Shoot to Kill (17 page)

Behind her, a girlfriend leaned against another parked car, laughing drunkenly. ‘You’re getting it on yourself!’

‘Piss off!’ the squatting woman grunted as she did a little jig, trying to avoid stepping in her own wee.

Shifting in his sleeping bag, Gasparino caught the eye of the
standing woman. She was wearing a thin, sleeveless dress that ended about half-an-inch below her crotch. A small bag hung from her left shoulder. She had no jacket and her legs were bare. The regulation over-sized shoes were strapped to her feet. Intoxicated as he was, Gasparino imagined he could see the goose bumps on her arms, even from fifteen feet away.

Glassy-eyed, the shivering girl stared right through him, as if he was invisible. ‘C’mon, Jen,’ she shouted, ‘let’s get going.’

‘Hold on!’ the woman shrieked. ‘I’m almost done.’ Finally, she levered herself back into something approximating a standing position, pulling up her pants as she did so. Stepping over the lake she had just created, she wobbled towards her friend, who reached out with a supporting arm. ‘Will we make the train?’

‘Dunno.’

Gasparino watched the two of them stagger off down the road.
You don’t know how lucky you are
, he thought groggily,
having somewhere to go, a bed to sleep in
. As they disappeared round a corner, he closed his eyes, knowing that, for him, sleep was unlikely to come.

After more than twenty years in the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment, serving in Saudi Arabia, Northern Ireland, Germany, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan, it had taken barely a couple of weeks for his marriage to collapse and his life to unravel. Trying to ignore the pain in his leg, Adrian Gasparino picked up a grubby copy of a freesheet that had been discarded in the doorway. He checked the date on the front page. Maybe it was today; maybe it was yesterday. Thinking about it for a moment, he realized that, either way, his baby’s due date was only a couple of days away.

If it actually was
his
baby.

‘Hey! Mister!’

Gasparino looked up but said nothing.

‘Got any money?’ A tall skinny boy, wearing jeans and a red hoodie with the legend
ANIMAL
on the front, stepped towards him. He had a blank, acne-scarred face, with no obvious signs of intelligence behind his dead, dark eyes; the type of kid he’d last seen cowering in
a compound in Helmand. Hovering behind him, Gasparino counted four others, all dressed in similar fashion, a posse of evil urchins.

‘Gimme your cash,’ the boy repeated, his scrunched-up mockney accent harsh and unforgiving.

Gasparino’s hand reflexively slipped inside his sleeping bag. In his trouser pocket he had twenty-three pounds and seventy-six pence. Twice, earlier in the day, he had counted it, each time coming up with the same number. He had no idea how long he would have to make it last.

The boy took a swing at the end of Gasparino’s sleeping bag with the toe of his Nike trainers. ‘Are you stupid?’

The sound of bovine laughter came from the boy’s mates.

‘I don’t have anything,’ Gasparino protested. He tried to struggle out of his sleeping bag but a kick in the stomach sent him back down.

‘Don’t take the fucking piss,’ the youth shouted. ‘Give us your fucking booze money.’

Gasparino felt a spasm of anger in his chest. Why couldn’t people just leave him alone? ‘Fuck off, you little bastard!’ he hissed. Pulling his arms out of the bag, he grabbed the kid’s ankle and pulled his attacker towards him.

Unable to keep his balance, the boy fell on top of the ex-soldier, arms flailing. Blood pumping, Gasparino tried to get his hands round the kid’s neck before he could escape. The urge to do some serious damage to the little bastard was overwhelming. He got one hand over his Adam’s apple and squeezed. The kid let out a satisfying gurgling noise as his eyes rolled back in his head.

‘You little shits!’ Gasparino shouted, squeezing harder.

‘You cheeky cunt!’ someone shouted. Then they were all upon him, kicking, screaming and biting. He grabbed hold of an ear but couldn’t get a grip. Then a face appeared in front of him and for a moment he thought it was Justine. Confusion spread through his brain as someone ripped his hand from the kid’s throat, snapping a finger in two in the process.

‘Bastard!’ Again, he tried to struggle to his feet but two of them had him pinned down against his rucksack.

‘Fucker!’

The last thing Adrian Gasparino remembered seeing before the lights went out was the dirty sole of a boot heading for his face.

‘What the hell are you doing, representing Clive Martin?’

A dark look passed across Abigail Slater’s face. ‘Surely,’ she glowered at her lover sitting opposite, ‘
I
have discretion – total discretion – when it comes to deciding on the clients that
I
choose to take on.’

‘Well, yes,’ Christian Holyrod stammered, ‘but come on. On the one hand I’m trying to clean things up, and here you are, getting in the way.’

Slater placed her knife and fork carefully on her plate and looked slowly round the restaurant. For an evening early in the week, The Triangle was doing more than brisk business. There was not an empty table in sight and a growing crowd at the bar, waiting to be seated. You would hardly think they were in the middle of the worst recession since the Second World War. Then again, economic austerity was for the little people. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, one of Christian’s more lame-brained colleagues, famously said, ‘We’re all in it together’; what he meant was, ‘You’re on your own, losers’. The little berk had last been seen on the slopes of some swish Swiss resort, enjoying a ten-grand skiing break, while his minions were busy trying to cut all the social services they could. Politicians, Slater thought contemptuously, they were such useless cretins. For a moment, she tried to remember why she was having a relationship with one. Nothing came to mind.

‘What’s so funny?’ Christian asked, a sour look upon his face as he played with his glass of Vega Sicilia Unico 1996.

‘Nothing.’ Slater cut a large slice off her mound of beef tartare. Popping it into her mouth, she chewed lasciviously, licking her lips as she swallowed. The look on Christian’s face signalled the rush of blood to his crotch, amusing her even more.

‘He’s a very interesting and articulate guy.’ Slater washed down the steak with a mouthful of wine.

‘Who – Martin?’

Slater nodded. ‘He talks well about the grotesque sexualization of our society.’ Slipping off one of her pumps, she inserted her foot between Holyrod’s legs and began gently massaging his groin with her toes.

The Mayor’s eyes widened. After a moment, his mouth opened slightly but no sound came out.

‘The way he explains it,’ Slater continued, feeling him stiffen under the arch of her foot, ‘we’re all in the sex industry, one way or another. Sex is used to sell everything – films, music, cars . . . even Entomophagous Industries.’

‘What do you mean?’

Slater put her cutlery back on the plate and pushed the half-finished meal away. ‘Have you seen the latest corporate advertising?’

Holyrod, rapidly losing interest in the conversation, shook his head.

‘There was a full-page ad for Entomophagous in the
Economist
, the
Journal
and the
Herald Tribune
. It was a picture of a naked woman,’ Slater explained, ‘or I should say “girl”, she looked about fifteen at best, sitting on a horse in a field with a slogan that said something like “beauty and strength”, something like that.’

Pulling her foot away from him, she slipped it back into her shoe. ‘So don’t come all high and mighty with me. And don’t try and tell me who I should choose as my clients.’

Slater dropped her napkin on her plate and sprang to her feet. Leaning over the table, she patted the Mayor on the cheek.

‘You never know,’ she smiled maliciously. ‘Maybe if you go home, your wife will let you fuck her tonight.’

Not very likely
, Holyrod mused, trying to recall the last time they’d had sex.

‘Or,’ Slater continued, ‘maybe you could just wank off to one of your ads . . . if you like that sort of thing.’ Stepping away from the table, she headed off to get her coat.

Holyrod quickly pulled himself together as a hovering waitress approached the table.

‘Was the meal all right, sir?’

‘Fine, fine,’ said Holyrod brusquely as he watched his mistress disappear into the night. Maybe he
would
go home and fuck his wife, just to spite her. ‘Just get me the bill and a large glass of the twenty-year-old Pittyvaich.’

Carlyle wondered how long it might be before he could slink off and get a cup of coffee. He thought about the dozens of different cafés within a five-minute walk of the crime scene. As he went through the list, most of them were immediately ruled out on quality grounds. This was not the kind of morning when any old rubbish would do. He definitely was not in the mood for flavourless generic offerings doled out by some grumpy East European who hadn’t yet realized she should have stayed at home, rather than running off to a city that even he, a resident here all his life, found dirty, expensive and unforgiving.

The working day had started as he was brushing his teeth. Standing naked in the bathroom, he was wondering whether his gut was expanding as the desk sergeant phoned and informed him of the homicide. An unidentified tramp had been kicked to death in a doorway at the back of the London Coliseum, home of the English National Opera, not much more than fifty yards from the police station at Charing Cross.

‘Not so good for the crime statistics,’ the sergeant reflected.

Not so good for the poor bugger who is dead
, Carlyle replied silently, holding his mobile to his ear while he continued brushing his teeth.

‘And just round the corner from where I’m standing,’ the sergeant sighed. ‘Doesn’t look too clever, does it?’

Still looking in the mirror, sucking in his stomach, Carlyle told him, ‘I’ll be there in ten minutes or so.’ Ending the call, he reached for the mouthwash.

Helen appeared behind him. Stepping out of her pyjama bottoms, she sat down on the toilet and began to pee. She gestured at the mobile as he set it down by the side of the bath. ‘Work?’

Carlyle nodded as he gargled. Spitting the mouthwash into the sink, he took the T-shirt that had been warming on the radiator and put it on. ‘Yeah. Dead tramp. Nice way to start the day.’

‘Ah well,’ she said, ‘good luck.’

‘Thanks.’ He kissed her gently on the top of the head. ‘I’ll tell you about it tonight.’

Umar Sligo turned up the collar of his raincoat and flashed a cheesy smile at the pretty blonde WPC standing by the police tape. He was sure he hadn’t seen her before; if he had, he would have remembered. Umar prided himself on always remembering a pretty face. Tossing her head, the girl looked away. Umar didn’t mind. Making a note of the number on her epaulette, he knew he would have her mobile number by the end of the day, no problem.

‘Sergeant . . .’

Turning back to face his boss, Umar gestured at the Fulham FC baseball cap pulled down low, with the brim concealing most of John Carlyle’s face. ‘Nice hat, Inspector.’

Stepping out of the rain, Carlyle tugged the brim down even further and grunted. The downpour was getting heavier but in the enclosed space of the doorway there was no chance that the stink of death was going to be washed away any time soon.

It wasn’t much of a crime scene, just a pair of battered Gola trainers sticking out from a heap of smelly clothes. If it wasn’t for the congealed blood spreading along the grimy concrete, you would assume the guy – Carlyle assumed that the victim was a man – was just another sleeping dosser of the kind that were to be found sprinkled around Covent Garden at any time of the day or night.

Nameless people living in a different world on the same streets.

‘Any ID?’

‘Nah.’ Umar shook his head. ‘They took everything.’

‘They?’

‘The techies reckon four or five people were involved. Anyway, they cleaned him out, took whatever money and possessions he had. All he had left were his clothes and the sleeping bag.’

‘Great.’ Turning away from Umar, Carlyle watched the pathologist, a small bearded guy called Evan Milch whom he hadn’t worked with much before, snap off his latex gloves and drop them into his bag. Closing the bag, he stretched and shook out his shoulders, catching Carlyle’s eye as he did so.

‘Nasty,’ said the pathologist.

Carlyle nodded.

‘We have just about finished here, I think.’ Milch wiped his hands on his green corduroy jeans. ‘I will let you have some initial thoughts by close of play.’

Someone kicked the poor bastard to death
, Carlyle thought.
What’s to know?
He smiled thinly. ‘Thanks.’

‘My pleasure.’ Zipping up his padded green Barbour jacket, Milch gave a small bow and moved off the pavement, heading for the far side of the police tape and the peace of his mortuary.

As he watched him go, Carlyle stared vacantly at the corpse. For no particular reason, his mind alighted on a memory of Walter Poonoosamy, a local drunk known as ‘Dog’ on account of the fictitious pet he used to panhandle money from tourists. For a while, a few years back, Walter had been a local micro-celebrity, a regular fixture in the waiting room of Charing Cross police station. Then he disappeared, his fate unknown. Or, rather, the
details
of his fate were unknown. But, for a while at least, Walter had a name, an identity of sorts.

This guy, Carlyle thought sadly, was probably just a corpse long before he had breathed his last.

‘Fuck!’ Looking down, Carlyle saw that he had stepped in the victim’s blood. He took a step backwards, ignoring the disapproving looks of the two technicians still working on the crime scene. Standing in the rain, he wiped the toe of his shoe in a pool of murky water and looked across at his sergeant, standing vacantly in the gutter waiting for something to happen.

Umar caught him staring. He nodded again at the inspector’s cap. ‘Bad result for Fulham last night.’

Tell me something I don’t know
, Carlyle thought. Fourth defeat on the bounce, a shell-shocked manager and another wearisome relegation battle looming. ‘We’re not like United,’ he said maliciously, ‘with dodgy decisions from helpful referees every week.’