‘Something like that.’
‘Well, well, well,’ Joe chuckled. ‘Edgar Carlton and Christian Holyrod? The joint dream ticket of dream tickets.’
‘Maybe,’ Carlyle snorted, ‘if you’re a mentally incontinent, Daily Mail -reading fascist.’
‘Hey,’ Joe chided him, ‘Anita reads the Mail.’
‘She should know better,’ Carlyle growled.
‘What are the odds of those ending up in our investigation?’ Joe asked, moving the conversation on.
‘About as good as our own chances of getting murdered,’ said Carlyle glumly.
‘Simpson will most definitely not be happy,’ Joe pointed out.
‘A silver lining,’ Carlyle agreed, ‘however faint.’
‘So what do we do now?’ Joe asked.
‘Let’s sleep on it,’ said Carlyle. ‘Keep all this strictly to yourself, for now. We will have to be extremely discreet, especially when it comes to writing things down. No written reports, no emails… at least until we know what the fuck is going on here.’
‘Of course.’
‘I’ll go and see Simpson tomorrow. It’s better to do it face to face. Then we’ll have to reach out to the gentlemen in question, and see if they can shed any light on why someone might want them dead.’
SEVENTEEN
Heading for Paddington Green police station, Carlyle walked out of Edgware Road tube station. At the station entrance, he paused to let his eyes adjust to the gloom. There was no need to hurry, as Simpson regularly stayed holed up in her office to late into the night. She was not the best when it came to handling bad news, and therefore Carlyle was in no rush to give it to her.
As he approached the station, he was struck by its shameless ugliness. Paddington Green police station was a brutalist cube from the 1960s that almost made its Charing Cross counterpart seem elegantly designed. Straight out of the couldn’t-give-a-flying-fuck school of architecture fashionable at the time, it eroded his spirit still further. Five minutes later, waiting in the anteroom outside her office, he picked up a magazine that had been discarded on the seat next to him. Flipping the pages, he realised it was the same magazine he’d been reading in the clinic on Harley Street while waiting for Ferruccio Pozzo to come round from his operation. Finding the correct page, he picked up the article about The Golden Twins, Edgar and Xavier Carlton, where he’d left off before arresting the now-deceased Mafioso.
Both brothers have worked hard to cultivate their voter-friendly image. Each is physically imposing (Edgar is 6’1” and Xavier 6’2”), with the looks of a pair of matinee idols. Both have the regulation exotic political wife (Russian for Edgar, while Xavier’s is Italian) and an impressive number of suitably cute and precocious children (four and three respectively).
The third leg of this proto-political dynasty is provided by half-sister Sophia, who is married to close political ally Christian Holyrod, the former soldier whose election as Mayor of London last year was very much seen as a forerunner of Edgar’s assault on No 10. Sophia has her hands full with the five children she has popped out for Holyrod in the course of their eight-year marriage, but she is still seen as a powerful behind-the-scenes influencer. Last year’s Christmas card, a group shot of the three families at a polo match under the legend Wishing You a Carlton Christmas, was, in effect, the party’s manifesto encapsulated in full.
The door to Simpson’s office opened, and a young woman stepped out. She didn’t introduce herself, but Carlyle assumed she must be his superior’s assistant.
‘Sorry for keeping you waiting.’
‘That’s fine,’ Carlyle smiled. He had already resigned himself to a long wait, so it was relatively easy to be gracious. The PA was a chunky girl, in her twenties, with mischievous grey eyes and an arresting lime-green bra clearly visible under her transparent white blouse.
She let him gawp at it for a few seconds. ‘Can I get you anything?’
‘No, I’m fine.’
‘If you do need anything, just let me know.’ She smiled before disappearing back into the office.
Carlyle filed the bra in his bank of happy thoughts, and returned to reading his article.
The brothers are poster boys for ‘the new posh’, the fashionable, knowing, ironic elite who can beat the liberals at their own game. So, by and large, they keep their fancy cars in the garage (Edgar has a Porsche Cayenne 4?4 and Xavier not one but two Maseratis), but they make sure that they are only ever photographed driving their matching, environmentally friendly Prius hybrids.
Xavier has also embraced a bicycle, some say at his brother’s behest, regularly cycling to work at the Commons. ‘It takes me back to my days at Eton,’ Xavier said recently, ‘the happiest days of my life, obviously. And, at the end of the day, when you look at the big picture, you can see howit’s also about freedom of the individual and taking one’s own action over an overbearing nanny state which wants to kill our spirit and rob us all blind.’
Camping (it’s not like the boy scouts; instead think drinking Chablis in a?5,000 yurt while barking down your iPhone at your PA and complaining about your WiFi), music festivals and British seaside holidays have all got the Carlton thumbs-up. Times may be tough, but they are laughing in the face of recession. It’s all therefore about the quality of life. Is it all bogus, though? Of course it is. But if everything is bogus, then nothing is. What is a dream if it’s not reality?
The door opened again. This time, Simpson herself dashed out, bouncing along the corridor without even acknowledging him. Less than a minute later, she bounced back.
‘Sorry to keep you waiting, John. I won’t be long.’
She didn’t wait for his reply. He didn’t utter one, being too busy worrying because she had used his first name.
Such is this picture of domestic and political perfection that even ‘the race issue’, the one thing that some of the more antediluvian political commentators speculated could halt their blitzkrieg through the establishment, has been completely neutralised. In a recent pressyour button. co. uk poll for Political Stud magazine, 42 per cent of respondents didn’t even realise that they were black. As Edgar himself put it recently: ‘I’m not black, I’m privileged.’
Carlyle felt a familiar vibrating feeling against his chest, and pulled out his phone. Seeing that it was Joe, he hit the receive button.
‘How’s it going?’
‘There’s not a lot to report, boss,’ Joe replied. From the sounds in the background, he had either gone home already or he was watching the Cartoon Channel in the office. ‘Did you speak to Simpson?’
‘Still waiting. Anything new in the media?’
‘No, it’s all gone quiet.’
‘Good. I’ll give you a call right after the meeting.’
‘OK.’
‘Give my best to Anita and the kids.’ Carlyle ended the call and put the phone back in his pocket. Lucky sod, he thought. I wish I was at home, too.
Of course, neither brother has ever worked in the real world, moving seamlessly from Cambridge to safe seats, one in London, one in the country, after a few years spent travelling and setting up their respective families. At that time, Edgar spent a year at the Society for Freedom, Progress and Innovation, currently the party’s favourite policy think-tank. Colleagues at the time have suggested that he was a stranger to the concept of a five-day working week, but he still managed to be credited as the co-author of a pamphlet called ‘ Heading South: The case for internal migration in the UK ’, which argued that northern cities like Liverpool and Newcastle have ‘lost much of their raison d’etre’, their private sector economy and their ability to generate wealth. It argued that the citizens in such godforsaken places should head south to places like Oxford and Cambridge, offering better job prospects. Needless to say, this paper caused a storm of protest. The idea has now been disowned and it is not expected to appear in the party’s election manifesto.
His phone went again. This time it was a text from Helen: We’ve eaten, so you’re on your own for tea. x
