‘How are you?’ he asked, trying to inject some interest into his voice.
‘I wondered if I could talk to you about something,’ she said, not bothering with any preamble. ‘Maybe we could have a coffee together?’
‘This is not about the Mills case, is it?’ Carlyle enquired cautiously. He hadn’t seen it in the press yet, but it was only a matter of time.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. What’s it about, then?’
‘Don’t worry,’ she said rather brusquely, ‘it’s not about any of your cases. But I’d rather we talked face to face. Could you do nine o’clock tomorrow morning?’
Carlyle sucked in a breath. He was curious to find out what was causing Rosanna such concern. Whatever it was, it would doubtless be more diverting than his rather banal domestic slaying. On the other hand, she didn’t pay his wages, and he did have to get Henry Mills processed. ‘That would be tricky,’ he said finally. ‘Now is not a great time.’
‘Please,’ she said firmly, ‘it’s really quite important. It will only take half an hour and it would be a really big favour.’ There was a genuine nervousness in her tone that he had never heard before. This was not the usual flirtatious Rosanna, the one that made him feel so uncomfortable. Stripped of its usual coating of ironic detachment, her voice sounded strained. Compared to the super-assured alpha female that he was used to, it was almost endearing.
‘Well…’ His interest was aroused. She might be playing him along, but he didn’t think so. If nothing else, this could wipe the slate clean between them. Carlyle reflected for a moment. ‘All right,’ he said finally. ‘Nine thirty.’
‘Fantastic!’ she said with obvious feeling. ‘How about we go to Patisserie Valerie on Marylebone High Street?’
‘Fine,’ he said, heartened slightly by the prospect that he might at least get a good pastry out of it.
‘Good, I’ll see you there. Have a pleasant evening, Inspector.’
‘You too.’ Carlyle clicked off the phone and glanced at Helen, who was still engrossed in her television show. Luke Osgood was now dancing around his jungle clearing, wearing nothing but a yellow posing pouch and a red cowboy hat. He had a bottle of wine in one hand and a cigar in the other. Whatever else Luke has had done recently, Carlyle thought, he hasn’t yet coughed up for any liposuction. Disgusted, he pushed himself off the sofa and fled the room.
For almost two hours, he lay in bed, racing through the final hundred or so pages of an excellent detective novel by an Italian writer, whose hero found himself fighting his way through the mire of ‘corruption, fraud, rackets and villainy’ with mixed success. Carlyle enjoyed it immensely. Finishing the last page, he closed the book and let it fall on the bedside table with a satisfying thud. Books like that should be required reading in schools, he thought. They should be thrust into the hands of the so-called literary experts who imagined that crime novels were just convoluted puzzles. Yawning, he stretched out under the duvet. For a short while, he enjoyed the luxury of letting his mind go blank, while staring at the ceiling. Then, giving up on any hope of his wife’s imminent arrival, he switched off the light and prepared to dream of villains and villainy.
Draining the last dregs from his 750 ml bottle of Tiger beer, Jerome Sullivan nodded his head in time to the beat of T.I.’s ‘Dead and Gone’, grinning serenely, despite the music playing so loudly that the windows were shaking. No one within half a mile of his flat could possibly be getting any sleep, but the neighbours knew better than to complain. Jerome was not good with criticism. The last person to complain about his anti-social behaviour had ended up in the Royal Free Hospital with two broken legs.
Running his operations out of the bunker-like Goodwin House, the thirty-one year old was the biggest skunk and ecstasy dealer in the N5, N7, NW5 and NW1 postcodes. The 1980s four-storey, brown-brick building was perfectly designed for his business operations. It was almost as if Camden Council had built it to order. It even looked like a fortress. The windows were small and at least twenty feet off the ground. More importantly, there was only one way in; even that was on foot — there was no vehicle access. Seeing its potential, Jerome had appropriated the top two floors and set about strengthening the building’s defences, so that if the police ever tried to raid it, it would take them at least two hours to get in. Short of bringing a Challenger tank down Marsden Street and pumping a couple of 120 mm rounds into the building, number 47 was impregnable.
Tossing the empty beer bottle onto the sofa, Jerome felt a sudden wave of boredom sweep over him. Reaching for his new toy lying on the coffee-table, he staggered to his feet and kicked at a couple of the bodies slumped on the floor. ‘Get up!’ he shouted over the music. ‘Let’s go up on the roof.’
Two minutes later, he was waving a Glock 17 above his head as he swayed to the music blasting through the asphalt below his bare feet. The 9 mm semi-automatic pistol had arrived earlier in the day, a present from a happy supplier; a reward for Jerome beating his sales targets for the first quarter of the year. The supplier — an Albanian people-trafficker who was diversifying into drugs — had thrown in a couple of clips of ammunition as well. Jerome hadn’t realised that he had any sales targets, quarterly or otherwise, but he was delighted by the gift. He had never owned a gun before, and he wasn’t sure what he was going to do with it.
But he knew he would do something.
By his standards, Jerome had been giving it some serious thought. The way he saw it, there was no point in having the gun, if you didn’t use it to shoot someone. But who? For the moment, however, just holding it was enough. Wearing just a Nickelback T-shirt and a pair of ruby Adidas running shorts, he shivered in the night air. In the semi-darkness above the orange street lights he could see the goosebumps on his arms, but the cold was overridden by the overwhelming sense of power flowing from the Glock as he gripped it tightly in his hand. Sticking his free hand down his trousers, he gave his balls a vigorous scratch and felt a tingling in his groin. The Glock was giving him a chubby all right, and he hadn’t even fired it yet. ‘Oh man!’ he groaned to himself. ‘This has gotta happen, just gotta…’
Eric Christian, one of Jerome’s key associates, a friend since their second year at nearby Gospel Oak Primary School, stumbled through the doorway and on to the roof. He was followed by a couple of hangers-on who didn’t know the end of a party when they saw one. Eric looked at Jerome and grinned. ‘Careful you don’t walk right off the edge, man,’ he drawled, trying — and failing — to light a large blunt with a Harley-Davidson lighter.
‘No worries, dude,’ Jerome grinned. He brought the gun down to eye level, gripped it double-handed and pointed it at Eric.
Eric’s eyes widened as the blunt fell from his lips. ‘Whoa, maaaan!’ he drawled, trying to keep the nervous laugh out of his voice. ‘Tell me that thing’s not loaded.’
‘Nah.’ Jerome’s eyes lost their focus. He pulled the gun to his chest and pointed the barrel skyward, like a man about to participate in an old-style duel. ‘I took the clip out before. It’s downstairs somewhere.’
The music beneath them reached a crescendo. Starting to dance again, Jerome pointed the Glock past Eric at the other two guys who had joined them. He remembered them now. They were pondlife: sometimes they did little jobs for him, sometimes they were customers. Both of them looked like they were going to shit themselves; one even stuck his hands up, like they did in the movies. Jerome thought this was hilarious and burst out laughing, thinking that if the gun were loaded, he might just pull the trigger. He turned back to Eric. ‘We’ll have to try it out soon, though.’