London Calling - James Craig [44]
Joe lent back in his chair and let out a deep breath. ‘Not really.’
‘What about the SCD? Could this be one for them?’
Of the Metropolitan Police’s eleven Specialist Crime Directorates, the Homicide and Serious Crime Command was SCD1. It usually dispatched a major investigation team or a homicide task force to sweep up all the interesting murder cases. By definition that meant virtually all those that were not solved within a matter of hours.
‘I wouldn’t bet on them bailing us out,’ Joe replied. ‘Homicide is seriously stretched at the moment. Half of them have been sent to Belgravia to deal with the Arab billionaire who took a dive off the balcony of his Mayfair penthouse, back in March.’
Carlyle nodded. He was aware of the case.
‘Lots of foreign travel involved with that one,’ Joe continued, ‘so everyone wants a piece of it. No one’s in a hurry to call it a day, either.’
‘I can imagine,’ said Carlyle. Lots of foreign travel meant time away from the family and lots of well-paid overtime. Even better, there was no real pressure to get a result. The established consensus was that it had been a professional hit, with the killer lurking somewhere back in the Middle East, untraceable and untouchable. All in all, it was a great case to be working on. Those involved would be fighting off volunteers with a stick.
‘Face it,’ said Joe, ‘it looks like we’re stuck with this one.’
‘We?’
‘Yes, well, you obviously, O great one,’ Joe’s grin got wider, ‘but, as usual, I will probably have to help out … at least a little bit.’
Carlyle nodded formally in the sergeant’s direction. ‘You are too kind.’
‘No gratitude necessary,’ said Joe, bowing slightly in return. ‘We might as well try and get it sorted out as quickly as possible.’
‘Quite.’ Carlyle stroked his stubble and shot his sergeant a look of mock seriousness. ‘No one’s turned up to confess this morning?’
Joe Szyszkowski pretended to think about this for a minute, before delivering the inevitable reply, ‘No.’
‘Is there no hot lead that presented itself while I was in bed?’
Again, Joe pretended to think about it for a second, before shaking his head. ‘No.’
‘OK, OK, let’s get serious.’ With a tremendous effort of will, Carlyle summoned some enthusiasm for the matter in hand. ‘What about the knife, then?’
‘It’s a nice bit of kit. No prints. Could have been bought in several hundred locations across central London, assuming it was purchased recently, that is.’
‘Do we want to spend time checking on that?’ Carlyle asked.
‘It’s already in hand.’
Carlyle moved on down his mental checklist. ‘Did you see the note?’
‘Yes.’
‘What do you make of it?’
‘There’s a story here, obviously,’ said Joe. ‘The killer wants us to know why he did this.’
‘OK,’ said Carlyle, suddenly all business. ‘So have we come up with anything else involving a similar MO?’
Joe adopted a philosophical tone. ‘The modus operandi in this case appears to be fairly unique. There have been twenty-eight knife killings in London so far this year. There were eighty-six last year. Most are either domestics or kids stabbing each other on sink estates.’
Carlyle grunted. Crimes of passion or crimes of stupidity, both categories bored him silly.
‘We are checking out all of the rest,’ Joe continued, ‘but there appears to have been nothing similar so far … arse-wise.’
‘Have you viewed the CCTV pictures from the hotel?’ Carlyle asked.
‘Yeah.’ Joe took another slurp of his coffee. ‘Useless result, though some American boxer and his groupies got into a fight with the management, just before you turned up.’ He grinned. ‘One of the women had her top ripped off. Wearing no bra.’
Carlyle gave him a look that said: Let’s focus on the matter in hand, shall we?
‘That was quite entertaining but caused chaos. I’ve got one of the lads back at the station having another look through, but I don’t