‘Tell me about it.’ Wolf stared at his shoes and his eyes began to droop. Carlyle allowed himself a wry smile; this wouldn’t be the first time the shrink had fallen asleep in one of their sessions. Taking a deep breath, he began a short monologue about cost-cutting at the Met and the need for redundancies.
After he had finished talking, there was a pause before Wolf shook himself awake. ‘Ah yes,’ he said finally, ‘very interesting. What do you make of it all?’
Carlyle shrugged. ‘It is a very difficult situation. Money is obviously very tight. There is a need to cut back.’
After some rummaging, Wolf retrieved a pencil from down the side of the chair and pointed it at Carlyle. ‘But what do you, yourself, make of it?’
‘Nothing, really. I just have to get on with my job.’
Wolf scribbled something in his notebook with the pencil. ‘The job is very important to you?’ he asked, as awake now as Carlyle had ever known him.
‘Of course.’
There was more scribbling, which made Carlyle feel increasingly uncomfortable. Looking up from his notes, Wolf smiled. ‘What would you do,’ he asked, ‘if it was taken away, if you couldn’t be a policeman any longer?’
‘Well . . .’ Carlyle looked at the clock on the wall; they still had more than half an hour to go.
Standing on the third floor of Phoenix Court, Alison Roche banged hard on the door of number 23. She could make out some movement behind the frosted glass and gave it another thump with the palm of her hand. ‘Hurry up!’ she shouted. ‘This is the police!’
‘Do you want us to kick it in?’ asked one of the two constables on the landing beside her, a young giant by the name of Joe Lynch.
‘Don’t you fucking dare!’ said a voice as the door opened a few inches.
‘Carla Dyer?’ Roche asked.
The crone behind the door said nothing.
‘Open up,’ Roche said imperiously.
‘What do you bloody want?’ the woman demanded.
‘What do you think?’ said Lynch, quickly sticking his foot in the door. ‘We’re looking for Colin.’
‘He ain’t here,’ Carla said unconvincingly.
‘We’ll just check for ourselves, if you don’t mind,’ said Roche. She nodded at Lynch, who stepped forward and shouldered the door open, pushing the woman back down the hallway.
‘You can’t come in here,’ the woman shouted. ‘This is harassment!’
Grabbing the collar of Carla Dyer’s sweatshirt, Lynch marched her into the living room and on to a mangy-looking sofa. ‘Stay there,’ he barked, before going off to join his colleague in a search of the other rooms.
Arriving in the room, Roche looked around. On top of a sideboard there were four framed pictures, including one of a smiling teenage boy holding a football. There was the sound of breaking glass in the kitchen. Roche’s heart sank. She knew that Carlyle would go mental if they made a mess of this.
‘You’ll fucking pay for that,’ hissed Carla Dyer.
Roche gestured at the photo. ‘Is that Colin?’
Carla looked at the picture but said nothing.
‘Where is he?’
‘How should I know?’ The woman shrugged theatrically. ‘I’m not his keeper.’
There was another loud crash from the back of the flat, followed by shouting. Stepping into the doorway, Roche caught movement to her right. Instinctively, she stuck out a foot and sent the fleeing man sprawling. Bouncing down the hallway, Colin Dyer tried to get back to his feet but was put down again by Roche’s swift kick. He lay there groaning, so she gave him another for good measure. ‘Stay down, you little bugger!’ She turned to see Lynch moving sheepishly towards her, holding his nose.
‘The bastard sandbagged me,’ Lynch whined. ‘I think it’s broken.’
Behind him, the other PC tried to stifle a grin. ‘The stupid bastard was hiding under the bed.’
Unable to summon up any sympathy for her colleague, Roche gestured towards the prostrate Dyer. ‘Get him back to the station,’ she said, taking her mobile from the pocket of her jacket. ‘Take his mother too. I’ll get Forensics up here and we’ll see what we can find.’
NINETEEN
Roger Leyne lived in an impressive four-storey Georgian house on John Street in Bloomsbury, a twenty-minute stroll from the office of Dr Wolf. By the time he turned off Theobald’s Road, the inspector felt suitably refreshed, the meaningless prattle of his latest session with the shrink deleted from the recycling bin in his head. Stepping off the pavement and onto the doorstep of number 42, he pressed the doorbell and waited.
Knowing that he was expected, Carlyle tapped his shoe against the stone. Leyne’s office at the London School of Economics had informed him that the professor was ‘working from home’ and had promised to ring ahead, to inform him of Carlyle’s visit. However, there was no sign of any response to his arrival. After a minute or so, he rang the bell again, longer this time, giving it three extended, insistent bursts.
Still no one came.
Feeling somewhat peeved, Carlyle pulled out his mobile and called the LSE. While it rang, he peered over the railings into the basement void.
‘London School of Economics, Professor Leyne’s office, good morning.’
Using his free hand, Carlyle pulled himself up on the railings to get a better view.
‘Good morning.’
‘Shit!’
‘Hello?’
Ending the call, Carlyle slipped the phone into his pocket and stepped back onto the pavement. A small gate in the railings gave access to a narrow metal stairway leading to the basement. Peering over the railings, the inspector could see a pair of French doors; the glass in one of them had been smashed. He gave the gate a push; annoyingly, it was padlocked. With some considerable effort, he hoisted himself over the railings. Standing at the top of the stairs, he wiped the sweat from his brow and took a moment to get his breath back. He caught the eye of a well-dressed young woman who had stopped three yards away to let her dachshund take a shit.
‘I hope you’re going to clean that up,’ Carlyle said tartly as he watched the dog crouch down to perform its business.
Pretending not to hear him, the woman turned and dragged the dog off in the opposite direction while still in mid-dump.
Carlyle shook his head. ‘Poor little bugger.’ Returning to the matter in hand, he began descending the stairs. At the bottom, there was the smell of chlorine and the gentle hum of a generator. A quick rummage through his pockets confirmed that he wasn’t carrying any latex gloves. Cursing under his breath, the inspector gave the door with the broken window a gentle tap with his shoe. Gratifyingly, it edged open and he slipped inside.
Under more normal circumstances, Carlyle would have been very taken by the forty-foot swimming pool, the pale blue water shimmering off the white ceiling and the limestone surround; doubtless all very
House & Garden
. Today, however, he was more taken by the body face down in the pool and the blood that was slowly leaking from it. Slowly, carefully, he moved down the side of the pool. When he approached the hot tub that sat beside it, he stopped and listened for any sounds coming from upstairs. Other than the occasional passing car on the street outside, there was nothing. Confident that the killer was long gone, Carlyle pulled out his mobile and called the station.
It was only after the call failed to connect that he realized he didn’t have a signal. He looked at the floater then raised his eyes to the heavens. ‘God,’ he laughed, heading for the stairs, ‘if this is Your idea of some kind of cosmic joke, it isn’t fucking funny.’
Leaving the front door ajar, Carlyle sat on the step and called Roche. The call went to voicemail and he left a message. His second call was to Susan Phillips.
Phillips picked up on the second ring. ‘John,’ she said cheerily, ‘how are you?’
‘Not too bad,’ Carlyle said. ‘Are you busy at the moment?’
‘Right now?’ she asked, quickly twigging that this was not a social call. ‘Not especially. Why?’
Carlyle explained the situation.
‘I’ll organize reinforcements,’ said Phillips, ‘and we’ll be right there.’
‘And Susan?’
‘Yes?’
‘Bring me some latex gloves, will you?’
Standing by the edge of the pool, Carlyle snapped on his rubber gloves and wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.
Rolling up her shirt-sleeves, Susan Phillips gave him a stern look. ‘Why don’t you go and have a look around upstairs and we’ll see about getting this guy out.’ Phillips worked out of Holborn police station, on nearby Lamb’s Conduit Street. A staff pathologist with the Met for more than twenty years, she was quick, no-nonsense and dependable.
‘All right,’ Carlyle smiled. ‘See you later.’ Deciding to start at the top of the house, he skipped merrily up the stairs.
By the time he reached the fourth floor, the spring in his step had long since disappeared. Somewhat embarrassed by his lack of puff, the inspector flopped into a leather sofa placed next to the top of the stairs and looked around. The whole of the fourth floor was an open space that Leyne had turned into his office. Despite the grey skies outside, the space was flooded by light from large windows front and back. Along the length of the far wall ran shelving from floor to ceiling, groaning with books. A pile of papers two foot high stood in one corner but, otherwise, the place looked very tidy.
After recovering his breath, Carlyle slipped off the sofa and went across to the window overlooking the street. Outside, an ambulance was double parked in front of the house, leading to a build-up of traffic. One of the delayed motorists gave an angry blast on his horn, causing a couple more to follow suit.
Why isn
’
t one of the uniforms sorting that out?
Carlyle wondered, annoyed. His gaze turned to the large desk next to the window. Pride of place was given to a nineteen-inch monitor for a very expensive-looking Apple computer. Stepping in front of the desk, Carlyle looked at the keyboard for a moment, then carefully tapped the return key. With gratifying simplicity, the screen blinked into life.
Carlyle smiled. ‘Not big on online security, are we?’ Sitting on the chair by the desk, he scrolled down the page. Under the headline ‘Draft Article’, Leyne had started writing what looked like a piece for a newspaper or magazine:
Is the Pope responsible for clerical sexual abuse? In a word, yes. When his degenerate priests are caught in flagrante, centuries of exploitation have shown them how to cover up their crimes, silencing their young victims with threats of damnation and emotional violence. What other organization could get away with such behaviour? No amount of sweet incense, ceremony or saints should blind us to the truth of rampant child abuse. Once he steps out of his Vatican fiefdom and comes to this country, the Holy Father should be arrested and tried in a civil court . . .
‘Say what you think, why don’t you?’ Carlyle said to himself. Hearing footsteps on the stairs behind him, he turned to see Phillips looking rather red in the face.
‘I should have known that you’d be all the way at the bloody top,’ she wheezed, taking a seat on the sofa he had occupied only a few minutes earlier.
Getting to his feet, Carlyle paced the room. ‘Have you fished him out yet?’
‘Not yet,’ Phillips said, ‘but it’s definitely Mr Leyne.’ She stretched her arms above her head and yawned. ‘God! This sofa is comfortable.’
Carlyle laughed. ‘Now’s not the time for a kip.’ His eye caught a familiar book on one of the shelves. Helen had bought him Richard Dawkins’
The God Delusion
as a birthday present and then proceeded to read it herself, so that he didn’t have to. It was a not unfamiliar situation that they were both happy with. Dawkins, Helen had gleefully informed him, was known as ‘Darwin’s Rottweiler’. He wondered what that made Leyne.
‘Cause of death?’
Phillips yawned again. ‘I couldn’t possibly say at this early stage.’
‘But?’
‘But I think that the two bullets in the chest may have had something to do with it.’
The first thing that Carlyle noticed when he walked into the interview room at Charing Cross police station was that the CCTV had been repaired. Smiling for the camera, he walked over to the desk and sat down.
Colin Dyer looked at him sullenly. His shaven head gleamed under the striplighting. His left cheek was badly grazed and there was a large bruise above his right eye. He scowled defiantly at Carlyle. ‘What do you want? I’m waiting for my brief.’
Carlyle dropped a thin sheaf of papers on the table and folded his arms. ‘What happened to you?’
Dyer looked at the camera and pointed an index finger at the bruise. ‘Your bloody sergeant beat me up!’
Carlyle waited for him to restore eye-contact. ‘Who is your lawyer?’
Dyer thought about it for a while, as if he were being asked to divulge some state secret. ‘Jenkins,’ he said finally, ‘Kelvin Jenkins.’
Carlyle nodded. Jenkins was a well-known bottom-feeder who probably spent more time in police stations than the inspector did himself. ‘I thought you might have managed someone a little bit more upmarket this time,’ he grinned, ‘given you nicked tens of millions of pounds’ worth of diamonds. Then again, fencing them hasn’t been so easy, has it?’
Grunting, Dyer shook his head.
‘You didn’t plan ahead properly.’
‘Fuck off!’ Dyer waved a hostile hand in front of Carlyle’s face.
‘Thinking never was your strong point, was it?’
‘I’m a victim of police brutality.’
Carlyle laughed. ‘Tell it to Kelvin,’ he chuckled. ‘You can have fifteen minutes when he arrives; then we need to get going.’ He watched Dyer’s face settle back into a look of sullen hostility. ‘I’m just here to give you a quick heads-up. You are nailed on for this. I don’t really give a fuck about the stones, but a girl died here and you are in deep shit.’ He was almost embarrassed by how trite it all sounded, but he could see that Dyer was taking it in. Pushing back his chair, Carlyle lifted the papers off the desk and got to his feet. ‘So, when I come back in here, I don’t want to hear any whining “
I don
’
t know nuthin’
” bullshit. I want names, places, and, above all, a precise explanation of how Paula Coulter was killed.’ He glared at Dyer, whose gaze fell to the table.
I
’
ve got you
,
you wanker
, Carlyle thought happily as he walked out of the door.
I
’
ve fucking got you.