That’s the great thing about scumbags, Carlyle smiled to himself. They tend to be very good at messing up. ‘Have we got a match?’
‘It’s going through the database now,’ Umar replied. ‘We’ll have the results tomorrow.’
‘Excellent,’ said Carlyle cheerily. Reaching the basement, he made an executive decision to treat himself to a mushroom omelette with chips and beans. ‘Something for you to look forward to when you get back from Middlesbrough.’
Silence.
He looked down at the phone. The signal had gone and he had lost the call. ‘Ah well,’ he mumbled to himself, ‘onwards and upwards.’
TWENTY-SIX
Lying on a king-sized bed in the penthouse suite on the fifth floor of the Dukes Hotel in St James’s, Christian Holyrod gazed morosely at Abigail Slater. Also naked, she was standing at the end of the bed, bent over her black leather shoulder bag.
Holyrod’s eyes narrowed. Her arse is getting fatter, he thought. That wasn’t necessarily a deal-breaker but, in the Mayor’s book, it was always better to err well on the skinny side of voluptuous. His wife could pile on the pounds; he expected considerably more restraint from his mistress. Taking a mouthful of whisky, his thoughts turned to his new PA in City Hall. Clara Hay, the third of his three assistants, had joined the Holyrod express a few months earlier. Twenty-four, she had a Double First in something or other from Cambridge and, rather annoyingly, a television presenter boyfriend who fronted something totally unwatchable on the BBC. Clara was slim, blonde – and smoking hot. Holyrod had a vision of her shimmying through the office in her slit leather mini-skirt and smiled happily.
‘Are you checking out my arse?’ Abigail said archly as she approached the bed.
‘Have you been going to your personal trainer?’ he asked before he could think better of it.
She gave him a quizzical look. ‘Not for a while. Been too busy. Why?’
‘Er, I just thought I might give her a go myself.’
They both appreciated the feebleness of the lie. The woman who organized Slater’s training sessions only took on female clients. To Holyrod’s relief, however, Abigail let it slide. Then he noticed the over-sized albino carrot in her hand. All evidence of life down below disappeared. He felt a sinking feeling in his stomach as he drained the last of the scotch from his glass. ‘What the hell is that?’ he asked.
‘It was a present from a grateful client, Christina O’Brien.’
The Mayor gave her a blank look.
‘One of Clive Martin’s girls,’ Slater explained. ‘Works at Everton’s. She was the one who assaulted the policeman during the raid there. Clive agreed to drop his claim, by the way.’
‘Which he would have lost anyway,’ Holyrod pointed out, refilling his glass almost to the brim.
‘If I agreed to sleep with him.’
‘What?’ Holyrod squawked, spilling some of his drink onto the carpet.
‘The dirty old goat wanted a shag,’ Abigail snorted. ‘Of course, I told him to get stuffed. We agreed on a compromise. I promised to get the charges dropped against Christina so that she could get back to work. Apparently she is Everton’s biggest earner by some margin.’
Christina O’Brien . . . Holyrod remembered the footage from the police raid that hadn’t made it onto his website and his reluctant penis began to stiffen just a little. Make a note of the name, he told himself. Everton’s might be worth a visit once he had stood down as Mayor. ‘How did you manage that?’
Leaning across the bed, Slater kissed him on the forehead. ‘That’s on a need to know basis, and you, Mr Mayor, do not need to know.’
Holyrod pushed himself up on his elbows, wondering whether he might order them a little something from room service. He wasn’t sure he could summon up the energy to go to a restaurant and, anyway, the menu at Dukes was really quite good. The grilled sardines on sourdough toast was one of his favourites. He was about to reach for the phone, when he saw that Abigail was fumbling with the albino carrot again. The thing seemed to have some kind of belt attached to one end. Concentrating, she pulled it around her waist and adjusted the straps.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked nervously.
Ignoring him, she removed a small tub of Vaseline from her bag. Twisting off the lid, she began smearing it along the length of her new appendage.
‘Abigail!’
‘Roll over,’ she commanded gruffly. ‘Let’s try something new . . .’
‘Where’s your mother?’
Alice gave her father a peck on the cheek. ‘She’s got a planning meeting tonight for the Liberia trip.’
‘Okay.’ Carlyle had forgotten all about Liberia. ‘What do you think about it?’
‘I think it’s a great idea,’ Alice said cheerily. As she stepped back, he realized she was still wearing his Clash T-shirt. Hopefully, it had been washed in the interim. ‘Mum says you might come too.’
‘We’ll see how work is shaping up,’ Carlyle said warily. ‘Have you eaten?’
‘Yeah. I was just about to start my homework.’
‘What is it?’
‘Maths and French.’ Two of her better subjects.
Carlyle nodded. ‘Good.’
‘It shouldn’t take long.’
‘Okay, I’ll sort myself out with something to eat.’
Carlyle was just pouring some olive oil onto a plate of penne, when Alice reappeared in the kitchen doorway.
‘I forgot,’ she said, putting a small packet onto the kitchen top next to the plate. ‘Someone asked me to give you this.’
Carlyle looked at the envelope and frowned. ‘What?’
‘When I was coming out of school this afternoon,’ Alice explained, ‘a guy handed it to me and asked me to give it to you.’
Carlyle’s mind went off in a dozen different directions, none of them good. ‘Is that all he said?’
‘Yeah. He asked me if I was Alice Carlyle and then he gave me your package.’
‘He didn’t say anything else?’ Carlyle asked, careful to keep any edge from his voice.
‘Dad,’ she complained, ‘if he’d said anything else, I’d have told you.’
‘Okay, okay.’ Leaving the packet where it was, Carlyle opened a drawer and pulled out a fork. Picking up his plate, he headed for the living room. ‘What did this guy look like?’
‘Aren’t you going to open it?’
‘Later,’ Carlyle said, spearing a couple of tubes of pasta and popping them into his mouth. ‘What was he like?’
Alice blushed slightly. ‘He was a young guy, quite cute.’
Carlyle nodded. ‘What did he look like?’
‘I dunno, just cute.’
Stepping into the living room, Carlyle grabbed the remote and switched on the TV.
Alice stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame. ‘Do you know him?’
‘Sounds like one of my snitches,’ Carlyle lied.
‘Ooh,’ Alice squealed. ‘An undercover operation!’
‘Something like that.’ Flicking through the channels, he opted for Sky Sports News. Sitting down on the sofa, he said to his daughter, ‘Thanks for bringing it to me. Now go and finish your homework.’
Umar Sligo stood in the away dressing room wondering why Paul Groom needed to have a shower. The goalie had just sat on the bench for the last 120 minutes plus penalties, watching glumly as his team had gone down to a predictable but embarrassing defeat in front of a four-fifths empty Riverside Stadium. Despite that, the only person who seemed in any way pissed off was Umar himself. The players and coaches were going mechanically about their business. Everyone just wanted to get back on the motorway and head for home. Umar could relate to that. Glancing at his watch, he realized that it would probably be about 4 a.m. before they made it back to London.
The team manager, a former England international rumoured to have a serious coke habit and an underage mistress, glared at the sergeant. When Umar had taken him aside and explained why he was there, the manager’s only response had been: ‘You plod, you pick your moments, don’t you?’ After a few minutes pacing the room like a demented hamster, he had skulked off to do his post-match press conference and answered the inevitable questions about his future or, more accurately, lack of one.