Death Call (15 page)

‘Listen, nigger piggy, I don’t have to go anywhere with you. I haven’t done nothing and you can’t fucking touch me – so lay fuckin’ off, right?’ Taylor said, lashing out at Grant in an effort to break free of his grip. Carroll was on him in a second, swiftly followed by Wheeler and Thompson, who were waiting for the bar to erupt. They didn’t have to wait very long. A bonehead in a bomber jacket pushed through the crowds into centre stage, grabbing everyone’s attention like the Virgin Mary in a school play. Only this stubble-headed idiot wasn’t intent on bringing a Saviour into the world – no, this Virgin Mary was intent on causing trouble. It was as if he had been practising for this moment all of his short and dull life.

‘Get your hands off him! You can’t go coming in here and assaulting people for no fuckin’ reason – it’s police brutality, ain’t it boys,’ the fat skin cried, turning around to face his comrades-in-stubble.

‘Come on, Taylor, you’re coming with us,’ Carroll said, grabbing his arm tightly.

Carroll and Grant were frog-marching their suspect from the pub as the first beer glass was thrown. It landed with deadly accuracy on Carroll’s forehead, smashing into a thousand tiny pieces. The blood was already starting to pour from the wound when the second came, swiftly followed by a third and fourth, until there was breaking glass everywhere.

By now the uniforms had entered and the four detectives were emerging into the cold night air, breath frosted all around them as they moved at speed to their car, parked across the street. It had all happened in a matter of seconds. One moment they were guiding Taylor out of the pub – the next they were being hit with pint pots – some of which were half-full. They were covered in beer, and Carroll had received a bad cut above his left eye. That was all he needed.

Taylor went strangely quiet once he was safely ensconced in the patrol car. It was as if his earlier bravado had deserted him completely. No smart remarks, no resistance – nothing. Just a half-zonked house-breaker in a grubby check shirt.

All four were soon on their way back to the station, while their uniformed colleagues endeavoured to dampen down the growing riot that threatened to engulf The Bulldog, and the area around it. It would be three hours before the area would be back to normal. Three hours in which twenty arrests would be made and three officers would be injured – along with ten skinheads – but, as everyone knew, they didn’t really count.

By the time they had arrived at the station it was ten at night, and they were a little tired. Carroll had been told to go to the hospital, and he had, under protest. He knew that he had to be present when they interviewed Taylor, and he did all he could to get his eye seen to as a matter of urgency. No doctor is going to turn down a detective at 11pm on a Friday night – even if the Accident & Emergency Ward is full. You don’t fuck with the cops – at least not if you’re a smart cookie.

When Carroll returned, three stitches decorating his newly acquired cut, Grant was sipping a cup of coffee with the Duty Sergeant, who was responsible for looking after the villains held in the cells. Sergeant O’Meara was his name, a true green Irishman from the wilds of Tipperary. Carroll didn’t like him very much. It was something to do with the fact that he, Carroll, had been brought up in Wembley, where he was told how wonderful, how beautiful, Ireland was. The only time he ever got to see the place was either in documentaries or when they went home every second year on holiday. They were happy memories, and he resented not being born there. Moreso, he resented the Irishman in front of him for being born there and for leaving it to come to London.

Carroll didn’t hate London – no – he just disliked it. Or at least parts of it. He could put up with the seamy, seedy and filthy world of the junkie and the hooker, but he couldn’t for the life of him put up with the prevailing upper-middle class attitude that seemed to keep everyone down-trodden. It never seemed logical. Why did the ordinary man in the street take the crap that was doled out to them, literally and metaphorically, by those blue-eyed boys in power? He guessed it was due to their upbringing.

Frequenting the bars of Wembley and Kilburn with his father, the young Dan Carroll had been a willing singer of Irish rebel songs, ballads of hunger-strikers and martyrs. He had even met a few ex-P.O.W.s. Irishmen who were put away in the fifties following an IRA border campaign which had fizzled out. He knew that he was caught in the middle of two worlds. When on holiday in Ireland he had always been called English, and when in school in Wembley, he had been called ‘Paddy’. He didn’t quite know who, what or where he was in his earlier years. But he had found a nice little niche for himself in the force, and when he met Sarah, his beautiful wife.

They had met in Kilburn, in The National Ballroom, where many romances had begun. From the first moment that he saw her, Dan was smitten. An Irish woman, young, intelligent and what’s more, beautiful. They had married within a year. And that was twenty years ago now.

It only seemed like yesterday when they were holding hands on the dance floor, staring deeply into each others’ eyes, drowning in the knowledge that they had found a safe haven, a place in which they could both weather the storm of life. Someone to rely on, to love, to hold. But the last ten years of their marriage had become a living hell. Sarah’s debilitating disease had stripped her of the desire to live. Slowly wasting away, she hated what the disease had done to her. Having been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at the age of twenty nine, she had thought that her life was over.

They had slowly learned to cope with the knowledge that she would eventually get worse and gradually lose control of her limbs. She had been suffering for nearly ten years now and was confined to a wheelchair, with very little mobility left in her hands. Over the previous two and a half years she had slowly withdrawn from the physical side of their relationship. Carroll guessed it was all part of the disease, but Sarah knew otherwise. She had slowly come to the belief that she was no longer a woman, only a person. She had allowed her condition rob her of their sex-life, and there was little or nothing that Carroll could do to change matters. He loved her dearly, and he always would.

Carroll wandered down to the interview rooms in search of his partner. Grant arrived with Taylor and sat him down on the other side of the desk.

‘Now,’ Carroll said, having switched on the tape recorder. ‘For the benefit of the tape, the time is 12.30am Saturday. Interview of Mike Taylor, suspect in the Escort Killing Case. Present are myself, DS Dan Carroll, and DC Samuel Grant.’

Grant opened the bidding.

‘Where were you on Monday afternoon, Mr. Taylor?’

‘Have I been arrested, or what? Cause if I have, then I want my lawyer, all right?’ Taylor said, shifting uncomfortably in his chair.

‘You’ll have plenty of time to talk to your lawyer, Mike, we just want to get a few things straight first, okay?’ Carroll said, with a lop-sided smile.

‘So, are you gonna arrest me then, or what?’ Taylor asked, looking slightly confused.

‘I told you back in the pub that all we want to do is talk to you – you’re simply helping us with our enquiries at the moment, so relax. You’re not being charged with anything, okay?’ Carroll said.

‘So, what’s the story?’

‘It’s like this, you were seen leaving number 12 Baalbec Street just around about the time that a young call girl was killed, and we have witnesses, so don’t try denying it. What we want to know is what you were doing there, and what you saw. Simple as that,’ Grant said, checking the tape to make sure that it was recording.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t even know where Baalbec Street is, mate,’ Taylor said.

‘Stop fuckin’ us around, Mike, we’ve got witnesses that can put you there. All we want to know is whether you saw anything strange or saw anyone strange in the house,’ Carroll said.

‘So, I’m not a suspect in the murder?’ Taylor asked.

‘Not for the moment – we only want to know...’

‘Whether I saw anything in the house?’ Taylor interrupted.

‘Exactly,’ Grant said, feeling a little exasperated.

‘So, let’s say I agreed to help you – then I wouldn’t be done for actually being in the house, would I?’ Taylor asked.

‘Put it this way, Mike, you’re the only person to have been seen leaving the house around the time of the murder. Either you tell us what you were doing there or we’ll start to believe that you killed the young woman, okay?’ Carroll said, matter-of-factly.

‘I didn’t kill her. I just thought it strange that the door was left open, so I decided to have a look, that’s all. That’s why I went in....’

‘So, it wasn’t with the intention of stealing anything then?’ Grant said, looking at Carroll, and then back at Taylor, who could tell he would be let off the break-in charge if he co-operated.

‘What did you see?’ Carroll asked.

‘I had a look around the house, that’s all....’

‘Did you go upstairs?’ Grant asked.

‘You mean did I find the body?’

‘Yes.’

‘It scared the life out of me. I just wanted to get out of there as quick as I could, you know what I mean?’

‘So you didn’t see anyone else around the property before you went in?’ Carroll asked.

‘No. Except there was a guy, he left the door open – that’s why I decided to have a look, you know?’

‘What did this fellah look like, Mike?’ Grant asked.

‘I didn’t get a good look at him – he was about my size.’

‘Did you see his face?’ Carroll asked.

‘No, he had a hoody on – you know, one of those boxing things – the kind of sweat-top with a hood. I couldn’t see his face. Listen, I’m not gonna be charged with going into the house, am I?’

‘I think that if you help us then we can have a word with the Chief. But only if you help us,’ Carroll said.

‘So, how did this man leave the house? Our witness says that she only saw you leaving the house....’ Grant said, unconvinced.

‘I got in through the back door after I saw the guy climbing over the back fence. I knew he was up to no good, but he wasn’t carrying anything, so I decided to have a look. The back door was wide open and there was no one in the house – that’s why I went in....’

‘So you went in the back door and came out the front?’ Carroll asked.

‘Yeah, didn’t I just say that?’ Taylor said, beginning to feel as if he wasn’t making himself clearly understood.

Carroll turned to Grant. They were thinking the same thing. No one had knocked on the doors of the houses to the rear. The houses whose rear windows overlooked the Slater family’s back garden. The fact that forensics had yet to give them a detailed report of the crime scene had stopped them from being able to proceed with the case in a direct manner. And, if nothing else, it was an excuse they could give to DCI Jones for their lack of progress.

Chapter 16

There was just something about her – that’s all. He wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but he knew that he wouldn’t be able to get her out of his head until he saw her again.

This wasn’t a good thing. It was one thing thinking about seeing her again, but it was quite another actually doing it. Carroll hadn’t felt this excited in almost a year. The sheer thought of seeing her, naked, willing and ready, sent a small shiver of anticipated pleasure down his spine. He knew it was wrong, he knew it was stupid, but he just couldn’t help himself.

Shit, he thought, everyone has urges. And that’s exactly what Carroll had. Only his urges were for the young prostitute he had seen at the City Slickers Escort Agency. Jeanie was her name, and she looked like she could do magic with that shapely young body of hers. Just the merest touch and Carroll would be in seventh heaven. Just a warm caress, a naked breast, a willing mouth. It was altogether too much for him, as he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel of his car.

It was around two in the morning, and here was Detective Sergeant Dan Carroll thinking of going to visit a whore. He was amazed that he should find himself wanting to do this. He was even more amazed that his unconscious mind was more or less driving him there, as though he had little or no control over his actions. It was his dick that was doing all of the thinking tonight, he thought, pulling up outside the escort agency. There were lights on, as he had hoped there would be, but there appeared to be little or no movement, no shadows traversing the room, no outlines of the human form at the window. It seemed pretty quiet up there.

What the fuck am I doing here? Carroll thought, feeling a surge of excitement run from between his legs to his racing brain. What am I doing? He knew well what he was doing, what he wanted to do. All he wanted at that moment was to be naked with the young whore, feeling the warmth of her silken skin next to his, to feel the curve of her breast, the downy hair of her inner thighs. That was where he wanted to be right now, and he could no longer deny himself this simple pleasure. It had been too long since he had slept with his wife – it felt like years. It was years.

Since their sexual relationship had died of unnatural causes, he had taken refuge in a bottle. But that was never quite enough. It never did more than give him temporary relief. And then there was the pent-up aggression that he unleashed on everyone around him. He hadn’t always been a foul-tempered detective with a drink problem. At just under 40, Dan was beginning to feel that life had passed him by. That the corpses he dealt with were, in fact, merely versions of himself. But while he could solve a murder and lock up the perpetrator, he had never been able to resolve his own personal dilemmas or take the right path. Always travelling and never arriving, he thought, more determined than ever to lighten his soul with what he needed. What he needed – it felt strange thinking that Jeanie was what he needed. It could’ve been anyone, he thought. But it wasn’t. Here he sat, no more than 20 metres from what he felt he deserved, what he knew he desired. And all he had to do was climb a set of stairs, knock on a door and pay the price. As easy as all that.