James Craig - Shoot to Kill

‘It’s a completely different game from when we were kids. None of this sticking your hand down a girl’s bra and maybe up her skirt if you were really lucky. Now it’s all gang bangs and aping the shit they see online. If you don’t scream the place down, you’re not doing it right. So a girl you’ve just met lets you have sex with her and you hand over a bit of cash at the end of it, so what? It’s the same for all of them, not just celebs like Gavin.’

‘We are all prostitutes,’ Carlyle mused.

Swann looked at him blankly.

‘The Sex Pistols.’ The inspector could hear ‘Anarchy in the UK’ filling his head.

Swann made a face.

‘Sid Vicious . . . Johnny Rotten?’ Carlyle tried.

Still no sign of any recognition.

‘John Lydon .’

‘Who?’

Jesus Christ! The kid was a black hole of stupidity.

‘You’re wasting your time,’ Blitz chuckled.

‘Looks like it,’ Carlyle sighed. He said to Swann: ‘What kind of music do you listen to?’

‘Dunno,’ Swann mumbled, before reeling off three or four names that Carlyle had never heard of.

Now it was the inspector’s turn to look blank.

‘You need to get some of your younger colleagues to fill you in on the ways of the modern world, I think,’ said Blitz.

‘We’re not just talking about changes in musical tastes here,’ Carlyle replied.

‘That’s what I just said,’ Blitz smiled. ‘You’ve got to realize that there’s no stigma attached to anything.’

Carlyle shot him a look. ‘Even murder?’

‘Okay.’ Blitz held up a hand. ‘There’s no stigma attached to almost anything. Short of something like murder, there’s not much that can’t be squared away when you’re earning millions.’

That’s why you’re so fucking scared of this , Carlyle thought. It’s one of the few things that could derail the gravy train . ‘I suppose not,’ he said ruefully. ‘Okay, moving on, what happened when Sandy Carroll was in the room? How come she got killed?’

As Swann raised his gaze, his eyebrows knitted together, giving him a rather constipated look. ‘Paul wanted to have sex with the girl. She didn’t want to and he went mad, kicking her and hitting her.’

How very convenient. ‘Why didn’t you stop him?’ Carlyle asked evenly.

Swann looked over to his agent. Refilling his glass, Blitz gave him the slightest of nods.

‘I tried,’ Swann continued, ‘but he elbowed me in the face and I fell down.’

Now Carlyle went for a slightly doubtful look. The boy’s face did not have a mark on it.

‘He’s a big lad,’ Swann explained. ‘Anyway, as I got up, he caught her smack in the face with a right hook and she just kinda . . . collapsed.’

‘Why did you run away?’

‘He called me,’ said Blitz, putting the vodka back in the fridge, ‘and I told him to come here.’

Carlyle gazed out of the kitchen window at a garden that had to be at least seventy-five feet long. In Primrose bloody Hill! God knows how many millions this place must have cost. He watched Blitz tuck away another slug of booze. ‘Leaving the scene of a crime is a serious offence.’

‘We have a deal,’ Blitz said firmly.

‘We do,’ Carlyle conceded, ‘so we’ll park that. What I need to know is: where can I find Mr Groom?’

Ambling back towards Camden Town tube station, Carlyle stopped in front of an estate agent’s office while he sent Umar an email, asking him to track down Ms Kellaway. After hitting Send, he lingered in front of the window, scanning the properties on view and eventually caught sight of one that looked similar to Blitz’s place.

‘Six point five million.’ Carlyle let out a low whistle. ‘Fuck me sideways.’ His phone went off. Lost in a sea of envy, he answered it without thinking.

‘Carlyle.’

‘Where the hell have you been, Inspector?’

Simpson sounded extremely pissed off. It always amused him when she was like this and he had to make an effort not to laugh.

‘I . . .’

‘And why haven’t you been answering your phone?’

‘Well . . .’ struggling to get his story straight, he thought about ending the call.

‘I had to do your press conference on my own.’

Oops .

‘With no idea what I was supposed to be saying.’

Carlyle remembered the days when Simpson, still climbing up the greasy pole, loved nothing better than a good presser. Back in the day, when she was one of the pushiest bastards around, she couldn’t wait to get her face on the telly. ‘Did you get a good turnout?’

‘What?’

‘Nothing, nothing.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Look, things are moving on quickly. We should talk face-to-face but there are a couple of things I need to do first.’

‘For fuck’s sake, John.’

Carlyle pulled the phone from his ear in shock. Simpson was usually sparing in her use of the f-word; he really must be pushing his luck. Returning the phone to his ear, he tried for what he hoped was a conciliatory voice. ‘We may be able to make an arrest.’

There was a pause on the line. ‘Get on with it then,’ she said impatiently, ‘and then come straight to my office.’

‘Of course.’ Ending the call, he pulled up his sergeant’s number.

Umar answered on the third ring.

‘Simpson’s on the warpath,’ he sniggered.

‘Don’t worry about that,’ Carlyle said sharply, giving him the address. ‘That’s the training ground for Swann’s club. Take a couple of uniforms. Go and pick up a guy called Paul Groom. Gavin Swann says he killed that hooker in the Garden Hotel.’

‘Gavin Swann?’ Umar cackled. ‘This is getting tasty!’

‘Bring him back to Charing Cross. I’ll be there in a couple of hours.’

‘Hold on, hold on, give me that address again.’

Sighing, Carlyle repeated the details.

‘Okay. Got it. On my way.’

‘Keep me posted.’ Ending the call, the inspector spent another couple of minutes looking in the estate agent’s window for a property that he could conceivably afford. Finding nothing, he shrugged and continued on his way to the underground.

With no intention of going to see Simpson, Carlyle sat on a Northern Line train as it trundled south and wondered just what he was going to do next. Getting out at Leicester Square, his dilemma was solved by a call from Dominic Silver.

‘We need to chat.’

Standing on the Charing Cross Road, Carlyle glared at an Italian tourist who walked into him while reading his A-Z. ‘Okay.’

‘Are you busy?’

‘Yes,’ Carlyle lied, ‘but I can always make time for you.’ He told Dom where he was.

‘Okay,’ Dom said cheerily. ‘Why don’t we go and get some culture? Take the Northern Line up to Euston and we’ll meet at the Wellcome Collection.’

‘Humankind cannot bear very much reality.’

And I cannot bear very much bullshit , Carlyle thought. Condemned to live in a wasteland of soundbites, jargon and empty words, he offered the most grudging of smiles. ‘What is that? The wit and wisdom of Dominic Silver?’

‘T. S. Eliot, actually.’ They were at the exhibition called ‘High Society: Mind-Altering Drugs in History and Culture’. Dom stepped in front of a poster for ‘Hall’s Coca Wine – The Elixir of Life’ and looked it up and down. A middle-class Victorian woman in a yellow cape and dress gazed into space, blissed out, clearly doped up to the eyeballs.

‘Whatever,’ Carlyle scowled, adopting the tone he used with Alice when she was pissing him off. Vague memories of double periods of English Lit at school flitted through his mind. Did they still teach poetry? He sincerely hoped not. What was it that Sherlock Holmes had said? ‘I crave for mental exultation.’ Something like that.