no pressure.
I introduced myself, sat down and asked him if he needed anything.
His face was pale and drawn and his hair was damp with sweat but his eyes were blue and alert behind his spectacles.
‘Did I ask for my lawyer?’ he asked. ‘I’m sure I still have all sorts of human rights.’
I indicated that he had, and that we expected his solicitor along any minute.
‘But in the meantime,’ I said, ‘I thought we’d have a chat about the things that probably won’t make it into court.’
‘Such as what, exactly?’ he asked. Obviously he was regaining his balance. I couldn’t be having that.
‘The Quiet People,’ I said and he looked genuinely blank, which was a worry. ‘Dark glasses, pale skin, live in the sewers, keep pigs and make pots. Any of this ringing a bell?’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘You mean the Whisperers.’
‘Is that what you call them?’ I asked, and thought that what we needed was some bloody agreement about nomenclature. An EU directive perhaps, looking to harmonize the terminology appropriate to the uncanny on a Europe-wide basis. Maybe not – it would probably end up all being in French.
‘Did you not notice all the whispering?’ he asked.
‘And the groping,’ I said.
He gave me a half smile. ‘That was more in the way of a perk,’ he said.
‘You don’t seem very surprised that we’re talking about it,’ I said.
‘A race of people living under West London like Morlocks,’ he said. ‘Your actual Victorian submerged nation complete with flat caps and steam engines. I’m Irish so I’m not really that surprised to find that the British security apparatus extends even there.’
‘You would be if you bloody worked for it,’ I said.
He smiled thinly.
‘If you know about the Whisperers,’ he said. ‘What exactly is it you want from me?’
‘You understand that no matter what, you’re going to get done for the murder of James Gallagher,’ I said.
‘I understand nothing of the sort,’ he said, but he unconsciously slipped his right hand, with its fresh bandage, out of sight under the table. He’d worn fingerless gloves at the Tate Modern, not an affectation but a disguise.
‘We have the wounds on your hand which match the murder weapon. In twelve hours we’ll have the DNA results which will match the swab you gave ten minutes ago to the blood we found on the aforesaid weapon.’ I paused to let that sink in. ‘As soon as we knew there were other entry points into the system we pulled the CCTV footage from cameras around Bayswater and Notting Hill. Sooner or later we will break your alibi.’
According to HOLMES, Ryan Carroll had been statemented the day after I’d met him and had been given an alibi by one Siobhan Burke, who claimed to have been sleeping with him on the night in question.
‘Whether or not Ms Burke faces charges of aiding and abetting after the fact,’ I said, ‘rather depends on the outcome of this conversation.’ That was an outright lie. Stephanopoulos would be using the threat of a perjury charge to get Siobhan Burke to flip on Carroll but we figured that he’d respond better if we thought he was the centre of attention. We’ll use your ego against you if we can – we’re not proud.
This approach, trying to roll over your suspect before their lawyer arrives, is high-risk and I could practically hear Seawoll grinding his teeth from next door where he was no doubt monitoring the interview. I suspected that Stephanopoulos was also watching, and definitely Nightingale and probably Agent Reynolds, in which case Kittredge would be there to keep an eye on her. For an interview that wasn’t officially taking place there weren’t half a lot of witnesses.
‘That’s low,’ he said. ‘Even for the police, that’s low.’
‘My point, Ryan,’ I said, ‘is that we don’t need anything more to send you down. But we do want to know why. So we’re giving you this opportunity to get it off your chest and satisfy our curiosity.’
‘You want to keep this secret, don’t you?’ he asked. ‘I don’t suppose there’s a deal on offer?’
‘No such luck.’ I said. Seawoll had made that much clear.
‘What if I was to threaten to use it as part of my defence,’ he said. ‘Have it all out in open court. Try keeping your secrets then.’
‘You can give that a go if you like,’ I said. ‘Strange little men living in the sewers, keeping pigs and making pots? My money’s on you ending up in Broadmoor with a thorazine drip.’
‘Thorazine,’ said Ryan. ‘That’s so last-century. You get Clorozil and Serdolect these days.’ He sighed. ‘No doubt you have it all sewn up, a nod and a wink and it’s like the story never existed.’
I tried not to show my relief. I mean, we might have been able to keep a lid on it, but the thing about a secret conspiracy is that it never stays secret for long. Tyburn was right about one thing – I didn’t think the status quo was going to be an option much longer.
‘What led you down there in the first place?’ I asked.
‘To the Whisperers you mean?’ he said. ‘Oh, family tradition. We may have all been a proper bourgeois Catholic family of lawyers and doctors, but we kept alive the memory of my Great-Great-Grandfather Matthew Carroll. Old Farmyard Digger himself.’
Who, like Eugene Beale and the Gallagher brothers, had headed for England and worked on the canals, tunnels and railways.
‘So I was hearing stories about the whispering men from an early age,’ said Ryan. ‘Not that I believed any of it.’
‘Is that why you came to London?’ I asked.
Ryan leant back in his chair and laughed in a way that reminded me of Ten-Tons. ‘I’m sorry, no,’ he said. ‘No offence, but it’s not everyone’s dearest wish to come to London. I had a perfectly serviceable career in Dublin.’
‘And yet here you came,’ I said.
‘You have to understand what it was like riding the Celtic Tiger,’ said Ryan. ‘For so many years we’d been this joke of a country and suddenly we were it, Dublin was where it was happening. All at once there were coffee shops and galleries and more than one kind of pub. People were immigrating to live in Ireland and not just by accident either.’
Ryan looked at me and may have detected a distressing lack of sympathy on my part because he leaned forward and said, ‘The thing about the international art market is that the market part of it is essentially dictated by the super-rich and the people that suck their dicks for a living.’ He mimed sucking a dick and it was funny – I laughed.
‘But the art part of the international art market is done by yours truly and other people like me – your actual artist,’ he said. ‘And for us it’s all about the expression of the—’ He faltered, waved his hand, and gave up. ‘The expression of the inexpressible. There’s no point asking what a piece of work means, you know? If we could express it in words do you think we would have spent all that time bisecting a cow or pickling a shark? Do you think bisecting a cow is somebody’s idea of a fun fecking afternoon? And then to have stupid people come up to you and say “It’s very interesting, but is it art?” Yes, it’s fecking art. Do you think I’m planning to eat the fecking thing?’
He sipped his tea and frowned. ‘God, I wish I’d asked for some vodka. Is there any chance of a vodka?’
I shook my head.
‘Did you ever bisect a cow?’ I asked.
‘Only on a dinner plate,’ said Ryan. ‘I don’t mind getting my hands dirty but I draw the line at faeces and dead animals. The hands are important, feeling the medium you’re working with. Did you take art at school?’
‘Drama,’ I said.
‘But you must have played with Plasticine – right?’
‘When I was a kid,’ I said.
‘Do you remember the feeling as it squeezed through your fingers?’ he asked, but he didn’t wait for an answer. ‘And you must have worked with clay at least once in your life.’
I told him I had and that I remembered the slick texture of the clay beneath my fingers and the excitement I felt when it went into the kiln for firing. I didn’t mention that nothing I made ever seemed to survive the firing process, usually exploding and often taking other people’s work with it. After a while the art teacher, Mr Straploss,
