James Craig - London Calling

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ One of the guards reached out to grab Carlyle by the throat.

Joe Szyszkowski rabbit-punched him on the back of his neck, then gave him a kick to the back of his left knee. ‘Consider yourself arrested, my friend.’ As the man sank to the carpet, Joe slapped on a pair of cuffs, and then gave him another kick for good measure.

‘Thank you,’ Carlyle smiled.

‘My pleasure,’ Joe replied cheerily.

As the bells continued to ring, people began leaving the ballroom, heading for the stairs as they evacuated the building.

The second guard looked from Joe to Carlyle, as if eyeing up which one of them to smack first.

Taking a step backwards, Joe pointed at a sign reading Exit. ‘It’s time for you to go.’

‘If you’re still here when I get back,’ Carlyle shouted over the noise, ‘you’ll be arrested for assault as well.’

Disgusted but impotent, the man shook his head and started for the stairs.

Carlyle jogged round a corner of the corridor just in time to see the door to the suite open and Edgar Carlton pop his head out. He looked very confused and didn’t seem to recognise the inspector. ‘What’s going on?’ he wailed, sounding as if he was about to burst into tears.

Lengthening his stride, Carlyle pushed his way through the door and on past the befuddled politician. ‘Just a false alarm,’ he smiled cheerily. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

Perspiration beading on his brow, a grim smile spread across Trevor Miller’s face as his eyes flicked between Carlyle and the sergeant. ‘Oh, look,’ he snarled, ‘it’s the fucking cavalry!’

The first thing Carlyle noticed in the room was the smell: a strange mixture of cigar smoke, piss and burning flesh. ‘Fuck me,’ he quipped, ‘this place smells worse than a kebab shop on Tottenham Court Road!’

Not for the first time in his life, he saw a joke fall flat. Carlyle didn’t even have time to laugh at his own gag before being rendered speechless by the scene in front of him.

‘Fuck me!’ Joe echoed from the doorway.

Miller stood on a balcony, holding a bruised and bloodied William Murray in a headlock. Up against the bulk of the ex-policeman, Murray seemed almost like a child. His eyes were glazed and he barely seemed conscious. Unable to put up any resistance, his face was turning red as the air was choked out of him.

‘What are you doing, Trevor?’

Miller automatically took a step backwards, thus propping Murray up against the balcony rail. ‘Just fuck off out of it, Inspector,’ he snarled.

Signalling for Joe to stay back, Carlyle took a careful step forward, then another. His mouth was dry and his heart was pounding. For the briefest moment, it was just like the old days, when he was speeding his tits off on the picket line. He felt giddy, almost euphoric.

‘What happened here?’ he asked gently. ‘What did he do, Trevor?’

‘He’s our man.’ As Miller eased his grip slightly, Murray started twitching.

‘I know,’ said Carlyle, edging towards the balcony. ‘That’s why we’re here.’ The pair of them were only ten or eleven feet away from him now, but Carlyle realised that he had no room for manoeuvre. ‘That’s why you have to hand him over to me.’

‘You haven’t learned very much over the years, have you?’ Miller looked past Carlyle, in the direction of the Carltons, who were both hovering in a corner.

‘What do you mean?’

‘What I mean is…’ Miller was in mid-sentence as Murray’s eyes opened wide and he started struggling. ‘Fuck!’ Miller started punching the aide in the face with his spare fist, eventually smashing his nose and showering them both with blood.

Jumping forward, Carlyle made a grab for Murray, but a brutal smack across the face from Miller stopped him in his tracks. As he staggered backwards, it felt as if he had been hit by a frying pan, and Carlyle was sure that the ringing in his head wasn’t just the fire alarm.

‘Boss?’ Joe asked, moving to Carlyle’s shoulder. In the distance, they could make out sirens. The police and the fire brigade would be here within minutes at most.

‘It’s OK.’ Carlyle straightened himself up, anger mixing with the agony. ‘I’m OK.’ Waiting for his head to clear, he eyed Miller and smiled. ‘That’s it, Trevor. Time to hand him over.’

A strangulated squeak emerged from Murray.

‘I don’t think so,’ Miller hissed, tightening his grip.

‘Trevor…’

‘Fuck off, Carlyle.’ Pulling Murray upwards and backwards, Miller flipped both of them over the guard rail.

For a split second, Carlyle stood there staring at the vacant space where the two men had been.

‘Shit!’ Rushing over to the rail, he peered down in time to see the two bodies hit the surface of what looked like a small swimming pool below. From the balcony, the splash sounded like a gentle ripple of applause.

Joe appeared at Carlyle’s side and looked down. ‘Ouch!’ he grinned. ‘That’s got to hurt.’

Carlyle turned quickly away and scanned the room. Both politicians had disappeared. On the carpet, amidst the broken glass, was a smouldering cigar. Stepping in from the balcony, he stamped it out with the toe of his shoe. As he did so, he caught sight of a light flashing under the sofa. Dropping to his knees, he pulled out an expensive-looking mobile phone, quickly dropping it in the pocket of his jacket before he stood up.

Joe was still peering over the rail. ‘Looks like there’s some kind of movement down there.’

‘Come on,’ Carlyle groaned, ‘let’s see if the fuckers can swim.’

Fighting their way past the stragglers on the stairs, it took the two policemen the best part of ten minutes to make it down to the basement. At least the alarms had stopped by the time that they reached the swimming pool. Finding the entrance locked, Carlyle pressed his ear to the door and listened. Other than the hum of the air-conditioning, there was nothing. Once, twice, three times he tried and failed to kick the door in. For a moment, he stood there catching his breath, trying to ignore the pain in his right foot and glaring at Joe, who was struggling to stifle a laugh. ‘You try it then, you fat bastard,’ Carlyle snapped, stepping away from the door.

‘OK.’ Joe, whose experience of kicking doors in was much more current, jogged ten feet back along the corridor, then turned round at a crouch. ‘One, two, three…’ Springing forward, he charged the door head-down, looking like an enthusiastic baby rhino. Carlyle grimaced in expectation of the imminent crunch of bone against wood. But, with Joe just inches from his target, the door suddenly flew open.

Carlyle watched open mouthed as his sergeant steamed through the doorway, tripped over a small flight of steps and belly-flopped into the pool beyond, splashing alongside the face-down floater that the inspector instinctively knew had to be William Murray. A moment later, Trevor Miller stepped out from behind the door. Although soaked from head to foot, he showed no sign of being injured by his fall.

Bloody typical, Carlyle thought, Miller lying face down in the pool would have been a decent result.

The security chief had a large white towel draped round his neck while vigorously drying what remained of his hair with another. ‘Well done, Carlyle,’ he grunted from somewhere behind the fabric. ‘Another crime scene compromised.’

‘Fuck you, Trevor,’ Carlyle snarled, ‘you’re under arrest.’

‘Am I indeed?’ Miller tossed the used towel on the floor and picked up a fresh one from a pile stacked on a white plastic chair nearby. ‘For what?’

Carlyle said nothing. What had he just seen? Murder? He was sure of it. He was equally sure that he couldn’t prove it – even before one considered the queue of people who would be ready to cover it up.