away from their relationship which, after all this time, was almost as much personal as professional. Dom, like Carlyle, was a family man. He’d had the same girlfriend for more than twenty years and, as far as Carlyle knew, they enjoyed a happy, monogamous relationship, one which had been blessed with five kids. The families knew each other well, and Alice had played with the Silver kids plenty of times over the years.
Carlyle drained his glass of guava, mango and goji. Dom was right; it was good. ‘I’m in the market for some information.’
‘Obviously.’ Dom sat further forward on the sofa and eyed Carlyle intently. ‘What kind of information?’
‘I’m interested in five men specifically. Their names are George Dellal, Ian Blake, Nicholas Hogarth, Harry Allen and Sebastian Lloyd.’ Hewasn’t yet ready to mention Holyrod and the Carltons.
Dom made a show of thinking about that for a few seconds. ‘This is the thing you were on the TV for last week?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Not making much progress, then?’ He grinned. ‘So what do you want to know?’
‘The usual. At least some of them use drugs, cocaine mainly and a bit of ecstasy. Where do they get them from? Who do they like to indulge with? What else do they get up to? Any interesting peccadilloes?’
‘Interesting peccadilloes?’ Dom laughed. ‘We all have some of those.’
‘You get the picture.’
‘Sure. Give Gideon the list and we’ll see what we can find out.’
‘I appreciate it.’ Rummaging through his pocket, Carlyle found a piece of paper, a receipt for a sandwich he’d bought the day before. While he scribbled down the five names, he thought about whether there was anything else he could get from his host. Things needed to be pushed along a bit, so he showed a little more of his hand. ‘Do you ever supply the concierge at the Garden Hotel?’ he asked, without looking up.
Dom glanced at Spanner and turned back to Carlyle. ‘Alex Miles? Yeah, now and again. Only the odd bit of business, though, nothing major. He likes to use different people. He wouldn’t make “my top hundred clients” list.’
‘Blake was the stiff found in his hotel last week.’
Dom made a face to signify: OK… and?
Gideon Spanner meanwhile kept staring blankly into space.
‘Blake was a fairly high-end drug user,’ Carlyle continued, ‘the type of guy who might buy from the likes of you through someone like Miles.’
‘There’s lots of those,’ Dom smiled. ‘Just leave it with us. We’ll doubtless dig up something. We usually do.’
‘I know.’
‘I’ll walk you down the stairs.’
At the front door, Dom followed Carlyle out into the street. ‘How’s the family?’
‘Fine,’ Carlyle said. ‘You?’
‘Good. The eldest two are at secondary school already.’ He grimaced. ‘The fees? Bloody hell!’
‘Tell me about it. Alice is at City in the Barbican now.’
‘That’s an excellent school.’
‘Yes, it is. We’re very pleased.’
‘How can you afford that?’
‘Good question.’
‘If you ever-’
‘No, no,’ Carlyle interrupted quickly. He wasn’t going down that road again. ‘We’re fine. She’ll get a scholarship soon… I hope.’
‘Good luck.’
‘Thanks.’
Would Carlyle ever take Dominic’s cash? It didn’t get any less tempting as the years went by. He’d discussed it with Helen a few times, in a What if? kind of a way. But it was never a serious possibility. They knew that if he ever crossed that line, he could never go back. The bottom line was that it wasn’t worth it, since it would be incredibly stupid to risk everything just for money. Never say never, of course, but things would have to become truly desperate.
Dom moved the conversation quickly on to less choppy waters. ‘We should get the kids together over the summer hols.’
‘Helen would like that. She’s always worried about Alice not having enough company, being an only child.’
‘Excellent.’
Dom wasn’t always this chatty, so Carlyle thought he might as well do a bit more fishing. ‘How’s business? Getting squeezed by the recession?’
‘Nah… well, maybe. Like you, I’ll never be out of work. It might be tough for a while, though, as I’m a discretionary spend.’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Yeah, sometimes,’ Dom laughed. ‘But, I’ll tell you this, we’ve just turned off easy street and on to shit street. The good old days are over. The easy money has run for the hills and the dirty money is getting dirtier. Things could get quite nasty for your average punter.’
‘Sure.’ A sociology lesson from a drug dealer, Carlyle thought. That’s just what I need.
‘You think about it, no more buying a house in London, watching the price going up, and then thinking you’re Warren Buffett. We’re off on a bumpy ride: industrial unrest, unemployment, stagflation – back to the bad old days of the seventies and eighties. You remember them?’
Yes, Carlyle thought, I do indeed.
Dom was off again on one of those monologues he’s perfected over the years: ‘Back to the days of power cuts, the rise of the National Front – or, rather, the bloody BNP,’ Dom continued. ‘Back to the days of mortgage rationing, holidays in Southend rather than Jamaica.’
Carlyle, who hadn’t been on holiday anywhere more exotic than Brighton since before Alice was born, said nothing. Dom probably spent more on his holidays than an inspector’s annual salary afforded.
‘We’re running out of power, too,’ Dom continued, really on a roll now. ‘Our ageing power stations are closing and we haven’t bothered to build new ones. Power cuts, shutting down the tube service, reducing hospital services, three-day working weeks, Alice doing her homework by candlelight… it’s all on the cards.’
‘Maybe.’
‘No maybes about it, mate. Civilisation requires electricity. Without it, it’s chaos and anarchy, here we damn well come. I wouldn’t want to be stuck at the top of your block of flats when the power fails.’
‘Thank you for that happy thought.’
‘Have you got a gun?’
‘Are you kidding?’
‘I wouldn’t rule it out,’ Dom smiled. ‘We are in serious, serious shit here. History is repeating itself in ever shorter cycles. Scumbag capitalism has been running out of control. The Russians are invading other countries again. They’ve even remade Brideshead Revisited. Even worse, that bunch of idiot public schoolboys will be running the country soon, or trying to.’
‘Helen wants me to take her to some film about the Baader-Meinhof,’ said Carlyle glumly. He couldn’t understand why his wife would want to spend two hours watching a film about German terrorists. Maybe it offered a gossamer thread to her lefty past.
‘Great date movie,’ Dominic sniggered. He flashed one of his trademark, old-style smiles. They were rarer these days, and usually of the sixty-watt rather than the hundred-watt variety, but this one was a decent approximation of the days gone by. ‘At least all this shit makes it interesting, eh? Just as long as they don’t bring back Spandau fucking Ballet.’
On her knees in a bathroom at Party HQ, Yulexis Monagas slipped Xavier Carlton’s penis out of her mouth and began gently flicking its tip with her thumbnail.
Xavier grunted with a mixture of surprise and pleasure. His member twitched on the brink of orgasm.
