London Calling - James Craig [59]
‘From seven million to just six, that’s not bad,’ Joe agreed, suspending his disbelief. ‘So what’s the bad news?’
‘One of them is the mayor.’
‘The mayor?’ Joe groaned. ‘Of London?’
‘No, the mayor of fucking Cairo,’ Carlyle deadpanned. ‘Of course, the Mayor of London!’
‘The Mayor of London.’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘Tell me that you’re joking,’ said Joe, ‘please.’
‘Sadly not, and—’
‘Jesus,’ Joe cut in, ‘there’s an and?’
‘Of the six,’ Carlyle said slowly, ‘one of them is our own dear mayor. Another – according to current opinion polls – is our next prime minister.’
‘Are you sure this isn’t a wind-up?’ Joe asked. ‘How do we know all this?’
‘Ian Blake went to Cambridge University, right?’
‘Right,’ Joe agreed. ‘He got a 2.1 in PPE, Philosophy, Politics and Economics, the standard-issue degree of our governing classes.’
‘Good for him,’ said Carlyle. ‘Beats my A level in General Studies. Anyway, while he was stuffing his head full of knowledge en route to obtaining that excellent qualification, he was a member of something called the Merrion Club.’
‘Never heard of it,’ said Joe.
‘Me neither until about fifteen minutes ago,’ said Carlyle.
‘I’m guessing it’s not the kind of club we’d get invited to join.’
‘No, the Merrion Club was – is, for all I know – a drinking club for rich young wankers.’
‘Rules us out, then.’
‘Damn right. In this case, rich means really rich, as in absolutely fucking loaded.’
‘Lovely.’
‘The aim was to get blind drunk, have a food fight, smash some furniture and maybe fuck the hired help, if they could still get it up later in the evening. At the end of it all, they’d pay for all the damage with fifty-pound notes.’
‘When was this?’
‘The early eighties.’
‘Blake graduated in 1984?’
‘Right. The Merrion class of ’84 included Blake and a guy called George Dellal. Plus Holyrod and the Carlton brothers and a few others. Dellal got chopped up in similar fashion to Blake a few months ago.’
‘Coincidence?’ Joe asked.
‘Hardly,’ Carlyle replied. ‘You’ve got a 1-in-25,000 chance of being murdered in this city, in any given year. What we have here is two out of this group of eight getting brutally murdered in less than six months.’
‘So what have we got?’ Joe asked. ‘Sounds like Brideshead Revisited meets Friday the 13th.’
‘Something like that.’
‘Well, well, well,’ Joe chuckled. ‘Edgar Carlton and Christian Holyrod? The joint dream ticket of dream tickets.’
‘Maybe,’ Carlyle snorted, ‘if you’re a mentally incontinent, Daily Mail-reading fascist.’
‘Hey,’ Joe chided him, ‘Anita reads the Mail.’
‘She should know better,’ Carlyle growled.
‘What are the odds of those ending up in our investigation?’ Joe asked, moving the conversation on.
‘About as good as our own chances of getting murdered,’ said Carlyle glumly.
‘Simpson will most definitely not be happy,’ Joe pointed out.
‘A silver lining,’ Carlyle agreed, ‘however faint.’
‘So what do we do now?’ Joe asked.
‘Let’s sleep on it,’ said Carlyle. ‘Keep all this strictly to yourself, for now. We will have to be extremely discreet, especially when it comes to writing things down. No written reports, no emails … at least until we know what the fuck is going on here.’
‘Of course.’
‘I’ll go and see Simpson tomorrow. It’s better to do it face to face. Then we’ll have to reach out to the gentlemen in question, and see if they can shed any light on why someone might want them dead.’
SEVENTEEN
Heading for Paddington Green police station, Carlyle walked out of Edgware Road tube station. At the station entrance, he paused to let his eyes adjust to the gloom. There was no need to hurry, as Simpson regularly stayed holed up in her office to late into the night. She was not the best when it came to handling bad news, and therefore Carlyle was in no rush to give it to her.
As he approached the station, he was struck by its shameless ugliness. Paddington Green police station was a brutalist cube from the 1960s that almost made its Charing Cross counterpart seem elegantly designed. Straight out of the couldn’t-give-a-flying-fuck