eighty years earlier, during the General Strike, the police had fought pitched battles with the workers only a stone’s throw from where he was sitting. Barely two months ago, just down the road in Brixton, prison riots had left one person dead and fifty injured; more than two hundred were arrested. The trouble there had been sparked by the accidental police shooting of a Jamaican mother of six, who was left paralysed below the waist. North of the river, the Broadwater Farm housing estate in Tottenham was still under martial law after riots there resulted in the murder of a police constable, a forty-year-old father of three. Another policeman had been shot. Meanwhile, a local politician had crowed that the police had received ‘a bloody good hiding’. The shit never fucking stopped.
Carlyle had turned all this over in his head, time and again, as he walked his beat. It had been almost nine months since he had visited Dominic Silver. He hadn’t taken up the offer of a job, of course, but he couldn’t help remembering Dom’s words: ‘There will always be an “enemy within”… You’ll be doing someone else’s dirty work forever.’ Carlyle had to admit, if only to himself, that it was looking as if like Dominic bloody Silver was right.
Slater returned with his second bacon roll and a mug of tea, just as two white youths came into view, walking at a steady pace towards the cafe. They were big blokes, easily six foot plus, broad as well as tall. Stopping in front of the window, they stared at the two policemen inside. It was only then that Carlyle realised that one of them had a brick in his hand. A second later, the window exploded and he was covered in glass. Without letting go of his roll, Slater toppled backwards in his chair. Leaving him on the floor, and abandoning his helmet and radio on the table, Carlyle rushed out of the cafe door and gave chase.
He shouted for the youths to stop. Unsurprisingly, they ignored him. Trying to run in his standard police-issue boots was agony. Almost immediately, his chest felt tight and he was struggling for breath. You need to start exercising some more, Carlyle told himself. Breathing through his mouth, he kicked on, pushing himself harder. He wasn’t gaining on the two men, but they weren’t losing him either. Fifty yards down the road, he saw them duck into an alley to his right. Looking over his shoulder, he could not see Slater anywhere. He felt a surge of annoyance, but there was nothing he could do about that now. Head down, he took the corner at speed and tripped straight over an outstretched foot, crashing headlong into a pile of rubbish bags that had been stacked against the alley wall. Carlyle flipped himself on to his back and just lay there, catching his breath. In the gutter, he thought, looking up at the stars. Or where the stars should be. Aware of the shadows moving just beyond the edge of his vision.
Someone took a step closer. There was the dull clink of metal on brick. ‘Get up!’
Slowly, Carlyle worked himself into a sitting position. One of the bags had burst and some spoiled fruit had spilled out. He plucked a rotten banana skin from his tunic and, as casually as he could manage, tossed it in the direction of the voice. Pushing himself out of the garbage, he stood up, looking at a third man now in front of him, with the two he had been chasing leaning against the wall further back.
‘Hello, Trevor.’
Trevor Miller tapped the length of lead pipe against the leg of his jeans. In the semi-darkness, he looked bigger and uglier than Carlyle remembered. ‘I warned you, Carlyle. Why did you go and talk to that tart’s lawyer? Why did you put me in the frame?’
Carlyle could feel his heart going like the clappers under his uniform. ‘Why didn’t you leave her alone?’
Without replying, Miller stepped forward and chopped the pipe into Carlyle’s ribs. A searing pain shot through his torso and he went down again. ‘My career could have been fucked because of you.’
‘You’re a big boy, Trevor,’ Carlyle said, struggling to his feet and glancing back down the alley. ‘You have to take responsibility for your own actions. Anyway, I don’t think you were ever going to make Commissioner.’
Trevor had caught his glance, and also looked back towards the street. ‘No one’s going to come and help you,’ he spat, waving the pipe in front of his face. ‘Everyone knows you’re a complete cunt. When I fuck you up, loads of people will be cheering. You have to take it.’
Carlyle decided that his only chance was to run for it. There was only Miller between him and the entrance to the alley. The other two were maybe ten yards further back, each enjoying a cigarette, neither paying a great deal of attention. If I could sell Trevor a dummy, Carlyle thought, I might get a couple of yards start. Who knows? That dickhead Slater might even put in an appearance. At the very least, he could have called for assistance.
Carlyle knew that he might not be able to outrun all three of them, but worrying about that wouldn’t help. He sprang forward, feinting to Miller’s right, before pushing off with his left foot and sprinting, head down, arms pumping, to his left. Miller, momentarily wrong-footed, screamed in fury. Carlyle felt the pipe whistle past his head before clattering to the ground. Reflexively he ducked but didn’t stop running. Bloody hell, he thought as he reached the mouth of the alley, I’m going to make it! Then his right foot went down and gave way beneath him as he slipped on the same discarded banana skin. Careering into a wall, Carlyle fell in a heap by the side of the road.
The footsteps behind him stopped and were replaced by mocking laughter. Someone kicked him in the back, and then he took a boot between the legs that, literally, made him see stars. Dazed, he was dragged by his legs back into the darkness of the alley. This time, all he could do was curl up as tightly as possible and wait for his beating. The next blow hit him behind the left ear. His last thought before blacking out was that he still had no idea where he should take Helen on their first date.
TWENTY
‘Who is in charge of the police investigation?’
‘Err…’ William Murray glanced at his boss, who nodded his approval, before leaning forward and speaking slowly into the star-shaped conference phone in the centre of the table. ‘He’s called
…’ he checked his notes, ‘Inspector Carlyle. He works out of the Charing Cross station.’
‘But it was a woman at the press conference.’ This time it was Xavier’s voice that crackled down the line, fighting to be heard above the background traffic noise.
The Merrion Club was back in session – sort of. This morning, however, expensive booze and obnoxious behaviour were off the menu. The club’s surviving members had dialled in to a conference call to discuss the unfortunate situation that they now found themselves in. While Edgar and his aide sat in a private room in Pakenham’s Gentlemen’s Club in central London, Xavier was busy campaigning somewhere in Surrey. Christian Holyrod was also out on the election campaign, while the other two – Sebastian Lloyd and Harry Allen – were both abroad.
‘The woman who conducted the press conference yesterday,’ Murray replied, looking down at his papers again, ‘is a Superintendent Carole Simpson. She is the inspector’s boss.’
‘Simpson will doubtless be very helpful in all this,’ Holyrod remarked. ‘Her husband is Joshua Hunt, who runs McGowan Capital.’
Murray waited for some sign of recognition on Edgar’s face. When none was forthcoming, he whispered, ‘He’s a member of the Pack.’
‘Don’t use that expression,’ Edgar snapped, quickly hitting the mute button on the phone. The so-called ‘Wolf Pack’ was a group of City investors who had each given the party a donation of at least a million pounds at the beginning of the year, in anticipation of the upcoming campaign. The details of who had donated what had been duly disclosed, as part of Edgar’s much-hyped commitment to financial transparency. Sadly, the fact that a couple of Pack members had made more than three hundred million each by unpatriotically shorting sterling during the recent financial crisis had not gone down so well in the press. The row was still bubbling along. Edgar, who could be thin skinned on certain matters, needed the money, but hated the hassle. He now eyed Murray like he was a naughty schoolboy in line for a caning. ‘Even in private,’ he hissed, ‘we never call them that.’
‘Yes,’ said Murray quietly, looking down at his hands.
Edgar felt his anger fade. ‘Loose lips sink ships, and all that,’ he grinned.
‘Yes,’ said Murray again, wondering what the hell his boss was talking about.
Edgar sighed and tried again. ‘Don’t start using the language of the media, because that will only help them destroy us.’
‘Anyway,’ said Murray, trying to find his way back to the matter in hand, ‘it has to be convenient for us to have a connection with Superintendent Simpson through Mr Hunt. Although, I suppose that to her it might appear a potential conflict of interest.’
‘A mere coincidence,’ Carlton sniffed. ‘Anyway, it’s not like it’s actually her case, is it?’
