James Craig: Nobody's Hero

‘My pleasure. Tell me about the guy in the bathroom.’

‘Ok-ay.’ Umar pulled a small notebook from his jacket pocket and flipped through the pages until he found his notes. ‘His name is Joseph Belsky and he is a cartoonist.’

Carlyle seeing a sketch taped to a drawing board in the flat. ‘So?’

‘He works for various newspapers,’ Umar continued. ‘Apparently, a few years ago he drew a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad . . .’

‘Uh oh.’ Carlyle was not liking where this was going.

‘. . . which was considered blasphemous by various Muslim groups around the world. One of them put a million-dollar bounty on his head.’

‘So that explains the panic room,’ Carlyle said. ‘Looks like he’s a kind of poor man’s Salman Rushdie.’

Umar gave him a quizzical look. ‘Who?’

‘Never mind.’

The sergeant looked back down at his notes. ‘Just before seven, a man smashed his way into the flat with an axe.’

Carlyle frowned. ‘If he had a panic room, why didn’t they reinforce the front door?’

‘Good question, to which we do not yet have any answer. There was supposed to be twenty-four-seven security on the ground floor but the guy there had gone to take a dump.’

‘Urgh. Too much information.’

‘Probably just as well. The guard was an old bloke of about seventy.’

‘Everybody has to work longer these days.’

‘If he’d tried to stop the guy with the axe he’d have come a cropper and we might have a death on our hands.’

‘God. Imagine getting your skull split in two because of a bloody cartoon.’

‘Stranger things have happened.’

‘Yes, I suppose they have.’ An image of Jack Nicholson in The Shining floated into the inspector’s head. ‘How big was the axe?’

‘Not that big.’ Umar held his hands in front of his face like a fisherman illustrating the size of his catch. ‘About this big. A four-inch blade.’ He pulled out his BlackBerry, hit a few buttons and passed it to the inspector. ‘That’s it.’

Carlyle looked at the image on the screen. ‘ Estwing Sportsman Axe . Nice bit of kit.’

‘Not the kind of thing you would normally have much need for in Central London.’

‘No, I suppose not.’

‘So, the axeman smashes in the front door and chases Belsky through the flat, screaming, “ Your time has come! ” ’

‘But he didn’t touch the kid?’

‘No, he didn’t pay any attention to her at all. When the first uniforms arrived on the scene, approximately twelve minutes after Belsky called 999, he was still trying to smash the bathroom door down.’

‘So this guy’s not the sharpest tool in the box then?’

‘Boom, boom.’ Umar gave him a sickly smile. ‘But they never are, are they?’ With an Irish father and a Pakistani mother, the sergeant had considerable experience when it came to dealing with nutters of all persuasions.

‘No,’ his boss agreed, ‘they never are. Who is he?’

‘When they arrested him, he gave his name as Taimur Rage.’

‘That doesn’t sound very Islamic militant to me,’ Carlyle noted. ‘Not that my knowledge of this kind of thing is that great. Once you get past Osama bin Laden there isn’t much brand recognition.’

‘He’s from Shepherd’s Bush.’

‘Osama?’

‘Taimur Rage.’

‘Mm. Nothing good ever came out of Shepherd’s Bush,’ said Carlyle with feeling. In the early 1980s, as a young constable straight out of training college, he had pounded the less than salubrious West London streets. His experiences of the Shepherd’s Bush station were not particularly good ones.

Umar stroked his chin. ‘What about QPR? Or the BBC? Or that giant shopping centre?’

The inspector shook his head, as if trying to dislodge the unhappy memories. ‘I rest my case.’

‘Anyway,’ said Umar, getting back to the matter in hand, ‘we need to check out the address that the axe man gave us, but it looks like he’s local.’

‘Excellent,’ Carlyle groaned. ‘A home-grown terrorist. That’s just what we need. Why couldn’t he just go on the dole and lounge around playing computer games all day? Loot the odd pair of trainers when there’s a riot going on. That’s what normal British kids do, isn’t it?’

‘I thought that you were supposed to be the parenting expert.’

‘Is our man on any of the databases?’ Carlyle asked, ignoring the jibe.

‘Not as far as I know, but we’re still checking.’

‘Good. Where is he now?’

‘They took him back to Charing Cross.’

Carlyle suddenly remembered Seymour Erikssen. ‘Shit.’ He glanced at his watch. Time was running out. If he didn’t formally charge the burglar in the next hour or so, the old bugger would walk.

‘What?’

‘Need to get going.’ Jumping to his feet, Carlyle fished a twenty-pound note out of his pocket and signalled to Laura that he wanted to settle the bill. ‘Let’s go and see if they’ve managed to rescue our cartoonist yet – then I’ve got to get back to the station sharpish.’

‘ Oooh , that’s good . . . that’s so good .’ Elma Reyes reached for the large glass of very expensive wine that was perched on the edge of the massage table near her head. Conscious of a delicious tingling sensation at the base of her spine, she smiled and purred, ‘Don’t stop,’ arching her back as she pushed her thighs half an inch wider apart. ‘Deeper. You know what I like, Harry.’

Warming some Raw Gaia oil in his hands, Harry Gomes, Elma’s regular masseur for the best part of a decade, laughed quietly to himself. ‘Yes, I do. Deep-tissue massage to relieve the tension. And you’ve got lots of tension.’ Lazily letting the oil drip onto her buttocks, he began drizzling it into the crack of her ass, chasing after it with the tips of his fingers.

‘ Deeep tissue . . .’ Elma took a slurp of the wine – you couldn’t beat a decent Bordeaux in her book – and breathed in the scent of the lavender candle burning in the corner of her hotel bedroom. As Harry’s probing intensified, she wondered if she should have had a shower before climbing on to the table. Too late now , girl , she thought to herself. Anyway , Harry’s not the sort to complain , he can take most things in his stride .

Placing the glass carefully back down on the table, she lowered her head onto the towel. ‘Those thumbs of yours get into places . . .’ She sighed as his hands gently prised her buttocks apart. The foreplay was over and now it was time to finish her off.

‘You ready?’

‘Uhuh.’ She gasped slightly as he entered her.

‘Just relax.’

‘I’m relaxed, Harry.’

‘Good. Leave everything to me.’

‘Sure thing.’

Harry was a squat, fifty-something guy who originally hailed from Jamaica, arriving in London with his parents in the late seventies. After winning three medals (two silver and a bronze) in power lifting at the Auckland Commonwealth Games, he had taken a three-year course in Healing Therapies and Eastern Philosophy at the University of South Berkshire and set up as an out-call masseur, servicing primarily athletes and minor celebrities. He first met Elma at a Let Jesus In conference in Crystal Palace. It was one of her earliest gigs, supporting Silas Spelman (the Guru of South London), and as the time approached for her to leap on stage, Elma was so stressed that she could hardly speak. However, after twenty minutes with Harry and his healing hands, she had knocked them dead. As far as Elma was concerned, it was just about the best fifty quid she had ever spent. As soon as she bounded off the stage, the whoops of the congregation ringing in her ears, she had made a regular booking. Since then, Harry had been ‘working on her issues’ for an hour once a week, plus an extra hour immediately before any performance. Their relationship had grown over the years, surviving the collapse of Harry’s business after he was convicted at the Old Bailey of sexually assaulting thirteen clients. Following Harry’s re-emergence from Wormwood Scrubs, Elma was one of the few people who stood by him. Despite, or rather because of, his controversial technique, she valued his ministrations more than ever. Put simply, Harry was the only guy who had been able to make her orgasm – or even brought her close – since she’d left her husband.