front doors were ceremonially closed and the school day officially began. Feeling satisfied with a job well done, Carlyle turned away and headed off in the direction of the tube.
After dropping Alice off at school, Carlyle returned home in search of a couple of hours’ sleep. Home was a two-bedroom apartment, measuring eight hundred and ninety square feet, on the thirteenth floor of Winter Garden House, facing south towards the river, with decent views of the South Bank arts complex, the London Eye and Big Ben. WGH was a fifteen-storey, 1960s block housing thirty apartments, which sat on Macklin Street at the north end of Drury Lane. Their apartment had been bought