Sins of the Fathers (20 page)

‘
Where
’
s your husband?
’

From behind the curtains, the cries of the assembled press pack – a motley bunch of middle-aged white men with a chronic vitamin D deficiency kept at bay by a harassed trio of uniforms – merged into the general background hum of the city. Inside, it was just a normal home, with a comfortable, lived-in feel. There was the usual selection of photos and mementos but nothing that spoke particularly of Simon Collingwood’s sporting career.

Carlyle was embarrassed to be here, slightly ashamed to be imposing himself on this woman at the worst time of her life – but that was his job.

He let a few moments slip past.

Then a few more.

Still she did not acknowledge his presence.

‘Are you sure,’ he said finally, gently, ‘that you don’t know where your husband is? Or where he might possibly be?’

The shake of her head was so slight that he might have imagined it. The tears that welled in her eyes before running down her cheeks and dripping off her chin on to the carpet were real enough.

‘We’ve told you, Inspector, Alison had no inkling of any of this,’ said Celia Barclay, family friend and now de facto spokesperson for the mute Mrs Collingwood.

Carlyle finished his tea and placed the cup and saucer carefully on the floor by the foot of his chair. ‘I appreciate that. And I fully accept that the escape was a spur of the moment thing. But Simon’s disappearance simply prolongs this whole,’ he was going to say ‘mess’ but stopped himself in time, ‘situation. We have his passport, so he will not be able to leave the country. There is, literally, nowhere for him to go.’

‘I’m sorry, Inspector.’ Getting to her feet, Barclay gestured towards the door.

‘Okay.’ Pushing himself out of the chair, Carlyle handed her his cup and saucer. ‘Thank you for the tea,’ he smiled. As she took it, he slipped past her and stepped in front of Alison Collingwood. Barclay made to protest but he held up a hand and she stopped. ‘Give us one minute, please.’

Clearly not happy, Barclay hesitated in the doorway before disappearing into the hall. Dropping to his knees, Carlyle took Collingwood’s hands in his. She looked at him, surprised, but did not pull away.

The tears just kept coming.

‘Mrs Collingwood,’ he said quietly, in the hope that the eavesdropping Celia Barclay could not hear, ‘I am not here to punish you or your family.’ A fat, salty teardrop splashed on to the back of his right hand but he did not let go. He was surprised that he did not feel like an idiot, kneeling there in front of a crying woman, but he knew that he had to at least try to help her. ‘But I cannot offer anything that can make this any easier.’

This time he got a definite nod and a sniffle.

Carlyle tilted his head towards the curtains. ‘There are a lot of people out there who have a great deal of sympathy for what Simon has done. They understand why he did it. Many of those people would like to think that if they were put in the same terrible, terrible situation, they would have the guts to do the same thing that he did.’

‘Do they?’ Her voice was more of a croak than a whisper.

Carlyle said urgently, ‘The thing for Simon now is that he has to deal with the consequences of his actions. It is better to do this as quickly as possible so that you can try and get through this.’

Alison Collingwood’s eyes filled again.

‘Do you have any other children?’ He knew the answer but he asked anyway.

She nodded. ‘Andrew. He’s ten next month.’

Carlyle squeezed her hands gently. ‘When you come out of the other side of this – and you will – he will still be young, and he will still need you.’

Collingwood began rocking gently backwards and forwards on the edge of the sofa. Still he did not let go of her hands. ‘I will do my best for you, but I need you to give me an idea of where Simon might be.’

‘Yes.’

Carlyle waited for more but there was nothing else. After a while, he was conscious of his knees aching and he had pins and needles in his left foot. Letting go of her hands, he stood up and placed a card on the sofa beside her. ‘If you can think of anything, anything at all, please let me know. I will do what I can to help.’

As if on cue, Celia Barclay reappeared in the doorway. Carlyle said nothing as he walked past her on the way out.

It should have taken no more than thirty minutes to take the number 186 from Highbury to Highgate but, thanks to roadworks on the Brecknock Road, Carlyle had been travelling for more than an hour by the time he got off the bus. In a foul mood, he made his weary way up Swains Lane, having to jump onto the pavement to avoid being run over by a group of over-excited cyclists enjoying the 15 per cent gradient on one of the steepest climbs in the city. Fretting about Alison Collingwood, he again had the sense of grasping at too many things that were outside of his control.

Running around, achieving nothing.

In the breast pocket of his jacket, his phone was going mad but Carlyle ignored it. He didn’t know what he wanted but did know that he didn’t want to talk to anyone right now.

Slow down.

Slow down.

Reaching the entrance to the east side of Highgate Cemetery, he glanced at his watch. There was still more than half an hour to go to closing time, so he ducked inside, flipping his ID at the attendant to avoid paying the small entrance fee.

In less than a minute, he had left the city behind.

Nodding to a couple who were heading for the exit, he began walking further down the muddy path, away from the pressures of the day. Highgate Cemetery was, to Carlyle’s mind, one of the most magical places in London. If there was one place he would like to be buried, this was it. How much better to be laid to rest in the leafy gloom, worm food, rather than being incinerated, your ashes mixed with those of strangers and stuck in some overpriced copper pot? For a moment, he fantasized about burying his mother here, although he knew that would be impossible. These days, the cemetery could only accommodate seventy new arrivals a year.

Highgate’s greatest celebrity, Karl Marx, was only one of a slew of famous residents, including authors George Eliot, Douglas Adams and Beryl Bainbridge, as well as Charles Cruft, founder of the eponymous dog show, the physicist Michael Faraday and the comic Max Wall. Carlyle found a bench in front of a magnificently carved memorial to Lieutenant General the Right Honourable Sir Henry Knight Storks (1811–74). His equally magnificent
CV
included High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands, Governor of Malta, Captain General of Jamaica and MP for Ripon. And those were just the highlights. Reading through the list, the inspector felt quite the underachiever.

At the bottom was the legend:
Tomorrow do thy worst for I have lived today.

Was that a good motto for Simon Collingwood?

Perhaps.

Letting his gaze wander from Sir Henry, Carlyle tried to let his mind go free. Clear out everything from his brain and then reassemble it in order of priority. There was so much to deal with:

Collingwood

Julian Schaeffer

Ayumi Ninomiya

His mother

How had he ended up with so much on his plate? If the solitude of the cemetery was a balm on his concerns, it failed to offer any solutions. After five minutes sitting on the bench, he felt chilled. Getting to his feet, he made his way back to the exit.

Danny Hutton lived in a modernist masterpiece overlooking the cemetery. Consumed by jealousy, Carlyle walked past the Porsche parked in the driveway and gave the bell by the front door a long, hard ring.

And waited.

Tapping the toe of his shoe on the step, he began counting. Notoriously impatient, it was a way of trying to exercise some self-restraint; he would give himself to fifty before ringing the bell again.

Forty-one, forty-two . . .

The door was flung open and he was confronted by a young woman in a sheer yellow bra and a skirt that could not have been any shorter without being non-existent. Only by gritting his teeth and pressing the back of his skull down violently on the top of his spine was he able to tear his gaze away from her chest.

‘Are you all right?’ the girl asked.

‘Ah, yes.’ Carlyle tried to focus on a spot above her head. ‘I am looking for Mr Hutton.’

‘He’s around somewhere,’ she said airily. ‘Hold this and I’ll go and see if I can find him.’

Carlyle was still staring at the ceiling as she thrust a cardboard placard on a wooden stick into his hands and disappeared back down the hallway.

‘Dad! Someone for you!’

Carlyle looked at the writing on the sign:
It
’
s my hot body and I
’
ll wear what I want.

‘You can say that again,’ he mumbled to himself.

First Miki Kasaba and now this. It was too much for a middle-aged man to take. Maybe he should have got Umar to come up here after all.

Then again, maybe not.

When the girl returned, Carlyle was genuinely distressed to see that she had not put on any more clothes. On a second glance, she was quite tall, maybe five eight, slim, with shoulder-length auburn hair. Pretty, but not drop dead gorgeous.

‘Dad’s in the shower,’ she smiled, apparently oblivious to his discomfort. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

‘Yes,’ he said, staring at his shoes. ‘Thank you. That would be great.’ Closing the front door, he left the placard in the hall and followed her into a kitchen where the glass roof had been opened to create an internal courtyard.

‘Wow,’ said Carlyle, happy to have something else to focus on.‘This place is amazing.’

‘Yeah, it’s not bad,’ said the girl. Slipping behind the breakfast counter, she flicked a switch to start boiling a kettle standing by the sink. ‘I’m Electra, by the way. Who are you?’

Carlyle gave his name and rank, which seemed to be good enough; she didn’t ask for any ID.

Electra rolled her eyes. ‘Dad’s not in trouble again, is he?’

Again? Carlyle ignored the question. ‘Do you normally let people you don’t know into your house?’

She gave him a sharp look. ‘Not when they spend so much time checking out my tits.’

His cheeks burning, struggling for anything remotely resembling a witty reply, Carlyle was saved by the kettle coming to the boil.

‘At least you have the decency to be embarrassed,’ she offered graciously. ‘Boys today can’t even manage that. They seem to think life is supposed to be one long porn movie.’

‘Mm.’ With a daughter of his own, Carlyle tried very hard not to think about what today’s boys were like.

‘What kind of tea would you like?’

Five minutes later they were sitting at a glass table, sipping green tea with lemon. Of Danny Hutton, there was still no sign. Looking over at the view of the cemetery, the inspector was happy to let Electra explain about SlutWalking.

‘It started in Canada when a policeman told Toronto University students that women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized. A couple of months later, a thousand people hit the streets in the first “slutwalk”. Then it spread to the US, Australia, Britain and so on.’

Carlyle nodded intently. Why would anyone want to call themselves a slut? He knew, however, to keep his own counsel.

The conversation was finally ended by the arrival of a middle-aged gent in a dark green Lacoste polo shirt and a pair of crisp Hugo Boss jeans. Danny Hutton was less red in the face than the last time Carlyle had seen him but he still looked seriously overweight. He eyed the visitor suspiciously.

‘Who are you?’

‘This,’ Electra chipped in gleefully, ‘is the policeman who’s come to talk to you.’

Hutton looked at his daughter. ‘Isn’t it time for you to make a defiant display of your inner slut?’

Electra glanced at the clock wall. ‘Oh yeah. Gotta go.’ Jumping up, she kissed her father on the cheek and bounced down the hallway. Hutton’s expression was that of a man who’d just been crapped on by a pigeon.

The front door slammed shut.

‘A strange carry-on,’ Carlyle mused.

Hutton wasn’t in the mood to talk about it. His pained expression showed no sign of easing. ‘Have you got any ID?’

Carlyle slipped his warrant card across the table. Hutton peered at it, grunted and waddled over to the fridge to fish out a small bottle of Evian. ‘So what do you want?’

Carlyle finished his tea and waited for Hutton to sit down. He didn’t oblige, downing half of the water as he strolled over to the floor-to-ceiling glass doors.

‘I wanted to ask you about Miki Kasaba,’ Carlyle said, keeping his irritation in check.

Hutton’s watery grey eyes narrowed. ‘You could have given me a heads-up.’ Finishing the last of the Evian, he crushed the bottle in his fist. ‘My bloody wife could have been here.’

Carlyle looked around. ‘Is she?’

‘No,’ said Hutton grumpily. ‘She’s gone to Westfield – for a change.’ Moving back to the kitchen, he tossed the bottle into the sink. ‘As if she needs another bloody designer handbag.’ He shook his head at the sheer bloody futility of it all. ‘But still, you didn’t know that.’

‘I wanted to ask you about Miki Kasaba, and the sugar daddy website,’ Carlyle said flatly.

Hutton frowned. ‘What about it?’

‘Miki’s flatmate, Ayumi Ninomiya, is missing.’

‘I know, I know.’ Pulling out a chair, Hutton finally sat down. ‘Miki told me about it. I reckon she’s probably just off partying somewhere.’

‘After all this time?’

‘Inspector,’ Hutton smiled maliciously, ‘we are not talking about ordinary chaps here.’

‘Ordinary chaps?’

‘You know, the average guy you see walking down the street. Or in the pub. A bloke like yourself.’

Carlyle raised an eyebrow. ‘I see.’

‘Alpha males is an understatement.’ He puffed out his chest. ‘We are
super
alpha males. You hook up with a pretty girl you like, you might spend a year taking her round the world, shagging her brains out.’ He chuckled to himself. ‘I think Miki was a bit jealous. You see, I had met Ayumi a couple of times through the website. She was a real fox – top, top drawer. She would have been my first choice but she said no. She had already hooked up with someone else.’