‘Kelly Kellaway,’ Swann explained, oblivious to his agent’s annoyance. ‘I’d hooked up with her a few times before she brought Sandy.’
‘I’ll give you her number,’ Blitz said, keen to move the conversation on. He was leaning against the sink, a tumbler of Grey Goose vodka in his hand, his half-smoked Romeo y Julieta smouldering in an ashtray nearby. Carlyle turned his attention back to Swann.
‘So you didn’t know that Sandy Carroll was the daughter of Dino Mottram?
Swann shook his head.
‘She was Dino’s step-daughter,’ Blitz corrected him. ‘From his first marriage. He gets through them at a steady rate. The last one was number three, I think. I hear he’s on the lookout for number four.’
Good luck, Commander Simpson, Carlyle thought. Increasingly, he was struggling to understand why his boss was going out with the old rogue. Then again, her track record with men was uniformly bad, so why not?
‘Dino is a great guy,’ Blitz said, ‘but why he feels he has to marry every bird that he ever shags is beyond me.’
‘Never heard of him. Who is he?’ asked Swann.
‘Dino is the bloke who owns the football club you play for,’ Blitz told him gently.
‘The old bloke?’
‘Yeah.’
Swann frowned. ‘I thought that Ricky owned the club.’
Blitz sighed. ‘He’s the Chief Executive.’
Carlyle drummed his fingers on the table. ‘Getting back to the matter in hand . . .’
‘It was Paul,’ Swann bleated.
Carlyle looked at Blitz. ‘Who’s Paul?’
‘Paul Groom. He’s a reserve goalkeeper – third or fourth choice. Played in the first team just the once, for a grand total of ten minutes. Been out on loan at Gillingham earlier this season.’
Poor bastard, Carlyle thought.
Finishing his vodka, Blitz stepped over to the fridge to retrieve the bottle. ‘Not a client of mine, in case you’re wondering.’
Carlyle looked at Swann. ‘What was he doing in your hotel room?’
Swann gave the question some thought. ‘Sometimes,’ he said finally, ‘we hang out together.’
Carlyle grinned. ‘And you like to share the ladies?’
Swann shrugged, as if he didn’t understand the point that the inspector was trying to make.
‘You shouldn’t read anything into it,’ Blitz said. ‘Team-mates like to hang out together. Groupies get handed round. It happens all the time.’
‘Groupies?’ Carlyle frowned. ‘I thought she was a hooker.’
Swann gave the impression of serious thought. ‘She wasn’t on the game.’
‘She just put herself about,’ Blitz explained. ‘They tend to call them “sport fuckers” these days.’
Charming. ‘But she took money?’ Carlyle asked.
Swann thought about it some more. ‘Yeah, well, she would have done, I suppose.’
‘You suppose?’
Swann looked at the inspector earnestly. ‘Well, we didn’t get that far, did we?’
The cretin was beginning to wear him out. Carlyle took a deep breath. ‘Why do you even have to pay for it, anyway?’
‘Kids today,’ Blitz laughed. ‘They’re not like us, Inspector. They’re all watching porn on the internet by the time they’re five and fucking around by thirteen.’
Carlyle thought of Alice and shuddered.
‘It’s a completely different game from when we were kids. None of this sticking your hand down a girl’s bra and maybe up her skirt if you were really lucky. Now it’s all gang bangs and aping the shit they see online. If you don’t scream the place down, you’re not doing it right. So a girl you’ve just met lets you have sex with her and you hand over a bit of cash at the end of it, so what? It’s the same for all of them, not just celebs like Gavin.’
‘We are all prostitutes,’ Carlyle mused.
Swann looked at him blankly.
‘The Sex Pistols.’ The inspector could hear ‘Anarchy in the UK’ filling his head.
Swann made a face.
‘Sid Vicious . . . Johnny Rotten?’ Carlyle tried.
Still no sign of any recognition.
‘John Lydon.’
‘Who?’
Jesus Christ! The kid was a black hole of stupidity.
‘You’re wasting your time,’ Blitz chuckled.
‘Looks like it,’ Carlyle sighed. He said to Swann: ‘What kind of music do you listen to?’
‘Dunno,’ Swann mumbled, before reeling off three or four names that Carlyle had never heard of.
Now it was the inspector’s turn to look blank.
‘You need to get some of your younger colleagues to fill you in on the ways of the modern world, I think,’ said Blitz.
‘We’re not just talking about changes in musical tastes here,’ Carlyle replied.
‘That’s what I just said,’ Blitz smiled. ‘You’ve got to realize that there’s no stigma attached to anything.’
Carlyle shot him a look. ‘Even murder?’
‘Okay.’ Blitz held up a hand. ‘There’s no stigma attached to almost anything. Short of something like murder, there’s not much that can’t be squared away when you’re earning millions.’
That’s why you’re so fucking scared of this, Carlyle thought. It’s one of the few things that could derail the gravy train. ‘I suppose not,’ he said ruefully. ‘Okay, moving on, what happened when Sandy Carroll was in the room? How come she got killed?’
As Swann raised his gaze, his eyebrows knitted together, giving him a rather constipated look. ‘Paul wanted to have sex with the girl. She didn’t want to and he went mad, kicking her and hitting her.’
How very convenient. ‘Why didn’t you stop him?’ Carlyle asked evenly.
Swann looked over to his agent. Refilling his glass, Blitz gave him the slightest of nods.
‘I tried,’ Swann continued, ‘but he elbowed me in the face and I fell down.’
Now Carlyle went for a slightly doubtful look. The boy’s face did not have a mark on it.
‘He’s a big lad,’ Swann explained. ‘Anyway, as I got up, he caught her smack in the face with a right hook and she just kinda . . . collapsed.’
‘Why did you run away?’
‘He called me,’ said Blitz, putting the vodka back in the fridge, ‘and I told him to come here.’
Carlyle gazed out of the kitchen window at a garden that had to be at least seventy-five feet long. In Primrose bloody Hill! God knows how many millions this place must have cost. He watched Blitz tuck away another slug of booze. ‘Leaving the scene of a crime is a serious offence.’
‘We have a deal,’ Blitz said firmly.
‘We do,’ Carlyle conceded, ‘so we’ll park that. What I need to know is: where can I find Mr Groom?’
TWENTY-FOUR
Ambling back towards Camden Town tube station, Carlyle stopped in front of an estate agent’s office while he sent Umar an email, asking him to track down Ms Kellaway. After hitting Send, he lingered in front of the window, scanning the properties on view and eventually caught sight of one that looked similar to Blitz’s place.
‘Six point five million.’ Carlyle let out a low whistle. ‘Fuck me sideways.’ His phone went off. Lost in a sea of envy, he answered it without thinking.
‘Carlyle.’
‘Where the hell have you been, Inspector?’
Simpson sounded extremely pissed off. It always amused him when she was like this and he had to make an effort not to laugh.
‘I . . .’
‘And why haven’t you been answering your phone?’
‘Well . . .’ struggling to get his story straight, he thought about ending the call.
‘I had to do your press conference on my own.’
Oops.
‘With no idea what I was supposed to be saying.’
Carlyle remembered the days when Simpson, still climbing up the greasy pole, loved nothing better than a good presser. Back in the day, when she was one of the pushiest bastards around, she couldn’t wait to get her face on the telly. ‘Did you get a good turnout?’
‘What?’
‘Nothing, nothing.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Look, things are moving on quickly. We should talk face-to-face but there are a couple of things I need to do first.’