London Calling - James Craig [67]
The body had been identified from a marketing brochure found inside the Range Rover. There was the by now familiar knife sticking out of his arse, and a pool of congealed blood extended several feet away from the body. Nearby, an extremely impressive stream of vomit had run almost the whole length of the vehicle.
Joe wandered over.
‘Why is he still here?’ Carlyle asked.
‘They superglued him to the car,’ Joe explained, trying to stifle a giggle. ‘The paintwork is going to be ruined.’
‘What?’
‘He is stuck to the bonnet. They found a jumbo bottle of Lockdown “brush on” superglue.’ He gestured to a small group of officers gathered by the car, lowering his voice a little.
‘Lovely.’ Carlyle already knew that superglue was a more common problem for the police than most people would imagine. Once, in East London, he had been called to a flat where a man in a wheelchair had starved to death after his upper and lower jaws were glued together. The coroner recorded an open verdict, but for a long time afterwards Carlyle wondered what had happened. Was it an accident? Or suicide? They were real teeth, so how could you glue them together by accident? If the guy had done it deliberately, then what a truly terrible way to kill yourself. Or maybe someone else had done it to him? Carlyle had lain awake at night trying to work it through, but a plausible explanation would always elude him. Another time he had to deal with a man suspected of breaking his bail curfew, who had glued himself to his girlfriend in an attempt to avoid being arrested. Carlyle packed both of them off to the station and had her charged with obstruction, before making himself scarce so that he didn’t have to hang around for the business of separating them.
‘Why do you think they did that?’ he asked Joe, gesturing towards the corpse.
‘Presumably to hold him in position,’ Joe replied, ‘so that we would find him exactly like this, with the knife sticking out of his arse.’
‘Just like Ian Blake. And similar to George Dellal.’
‘Yes, it’s the same MO – different type of knife, but clearly the same MO.’
Carlyle thought about it for a minute. ‘How are they going to get him off?’
‘They’re discussing that with the pathologist and a forensics guy right now. It’s going to be tricky. They’ve already tried soap and water with no joy. Someone suggested nail-polish remover, but they don’t have any handy. Now they’re thinking of calling the Fire Brigade.’
‘That will go down well,’ said Carlyle wryly. ‘Let’s make sure we’re gone before those guys turn up.’
Carlyle felt his phone start buzzing in his jacket. He fished it out and glanced at the screen. There was no name or number; it just read ‘call’. Thinking that it was probably Simpson, he left it buzzing and dropped it back in his breast pocket. ‘How exactly did they manage to do it?’ he asked casually, nodding in the direction of the crime scene.
‘They smeared glue on his palms, then pressed them down on the bonnet,’ said Joe, who did not share Carlyle’s squeamishness. ‘And also on one side of his face.’
‘OK.’
‘And they glued his knob, too,’ gasped Joe, his shoulders bobbing as he finally lost the fight against mirth.
Despite the early hour, the smell, and everything else, Carlyle couldn’t help but smile too. ‘Seriously? His knob.’
‘Apparently,’ Joe coughed, wiping away a tear, ‘it’s stuck to the badge on the grille.’ He somehow managed to grin and grimace at the same time. ‘I didn’t look that closely myself, but I have it on good authority from those that have.’
Carlyle allowed himself another peek from a distance. It did indeed look like the guy was trying to fuck his Range Rover. What a shocking way to treat a seventy-grand motor.
One of the men in the group discussing the glue problem peeled away and came over.
‘Joe …?’
‘How’s it going, Matt?’ Joe replied. ‘This is my boss, Inspector