James Craig - London Calling

‘But he checked in alone?’

Shue glanced at the screen again. ‘Yes.’

Carlyle waited for Shue to say more, but she just stood there silently. ‘And?’

Shue snapped to attention. ‘Number 329 is registered to a Mr Ian Blake. He booked in for just the one night. He checked in at seven twenty-five last night, had some food and champagne delivered just after nine, which he signed for. He has an alarm call booked for seven-thirty tomorrow or, rather, this morning.’

Carlyle thought about that. The information was useless: it told him nothing. They were just putting off the inevitable visit upstairs. He took a deep breath: ‘OK, let’s go and pay Mr…’

‘Blake.’

‘Mr Blake… let’s go and pay him a visit. I need to take a look inside room 329.’

Shue frowned. ‘Are you sure, Inspector?’

This was a necessary part of the job, trampling over people’s reluctance to get involved, dragging them unhappily into a little bit of the mess that comprised his regular working life. Sometimes he did it with relish, but not tonight. Tonight he was painting by numbers.

She pulled a key card out of a drawer behind the desk and held it up for him to inspect. ‘Well…’

Are you sure? Carlyle looked down at his shoes, trying not to smile. He’d been asked that question a million times before. He was a policeman, for fuck’s sake. Of course, he was sure.

‘… we could end up getting a guest out of bed by mistake.’

‘Yes,’ he nodded, ‘we could.’

Her face brightened slightly, as she mistakenly assumed that he was considering her point of view.

‘Or,’ Carlyle met her gaze with a grin, ‘we could be ignoring something serious – maybe a murder.’

‘Um.’ She took a step backwards, with a look of annoyance as if he’d just tried to grab her arse.

Carlyle ignored her irritation. ‘So,’ he said firmly, ‘do you see where the balance of risk lies here?’

They rode the elevator to the third floor in silence. Stepping out, Shue led him along a silent corridor that was lit by low-wattage lighting at floor level, like the emergency lights on a plane. Their footsteps were hushed by a deep blue carpet and, with even the normal background hum of the city for once blocked out, the silence had a strange completeness to it. The scene, Carlyle reckoned, had that ‘middle of the night in the big city’ feel to it, although, with no windows to look out of, it could just as easily have been the middle of the day.

At the end of the corridor, Shue turned right into a shorter corridor, which led to a dead end. She came to a stop outside door 329 in the middle of a cluster of six rooms, three ranged on either side, towards the back of the hotel building. Outside the door, the remains of the room-service order were stacked neatly on a tray, beside an empty champagne bottle.

Shue nodded at the label. ‘Krug. From the 1995 vintage; the good stuff. It costs five hundred pounds a bottle.’

Carlyle shrugged.

For a moment, she just stood there, pass key in hand. ‘God,’ she whispered, turning to Carlyle, ‘I hope you’re right about this.’

‘What?’ Carlyle asked, with gentle amusement. ‘You mean that you’re hoping that he’s really dead?’

‘No.’ Shue smiled weakly. ‘You know what I mean. If he’s asleep… or shagging or something…’ Her unease seemed genuine.

Despite his aching tiredness, and against his natural instinct, Carlyle took a deep breath and summoned up the energy to try some empathy: ‘You must have seen all sorts in your time?’

‘No.’ She took a step away from him, looking strangely put out. ‘No, not really. I’ve only been doing this for six months.’

Giving up on the small talk, Carlyle pulled his shoulders back and assumed his most official tone, the one that didn’t normally sound like him. ‘Don’t worry. This is formal police business and I will take full responsibility for upsetting your guests.’ He rapped gently on the door and counted to ten. There was no response from inside. He knocked on the door, harder this time, before again counting to ten. Still nothing. He gave Shue a knowing smile. ‘Please, unlock the door and then stand back.’

The night manager did as requested. Carlyle opened the door firmly but slowly. Without saying anything, he stepped inside the tiny vestibule. To his left was an empty wardrobe; on the right was an equally empty bathroom. Ahead of him extended the room proper. It was illuminated only by the light from a floor lamp in the far corner, and Carlyle could see one foot dangling off the end of the bed. There was no snoring to be heard, and there were no noises suggesting than any sexual activity was in progress either.

Closing the door behind him, he took two steps into the room proper, in order to confirm what he already knew.

The note had not been a joke.

Cambridge University, June 1984

Life is short, but the day is long.

There were signs. Signs everywhere. It was the hundred and sixty-ninth day of the year. It was one hundred and sixty-nine years to the day since the English had triumphed at Waterloo. It was a time for history. A time for destiny. And, above all, a time for pain.

In the here and now, it was the end of the summer term, the end of the academic year and the end of life at university. The big, wide world was out there waiting for them, ready to shower them with money, status and power. Of course, they would make it wait until they were damn well ready. That was their right. They had been taught from birth that the world waits for gentlemen, not the other way round.

Liberty was being traded for power. All of this would be missed.

The celebrations had lasted for more than thirty hours now, an endless tour of bars and parties, running into the same people again and again. Now, drawing deep on their second wind, they had returned to his rooms for the unspoken, much anticipated finale.

The club was in session.

It had started to rain. A heavy summer downpour at the end of a baking day was accompanied by the rumble of distant thunder. The weather only added to the fin de siecle feel of it all. They were washing away the past, preparing the ground for the future. Sad, weary, but expectant.

The sight laid out before him was like a porno version of Tom Brown’s Schooldays directed by Tinto Brass – less Flashman, more Fleshman. The Italian smut king’s Caligula had pride of place in his porn collection in one corner of the room: a stack of quality VHS tapes almost five feet high that had been accumulated over the years. On the television screen next to them, Salon Kitty played silently to the sound of ‘She Works Hard For The Money’ by Donna Summer coming out of his fantastically expensive Bang amp; Olufsen Beocenter stereo system.

All eyes were fixed on a space of about eight feet by four that had been cleared in the centre of the room and on the body that lay there, face down. The atmosphere was thick with the clashing scents of body odour, excrement, semen and cannabis. Despite opening all the windows, the blue smoke that had settled around head height was still thick enough to effectively obscure the print of Hockney’s Mulholland Drive on the far wall. Someone had crashed through a glass coffee table, the remains of which had been pushed into a corner. Empty champagne and Absolut vodka bottles littered the floor. A half-eaten pizza was left peeking out from under the sofa.

Their quarry was three years in the grooming. The networking, the lobbying, the oiling, it had all led up to this night. Now, he would be three hours, three minutes, in the destroying. Their pretty boy Icarus, flying too close to the sun. Now he had to fall to earth, to reclaim his place among the peasants. To realise that he had been flying too high.