‘Yes.’ The inspector stole another glance at the urn. Marvin, you silly sod, if only you knew the trouble you’ve caused. He looked back at the wife. ‘What did the SO15 boys say that they were looking for?’
‘Dunno,’ she sniffed. ‘The same as you, I suppose.’
‘OK.’ Carlyle wondered what to do next. Maybe he should go back to Roche; see if he could do a trade with the information that Sonia Coverdale had given him. Maybe SO15 already knew about Michael Nicholson and Tallow Business Services, but maybe they didn’t.
‘They didn’t take the paper records though.’
‘Sorry?’
‘We keep paper copies of all Marvin’s files. I mean, you never know with all that electronic information, it could all just disappear in a puff of smoke one day and then where would you be? Marvin was always paranoid about losing all the data, so we had a back-up to the back-up.’
Good old Marvin. ‘Only the paranoid survive, as they say.’
Naomi Taylor blinked away a tear.
Carlyle, you idiot. ‘Sorry.’
She struggled to her feet. ‘Would you like to see them? They’re in the kitchen.’
After an hour of sifting through a pile of papers six inches thick, Carlyle was none the wiser as to the job Marvin Taylor had been doing on the night of his death. Marvin and Naomi might have been keen on keeping duplicate records, but they hadn’t been too interested in filing them in any discernible order. Moreover, it was clear that Marvin’s clients were not the kind of people who liked to provide too much information for the purposes of an invoice. Pushing his chair back from the kitchen table, he closed his eyes and yawned.
‘Who are you?’
Opening his eyes, Carlyle saw a young girl standing in the doorway. He smiled. ‘I’m John. Who are you?’
She didn’t answer his question, but went on: ‘Why are you here?’
‘I’m a policeman.’ Taking his warrant card from his pocket, he held it out for her to inspect. ‘I’m looking at some information for your mother.’
The girl thought about it for a moment, then stepped into the kitchen and took the ID from his hand. Studying it carefully, she read aloud: ‘Inspector John Carlyle, Metropolitan Police.’
‘That’s me.’
She looked at him doubtfully. ‘You don’t look like your picture.’
‘That was taken a while ago now,’ Carlyle said, ‘when I wasn’t as old as I am now.’
The girl took one last look at the photo and handed the card back to him. ‘Not so much grey hair. And no glasses.’
‘I’m getting old,’ Carlyle shrugged, dropping the card back into his pocket. ‘It happens.’
‘Are you older than my dad?’
Carlyle felt a sick feeling in his stomach. ‘Yes, a few years older.’
‘My dad’s dead,’ the girl said matter-of-factly. ‘His ashes are in the living room.’ She stared at him defiantly, as if challenging him to deny it.
Trying to hide his embarrassment, Carlyle began trying to tidy the papers on the desk. ‘What’s your name?’
‘I’m Laurie.’
‘Nice to meet you, Laurie.’
‘Did you know my dad?’
‘Yes, I did. We worked together when he was in the police. I liked him a lot. He was very good at his job.’
Laurie nodded. ‘Are you going to be here long?’
‘Not very long.’
‘Do you want to hear a joke?’
‘Sure, why not?’
‘OK, and maybe you want this for your pile.’ From behind her back she produced a sheet of A4 paper that was covered in crayon of different colours and placed it carefully on the table.
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’ She looked at him earnestly. ‘So, what do you call a crazy chicken?’
‘A crazy chicken . . .’ Carlyle rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘I don’t know.’
‘A cuckoo cluck, ha. Geddit?’
‘That’s a good one,’ Carlyle chuckled.
The girl folded her arms. ‘Your turn.’
‘OK.’ Carlyle thought about it for a moment. He only ever had the one joke but it was a good one. ‘What do you call an exploding monkey?’
‘A what?’ The girl frowned.
‘An exploding monkey.’
‘No idea.’
‘A ba-boom.’
He watched her face fall.
‘That’s terrible.’ Pushing herself away from the table, Laurie skipped out of the room and disappeared down the hallway.
‘I quite like it,’ Carlyle mumbled to himself. Returning to the mess on the desk, he picked up the sheet of paper the child had left behind. It was immediately clear that Laurie had spent quite a bit of time colouring in one of her dad’s invoices. The mess reminded him of the art on the wall of the Garden Hotel. He should show it to Deborah Burke; maybe she could hang it in the lobby. Underneath a smear of orange crayon he noticed the date; the invoice had been raised barely a week ago.
Then he saw the name. Tallow Business Services.
‘Bingo.’
Folding the sheet of paper into quarters, he stuffed it into his pocket. Getting to his feet, he headed quickly for the door, leaving the mess of papers for someone else to deal with.
Fifty yards down the road, the phone started vibrating in his pocket.
‘Carlyle.’
‘Boss, where are you?’
‘Tsk.’ The inspector was in no mood to be quizzed by his sergeant.
‘I think you’d better get back here sharpish,’ Umar continued. ‘Simpson’s on the warpath.’
‘What’s the problem this time?’ Carlyle asked, adopting the blasé tone of a man long past caring.
‘It’s your Germans.’
My Germans? When did they become my bloody Germans? ‘What about them?’ he snapped. ‘We had a meeting scheduled for this morning. They didn’t turn up.’
‘That might be because they were beaten to a pulp in Soho last night.’
‘Fuck,’ Carlyle sighed, lengthening his stride. ‘OK, I’m on my way.’
FIFTEEN
Standing on the top floor of one of London’s most expensive private hospitals, Carlyle looked over the nearby rooftops. It had turned into the kind of typically grey London morning that suited the inspector’s sombre mood perfectly. Having spent the morning running around like a blue-arsed fly, he wanted nothing so much as a sandwich and a decent coffee. More than that, however, he just wanted to be left alone. There was nothing that irked him more than feeling the Commander’s controlling hand on his shoulder. Carlyle simply did not respond well to being managed.
Following the call from his sergeant, he had rushed over to A amp;E at St Thomas’s, only to be cheerily informed by a senior staff nurse that his quarry had flashed his Platinum health insurance card on arrival and had been promptly transferred to the Len Cohen Medical Centre. There was nothing your average NHS operative liked better than being able to pass a patient off to the private sector with a minimum of fuss.
‘He wasn’t even British,’ the woman observed, shaking her head at the temerity of these bloody foreigners, coming over here and getting sick just so they could take advantage of our wonderful health service.
With a growl of frustration, the inspector had turned around and retraced his steps as far as Portland Street, in the heart of Fitzrovia. Twenty-five minutes later, he was standing in the hotel-style reception of the LCMC, being told that Mr Gregori was undergoing ‘tests’ and could not be seen for another half an hour at least.
‘Fuck’s sake.’
The nurse, who looked barely half his age, shot Carlyle a disapproving look.
‘Sorry,’ he stammered. ‘What about the other one?’
‘The other one?’ the girl asked. He noticed the name on her badge: Siddle.
‘Yes.’ Carlyle tried to recall the name of the second German, but his mind was resolutely blank. ‘There was another one.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ Nurse Siddle said, ‘but let me see what I can find out for you.’ And she scurried off before he could ask any more questions.