out of the victim’s backside, in a way that set a new benchmark for London knife crime. Unable to resist, Carlyle mumbled to himself: ‘That must be a real pain in the arse.’ With his nose hovering about three inches away, he squinted to read the writing on the handle. It contained an image of two matchstick men, side by side, with just two arms and three legs between them. The man on the right had his arm in the air in a walk-like-an-Egyptian type of pose. Bloody strange logo, thought Carlyle. Next to it was the brand name Zwilling and J.A. Henckels. Otherwise, it looked like a normal knife, one you could probably buy anywhere. Nevertheless, its provenance was something to have checked later.
At a gentle knock at the door, Carlyle stepped back past the foot of the bed and into the vestibule. He pulled open the door to find a friendly blond woman called Susan Phillips smiling at him. Phillips was based at the Holborn police station, which was barely five minutes away by car at this time of night. She had been a staff pathologist with the Met for more than fifteen years now, and they had worked together several times before. ‘Good morning, Inspector,’ she said with an annoying cheerfulness. ‘I hear you have something for me.’
‘Thanks for coming,’ Carlyle said, holding the door wider. He thought she was looking tired and quite a bit older than her thirty-seven years, but sensibly he kept such thoughts to himself. After all, it was the middle of the night, and Carlyle knew that he was no oil painting himself, whatever the hour.
‘No problem,’ Phillips nodded. ‘Shall I come in?’
‘Let me move out first,’ said Carlyle, ‘then you can get at him more easily. I won’t spoil your fun, but it looks fairly straightforward.’
He stepped out into the corridor and nodded a greeting at a pair of forensic technicians he didn’t recognise. A couple of yards along, Anna Shue had also returned, with PC Burgess in tow. Burgess was looking quite pleased with himself, having successfully fully tracked down the twenty-pound note tendered by Alex Miles in the Epoca cafe.
Stepping forward, Carlyle had a quiet word with both, and watched them set off to deal with their allotted tasks. Phillips and the technicians had already taken over the room and there would be little for Carlyle to do for the next couple of hours.
He could have been dozing, or he could have been thinking. Either way, Carlyle’s reverie was ended by a knock at the door. Without waiting to be invited in, room service appeared with a breakfast trolley bearing scrambled eggs, coffee, toast, a generous selection of Danish pastries and some fruit. The waiter pushed the trolley as far into the room as possible, then turned on his heel to leave. Almost before Carlyle had the chance to mumble ‘Thank you’, the man was gone, seeming careful, for whatever reason, to avoid eye contact – or any other kind of contact – with the forces of law and order.
Realising that he hadn’t eaten for more than twelve hours, Carlyle salivated as he eyed the spread provided. He was extremely grateful indeed to Anna Shue for opening up the empty room right next to 329, where he could park himself and organise the start of an investigation, but he was even more grateful for the breakfast. Pouring himself a cup of steaming coffee, he sucked it down in one go, letting it scald the back of his throat. Hot was how he liked it, hot and strong, and he felt the caffeine spread through his system as he poured himself a second cup, and contemplated a sugar rush to go with it. Carlyle had a sweet tooth – he could easily name ten favourite patisseries within a one-mile radius of the piazza – so he passed on the eggs and went straight to the pastries. Sitting on the rather lumpy bed, he took another slurp of coffee and took a large bite out of a cherry Danish before enjoying a contemplative chew. Not up there with the best of them but not at all bad, Carlyle decided happily, while polishing it off and reaching for a second.
While forensics commandeered the victim’s room, Burgess had taken formal statements from Alex Miles and the rest of the hotel staff. For the record, they had reiterated what was previously said, i.e. not very much. The guests in the rooms immediately surrounding number 329 were also roused, to general dismay and annoyance, in order to confirm that they had seen and heard nothing too. To the night manager’s obvious relief, Carlyle agreed that they wouldn’t knock on any further doors on the third floor before seven-thirty. He knew that such activity wasn’t likely to yield anything, so he was happy to make her that concession. Anyway, it was just a matter of ticking a particular box for the record.
There had since been few other developments. The twenty quid rescued by PC Burgess from the Epoca cafe had been given a quick once-over by the technicians on site. With no signs of blood, it hadn’t yielded anything of immediate interest, so had been sent to Scotland Yard’s Forensic Science Laboratory, at Hendon in north London, for further tests. Finally, Alex Miles had taken Burgess and Carlyle through the hotel’s CCTV footage to see what they could glean from that.
At one point, it struck Carlyle that Miles seemed to be very much leading the hotel’s response to the incident. For such a high-profile hotel, in-house security was conspicuous by its absence. After some probing, Shue admitted that the chief security officer was off site, ‘auditioning’ a pair of Costa Rican hookers who wanted permission to work the premises.
The body itself had left for the morgue about half an hour ago. Having done her thing, the pathologist, Susan Phillips, had returned to Holborn police station to consider her findings and come up with a preliminary report. Meanwhile, the forensics guys had taken turns in going through the room with their own particular fine toothcombs. The remains of the victim’s room-service meal had been bagged up and sent to Hendon, too, along with the murder knife, clothing and a few other bits and pieces found inside the room. Details of anything of interest would arrive on Carlyle’s desk at Charing Cross later in the day, probably sometime in the middle of the afternoon. Business cards found in the victim’s jacket pocket, as well as a driving licence in his wallet, had confirmed the man’s name as Ian Blake.
It appeared that Blake had been managing director of a company called Alethia Consulting, whatever that was. Alethia herself, Carlyle vaguely remembered from various conversations with his daughter Alice, had been some kind of Greek goddess. What the company actually consulted on wasn’t clear, and it was unlikely that it mattered that much right now. Blake’s colleagues, or rather his ex-colleagues, would be receiving a visit within a couple of hours. Doubtless they would express their shock and dismay, portray the deceased as a latter-day saint, and reveal nothing useful whatsoever.
Carlyle drained his coffee cup and finished off the second pastry. He eyed a third but, after a few elongated seconds of emotional struggle and internal debate, he thought the better of it. Putting the empty cup back on the trolley, he sat back on the bed and let out a small burp.
The caffeine left him recharged, if not refreshed. It also inspired a thought. Sitting on the bed, he rifled through his pockets, looking for his new toy, a BlackBerry 8820. The handheld computer, only slightly larger than a cigarette packet, was one of the first two hundred to be assigned to Metropolitan Police officers – at inspector level and above – on a trial basis. Carlyle wasn’t what you would call an early adopter of new technology, but then neither was the Met. It had taken him the best part of nine months to successfully apply for the thing, get his hands on the thing, and then cajole the IT guys to persuade it to talk to his desktop computer and the network at large. Even now, the little machine seemed to work only erratically, but he could see its possibilities, not least in terms of spending more time out of the office, and so had vowed to stick with it.
After typing in his password, he went to the browser and Googled ‘Alethia’. Finding the company’s website, he then went to the homepage, which told him that it provided ‘strategic consulting services’ and had offices in New York and Dubai as well as London. Struggling with the small-size script, he brought up a list of directors and clicked on Blake’s biography.
Ian Blake, 47, revolutionised the consulting paradigm when he founded Alethia Consulting in 1993. His experience (over twenty years in the industry) has been focused within reputation management and evolving business strategies specifically for dynamic companies and individuals. This experience includes a wide variety of capital markets and transaction-based activities including leading multiple corporate financings, M amp;A transactions, personnel management and global-issues management activities. Ian works extensively with the most senior executive management – from small to large corporations, as well as not-for-profit organisations – across all sectors and markets, focusing on integrated strategic communications. He holds an MBA in international business from London Business School and a Master of Entrepreneurial Leadership degree from INSEAD in Paris.
Very informative, Carlyle thought. Maybe that’s why he was killed – someone took extreme offence at his ability to mangle the English language. After another few seconds of staring myopically at the screen, he hit the ‘clients’ link and watched as a list of names came up which included a football club, two universities, two banks and a handful of large retailers. There were also various names that Carlyle didn’t recognise, but all of these were
