Putney End turnstiles. It was less than two weeks since the last season had ended, but the euphoria of the team’s last-gasp escape from relegation was long since dissipated. Carlyle had yet to renew his season ticket for the Riverside Stand, and he wondered if this time he would actually get round to it. He had been going to watch Fulham ever since he had been eight years old, but every year it seemed harder to justify the cost. If he put his mind to it, he could doubtless think of a dozen other things to do with the six hundred pounds, while Helen could probably think of a few dozen more.
Walking fifty yards on past the football ground, he turned right into Harboro Street. It was the same as dozens of other roads in the area, and hundreds of residential streets in the surrounding inner suburbs. There was a long row of two-storey terraced houses on either side, with a cross-section of cars, from tiny Fiats to huge Porsche 4?4s – parked tightly together against the pavement.
Crossing the road, he walked about halfway down before he found number 99. This was the address that Dominic Silver had given him.
The house was set back no more than twelve feet from the street, behind a small paved front garden. It appeared clean and in good repair, with a newish-looking coat of white paint on the brickwork and a flower box on the ledge of the ground-floor bay window. Three bedrooms, Carlyle guessed, and probably worth about half a million, if not more. Not for the first time, he felt a deep pang of regret that his parents had shown no interest in getting on to the London property ladder forty-odd years ago.
The front gate stood ajar, so he stepped quickly up to the front door and rang the bell. When there was no reply, he stepped forward to give it another ring, then noticed that the door was slightly open. Gingerly he gave it a push and stood peering along the hallway.
‘Hello?’
There was no reply.
Carlyle stepped inside the narrow hall. In front of him rose the stairs: to his right was what must be the living room. The hall continued alongside the stairs towards presumably a kitchen located at the rear.
As he took another step forward, he could hear voices coming from the back of the house.
‘Hello?’ he called again, louder.
Still no answer. Hearing some movement in the living room, he moved a couple of paces further along the hall and stuck his head round the door. An immaculate-looking Labrador immediately jumped off the sofa and padded over to give him a friendly sniff. Carlyle indulged it with a quick tickle behind the ears and moved back into the hallway. He moved slowly towards the voices, with his new friend now in tow.
‘HELLO!’ he shouted. ‘This is the police!’
The voices instantly stopped, and a woman stepped out of the kitchen. There was a large cook’s knife in her hand.
Instinctively, he took a small step backwards. ‘I’m Inspector Carlyle of the Metropolitan Police.’
‘Yes, you are,’ she said, letting the knife drop to her side.
‘I tried calling from the door, but got no reply,’ he explained, still keeping his distance.
She smiled. ‘Apologies, Inspector, I didn’t hear you back there. I was listening to the radio: an interesting report on the current conflict in northern Uganda.’
‘Uh-uh,’ said Carlyle, who was blissfully unaware of that particular war.
With her free hand, she reached into the pocket of her shirt and tossed the dog a biscuit. ‘I see you’ve met Arthur.’
‘Yes.’
A thought suddenly struck her. ‘How did you get in, by the way?’
He gestured back down the hall. ‘The front door was open.’
‘God, I’m always forgetting to close it properly. I’ve got to stop doing that, haven’t I, Arthur?’ The dog wagged his tail happily, perhaps anticipating another biscuit. ‘Maybe I’m losing my marbles.’ She looked past Carlyle, down the hall. ‘I didn’t also leave the keys in the lock, did I?’
‘No.’
‘Thank goodness for small mercies.’
She was a striking woman, in good shape with an athletic build and easily a couple of inches taller than Carlyle, even in her bare feet. Well preserved, she looked around his age, or maybe a few years younger. He noticed how her striking green eyes shone with what looked like the effects of no little alcohol.
A few minutes later, he was sitting on the sofa recently vacated by Arthur, nursing a small cup of black coffee. Susy Ahl sat in an armchair opposite him, with a large glass of Chateau Miraval Rose. The three-quarters- empty bottle stood on the wooden floor by the foot of her chair.
‘Were you expecting me?’ Carlyle asked, once they were both sitting comfortably. ‘You seemed to know who I was.’
‘I saw you on the television,’ she said matter-of-factly, though not making eye contact. ‘I assumed that you’d want to speak to me sooner or later.’
He didn’t see a television in the room, but that didn’t mean anything. Maybe she had one in the kitchen or up in her bedroom. Anyway, there were plenty of other ways she could have seen Superintendent Simpson’s press conference.
‘That was a few days ago,’ he said.
She smiled weakly. ‘Was it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Time flies.’
‘You didn’t think of coming to see me?’ he asked gently.
‘I’ve been busy. Out of the country.’
‘On business?’
‘Yes.’ Gingerly she stood up and lifted a business card from the mantelpiece above the empty fireplace, in which stood some kind of potted plant. Handing the card over to Carlyle, she continued. ‘My firm has a number of clients in the Middle East, so I’ve been shuttling between here and Dubai every couple of weeks for the last nine months.’
She sat back down, as he studied the card. In navy script, it said: Susy Ahl, Partner, Escudo amp; Caspian LLP.
‘What’s LLP?’ he asked.
‘Limited Liability Partnership. Escudo amp; Caspian is a law firm.’
‘What kind of law?’ he asked, tensing slightly.
‘Property. We mainly help investors buying and selling commercial property in London.’
How boring, thought Carlyle, suppressing a smile. ‘Isn’t that quite tough at the moment?’ he asked.
‘It’s not as easy as it was, but at least my clients still have some cash. Thank God for dumb Arab money.’
‘Dumb?’
‘That’s the stereotype, that they always get suckered into paying tourist prices. In reality, they’re very smart; very smart indeed. They tend not to overpay and they now own large chunks of London lock, stock and barrel.’
Carlyle could not care less about that, one way or another. What he needed now was to get this conversation back on track. ‘I’ll need the precise dates of your business trips.’
‘Of course. Call me at my office in the morning and I can give you a full list.’
‘I’ll do that.’ Carlyle slipped the card into his jacket pocket. Enough of the preliminaries, he thought. ‘Tell me about Robert Ashton.’
This time she kept her eyes directly on him, as she took a large mouthful of wine. ‘What exactly do you want to know?’
‘Just let me hear your version of it.’
‘Well,’ she put her glass down on the floor, ‘I assume you know that Robert was my boyfriend at Cambridge.’
Carlyle said nothing.
‘We had been going out for a couple of years before he killed himself.’ She said it quietly but calmly, without any emotion in her voice.
Very controlled, thought Carlyle, but, then again, it’s been a long while.
