“They’re holding him for us at Albany Street. I said we’d get there as soon as we could. Did you remember to pay your congestion charge this morning?”
“Don’t be ridiculous; I wouldn’t know how to. I’ve never paid for Victor.” His rust-bucket hippie-era Mini Cooper was hardly worth more than a month’s CC fees. “I keep a length of reflective tape in the glove box, pop it over the plates this side of the cameras, and take it off on the other side. I don’t feel guilty for doing so; the unit should be exempt. We’ve one staff car amongst eight, and I’m certainly not going to wait at a bus stop to get to a crime scene.”
May broke into a smile, digging a package from the jacket of his smart suit. “I thought you might like to pay it today.” He handed his partner the box. “Happy birthday.”
“It’s my birthday? Are you absolutely sure?” He thought for a minute. “Good heavens, October twenty-fifth, you’re right. I wondered why Alma served my eggs with her earrings on this morning.” He tore open the paper and examined his gift. “This is really most kind of you, John.” He grinned. “What on earth is it?”
“It’s the very latest in mobile technology. You can access the Internet from it and find your position from satellites, and do all sorts of things.”
Bryant was touched. He ran his fingers over the sleek brushed metal of the telephone as if handling a piece of Meissen. “You mean you’re actually trusting me with a gadget?”
May shrugged. “I have to take a leap of faith sometime. It might as well be now.”
¦
Leo Carey was more accustomed to conducting consultations in the calm woody gloom of Claridge’s or the immaculate etherea of the Sanderson Hotel. He glanced up at the moulting distempered walls of the Albany Street nick with the same level of discomfort on his face that film stars showed when posing for police mug shots. His sleek Bond Street-tailored suit and Cambridge tie did little to erase the image presented by photocopies of him tied naked to a toilet that were currently making their way around the police station. Every few minutes one of the Met constables peered in through the meshed glass of the interview room and smirked knowingly.
“Popular opinion is formed by small groups of highly influential people,” Carey told the detectives. “Everyone else is unimportant. It’s my job to ensure that the key opinion-formers attend our events.” The grinning officers at the window were distracting him.
“Take no notice of them,” May advised. “Tell us about Saralla White.”
“I’d been working for British Petroleum as an image consultant,” Carey explained. “I met Sarah at a launch party, while she was still repping graphic artists around town. She told me she was being kicked out of her Bermondsey flat, and had nowhere to stay. I took her for a bite to eat, and she suggested sleeping on my sofa. We’d only known each other for about an hour! I’d never met anyone like her before. She was so angry and passionate. I had just broken up with Olivia, my girlfriend. I had no experience of girls like Sarah before. She was exciting to be around.”
“And before you knew it, you’d become involved,” May prompted.
“She wasn’t easy to be with, mind you, too volatile for comfort, but a lot of fun. Life was never boring. Then I found out why she’d lost her apartment.”
“We know about the drugs. She was dealing cocaine from the premises. We have her arrest details.”
“It was nothing to do with me. And nothing was ever proven. The case got thrown out of court because someone had messed with the evidence. At that point Sarah decided to stop representing artists and become one herself. She came up with an angle, changed her name to Saralla, and asked me to help her get media attention.”
“Are you saying that her artistic status was just a pose, that she didn’t believe in the causes she supported?”
“No, she believed in them, but I taught her how to use her own personality to create controversy. Belief isn’t enough; you have to go out and stir up trouble in the public arena. I taught her everything I knew, and did my job a little too well. She was keeping a Web log of our life together, complete with photographs and filmed footage, and was publishing it behind my back. We fought and I threw her out, but by that time she no longer needed me. Her career had taken off. That should have been the end of it, but she wouldn’t keep her mouth shut. The more the press goaded her, the more she told them. She embellished the truth, then completely reinvented her past. Suddenly I was no longer her mentor, but the man who made her pregnant and forced her to have an abortion. She needed a villain in the story, and had enough photographic evidence to flesh out her fantasy.”
“When did you last see her?”
“I didn’t. I mean, I broke all contact after hearing about the photographs.”
“Why didn’t you take any legal action?”
“Damage limitation. The more you defend yourself, the guiltier you look. My clients started cancelling contracts, so I got out before the company folded on me. I came from an entertainment PR background, and needed to build a client base.”
“So you started low by picking someone with an image problem,” Bryant surmised.
“Martell came with such a bad reputation that nobody else wanted to touch him. I figured if I could make this a success, other offers would come. I thought that after Sarah I could handle anyone, but Martell was a nightmare. Insecurity is a tough trait to deal with. There were rumours about his private life. The tabloids were suspicious, and went fishing for stories about how he spent his evenings, but he was dumb and vain enough to keep taking the bait. This latest escapade has broken within hours of his death, so everyone will think he killed himself. Martell was convinced he’d lose his TV deal. He’d used up all of his friends. He was still popular with the public, but his ratings were starting to slip. He caused offence on ITV1’s breakfast show the week before – he’d been caught on camera making sarcastic comments about his fans – and was getting hate mail as a consequence. If you’re going to start manipulating public opinion, you need a clever game plan, and Martell wasn’t exactly the brightest bulb in the billboard.”
“Tell us about your argument with him,” May suggested.
“Martell rang me at four yesterday afternoon and asked to meet me in the cafe in Russell Square in an hour’s time. He admitted that he’d gone to a lap-dancing club on Monday night, where he’d met a couple of girls who took him back to the Great Russell Hotel for champagne, drugs, and a little fooling around – the usual tired old story. Except that the girls told him they were Russian fifteen-year-olds who had come here illegally on a vegetable lorry through the Channel Tunnel. You’d think he would have smelled a rat by now, but instead he went with them. So they’re back in the hotel room, and every time the girls break off to take calls on their mobiles, they’re actually shooting digital footage of Martell and sending it over the Internet to
“Who’s that?” asked Bryant.
“Janet Ramsey is a smart Tory bitch who’s obsessed with illegal immigrants, and happens to be the new editor of
“What time was this?”
“About a quarter to six. You can check with the staff in the cafe. They’re bound to remember – we made enough noise.”
“What did you do then?”
“I paid the bill and walked off towards Kingsway, trying to clear my head. I had something to eat at a French place near Lincoln’s Inn Fields, I can’t remember the name, but it would be easy to find. Then I caught a taxi home.”
¦
“Do you believe him?” asked Bryant as the detectives drove back towards Mornington Crescent.
“He had a fight in a public place; he couldn’t lie about that,” said May. “But do I believe him? I think so. He had a reason to take revenge against Sarah White, and Martell was about to ruin his new career, but it’s hardly enough to make you dress up as a highwayman and construct something so insanely baroque – and that’s what
