At least the headache was gone. ‘Who you gonna call?’ she asked herself. In the absence of Ghostbusters, she dialled 999.
FORTY-THREE
The morning sun sneaking through the West London cloud glinted off the bald dome of Ron Flux, causing Carlyle to shield his eyes with the back of his hand. This morning, the Detective Inspector from Hammersmith was wearing a gruesome green blazer with a red check, and a pair of chinos that seemed too small at the waist and too long in the leg. Nothing, however, could distract from the look of agitation on the man’s face.
Carlyle looked down at the body laid out on the platform under a blue plastic sheet as a trio of technicians buzzed around the shed where it had been dumped. A familiar sense of despair and anger washed over him. He tried to remember the girl’s name, but his mind was blank. ‘Is that her?’
‘Sandra Middlemass? Yeah, that’s her.’ Hands on hips, Flux stared at the board indicating that all west-bound Central Line services had been suspended. He signalled towards a couple of women standing further down the platform, just inside the police tape. The pair of them looked like they would do a runner at any moment if it wasn’t for the attentions of a couple of uniforms hovering nearby. ‘The cleaner found her about six this morning and got her supervisor to call it in. How long she’d been there, we don’t know yet.’
Couldn’t have been that long, Carlyle thought, otherwise someone would have smelled something. ‘So, what’s next?’
‘Get her out of here,’ Flux replied, ‘find out how and when she died. See if we can link it back to the Persian Palace.’ He took out his mobile and made a call.
‘Fair enough.’ The inspector still wasn’t sure why Flux had called him out here. ‘How can I help?’
Flux made a face, indicating that the call was being diverted to voicemail. He hung up without leaving a message. ‘I just want to make sure you don’t get in the way.’
‘Don’t worry about that. We won’t do anything that obstructs you and your sergeant.’
Flux toyed with the phone in his hand. ‘Bloody Napper,’ he said. ‘Where the hell is he?’
Bloody Umar, for that matter – where is he? ‘And, of course, if there is anything we can do . . .’
Still playing with his phone, Flux gave him a perfunctory nod. A couple of paramedics appeared on the platform, sliding their gurney under the police tape. Carlyle thought back to his meeting with Calvin Safi and the vacant girl in the leather jacket sitting in the back booth. He turned his attention back to Flux. ‘Are there any other girls who have been reported missing?’
‘There are plenty of girls that are reported missing,’ the DI sighed, ‘but none that we have been able to connect to the kebab shop.’
‘Okay.’ Carlyle stepped aside to let the paramedics past. ‘I’m going to head off, but let’s keep in touch.’
‘Yeah, sure,’ Flux replied, his thoughts elsewhere.
On his way out of the tube station, Carlyle tried calling Umar. When the sergeant’s voicemail kicked in, he hung up and stomped unhappily across a zebra crossing, forcing an onrushing Vauxhall Corsa to slam on the brakes. The driver, a skinhead with a tattoo on his forearm, looked as if he wanted to give the pedestrian a piece of his mind, but thought better of it when the inspector gave him a defiant glare. As he reached the kerbside, it occurred to Carlyle that the man looked vaguely familiar, but he dismissed the notion without even looking round. ‘All these wankers look the same,’ he mumbled to himself as he scanned the horizon in search of sustenance.
In the end, he chose a café with strawberry tablecloths run by a couple from Thailand. In the background, a commercial radio station was playing at a mercifully low volume. Aside from an old guy sitting under a poster advertising holidays in Phuket, the place was empty. Stepping up to the counter, the inspector considered the modest fare on offer.
After ordering toast and a mug of green tea, he grabbed a copy of Metro from one of the tables and took a seat by the window. Looking across the Green, he had a reasonable view of the Persian Palace – good enough at least to see that the place was closed. Carlyle carefully scrutinized the windows on the upper floors for signs of life. There were none. With a sigh, he turned his attention to the newspaper.
He was halfway through a story about an MPS staff survey when his breakfast arrived. Thanking the waitress, he picked up a slice of toast and took a large bite as he continued reading. The survey, which had been released after a request under the Freedom of Information Act, looked at officers’ attitudes towards the job and towards the public. ‘Nobody bloody asked me,’ Carlyle muttered, washing down the toast with some tea as he scanned the findings. One stat caught his eye: 32.7% of officers agreed with the statement: ‘It’s a waste of time trying to help some people’.
‘That must make the other 67.3 per cent liars,’ he mused, reaching for another piece of toast. An Assistant Commissioner was quoted as saying: ‘We strive to be an organization which is as open and transparent as possible and within which all our staff support each other in providing the best service possible to the public.’
‘You make it sound like the Waltons,’ Carlyle snorted, turning to the sports pages. Folding the paper in half, he began to read a story about Fulham’s latest transfer target when he was distracted by a pair of pretty black girls walking past the window. As they disappeared from his field of vision, the inspector noticed activity at the kebab shop. He watched as a fat white bloke put a key in the front door, went inside and locked the door behind him. Dropping the newspaper onto the table, Carlyle slurped down the rest of his tea before reaching into his pocket. Pulling out a tenner, he headed over to the counter to pay his bill.
Crossing the Green, he looked up at the clouds. The early morning sunshine had given way to more familiar grey skies. The forecast was for rain. For once it looked like the Meteorological Office had got it right. It was only a matter of time. Outside the Persian Palace, he gave a short sharp blast on the buzzer and waited.
No response.
He pressed again.
Still nothing.
I know you’re in there. He left his finger on the buzzer and started counting in his head as he listened to its insistent whine inside the shop. Breathing in the smells of old kebabs and car exhausts was making him feel dizzy, and Carlyle tried to shake the fuzziness from his head. Despite his breakfast, he was still feeling hungry and his mood darkened with every passing second.
He had reached seventy-six when the white guy he had seen going inside a few minutes earlier appeared from the back of the shop. ‘What’re you doing?’ he snarled through the glass as he scratched at a tattoo on his forearm. He was wearing a red Fred Perry polo shirt under a black Harrington jacket. Dirty jeans and a pair of white Nikes made up a fairly standard blue-collar ensemble.
Was this the guy who’d nearly run him over at the zebra crossing? He might have been, but the inspector was by no means sure. ‘Open the door.’
‘We’re closed. Fuck off.’
Carlyle pulled up his ID and held it up against the glass. ‘I want to talk to Calvin.’
The man scratched his head. ‘Guess what? He’s not here. So fuck off.’ Stepping to his left, he hit a switch and a security shutter started descending on the inside of the shop. Not waiting for it to fully close, the man turned and headed further inside.
Standing on the pavement, Carlyle considered his options. A sign next to the door said that the shop wasn’t due to open for another three hours. He could come back later. Or what? Unsure of his next move, he began walking aimlessly along the pavement in the direction of Shepherd’s Bush tube. Twenty yards before the station, a bus pulled up at the stop and a dozen or so passengers swarmed onto the pavement. Brought to a halt, Carlyle noticed a narrow passageway leading behind the row of shops that included the Persian Palace. For want of anything better to do, he decided to take a look.