important dinner party. In fact, he probably was.
Silver took Carlyle by the arm and began walking him briskly in the direction of William IV Street and Covent Garden. ‘It’s quite a show,’ he said, excitement evident in his tone. ‘I hear they’re trashing Stringfellow’s.’
‘So I guess we’re not going to take in a lap dance, then,’ Carlyle deadpanned, allowing himself to fall in step with his mate. ‘What are you doing here anyway?’
‘I just need a quick favour.’
Two minutes later, they were standing in Chandos Place, at the back of Charing Cross Police Station. The entire street had been cordoned off. Behind the tape, ten or twelve police vans were parked haphazardly, occupied by a mixture of bored-looking policemen and policewomen, annoyed at missing out on the real action, and some arrested-looking demonstrators whose disappointment looked even greater. Standing on the corner of Bedfordbury, along with a few gawkers and people searching for their friends, Dominic outlined the situation. ‘Two of my guys are inside there,’ he said, pointing to a van parked twenty feet away.
Carlyle sighed. He knew where this was going.
‘They’re holding,’ Dom continued. ‘Quite a lot, as it happens.’
‘That was clever,’ Carlyle scowled. ‘What the hell am I supposed to do about it?’
Dom put on a pained expression. ‘C’mon, John, they haven’t been processed yet. It’ll last forever to deal with this lot, so it’ll take nothing for you to sort this out for me.’
‘Easy for you to say,’ Carlyle huffed.
‘Surely you can have a quiet word with one of your colleagues, and then the problem is solved?’ He gestured at the scene in front of them. ‘It won’t make any difference to all this. Your arrest figures today are going to be extremely good, regardless.’
‘For fuck’s sake,’ Carlyle glared at him, struggling to keep his voice down. ‘Do you only hire these types if they are terminally stupid? What the fuck were they doing here, anyway?’
Dom spread his arms wide and laughed nervously. ‘ Mea culpa, mate, mea culpa. I know it’s a big ask. A very big ask. I’ll owe you big time.’
‘Fucking hell, Dominic.’
‘I’ll get you anything you want,’ he said, hopping from foot to foot. ‘Anything.’
Carlyle gritted his teeth. ‘Don’t start that again. How many times
…? I don’t fucking want anything. If I take stuff from you, that’s only going to get me into more trouble.’
‘I understand, of course, I do.’ Dominic stepped closer. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t have to be like that,’ he said, with a slight desperation in his voice that Carlyle had never heard before. ‘You know how it works. I’ve helped you before. I have contacts. I can get information. I can help you again.’
Carlyle started pawing the ground with his right boot. He knew that the smart thing here to do would be to just walk away.
‘C’mon,’ Dom pleaded, ‘this will be a great investment in your future career.’
Carlyle rubbed his neck, not even wanting to think about it. He looked at Dom. ‘What are their names?’
‘Pearson and Manners. Nice middle-class boys, both.’ He gestured at the chaos around them. ‘Fit right in with this mob.’
‘Fucking idiots.’ Pushing his hand into the back pocket of his jeans, he pulled out his Police ID and ducked under the tape. ‘Wait here.’
THIRTY
Fifteen minutes after speaking to Dominic Silver on the phone, Carlyle headed into St James’s Square carrying a small see-through plastic bag containing lunch for them both. Before entering the garden in the middle, he stopped by the simple memorial erected to Yvonne Fletcher to pay his respects. A round plaque told him what he already knew: twenty-five-year-old WPC Fletcher had been shot in the Square on 17 April 1984. She had been on crowd control, looking after a small demonstration outside the Libyan People’s Bureau. Twenty-five years later, her killer had yet to be brought to justice. Carlyle hadn’t worked with her personally, but he knew that she had been well respected as a decent, friendly copper, and also a good colleague.
Carlyle stood there for a minute as the cars rushed past and people went about their business. His thoughts were the same as always. How unlucky was it to have died on what should have been a routine shift in the heart of London? A year after the shooting, Carlyle had stood to attention in the same square while Prime Minister Thatcher had unveiled Fletcher’s memorial. In her speech, Thatcher had signed off with a quote from Abraham Lincoln: ‘Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.’ We’ll dare to do our duty, Carlyle often told himself in the years afterwards, if only we’re allowed to by the politicians.
By the time he entered the garden, Dominic Silver was waiting for him on a bench under a tree. The day was warm, but there was a pleasant breeze, and Dom had managed to commandeer the best of the available shade. The park was quite busy, with office workers spread out on the grass to enjoy the sun. Without introduction, Carlyle handed over the plastic bag. Dom rooted about in it for a few seconds, taking what he wanted before handing it back. Together, they sat eating in happy silence for ten minutes or so. When they’d finished, Carlyle gathered up all the rubbish and dropped it in a nearby bin.
‘Thank you for lunch,’ said Dom, as Carlyle returned to the bench.
‘No problem.’
‘It’s a great day to be sitting here in the square,’ Dom said, wiping some crumbs off his Neil Young ‘Like a Hurricane’ T-shirt.
‘Sure,’ said Carlyle, letting the food settle in his stomach.
‘The world’s most expensive house used to be over there.’ Dom, the property guru, pointed a finger over his left shoulder. ‘Number eight went for more than a hundred million, once upon a time. The Russians have pissed on that amount many times over in the last few years, of course.’
‘You wanted to talk about the Russians?’ Carlyle was bemused.
‘No,’ Dom smiled, ‘I wanted to talk about Susy Ahl.’
Carlyle made a face that said Be my guest. A pigeon was trying to stick its head into a discarded crisp packet on the grass. It wasn’t having much success and he knew how it felt. By now he was getting used to everyone else being at least one step ahead of him on this case. ‘And who, pray tell, is Susy Ahl?’
‘Susy Ahl,’ said Dom casually, ‘ was Robert Ashton’s girlfriend, back in the day. She is the woman you need to speak to about the Merrion killings.’
Carlyle turned to look at him, interest finally overriding his irritation at being shown up. ‘And how do you know this?’
Dom waved a hand airily above his head. ‘I know lots of things.’
‘Come on,’ said Carlyle, getting a bit exasperated now, ‘this isn’t about lots of things.’
Now he’d had some gentle fun, Dom’s expression became more serious. ‘Did you know that Eva went to Cambridge?’
‘No.’ Carlyle knew next to nothing about Eva Hollander, other than that she was Dom’s common-law wife.
‘Eva’s a very smart girl, got herself a first in History. Thought about doing a PhD, her subject being the cultural legacy of the Weimar Republic.’
‘But she hooked up with you instead,’ Carlyle quipped.
‘I didn’t meet her until later,’ Dom corrected him. ‘Instead of doing research, she got married. Her scumbag husband was actually a client of mine in the early nineties…’ He let those reminiscences trail off.
With his famed empathy, Carlyle kept on digging. ‘Let me guess,’ he said. ‘You lost some money, but won the girl.’
‘Don’t be flippant, John.’ Dominic sat up and stared him straight in the eye. ‘I wouldn’t take the piss out of your family, would I?’
‘No, sorry.’ Carlyle tried to get the conversation back on track. ‘So Eva knows this woman?’ he asked.
‘She knows her sister. They shared a house together in Cambridge, for a year.’
