James Craig - Acts of Violence

‘One thing at a time.’ Carlyle held up a hand. It was all getting very complicated. He wanted to line up all the bits of information and see if they added up to a vaguely coherent story. ‘Why was Mr Popp on a watchlist?’

‘Marcus has been a person of interest to the police for a long time. Abandoned by his mother as a baby, he was in and out of care homes until he was adopted by the Popp family when he was nine. Hats off to them, they stuck at it, although he was a difficult child. First arrest at eleven, for shoplifting, then a string of petty crimes; he crashed a stolen car when he was thirteen.’

‘So far, so boring,’ Carlyle yawned.

‘He was bright though. Ended up going to university in Berlin. Became a student activist, racked up another four convictions, including one for arson and one for GBH. Then he dropped out of sight. I spoke to the Berlin police. They were surprised he had turned up in London.’

‘So why did he hoodwink poor old Kortmann and pretend to be a private eye?’

‘Because,’ Elmhirst said triumphantly, finally playing her joker, ‘he wants to find his mother – Sylvia Tosches.’

Carlyle slumped back in his seat. ‘You are kidding me.’

‘No.’ The sergeant reached into her bag and pulled out a bright red apple. ‘That’s what the papers in the envelope say.’

The inspector lifted one of the closely typed forms to his face. It was still in German. He was still none the wiser.

‘He’s looking for his mum,’ Elmhirst repeated.

‘His mum the terrorist,’ Carlyle said.

‘She’s still his mother.’

‘OK, so he’s looking for his dear old ma. The question is, why?’

‘Because he’s her son.’ Taking a large bite out of the apple, the sergeant watched the Astra get overtaken by a minibus full of football fans. Clocking Elmhirst, they treated her to a series of obscene gestures as they edged past in the outside lane. As they pulled in front of the Astra, she flipped them the finger and was rewarded by an unflinching view of the chalky cheeks of one of the fat bastards in the back row. Elmhirst and Gapper giggled in unison, much to the inspector’s irritation.

‘For Pete’s sake.’ He felt like a schoolteacher on a fifth-form school trip.

Letting the minibus accelerate way from them, Gapper kept his eyes on the road. Elmhirst took another bite of her apple. ‘People are funny when it comes to these type of things. Maybe he wants a tearful reunion or something?’

‘He’s not making much of a job of it, anyway.’

Devouring the apple core, Elmhirst dropped the stalk back into her bag. ‘What’s happened to the woman, by the way – the one that Kortmann thought was really Tosches?’

‘Barbara Hutton?’ Carlyle sniffed. ‘There’s still no sign of her or her husband.’ Conscious that his ‘to do’ list was getting ever longer, he made a mental note to check in with the daughter when they got back to London. ‘They’ll turn up.’

‘In Paraguay,’ Elmhirst ventured. ‘In twenty years’ time, or something.’

‘That was the Nazis, who fled to Latin America,’ Carlyle corrected her. ‘Tosches was a leftie.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘You know what I mean.’

Not really, he thought coolly. Turning his attention to Gapper, he gestured at the road in front of them. ‘How far away are we from this place, Joel?’

The driver looked at the sat nav. ‘Should be about another forty minutes, I reckon.’

Elmhirst looked round at him expectantly. ‘So what’s the plan when we get there, boss?’

Good question, Carlyle thought, saying aloud: ‘I’m working on it.’

Letting the car coast to a halt at the side of the road, Gapper switched off the headlights. For several moments, the three of them sat in silence.

‘Is this it?’ Carlyle stared out into the darkness. ‘There’s nothing here.’

The driver gestured down the single-lane road and into the night. ‘According to the sat nav, it is 750 metres further on.’

‘What is?’ the inspector asked with a sense of foreboding. He’d had more than his fill of pastoral adventures the last time around.

‘It’s a housing development called Voisin Towers,’ Elmhirst explained.

‘But it’s in the middle of nowhere,’ Carlyle argued. ‘You can even see the stars in the sky.’

‘It was supposed to be elegant living for commuters,’ the sergeant continued, ‘a proposed total of 350 units – 230 flats and 120 houses – at prices of up to £1.8 million.’

‘Nearly two million quid? Out here?’ Carlyle made a disgusted sound. ‘Bloody hell, those are almost London prices.’

‘You know what it’s like with the housing market,’ Elmhirst said. ‘Everyone talks it up and up – and then it crashes.’

‘Yeah, I suppose so.’ Carlyle gave silent thanks to his late father-in-law, who had conveniently keeled over, leaving Helen a small but cosy ex-council flat in Covent Garden. If it wasn’t for that, they would have probably ended up living miles away from the centre of the city.

‘The developer went bust in the crash. One day, everyone was working away as normal and the next they just never came back. The place is owned by a consortium of banks. It was number six on a list of the top fifty worst speculative developments in the UK. No one thinks it will ever be finished. The council is trying to get it demolished and returned to green fields, but the banks don’t want to pay the twenty million that it is expected to cost. The whole thing is a bit of a mess, really.’

‘You don’t say. But how did they get planning permission in the first place? Aren’t they supposed to protect the Green Belt from this sort of thing?’

‘There’s an investigation into that, apparently. The local paper ran a campaign.’ Releasing her seatbelt, Elmhirst opened the door and got out of the car, while the inspector struggled out of the back of the Astra. Gapper, who seemed perfectly happy to stay behind the wheel, did not move.

Dressed in a pair of skinny jeans, black Converse All Stars and a black leather biker’s jacket at least two sizes too big for her, the sergeant looked like one of the cool teenagers on the way to the village disco. Stuffing her hand in her pockets, she set off along the gentle incline. The inspector, definitely not one of the cool kids, lagged a respectful distance behind.

After a couple of minutes, Elmhirst came to a stop. Once Carlyle had caught up, she pointed at the vaguest of shapes in the distance. Squinting, the inspector could make out a feeble splash of light coming from one of them.

‘That’s Voisin Towers,’ she told him. ‘Kortmann’s credit card was used yesterday at a petrol station three miles down the road. The CCTV shows that it was used by Gregori, aka Popp.’

‘Not very clever,’ Carlyle murmured, his mind already focusing on the shoeing that was going to be coming Marcus Popp’s way once he caught up with him.

‘He’s obviously under a lot of stress.’

‘We’re all under a lot of stress.’ He glanced back at the Astra. Gapper was happily ensconced inside, eating a Mars Bar and reading a newspaper; he didn’t look like he was under any stress at all.

‘With his mum and everything,’ Elmhirst ventured, ‘Marcus is under more stress than most.’

‘We don’t even know if she is his mum,’ Carlyle reminded her. ‘In fact, the more I understand about both of these two comedians, Popp and Kortmann, the less likely I am to believe anything that comes out of their respective mouths. I’m coming to the conclusion that poor old Barbara Hutton is nothing more than a posh Bloomsbury housewife with a rather unappealing husband.’