James Craig - London Calling

Carlyle stood there, wondering what to do next. His headache was returning with a vengeance, and he needed again to find some shade.

Eventually, Trevor picked up his helmet and slowly trudged out of the garden. ‘You stupid bastard,’ he hissed, pushing past Carlyle. ‘You stupid bloody bastard, next time try to remember which fucking side you’re on.’

Not wishing to dwell on his rampant stupidity any longer than was absolutely necessary, Inspector Carlyle headed back in the direction he’d come from only ten minutes earlier. The fact that it was such a short walk did nothing to improve his mood. Grinding his teeth in frustration, he lengthened his stride and tried not to think about the bed he could already be lying in. There was no one about to catch a middle-aged policeman talking to himself like a demented dosser, and so he took the opportunity to curse himself loudly. Tonight wasn’t the first time this year that he’d arrived outside his flat, stuck his hand in his jacket pocket and realised that he had left his house keys at the station and, therefore, couldn’t get in. There was no way he would dare wake his wife at this time of night, so he turned round and headed back to Charing Cross Police Station.

Keeping up a brisk pace, Carlyle cut across the north side of Covent Garden piazza, whose cobbles felt hard and unyielding under the soles of his shoes. This was his home territory, just three blocks north of the biologically dead waters of the River Thames at Waterloo Bridge.

Carlyle passed an imposing mansion standing at number 43 King Street, in the north-west corner of the piazza, which was now home to a flagship shoe store. Back in the nineteenth century it has been one of London’s first boxing venues. Then, as now, the prizefight game was so bent that many of the bouts descended into farce. One of the most famous King Street matches ended in chaos after both fighters took a dive even before a single punch had been thrown. Not surprisingly, the disgruntled punters sought to take out their frustrations on the two boxers, one of whom found the presence of mind to feign blindness in order to escape a beating from the mob. Legend had it that this ‘blind’ boxer was declared the winner, and awarded the purse as well.

Glancing up at a poster advertising a new computer game, Carlyle stumbled on a loose cobblestone. He steadied himself in front of the life-size image of a cartoon commando letting fly with a machine-gun in each hand. The game’s strapline promised ‘a new kind of war’. That’s just what the world needs, Carlyle thought sourly, as he resumed walking. Almost immediately, he was passing in front of St Paul’s Church. Known as the actor’s church, it was currently flanked on one side by an Oakley sunglasses store, and on the other by a Nat West bank. Inigo Jones, the architect, would doubtless be proud, Carlyle thought, to see his celebrated creation now keeping such august company. God would probably be quite chuffed, too.

In front of the church’s outsized portico, an acne-scarred youth wearing last season’s Arsenal away shirt sat on the kerb, with his head buried in his hands. Oblivious to his suffering, a couple of insomniac pigeons pecked at the large pool of golden vomit shimmering under the orange street lights nearby. Behind him, a very young-looking girl in an insubstantial silver dress stood motionless, expressionless, apparently disinclined to comfort him or to leave him, as their night on the town struggled to die.

The pair paid Carlyle no heed as he walked on. For his part, Carlyle gave the girl a hard stare, saying a silent prayer that his own daughter wouldn’t be found in a similar situation in seven or eight years’ time.

Reaching the corner of Agar Street, Carlyle looked up and took in the hulking mass of Europe’s largest police station. Covering a whole block of some of the most expensive real estate in the world, it stood a couple of blocks north of the eponymous train station. It was a squat, featureless building, rising to six economical storeys, bristling with CCTV cameras on every corner, peppered with windows too small for its bulk; windows for seeing out of rather than for looking in through. The half a dozen old-fashioned blue police lamps placed in random locations around the building looked just as fake as they actually were. The same blue lamp used to be found outside every police station, reminding the public that the police were always ready to serve. Now they were just design accessories.

The station building was painted in an off-white colour that always looked grubby. The finishing touch was a small portico, as if copied from the nearby church in the piazza, framing the front entrance and making it look more like a provincial town hall than a major cop shop.

Charing Cross was one of a hundred and forty Metropolitan Police stations located across London, and Carlyle had been stationed at this one for almost ten years now, making it his longest posting by a considerable margin. In the previous decade and a half, he had made various random stop-offs around the capital in the fairly random circuit of stations that had constituted his ‘career’ – including Shepherds Bush, Southwark, Brixton, Paddington Green and Bethnal Green. He had moved slowly through the ranks, from constable to sergeant to inspector, having a go at most things: vice, drugs, fraud, homicide and even a short and inglorious spell at Buckingham Palace in the Royal Protection Unit.

Despite picking up more than his fair share of commendations, Carlyle knew that he had never really been considered as part of the team. He was not ‘one of us’, nor was he a ‘safe pair of hands’. Somehow, he had survived, though, without ever becoming part of the family. How had that happened? The powers that be were doubtless as surprised as Carlyle himself that he was still around. Over the years, he had evolved into a jack of all trades and master of none. He had put down roots of a sort, like a tree stuck in the pavement: stable but not necessarily happy.

Climbing the steps, he glanced at the rather modest Charing Cross Police Station sign, which sat below a small and very grubby royal crest. Above the crest, a chaotic rainbow-coloured flag hung limply from its pole, the usual Union Jack having been replaced in recognition of Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Month, whatever that was. Inside, the place was unusually empty, save for a lone figure slumped comatose in the corner.

Walter Poonoosamy, commonly known as ‘Dog’, was a drunk, a regular nuisance or a local mini-celebrity, depending on your point of view. Dog’s moniker came from his habit of approaching tourists who were aimlessly wandering about the piazza and asking for their help in finding his pet Labrador, called Lucky. Lucky, he explained, was his one companion in life, and as luck would have it he had gone missing that very day. As far as anyone knew, there never had been any such animal, but he fitted the stereotype of a down-and-out’s faithful friend, which, combined with Dog’s not inconsiderable acting ability and persistence in the face of a raging thirst, was usually sufficient to tug at the heartstrings of the gormless enough to easily cover the cost of a couple of 1.5 litre bottles of Diamond White cider, which was his preferred tipple. It was urban legend that one tear-stained performance had prompted a middle-aged American lady from Wyoming to hand over a fifty-pound note and tell the bemused tramp to ‘Go get yourself a new dog’.

Tonight, Carlyle could smell evidence of the comprehensive but unscheduled toilet stop which explained why no one had yet tried to move Dog on from his bench. Carlyle observed a sensible exclusion zone around the wino, as he stepped towards the desk where the duty sergeant – an amiable, middle-aged guy called Dave Prentice – was tossing a pair of latex gloves to a disgruntled, sleepy-looking PCSO whom Carlyle didn’t recognise. There was a large bottle of disinfectant on the desk, alongside a mop and a bucket of recently boiled water mixed with some industrial-strength disinfectant. The cleaners wouldn’t arrive until at least six-thirty, which meant a PCSO had to be press-ganged into action meanwhile. Police Community Support Officers were volunteers who signed on to help the regular police in their spare time, though, with no power to arrest suspected criminals, they were widely derided as ‘plastic policemen’. Bored and unmotivated, they were responsible for most cases of gross misconduct among Metropolitan Police staff, usually involving drinking offences and motoring crimes. Twenty or so got sacked each year and, in general, Carlyle tried to have as little to do with them as possible.