Murray took a contented puff on his cigar.
‘You!’ Xavier pulled ineffectually against his restraints. ‘It was you all along.’
Murray nodded.
Xavier let his forehead sink back to the floor: ‘Icarus, the boy who flew too close to the sun…’
‘Not a very original choice of name.’ Murray spoke quietly, flicking some ash on to the carpet, his words almost getting lost against the music. ‘Not his name, of course.’
‘Of course,’ Xavier nodded subconsciously.
Murray flicked some cigar ash towards Edgar, who had fallen silent. The shock had finally kicked in, and it looked as if he had passed out. Probably just as well, Xavier thought. Where the fuck was that useless fat bastard Trevor Miller? Probably out in the ballroom getting drunk and trying to grope one of the secretaries.
‘His name was Robert.’
‘Yes.’
‘The name of the man you killed was Robert Ashton.’
‘But-’
‘He was my father.’
Murray dropped to his knees and pulled Xavier’s head up by his hair, bringing the broken bottle neck close to his neck. For a few moments, the noise outside died down as Kylie’s singing gave way to another thumping dance track.
Out of nowhere, Xavier summoned some new reserves of spirit. ‘You’ll never get away with it!’ he hissed.
‘I don’t want to get away with it,’ Murray snarled. ‘I want everyone to know what you people did.’
‘It wasn’t me. I wasn’t even there,’ a voice snivelled. Edgar had obviously reawakened.
‘Yes, you were!’ Xavier retorted angrily. He wasn’t going to let this lunatic have the pleasure of watching either of the brothers grovel.
‘Only at the end,’ Edgar protested. ‘I didn’t-’
‘You didn’t fuck him,’ Xavier hissed. ‘Big deal, so what? You still got your rocks off. We all did.’ Craning his neck, he turned back to face Murray who had dropped the neck of the broken bottle on to the carpet and was now fumbling with a mobile phone.
Edgar grew even more agitated as Murray started filming the grotesque scene that he had staged.
Laughing, Murray gave him a sharp kick. ‘Keep it up,’ he jeered. ‘This will make for better viewing. You’ll be an internet sensation.’
Screaming like a stuck pig, Edgar obliged the crazed auteur. It struck Xavier that his brother looked like the victim in a splatter movie, which, in a sense, he was.
‘You don’t like it so much when the tables are turned, do you?’ Murray grinned, dancing about in front of them, as if he was in a trance.
To hell with it, Xavier thought. If I ever live through this, a bloody video will be the least of my worries. Waiting until the camera was focused straight on him, he let rip. ‘You murdering bastard, I’m not ashamed of having buggered your old man.’ With a monumental effort, he adopted a leering grin. ‘We both enjoyed it at the time. And I have to say, William, your dad was a rather good shag.’
‘You total fucking bastards!’ Murray screamed, hurling the phone at Xavier’s head, but missing wildly. Tears poured down his face as he fumbled about on the carpet for the broken bottle. Grabbing it by the remaining neck, he rose slowly to his feet.
‘Now it’s your turn to die…’
The rest of his words were drowned out by a tidal wave of noise filling the room. To the soundtrack of The Prodigy’s ‘Omen’, the party’s election theme tune, Xavier watched open-mouthed as Trevor Miller slammed the door and launched himself through the air, taking Murray out with a tackle aimed at neck height. His head smashing against the wall, Murray collapsed to the floor, narrowly avoiding impaling himself on the jagged glass of the bottle still gripped in his hand.
Miller jumped up, kicking Murray’s weapon out of his grasp. He then crossed the room and locked the door. Taking a Swiss Army knife from his pocket, he hacked at the tape binding Xavier’s hands until he could pull them free. Leaving him to untie his own feet, he then moved on to Edgar.
Xavier winced as he pulled the tape from around his ankles, tugging away several follicles of hair in the process. Jumping up, he found his trousers and quickly pulled them on. Then he turned to watch Edgar, slowly struggling into his underwear with a glazed expression on his face.
‘Let’s get this sorted out,’ Xavier declared grimly.
Edgar did not respond.
Pulling on his shirt, Xavier shifted his gaze to Miller, who was now standing over the prostrate body of Murray. ‘Is he dead?’
Miller gave the body a firm kick, which managed to elicit a groan. ‘Sadly not.’
‘What shall we do with him?’ Xavier asked.
Miller shrugged. ‘Your call.’
Buttoning up his shirt, Xaxier stared Miller in the eye. ‘He cannot leave this room alive.’
After a moment’s reflection, Miller pulled aside the curtains covering most of the wall opposite the door. Behind them was a pair of sliding doors that gave access to a small balcony. Opening the doors, Miller stepped out on to the balcony itself, put his hands on the guard rail and peered over the edge. After checking that Murray was still immobile, Xavier headed over to do the same.
They were currently on the top floor, and the balcony overlooked a large atrium rising through the centre of the hotel. They were more than a hundred feet up, and only twenty feet below the atrium’s glass roof. This level of the hotel was deserted – all the neighbouring suites having been kept empty on security grounds.
After a few moments of silent contemplation, Miller turned to Xavier and grinned. ‘That’ll do nicely.’
Carlyle found his access to the Carlton brothers’ suite barred by Miller’s security men, who showed no interest in either his warrant card or any demands for them to step aside. With his adrenaline pumping, and in no mood for further argument or delay, he headed over to a nearby fire alarm and smashed the glass, setting off a hellish cacophony of alarms and bells.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ One of the guards reached out to grab Carlyle by the throat.
Joe Szyszkowski rabbit-punched him on the back of his neck, then gave him a kick to the back of his left knee. ‘Consider yourself arrested, my friend.’ As the man sank to the carpet, Joe slapped on a pair of cuffs, and then gave him another kick for good measure.
‘Thank you,’ Carlyle smiled.
‘My pleasure,’ Joe replied cheerily.
As the bells continued to ring, people began leaving the ballroom, heading for the stairs as they evacuated the building.
The second guard looked from Joe to Carlyle, as if eyeing up which one of them to smack first.
Taking a step backwards, Joe pointed at a sign reading Exit. ‘It’s time for you to go.’
‘If you’re still here when I get back,’ Carlyle shouted over the noise, ‘you’ll be arrested for assault as well.’
Disgusted but impotent, the man shook his head and started for the stairs.
Carlyle jogged round a corner of the corridor just in time to see the door to the suite open and Edgar Carlton pop his head out. He looked very confused and didn’t seem to recognise the inspector. ‘What’s going on?’ he wailed, sounding as if he was about to burst into tears.
Lengthening his stride, Carlyle pushed his way through the door and on past the befuddled politician. ‘Just a false alarm,’ he smiled cheerily. ‘Nothing to worry about.’
Perspiration beading on his brow, a grim smile spread across Trevor Miller’s face as his eyes flicked between Carlyle and the sergeant. ‘Oh, look,’ he snarled, ‘it’s the fucking cavalry!’
The first thing Carlyle noticed in the room was the smell: a strange mixture of cigar smoke, piss and burning flesh. ‘Fuck me,’ he quipped, ‘this place smells worse than a kebab shop on Tottenham Court Road!’
Not for the first time in his life, he saw a joke fall flat. Carlyle didn’t even have time to laugh at his own gag
