Sins of the Fathers (11 page)

Carlyle nodded.
Tell me about it.

She looked at him, as if for the first time. ‘What is your name?’

‘Carlyle. Inspector John Carlyle.’

Miki stuck the key in the lock. ‘Last time it was a woman.’

‘Yes. She has gone on maternity leave.’

‘Of course,’ Miki giggled, pushing the door open. ‘I remember now. She was
big
. Maybe she should have been more careful. Stopped work earlier.’

Carlyle said nothing. Trained in his new position, he picked up the bags and followed Miki inside into the hallway. Kicking off her shoes, she hung her coat on a peg on the wall and moved off down the corridor. ‘I need a shower.’ She pointed to a room off to the left. ‘Put the shopping in there and make yourself a cup of tea if you want. I won’t be long.’ Before he had a chance to respond, she disappeared into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

Dumping the bags in the middle of the room, Carlyle dropped onto a black leather sofa and kicked off his shoes. Yawning, he did a quick audit of Miki’s shopping. Most of the brands were names which he didn’t recognize but there were three large carrier bags with the legend
Louboutin
emblazoned on the side. Carlyle knew what they were, even before he clocked the two shoeboxes inside each bag. He let out a low whistle. Clearly Miki, or more likely Miki’s gentleman friend, had spent several thousand pounds on some pretty heavy retail therapy. Leaning back into the sofa, he stretched his toes on the wooden floor. With his stomach still full of breakfast, he felt heavy and lethargic. Maybe he should make himself some tea?

Someone was talking. But they weren’t talking to him, and they weren’t talking in English. Shaking himself awake, Carlyle slowly focused on Miki Kasaba standing in the doorway in a pair of jeans and a grey T-shirt, talking on her mobile. Giving him a cheeky grin, she said something in Japanese and ended the call.

‘Looks like I’m not the only one who had a hard night.’ Freshly scrubbed, without the make-up, she radiated youth and health.

Getting to his feet, Carlyle grunted.

‘Did you get some tea?’

Stretching, he shook his head.

‘Let me make some.’ Crossing the room, she stepped into the open-plan kitchen.

‘Thanks.’

Leaving her mobile on a worktop, she filled and switched on the kettle. ‘What kind of tea would you like?’

Carlyle sat back down. ‘Green tea – if you’ve got it.’

‘I have.’ Miki opened a cupboard and took out a couple of mugs.

Carlyle gestured at the carrier bags. ‘That’s a lot of shopping.’

Miki took two tea bags from a box and popped one in each mug. ‘Dan took me to Paris.’

‘The guy in the Porsche?’

Miki looked at him coyly. ‘Yes.’ The kettle came to the boil and she poured water into each mug. Then she picked up both mugs – with the tea bags left in – handed him his and sat down with hers at the opposite end of the sofa.

‘Thanks.’ Carlyle took a careful sip.

Grasping her mug with both hands, Miki stared into her tea. ‘He’d been pressing me to go for months.’

Feeling an admission coming on, the inspector stayed schtum.

‘Ayumi always told me that I would have to sleep with him if I went.’ She gestured at the bags with her chin. ‘It was only a question of the price. We used to joke about it. Ayumi always said that six pairs of Louboutins was the absolute minimum.’

For her, Carlyle wondered, or for you? Feeling himself blush, he tried to think back to any reference to a sugar daddy in the case-file. He was fairly sure that there wasn’t any. ‘Who’s Dan?’

Miki rubbed her nose on her wrist. ‘I thought you were here about Ayumi?’

‘You need to help me here,’ Carlyle said gently. ‘Did Ayumi date Dan before you?’

‘I told everything to the other officer.’ Miki picked at a nail. ‘Ayumi met a lot of different guys online.’

‘Which website did she use?’

‘There are a few. The best one is called Leafhopper. Ayumi said the guys on there at least had plenty of money.’ Miki stifled a sob. ‘She isn’t coming back now, is she?’

It doesn’t look like it. Not for all the Louboutins in the world.
Carlyle made a non-committal gesture. ‘If she went off with someone from this website, where could she be?’

‘You tell me.’ Miki placed her mug on the floor. ‘I need to get some sleep.’ She looked the inspector straight in the eye. ‘It’s a big bed; big enough to share.’

Carlyle jumped to his feet. ‘I have to get to work.’

Putting a hand on her hip, Miki gave him a fake little pout. ‘Your call.’

Carlyle gestured at the shoes. ‘Anyway, you’re way out of my league.’

The pout gave way to a cheeky smile. ‘Everyone likes to slum it once in a while.’

Taking a deep breath, Carlyle returned his mug to the kitchen counter and set off for the doorway. ‘I’ll tell Mr Ninomiya that he can give you a call to arrange a meeting.’

She gave a tiny sigh. ‘I suppose so.’

‘Good.’ Carlyle stared at the floor. ‘Thank you for the tea.’ Fishing a business card from his pocket, he placed it on the television stand by the door. ‘Do get in touch if you can think of anything else.’ Without waiting for a reply, he ducked into the hall and fled towards the relative sanctuary of Charing Cross police station.

Waiting for the traffic lights to change so that he could cross the Strand, Carlyle scrolled through his latest list of missed calls:

Umar

Helen

Simpson

Susan Phillips

Two unknown numbers

The inspector scratched his head. That was about right for a few hours’ AWOL. No one had left a message. He looked up in the direction of Trafalgar Square. As usual, the traffic was crawling along at no more than a couple of miles an hour. The air was still and he could taste the exhaust fumes in the back of his throat. Three feet in front of him, a stationary taxi driver laughed into his Bluetooth headset as the meter ticked over to £42.20. In the back of the cab, a frustrated-looking businessman tapped angrily on his BlackBerry as his money burned away.

Belatedly the inspector tried to organize the rest of his day. Who should he call first? As the lights changed, the taxi edged on to the pedestrian crossing, blocking his way. Cursing, Carlyle resisted the temptation to give it a kick as he slalomed between the cab and a hotel shuttle bus. Safely reaching the north side of the road, he hit Phillips’s number as he strode towards the police station.

She answered on the first ring. ‘I was wondering where you had got to.’ Bright and cheery.

‘Busy,’ said Carlyle gruffly.

Susan Phillips got the message and immediately toned down the cheer. ‘Did you see my report?’

‘Yeah. Thanks for getting it over so quickly.’

‘It will take me time to work up the final verdict but I don’t think there’ll be much new in it.’

‘Okay.’ Carlyle stood by the red phone box outside the station entrance and listened politely while the pathologist reprised some of the highlights of Julian Schaeffer’s murder. He liked Phillips well enough to make a few encouraging and grateful-sounding noises but, in truth, he wasn’t much interested. The bloke had been shot in the chest at close range; that was all he really needed to know.

At least the snooze on Miki Kasaba’s sofa had refreshed him enough to boost his civility levels. When Phillips had finished her monologue, he was polite enough to ask a question.

‘Anything interesting about the bullets?’ It wasn’t really her area, but seeing as she had dug them out of the stiff, he thought he might as well ask. He knew that Phillips was a team player who showed more interest than most of her colleagues in the cases she worked on. She didn’t just cut up corpses, write up her notes and go home. It was one of the things he liked about her.

‘Not really. The ballistics check was done this morning.’ She reeled off a list of technical details that went in one ear and out the other.

‘Standard ammunition,’ Phillips concluded. ‘Could have been used in a wide variety of handguns. Find the weapon and they can run a comparison.’

They both knew that wasn’t going to happen. This was a professional killing; the gun used to kill Schaeffer would have been stripped and its component parts individually destroyed. Carlyle nodded at a WPC he knew coming out of the building and passing him on the pavement. ‘I’d better get on with it, then.’

‘Good luck.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Oh,’ Phillips said hastily, before he could hang up on her, ‘and there’s the other thing.’

Head bowed, Carlyle kicked the toe of his shoe against the phone box. ‘What other thing?’

‘Pippa Collingwood.’

Carlyle scoured his brain but nothing came out. ‘Who?’

Phillips sounded surprised. ‘Weren’t you up on Rosebery Avenue yesterday? The girl who was run over by the postal van.’

‘Oh that, yeah. Nothing to do with me, though.’ He tried to remember the name of the sergeant from Islington who had been in charge but – again – his mind was blank.

‘Ah, okay.’

‘Why?’ Peering inside the phone box, the inspector counted eight prostitutes’ calling cards stuck on the back wall above the phone with Blu-Tack. He shook his head. Having sex with a prostitute wasn’t illegal but solicitation was. The guys who went round sticking up the cards could be arrested and fined. The council had a team that was supposed to remove the cards as soon as they were put up. It was a ‘quality of life’ issue. But they couldn’t even enforce the law right next to the police station.

‘Well,’ Phillips cleared her throat, ‘it wasn’t just that she’d been run over. When we looked at her there was evidence that she had been the victim of violence over a period of time.’

Carlyle grimaced. ‘Sexual abuse?’

Phillips coughed. ‘Yes. It looks like she’d been raped. More than once.’

Carlyle felt sick to his stomach. He rubbed his face. ‘Like I said, nothing to do with me. Listen, I’m going to have a catch-up on Mr Schaeffer now. I’ll call you later if I have any questions.’

‘Good luck.’

‘Thanks.’ Ending the call, he headed inside.

After a trip to the canteen for a restorative cup of green tea, Carlyle went upstairs to his desk on the third floor. There was no sign of Umar, so he called his wife. Like Phillips, Helen answered on the first ring. Clearly, this was his day for getting hold of people.

‘Where have you been?’ Her voice was concerned rather than angry.

Carlyle felt himself relax. He explained what he had been up to, leaving out the part about the nap on Miki’s sofa. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I took the day off, so that I could hang out with your dad.’

‘Okay.’ He was grateful for this kindness and also because she didn’t raise the fact that the idea of taking some ‘personal time’ would never even have crossed his mind.

‘I think he’s happy for me to make the arrangements for the funeral.’

I bet he is.
‘It’s good of you,’ he mumbled.

‘He is your dad, John. It is your mum we’re talking about.’

Once again this morning he felt embarrassed. Although there was no one else around, he lowered his voice. ‘Yes, of course.’ He scribbled some notes on a pad on his desk as Helen talked through some of the details. The funeral was expected to be set for tomorrow week. ‘The thirteenth?’

‘The fourteeth,’ she corrected him.

‘Okay.’

‘Does that make a difference?’

‘No, no,’ Carlyle said hastily. ‘You have to take pretty much what you’re given, I suppose.’

‘Pretty much.’

‘The law of supply and demand,’ he mused.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’ Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Umar heading towards him. The sergeant was making a winding-up motion, telling him to get off the call. Carlyle held up an index finger to signal that he would be but a moment.

‘It’s going to cost about six grand.’

‘What?’ Carlyle did a quick mental audit of their various bank accounts. Helen was in charge of the family finances and she liked to point out that they didn’t have savings, as such. Rather, they had a buffer zone for when times got tough. It looked like the buffer zone was going to get wiped out.

‘That’s what it costs,’ she said defensively.

‘Of course, of course.’ He backed off, not wanting her to think he was being cheap or petty at a time like this. ‘Let’s just hope that no one else keels over any time soon.’

‘That’s not funny, John.’

Jesus, me and my big mouth.
Umar was hovering and Carlyle waved him irritably away. ‘Sorry. Anyway, we can take care of the cost, no problem. It will all be fine.’ Watching his sergeant retreat a few feet, arms folded, he lowered his voice further. ‘You are doing a great job on this. I really am very grateful. It’s a big help.’

‘Mm.’

‘Look, I’ve got to go. Crap day. There are a lot of people chasing me. I’ll give you a call as soon as I know how the rest of the day is panning out.’ He dropped his head so low it was almost under the desk. ‘I love you,’ he whispered but she had already ended the call. Tossing the mobile on his desk, he realized that he hadn’t even asked Helen how his father was getting on. ‘Your Son of the Year Award is in the post,’ he mumbled to himself.

‘Sorry?’

Rubbing his temples, the inspector looked up at his sergeant, who had surreptitiously crept back towards the desk. Umar looked as excited as a child in a sweetie shop. Normally he only got like that when he was chasing some skirt.

‘Nothing.’ Carlyle smiled wearily. ‘What have we got?’

‘We’ve found the girl.’

Carlyle stood up. ‘Ayumi?’

‘Huh?’

‘Sorry, wrong investigation. Which girl are we talking about?’

A look of profound annoyance flashed across Umar’s face. ‘Rebecca Shaeffer. The girl that disappeared from the playground. Who else?’

‘Oh, yes. Of course.’

Umar looked at him like he was mad. ‘Despite it being half-term, we managed to track down the headmistress of Rebecca’s school. They had contact details for a grandmother in Primrose Hill, so I sent a couple of uniforms round there and bingo, there she was, drinking cocoa and watching
Tom and Jerry
.’

Tom and Jerry
. Quality. Carlyle hoped it was some of the old ones – they were so much better. ‘So the girl’s there,’ he said slowly, ‘but the grandparents didn’t know about the father getting shot?’