Before he had even finished, the hacks began hurling an avalanche of questions at him. Turning quickly away, Edgar fled back inside.
Carlyle sat in a small office, looking out over the empty newsroom: an open-plan arrangement of desks and monitors, with a small studio set in the far corner. On maybe twenty separate screens, he could see images of Edgar Carlton proclaiming his victory on the steps of Downing Street.
‘How did you make the connection?’
‘Huh?’ Carlyle returned his gaze to Rosanna Snowdon. On the desk in front of her lay William Murray’s mobile phone, recovered from the Carlton brothers’ hotel suite. She eyed it nervously, as if it was radioactive.
‘Between father and son? What made you realise that William Murray was Robert Ashton’s kid?’
‘It just came to me,’ Carlyle shrugged. ‘I was sitting in a pub as the polls were closing. Edgar appeared on the TV screen, and William Murray was at his shoulder. Then it hit me…’
‘And his mother was covering up for him?’
‘Yes. We don’t know the precise balance of power in that relationship, but they were in it together.’
‘Madness.’
‘Was it?’ Carlyle exhaled. ‘If someone did that to my family, well
…’
Rosanna drummed a perfectly manicured fingernail on her desk. ‘Are you actually condoning murder, Inspector?’
‘No,’ he said stiffly, quickly descending into a bit of jargon in order to mask his opinions. ‘But at least you can put together the pieces and, at the very least, begin understanding the motivation of the perpetrators. That is not the same as condoning it.’
‘It’s an amazing story…’
‘It certainly is,’ Carlyle agreed.
‘… but I can’t use it.’
She looked up at Carlyle, with a pained expression. ‘Why have you brought me this?’
‘I thought you wanted an exclusive,’ he said evenly.
She gestured at the mobile. ‘Not this kind of exclusive.’
Carlyle shifted in his chair. Maybe coming here wouldn’t be the brightest decision he had ever made – even in the course of this current investigation, which would certainly be saying something. ‘What kind is that then?’
‘The kind that will never see the light of day,’ she replied.
He waited for her to explain.
She screwed up her face. ‘How can I use this? It’s not a story.’
‘It seems like a story to me,’ Carlyle said, not convinced himself now. He felt a creeping embarrassment at his stupidity. Why was he even here? What was he thinking? Edgar Carlton was in his first week as prime minister. William Murray and Susy Ahl were both dead. No one cared about their deaths. Robert Ashton may or may not have been successfully avenged.
Who had chosen Carlyle as the one man to shine a light on this dark little corner of the past? He wasn’t even doing his self-appointed task very well. There wasn’t going to be any ‘closure’. All he was doing was digging himself into another hole.
She sat back and gave him a rather pitying smile. ‘That’s why you’re the policeman and I’m the journalist. A story is only a story if I can report it. No one can use this. The lawyers wouldn’t let us go anywhere near it.’
Feeling like a complete idiot, Carlyle sat in silence.
‘You think this security guy…?’
‘Miller.’
‘Yes, Miller. You think he murdered the aide and also his mother?’
Carlyle nodded.
‘And maybe that other guy… the one killed out near the airport.’
‘Allen?’ Carlyle shrugged. ‘Maybe. I don’t know, but it’s possible.’
‘Why would he have done that?’
‘Well, unlike the rest of them, I think Allen was ready to talk. Talk properly that is. He had agreed to speak to me once he returned to the country. If he had spilled the beans, then that would have been a problem for all of them.’
‘But you can’t prove any of this, otherwise you’d nick Miller.’ The word ‘nick’ was delivered with a childlike relish.
‘That is correct,’ Carlyle admitted.
‘So you dangle it in front of me,’ she smiled broadly, ‘hoping that I can stir up some trouble.’
‘But publicity is the very soul of justice,’ he said primly.
‘How profound,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Where did you pick that up from?’
It took Carlyle a second to dredge the name from his memory. ‘Jeremy Bentham – he was a philosopher.’
‘I know who he was,’ Rosanna laughed, ‘but he never worked for the bloody BBC. And, anyway, I don’t think he meant that journalists should allow themselves to be used as a tool of revenge by frustrated coppers.’
Carlyle could only smile. She had him sussed out.
After a few seconds, she added, ‘And you could never arrest them, could you?’
Them being the Carltons.
‘No,’ he conceded. ‘Never in a million years.’
Her face lit up at the thought of it. ‘Although that would certainly be a story and a half. Nicked during your first week as prime minister! Who’d have thought old Edgar Carlton might be so interesting?’
Carlyle sighed. ‘No one will ever face any charges in relation to any of this. Ashton was too long ago, and the Murray problem has been solved to the satisfaction of everyone… except me.’
‘Exactly!’ She folded her arms in triumph. ‘See? I can’t run this story even if I wanted to.’
‘Can’t… or won’t?’ he asked petulantly.
She leaned forward in her chair. ‘Inspector, if I could stand this up, get interviews on camera, put it all together and get it past the lawyers, it would be a bloody miracle.’
‘But if you were a miracle worker?’
‘If I was a miracle worker, and I could get all the pieces to fall into place, sure I’d run it.’ She gave him another one of her coy smiles. ‘A grizzled old detective like you might think that I’m a bit of an airhead…’
Grizzled? He frowned. She was teasing him now, and he quite liked it.
‘… not that I would care, but I am a journalist. I’m a friend of Edgar Carlton sure, but my professional reputation is worth much more than any friendship. A story is a story and I will be a journalist for a lot longer than he is prime minister. I’m not in the business of burying things.’
‘I understand,’ he nodded, poised to spring out of his chair, suddenly keen now to be on his way.
‘But I’m not in the business of flogging a dead horse, either.’
Carlyle looked out at the monitors in the newsroom. Edgar had disappeared back inside his new home, and the screens were now showing some cartoon.
‘Like I said,’ Snowdon continued, ‘it’s got no legs. Even if I could run a piece, which I can’t, who’s going to follow it up? At best, I might get a mention in a couple of newspapers that hate the Carltons anyway. Who cares? Their powerful allies in the media will simply rubbish such “smears”. So the boys may have got up to a bit of high jinks at university. So what? Isn’t that what boys are supposed to do?’
They were distracted by a tired-looking man tapping on the window, signalling that he needed Snowdon. She nodded at him and held up her right index finger to signify that she would be only another minute.
‘I need to go and record a trailer,’ she explained, standing up.
‘Of course,’ Carlyle finally got out of his chair. ‘Thank you for your time.’
‘No problem. However, I think you’re being a bit naive, Inspector, and frankly that’s a bit of a surprise.’
Was that a compliment? Or an insult?
‘Still,’ Snowdon continued, ‘I’m going to do you a favour, a big favour.’ Tentatively, she lifted Murray’s mobile phone from the desk and began pressing some buttons. Then she looked up at him like a schoolteacher who was about to tell a none-too-bright pupil how best to avoid flunking his exam. ‘This case is closed, right?’
