Two minutes later, he was standing in the room where he had previously spun the line to Barbara Hutton about a burglar being on the prowl. He glanced up at the painting on the wall and gave Ulrike Meinhof a quick nod of recognition. She didn’t respond.
Belatedly, an alarm went off somewhere in the house. Carlyle glanced at his watch. A couple of minutes and then he was out of here. Even his recklessness had limits.
Clearly he didn’t have time to search the whole house, so where should he start? He contemplated the idea of grabbing a DNA sample – from a hairbrush perhaps – that could be compared with the sister. But how could he explain acquiring it? Moving into the hallway, he began climbing the stairs. Reaching the second floor, he found a small study, situated at the back of the house, with a window overlooking a walled garden. Almost half of the floorspace was taken up by a large oak desk on which sat an Apple Mac, largely hidden behind piles of papers. On the wall to his left was a large framed movie poster, showing a couple embracing under the legend Angst essen Seele auf. Below the poster was a small bookcase on which sat a framed black and white photograph. In the picture, a man and a woman seemed to be aping the pose of the couple in the poster. Carlyle lifted the picture in front of his face. The pair were standing outside in the sunshine. From the selection of people and banners in the background, it looked like they were taking part in a demonstration of some sort. Carlyle guessed it had probably taken place some time in the 1970s, or maybe the eighties. The man was a youthful Derek Hutton, hidden behind a thick, bushy beard. The woman he didn’t recognize; it clearly wasn’t Barbara Hutton, however. An old girlfriend? Wouldn’t that be a strange thing to keep on display in the family home?
He was still staring at the picture when the doorbell rang.
Stay calm.
Putting the photograph back in its place, Carlyle slowly counted to ten. Nothing. Relaxing, he went back to his task. The bookcase was filled with legal texts. On the bottom shelf was a battered red box-file. Opening it, Carlyle stared at a jumble of yellowing newspaper cuttings, some in English, some in German. At first glance, they all seemed concerned with Baader Meinhof and various terrorist attacks in Germany in the seventies. He glanced at his watch. His time was up. But what had he learned from his little criminal adventure?
Then he saw it.
It was an undated clipping from a German newspaper. Only four paragraphs and the headline had been cut off. Beside the text was a grainy photograph of a pretty girl and, beneath, the name: Sylvia Tosches. Interesting. It wasn’t exactly proof of anything, but it was something. He squinted at the image. It could have been Barbara Hutton. It could have been a million other women.
From outside came another blast on the doorbell.
Time to go.
Placing the clipping back in its place, he returned the file to the shelf and headed for the stairs. As he descended, a third blast led him to conclude that there was no merit in trying to exit through the basement. Instead, reaching the ground floor, he pulled open the front door to find a young PC standing on the doorstep. At the kerb, his partner sat in their police vehicle, watching developments with interest.
‘Excuse me, sir. Is this your house? Your alarm’s been going off.’
Carlyle turned to look at the blue light flashing insistently from the box above the front door before reaching for his warrant card.
The constable looked at it suspiciously and glanced at his partner.
‘I was just passing and saw there had been a break-in.’ Putting his ID back into his pocket, Carlyle pointed to the mess in the basement. ‘So I went to have a look.’ He knew it sounded lame, but as long as he stood his ground he would be able to get away with it.
‘Without calling it in?’
‘No, sorry. It was kind of an impulse thing.’
‘Didn’t you hear the bell when I rang it the first time?’
‘No.’
The PC clocked the latex gloves Carlyle was still wearing. It was clear that he was becoming more suspicious by the minute.
It was time to go on the offensive. ‘What is your name, Constable?’
‘Wilson,’ the uniform said stiffly.
Carlyle eyeballed the officer in the car, who was now busy talking on his radio. ‘And your partner?’
‘Garner.’
‘From the Holborn station?’
A nod.
‘OK,’ Carlyle sighed. ‘There is a bit of damage downstairs but nothing serious. Difficult to say what, if anything, was taken. The owners are out, obviously. You probably just need to leave them a crime number and we can be on our way.’
‘What about Forensics?’
Carlyle shot the youngster a look of disbelief. ‘Are you kidding? Have you guys got nothing better to do?’
‘Standard procedure.’
‘Not if you’re broke, it’s not. And the Met is most definitely broke.’
‘But-’
His irritation rising, Carlyle pushed open the door and invited Constable Wilson inside. ‘Want to take a look around?’
Sitting on the stairs, Carlyle checked the messages on his BlackBerry while Wilson poked about upstairs. After five minutes or so, the constable reappeared on the first-floor landing, filling out a pre-printed sorry you’ve been robbed form.
Is there any organization in the world that is as addicted to forms as the Met? Carlyle wondered. Getting to his feet, he yawned. ‘All done?’
‘I’ll just leave this for the owners,’ Wilson replied, coming down the stairs. ‘They can give me a call if they see anything on the CCTV.’
‘Huh?’
With his biro, Wilson pointed towards a small wall-light in the hallway. ‘They’ve got cameras all the way up to the top. Set them up to look like lights. Not bad.’
Carlyle stared at the camera. It looked like a normal light to him.
‘If you look inside, you’ll see that the “bulb” is a camera.’ Carefully placing the form on the bottom step of the stairs, Wilson went and stood directly underneath the fitting. ‘You can just see the little red light to indicate it’s on.’ He gestured for Carlyle to come and take a look.
‘It’s OK,’ the inspector said grumpily. ‘I need to get going.’ Who the fuck has CCTV inside their house? He cursed Derek Hutton under his breath.
‘I’ll let you know if they find anything.’
‘Thanks.’ Bolting from the house, he gave Constable Garner the briefest of nods before heading down Doughty Street and turning on to Gray’s Inn Road. Seeking out the sanctuary of Andrews Café, he ordered All Day Breakfast Number 3 and dialled Umar’s number.
‘I need you to get up here,’ he commanded when the sergeant finally answered.
‘Why?’ Umar whined.
‘I’ll explain when you get here.’ Carlyle gave him the Huttons’ address. ‘Meet me there in half an hour . . . no, make it twenty minutes.’ The service in Andrews was always quick; he would have enough time to finish his food before trying to clean up this latest self-inflicted mess.
SIXTEEN
‘Ren Qi is not going to be happy.’ Guo Miao looked down at the body of Michael Nicholson lying peacefully on the bed. ‘What happened?’
‘They gave him a sedative,’ Xue Xi explained, ‘in preparation for the journey. Maybe they gave him too much. Or maybe his heart just gave out. He might have had a pre-existing medical condition. We have no way of knowing.’
The State Security man shook his head. ‘The boss does not deal in “maybes”. He will want to know.’
‘That is a matter for the doctor,’ Xue replied, her tone a shade more dismissive than she had intended.
‘We’re hardly going to do an autopsy,’ Guo snapped back.
‘No. Of course not.’ For a moment, the pair of them stared at the corpse in silence. The man didn’t look any more appealing dead than he did alive. An image of Nicholson on top of the tiny Wang Lei flashed through Xue’s mind and she shuddered. ‘What are we going to do with the body?’ she asked finally.