Never Apologise, Never Explain - James Craig [74]
Reaching the bottom of the fire escape, Carlyle opened a metal gate and stepped out into a short passageway filled with waste bins and bags of rubbish, which led out on to Great Russell Street. Noting the familiar stench of rotting food and urine, he lengthened his stride and held his breath. He was about ten feet from the street itself when a large black sack in front of him started moving. Assuming that it was disturbed by a rat, Carlyle kept moving. However, his further progress was impeded when the mound of rubbish stood up in front of him, yawned and let out an enormous belch. Unable to hold his breath any longer, Carlyle was forced to inhale an eye-watering mix of curry, eggs and Special Brew. Taking a step backwards, he watched the tramp shake himself fully awake. The guy was dressed for winter, with at least three layers of clothing under a heavy black woollen overcoat. He wore a pair of grey slacks that looked as if they had not been cleaned during this century, and some fairly expensive-looking but heavily worn tan shoes. A blue Chelsea beanie hat rounded off the ensemble nicely.
Belatedly realising that he was not home alone, the man looked Carlyle up and down. He spent a few moments trying to work out what to make of the policeman, his eyes widening all the while, as if he had never seen another human being before. Finally, his mouth opened. A couple of seconds later, some words crawled out.
‘Got any money?’
It look Carlyle another moment to realise who he had standing in front of him, larger than life and ten times as smelly. ‘Dog?’ he said, puzzled. ‘I thought you were dead.’
Walter Poonoosamy thought about that for a moment, as he looked around the alley. ‘Maybe I am,’ he sniffed.
Stepping away from the pile of rubbish from which he had emerged, Dog continued to block Carlyle’s exit from the alley. If anything, the smell was getting worse, and the inspector was keen to be getting on his way. ‘Well,’ he mumbled, with as much fake bonhomie as he could manage, ‘it’s good to see you are still with us. I’m sure we’ll be seeing you at the station some time soon.’
The tramp grunted and looked down at the mess from which he had emerged. Tentatively, he began poking at one of the bags with his foot, in case there was some tasty morsel that he had missed. Taking this as his cue to leave, Carlyle eased his way past, heading for the bustle and the glare of the street beyond.
‘Excuse us, please?’
No sooner had the inspector emerged on to the street, than a couple of Chinese tourists thrust a street map in his face and asked him very politely – and in the kind of perfect English that no one in England had used for as long as he could remember – for directions to the British Museum. Resisting the temptation to send them in totally the wrong direction, he pointed at the massive building just across the road and forced himself to smile. With a cheery ‘Thank you’, the pair stepped off the pavement and almost walked straight into the path of an oversized tour bus. Once they had finally made it safely across the road, Carlyle watched them negotiate the pavement artists and the hot-dog sellers and safely reach the museum gates. Turning away, he decided to head for home.
He had barely gone twenty yards, however, when an idea popped into his head. Turning round, he retraced his steps back towards the alley. When he arrived, the tramp was still there,