A Man of Sorrows (22 page)

‘No.’

‘Good. Anyway, I wouldn’t think Slater would have leaked that story.’

‘Why not?’

‘Too risky. A Catholic priest accused of child abuse is one of the few people with less public credibility than a copper. Even a copper like you.’

Carlyle gave her a funny look. ‘Is that supposed to make me feel better?’

‘It’s supposed to make you think that having this in the papers might not be altogether unhelpful.’

‘Slater didn’t deny that it was her.’

Roche shook her head. ‘Why would she? Lawyers will never confirm or deny anything if they don’t have to. Ambiguity and bullshit is in their DNA.’

‘Anyway,’ said Carlyle, bored with the whole thing, ‘she likes winding me up.’

‘For God’s sake,’ Roche said, ‘don’t let her get to you. Sticks and stones and all that.’

‘We
are
in a cheery mood today,’ Carlyle said sarcastically.

‘Come on,’ said Roche, leading him towards the station. ‘I’ve got something that will definitely cheer you up.’

Letting her go on ahead, Carlyle watched a tourist almost get run over by a refuse truck. A drop of rain fell on his head, followed by another. With some reluctance, he headed inside.

Roche had reached the front desk when the opening bars of Eminem’s ‘Love The Way You Lie’ started up. Sighing, she stopped and began rummaging around inside her bag. After a few moments, she found her mobile.

‘Roche.’ A confused look spread across her face as she listened to the voice on the other end of the line. ‘What?’

Carlyle hovered a respectful distance away. Looking up, she gave him an angry glare.
What have I done now?
he wondered.

‘What was he doing there?’ Roche demanded down the phone. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake! When did this happen? Okay, we’ll be right there.’ Ending the call, she shoved the phone back in her bag. ‘Come on,’ she said, half-jogging back towards the door. ‘We need to get up to UCH. Colin Dyer’s escaped.’

Carlyle firmly believed that you should never get ill. If you did, seeing a doctor, any kind of doctor, should only be an absolute last resort. He had never, in his entire life, encountered a medical professional who had inspired confidence. The motley crew currently on duty at A&E in University College Hospital did nothing to change that deeply held view.

‘We are very busy here, you know.’ The inspector glanced at the name-tag on the young man’s white coat, resisting the temptation to give the little berk a good slap.

‘I understand that, Dr Higgins,’ he replied through clenched teeth, ‘but this is a very important matter. The man who has disappeared had been arrested in relation to an extremely serious crime.’

Higgins looked like he was in his mid-thirties. He was short, plump and well on the way to being completely bald. His florid complexion more than hinted at a taste for drink. The overriding impression was of a heart attack on legs. ‘Well,’ he pouted, folding his arms, ‘it might have been helpful if your colleagues had explained that to us at the time.’

Carlyle looked around for the two constables who had brought Dyer to the hospital but they had wisely made themselves scarce. He turned his gaze back to Higgins. ‘Just tell me what happened.’

‘Like I said,’ Higgins sighed, ‘the man was brought in about an hour and a half ago. We were very busy, but the officers insisted that he was seen straight away.’ Higgins gestured at a row of curtained-off cubicles to his right. ‘I took him into the nearest one of those and had a look at him.’

‘And?’ Roche asked.

‘Before I could say anything, the man dropped his trousers and showed me his penis,’ said Higgins matter-of-factly, as if this was an everyday occurrence, which, in reflection, Carlyle supposed it might well be. ‘He said that he had some “flesh-eating bacteria” that was going to kill him if he wasn’t treated immediately.’

If only
, thought Carlyle. He glanced at Roche, who simply shrugged.

‘He seemed quite distressed,’ Higgins continued. ‘I could see some inflammation and possibly a discharge. There was certainly a very strong odour – although, of course, that could simply be poor personal hygiene.’

‘Did you give him an examination?’ Roche asked.

Higgins shook his head. ‘I went to find some latex gloves. When I got back, he had disappeared.’

‘The CCTV shows he just walked out of A&E,’ Roche confirmed. ‘The constables had gone to get coffee.’

Carlyle rubbed his temples. ‘Okay.’ He looked at Higgins. ‘Thank you, Doctor. We’ll let you get back to your patients. Let’s hope you’ve had your quota of member-munching bugs for the day.’

Higgins grunted and scuttled off.

‘What do we do now?’ Roche asked, as she watched the doctor move away.

‘Apart from rip the shit out of the idiots who brought him here?’

‘Yes,’ Roche muttered. ‘Apart from that.’

The inspector looked at his watch. The day was slipping away and he had things to do. He took a moment, sorting their priorities in his head. ‘Get back to the station and make a list of all the places he might have gone,’ he said finally, ‘and get uniforms started on checking them out. Speak to Dyer’s lawyer, Kelvin Jenkins. Make sure he knows that if his client doesn’t turn himself in immediately, we will go after him for assisting a fugitive.’

Roche frowned. ‘But we don’t know that he was involved.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Carlyle said firmly. ‘Kelvin needs to understand that we will take this chance to fuck him up if he doesn’t help us out. Then go and talk to Damien Samuels, let him think he might get a better deal if he helps us find Colin – see if that loosens his tongue.’

‘Will do,’ Roche nodded.

‘No need to tell Dugdale yet,’ Carlyle added. ‘Dyer’s an idiot. He won’t stay free long, so let’s see if we can get him back in custody before the Commander gets to hear about it.’

‘Yes.’

‘We don’t want to damage your chances of getting into SO15,’ he added cheekily, ‘if we don’t have to.’

‘Very funny.’ She shot him a dirty look. ‘Where are you going?’

Carlyle watched a wizened old woman shuffle past them with the aid of a Zimmer frame. ‘I think,’ he said quietly, ‘I’ll go and have a word with Colin’s dear old mum.’

THIRTY

On the third floor of Phoenix Court, Carlyle gave Carla Dyer’s front door one last thump and turned away. Either the woman wasn’t in or she was hiding in a back room. He might be pissed off at the antics of the Dyer family but he wasn’t going to kick the door down on the off-chance that she was under the bed. Roche could come back later. His stomach rumbled and he wondered what his chances were of finding a decent café in Somers Town; probably not that bad, as long as he didn’t set the bar too high.

Reaching the top of the stairs, he paused to let an old woman pass on the way up. She was carrying a plastic bag filled with groceries and moving slowly. Making eye-contact, Carlyle gave her a friendly nod.

‘Are you a copper?’ she asked suspiciously, struggling on the landing.

Carlyle laughed. ‘Is it that obvious?’

The woman took a moment to catch her breath. ‘No one round here would be so polite as to let me past,’ she said finally.

‘I’m looking for Carla Dyer.’

‘Now, that is a big surprise.’ The woman continued on her way. ‘Try the Cock Tavern on Chalton Street.’

‘Thanks,’ said Carlyle as he headed down the stairs. Five minutes later he was standing in the Cock Tavern, eyeing a large early-lunchtime crowd. The haggard woman sitting at a table in the corner could, at first glance, have been anything from between forty and sixty-five. Wearing a replica Arsenal away shirt from four or five seasons previously, she held a bottle of Beck’s lager to her lips while contemplating the
Sun
crossword.

‘Carla Dyer?’

The woman barely glanced up from her paper. ‘Who are you?’

Carlyle pulled up a stool. ‘John Carlyle,’ he said quietly. ‘Metropolitan Police.’

Carla took a swig of her beer and lowered her eyes still further. ‘I don’t know where he is, so fuck off.’

Carlyle laughed.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘Colin did a runner a couple of hours ago. How did you know we were looking for him?’

She took another mouthful of beer and let the newspaper fall on the table. ‘So he phoned me. Big deal. I don’t know where he is.’ Her eyes flitted around the room. ‘If you don’t fuck off and leave me alone, I’ll scream the place down. There’s plenty of folk in here who would happily give you a good shoeing, copper.’

‘It is surprisingly busy,’ Carlyle persevered, ‘for the time of day.’

‘We’re all refugees from the Coffee House, down the road,’ Carla scowled. ‘Some fucking Frogs took it upmarket and banned loads of regulars. They only want professional people in suits in there now.’

And who can blame them?
Carlyle wondered, eyeing up the motley crew of refugees from Gastropub Land who had been washed up in the Cock.

‘It’s a disgrace.’

‘Look, Carla,’ said Carlyle, tiring of her musings on the evils of gentrification, ‘Colin is in deep shit. You either help us find him now, or the whole thing gets prolonged and, when we catch him, we throw the book at him.’

‘All over again, you mean?’

Carlyle nodded. ‘All over again.’

Draining the last of her beer, Carla let out a belch as she picked up her purse and got to her feet. ‘I’m going to the bar for another,’ she said, waving the bottle in his face. ‘Make sure you fuck off before I get back.’

As he watched her walk over to the bar, Carlyle caught a glimpse of her large red shoulder bag, doubtless some designer knock-off from a nearby street market, sitting open on the floor under the table with a mobile phone sticking out of a side pocket. He glanced at the bar. With her back to him, Carla was waiting for her drink. Taking his chance, he reached under the table and grabbed the phone. As he did so, he realized that there was something else in the pocket. Pulling it out with the mobile, he saw it was a photograph. After a moment’s hesitation, he slipped them both inside his coat.

Getting to his feet, he moved sharply to the door. Out on the street, he paused for a moment and tasted the air, a foul mix of exhaust fumes and cooking smells coming from a kebab shop two doors down. Then with a backward glance towards the Cock, he marched off at a brisk pace, heading towards Covent Garden.

At Il Buffone, the lunchtime rush was still in full swing. Squeezing into the last available seat by the bench in front of the window, the inspector found himself next to a fat man in a suit who was slowly eating a plate of lasagne while reading a story in that morning’s
Metro
; a couple of policemen had arrested the driver of a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VIII high-performance sports car on the Embankment and then decided to take it for a test drive around Central London. The end result was a collision with two trees on The Mall at 2 a.m. The £30,000 car was a write-off and the policemen were suspended.
More fantastic PR for the Met
, Carlyle mused.
You couldn
’
t make it up.

The newspaper story didn’t give the names of the officers involved but everyone at the station knew who they were. Carlyle knew one of the coppers reasonably well. The guy had always struck him as quite sensible and he hoped that his career wasn’t now as totalled as the car. Turning in his seat, he watched Marcello trying to toast a sandwich and make a latte at the same time. Catching the owner’s eye, he signalled that he was in no great hurry to be served.

Just as well I’m not that hungry
, he thought, as he idly counted eight people waiting to be fed, the queue spilling out along the street. As one departed, lunch in hand, another one joined the back of the line. By a quirk of the licensing laws, Marcello was not supposed to be running a takeaway business, just operating an eat-in café. But Carlyle was well aware that, without the additional trade, the place would be even more unprofitable than it already was.

Marcello took the money from one customer with a perfunctory ‘
Grazie!
’ and moved on to the next.
What a tough job
, Carlyle thought. Marcello had often complained to him that he couldn’t afford to bring in any help. As he watched his friend rushing around from Gaggia to grill like a madman, Carlyle hoped that he would get the place sold soon. Casting aside his selfish concerns, he knew that Marcello deserved better than this daily slog.

With a sigh, he pulled Carla Dyer’s mobile out of his pocket. A quick glance showed him that it was a cheap Samsung handset, presumably a pay-as-you-go model. The tiny battery in the top left-hand corner of the screen revealed that the battery was two-thirds charged. Happily, Carla had left the thing switched on, so he could easily check the voicemail box (empty) and the call lists. The latter showed that there had been a couple of calls received since Colin did a runner, but both were from unknown numbers. Carla had made one outgoing call, to another mobile. Carlyle looked at the screen for a few moments.
Sod it
, he thought.
Maybe I should just ring it and see what happens.
Before he could press the call button, however, the handset started vibrating in his hand.

Finishing his lasagne, the fat man struggled out of his chair. Tossing his newspaper on the seat, he waddled out of the door. Carlyle watched him disappear down Drury Lane and pulled up the incoming text message on Carla’s phone. It came from the same number that Carla had called earlier and simply said:
Need £££ now
.

‘Ah, Colin,’ Carlyle smiled to himself, ‘how nice of you to get in touch.’ He laboriously typed in a reply –
how much?
– and hit ‘send’.

Placing the phone on the bench, he picked up the discarded
Metro
and flicked through the news pages. The reply came when he was enjoying a story about the trial of a couple of conmen accused of trying to sell the Ritz Hotel for two hundred and fifty million pounds. The duo even managed to sucker a property developer into handing over a one-million down payment. ‘
In that competitive world of secretive
,
multi-million-pound deals
,’ the prosecutor told the court, ‘
some people are prepared to take risks that might seem breathtaking to most of us.
’
No shit
, thought Carlyle. Laughing to himself, he opened up the new message.