he tried to keep it in focus. The blade was moved a few inches back as if to give him a better look. ‘You have a choice. I’m not a sadist. Not like you.’
George vigorously shook his head, eyes wide. Along with the rubber gloves, the visitor was wearing a thin, clear, plastic raincoat, the kind that tourists bought when caught out by the weather. It hung all the way down to the floor and looked ridiculous.
‘Oh, you’d say that now. But then… when you had the chance.’
George felt something press into his flesh, then a burning sensation, then the agony of the knife chiselling into one of his ribs. He reached deep into his lungs and bellowed. The sound that emerged was like a constipated man trying to pass a cricket ball.
‘The harder you make it for me, the worse it will be for you. I’m no expert in this kind of thing, but I should be able to make a decent effort at cutting your throat. Sit still now…’
George was trying for one last deep breath as he watched the knife disappear under his chin. Looking down, he was distracted by the sound of something splattering off his killer’s raincoat. The knife flashed in front of him for a second time but by now his head was slumped on his chest, as if he was mesmerised by the blood that had filled his dinner plate to overflowing.
TWO
Inspector John Carlyle of the Metropolitan Police dropped the copy of Vogue back on to the coffee table in front of him and yawned. In the corner, his sergeant, Joe Szyszkowski, was snoring away quietly. Above Joe’s head, on a large television screen, a news reporter was standing outside Buckingham Palace speculating that the prime minister was finally going to call the long-awaited General Election. All manner of important things were going on in the outside word and here he was, sitting in a private health clinic on Harley Street, waiting for some Italian crook to finish having a tummy tuck.
‘How long is this going to take?’ he asked no one in particular.
The sour-faced receptionist looked up from her computer and gave him an exasperated look. Having a bunch of policemen camping in the clinic’s reception did nothing for the atmosphere of the place. Not to mention her ability to spend the morning talking to her mates on the phone while updating her Facebook page. ‘The doctor said Mr Boninsegna should be coming round in the next few minutes,’ she said slowly, as if talking to a particularly dim child who needed everything repeated several times. ‘He will let you know as soon as his patient begins to regain consciousness.’
‘You are very kind. Thank you.’ Commissario Edmondo Valcareggi, of the Italian State Police, smiled at the girl like a wolf contemplating the lamb that was about to be lunch.
You dirty old bugger, Carlyle thought sourly, you’ve got to be even older than I am. Having to babysit this old lech from Rome was a major pain in the arse. With his shock of white hair and sharp features, Valcareggi looked like something out of a Ralph Lauren advert. The expensively casual clothes he was wearing looked as if they must have cost many months of Carlyle’s salary. How much did Italian police get paid, anyway? ‘You’re sure that the man in there is actually Ferruccio Pozzo?’ he asked for the umpteeth time. The man recovering from his operation down the corridor was registered in the name of Furio Boninsegna.
Valcareggi smiled indulgently. ‘There is no question of it. We are absolutely sure. He’s had plastic surgery before, and is travelling on a fake passport of course…’
‘Of course,’ interjected Joe, who had woken up and was helping himself to a fresh cup of coffee from the pot by the reception desk. Taking a sip, he smiled at the receptionist, who made a show of blanking him. Shrugging, he sat back down next to Carlyle.
‘… but we have a DNA match,’ Valcareggi continued. ‘It is definitely the right man, and he is very worth catching. Pozzo has links to the various crime clans in the ’Ndrangheta syndicate. He has been a fugitive for almost two years now, and this is his second round of liposuction. We almost caught up with him the first time, at a clinic in Nice, but he left it about an hour before we arrived.’
‘It happens,’ said Joe sympathetically.
‘This time,’ Valcareggi beamed, ‘we’ve got him. No problem.’
‘Anaesthetic always slows them down,’ Carlyle quipped. ‘I don’t know why we don’t use it more often.’ Reaching down, he picked up another magazine and quickly flicked through the pages until he came to a large picture of two well-dressed men hovering on the cusp of middle age. The pair beamed at him as if they had just won an Olympic gold, taken the casino at Monte Carlo for ten million dollars and fucked Scarlett Johansson all ends up, all on the same day.
The strapline read: Better than you, and they know it.
Tossers, Carlyle thought. But he started reading anyway.
THE GOLDEN TWINS TAKE CENTRE STAGE
The Carlton brothers will be running the country soon; Eamonn Foinhaven profiles a new political aristocracy in the land.
One is known as ‘the Sun King’, the other ‘the dark prince’, nicknames they picked up on their fabled journey from the playing fields of Eton, the forge of leaders down the centuries, through Cambridge University to the House of Commons, and now on to the very gates of power, in front of No 10 Downing Street itself.
If the perception in Westminster is that Edgar Carlton is the prime minister in waiting – the odds on him taking the top job shortening every day, after every new fumble and misjudgement by the current incumbent – his younger sibling (by two minutes), Xavier, is hardly living in his shadow.
The political classes are now agreed that Edgar Carlton has all the necessary skills for great office: the charm, the drive, the appetite to lead from the front. Xavier, on the other hand, who is as likely to be found in the gossip pages as in parliamentary reports, has more doubters. Already handed the post of Shadow Foreign Secretary by his brother, it seems increasingly certain that he will get the chance to prove these doubters wrong. It is even whispered that the twins have agreed a secret pact, with Edgar promising to stand down as PM in favour of Xavier once a second term is secured.
The Carltons fit perfectly with the mood of the moment, the country’s new taste for austere glamour. Their story is now well known: the sons of the celebrated union between Hamisi Michuki, the Kenyan model who stormed London society in the 1960s, and Sir Sidney Carlton, a rakish tycoon who rose to the heights of Paymaster General in successive governments in the early 1960s, before his political ambitions were derailed by an unfortunate incident with a pair of strippers from the Cowshed Club, a notorious haunt of gangsters and other pre-Swinging Sixties lowlifes.
Happily for the boys, the best genes of both parents have been passed on; they acquired their mother’s stunning looks and their father’s political nous. Now, they are poised to sweep away both the gloom of the ‘new austerity’ and also the soul-destroying cult of the working-class rapscallion, or ‘cheeky chav’, both of which have plagued the country in recent years. In the class-ridden twenty-first century, the Carltons are the ultimate ‘anti- chavs’, standing against everything that is common, vulgar and ugly. Surfing a popular wave of optimism and glamour, they have, quite simply, left routine politics behind. ‘They are so in touch with the zeitgeist, it’s frightening,’ declares Chelsea-based style guru Sally Plank. ‘Their peers are footballers, pop stars and royalty, rather than other politicians. They realise that becoming a credible celebrity is ninety per cent of the job done; because if you’re a celebrity, the public will forgive you for being a politician.’
Potentially the first brothers to hold senior government office together since just before the outbreak of the Second World War, they are fiercely loyal to each other. ‘It’s almost like a gay political marriage,’ remarked one colleague who declined to be named. ‘They have an almost telepathic understanding and are constantly watching each other’s backs.’
Not that they have much to worry about in that regard at the moment, for whatever reservations ordinary members may have about the brothers’ grip on the party is more than offset by the current opinion polls. After many years in the wilderness, power once again beckons. Lucky or not, Edgar and Xavier Carlton are in the right place at the right time. They look young, modern and in touch with the public.
‘They will win, that much is certain,’ says pollster Martin Max of pressyourbutton. co. uk, the UK’s leading
