Carlyle thought about it for a moment. ‘It was a solid tip,’ was all he could think of to say.
‘Fuck!’
‘I’m sorry, Julie. I didn’t mean to drop you in it.’
‘I know, I know,’ she said, calming down a little. ‘There was evidence that stuff had been stored in the attic, but the place had been cleaned out before we got there.’
A thought danced across Carlyle’s brain. ‘Let me talk to my source,’ he said, ‘and see what he has to say for himself.’
‘Okay. But I could really do with something to help me out of this hole.’
Carlyle adopted his most reassuring tone. ‘Leave it with me. I’ll get back to you asap.’ Ending the call, he jumped onto a downward escalator and descended into the bowels of the underground network.
‘Hi, Harry. How’s it going?’
‘Fine. You?’ Sticking his copy of the Daily Telegraph under his arm, Harry Ripley held open the front door of Winter Garden House to let Luke Patten step inside. Short, bald and chronically overweight, Luke had joined the Royal Mail around the time that Harry had left it. Working out of the Mount Pleasant sorting office near King’s Cross, he had been delivering the post to this part of Covent Garden for more than fifteen years. He waved the fat packet of letters that he held in his left hand. ‘Got a lot this morning,’ he said, slipping off the red rubber band that had been holding them together. ‘Don’t think I’ve got anything for you, though.’ Letting the elastic band fall to the entrance-hall floor, he walked on.
Harry grunted. Letting the door swing shut, he bent down and picked up the rubber band before slowly straightening himself up and shuffling towards the lift, scowling at the back of the postman’s head. As far as Harry was concerned, Patten typified the way that the postal service had gone downhill. The pensioner was always collecting other people’s post that had been incorrectly put through his letterbox. Muttering under his breath, he would take it to a different flat in the building or even to a completely different address down the street. It vexed him sorely that there was no pride in the job any more; no one cared. They just wanted to get through their round as quickly as possible and bugger off home.
With his free hand, Patten flipped open his oversized satchel and pulled out an A4-sized jiffy bag. ‘I’ve got this packet for Carlyle,’ he said. ‘Is anyone in, do you know? I don’t want to schlep all that way up there for nothing.’
Harry pressed the button for the lift, which slowly began making its way down from the third floor. He knew that the wife and daughter had gone on holiday but that wasn’t the kind of information you just shared around casually. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said, gesturing at the parcel. ‘If it’s too big to go through the letterbox, just leave it by the front door.’
‘Needs a signature.’ Patten rubbed his nose. ‘Must be important. Don’t want to leave it lying around.’
‘What is it?’
‘No idea.’
Harry sighed. ‘Give it here then.’ The lift arrived and he held his foot in the door as he signed for the packet.
‘There you go,’ said Patten. ‘Ta, mate.’ After handing over the package, he headed for the stairs.
‘Don’t you want a ride up?’ Harry asked, stepping inside.
‘Nah.’ Patten shook his head cheerily. ‘My wife’s got me on this new exercise regime. It’s a killer.’
‘About bloody time,’ Harry grumbled under his breath as the doors closed.
Back at the station, Carlyle was staring into space when Angie Middleton appeared behind his desk and put a hand on his shoulder. Leaning back in his chair, he looked up at her. ‘What is it?’
‘There’s been a small explosion on Macklin Street. In your building.’
Carlyle almost fell out of his chair before leaping to his feet and grabbing his jacket. Then he remembered that Helen and Alice should be in Monrovia by now and his panic subsided a little. ‘A bomb?’
‘Looks like it,’ Middleton nodded. ‘One fatality, apparently. The Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit is already there.’
‘Okay,’ he said, heading swiftly for the exit. ‘If you get anything else, let me know.’
The building had been emptied and the road sealed off. Carlyle slipped under the tape and showed his ID to a succession of uniforms until he reached Winter Garden House. As he stepped inside, his mobile signalled that he’d received a text. He was pleased to see that it was a message from Helen: Arrived safely. Amazing place. H+A xx. Smiling with relief, he typed out a short reply and hit Send.
‘Who are you?’
Carlyle looked up from the screen of the phone and recognized the scowling face of the young EOD inspector from the time that he now referred to as ‘the Amazon false alarm’. The officer didn’t, however, remember him, which was probably a good thing. Carlyle flashed his warrant card for the fifth time in as many minutes. ‘I live in the building,’ he told him. ‘What happened?’
‘A device detonated in the lift,’ the EOD guy grudgingly explained, ‘just as it was reaching the eighth floor.’ Carlyle belatedly noticed the name stencilled on to the officer’s navy jumpsuit in small white letters: Gravesen. ‘The guy carrying it must have had it stuck under his arm; the whole thing came clean off at the shoulder.’
Carlyle thought back to the recent case of the Moscow suicide bomber who was killed in her flat after a spam text message from her mobile phone company triggered the device early. ‘Was it the bomber?’ he asked hopefully.
‘Nah,’ Gravesen grinned, ‘not unless they’re using pensioners now.’
Oh fuck. Carlyle’s heart sank. ‘Have you identified the victim?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Let me take a look,’ said Carlyle. ‘I might be able to tell you who he is.’
The lift doors were open, but only the top three feet of the lift protruded above the edge of the eighth-floor landing. Squatting down, Carlyle peered inside.
‘Don’t get too close,’ one of the technicians admonished him. ‘We haven’t started processing the scene yet.’
‘Okay.’ Carlyle edged back a centimetre or so. He gazed down at Harry Ripley’s body, slumped in the far corner of the blackened elevator. From the way he had fallen, it wasn’t clear that Harry had lost an arm, but the dark mess on the floor indicated a large amount of blood loss. Incinerated debris littered the lift floor around him.
‘He signed for a package from the postman,’ Gravesen informed Carlyle. ‘We found him on the sixth floor. He’s a lucky sod; using the stairs because he was on a health kick. Mind you, the exertion damn near killed him as well.’
Turning awkwardly on the balls of his feet, Carlyle gestured inside the lift. ‘How did he die?’
‘Take your pick,’ Gravesen replied, ‘but the explosion probably gave him a heart attack.’
‘Heart-attack Harry.’ Carlyle cleared his throat. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
‘What?’ Gravesen asked.
‘Nothing. His name is Harry Ripley. He lives – lived in number twenty.’
‘Why would anyone want to blow him up?’
Carlyle shook his head. ‘They wouldn’t.’
A young female officer appeared at Gravesen’s side. She whispered something in his ear and they stepped away from Carlyle, moving five yards down the hall. Carlyle tried not to look too interested as she handed over a piece of A5 paper. Gravesen made a show of reading it carefully before stepping back to Carlyle.
‘Looks like you’re right,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’ Carlyle asked, irritated that he was having to drag the information out of the EOD.
‘No one was trying to blow up Mr Ripley,’ Gravesen said. ‘The parcel was addressed to you.’
THIRTY-FIVE
Upstairs, he tried to call Helen on her mobile but couldn’t get through. Pottering around the cold, empty flat, Carlyle checked and re-checked his passport and his travel documents, before making himself a cup of green tea. Not knowing what to do with himself, he called Umar to see how the Gasparino investigation was going. But when his sergeant’s mobile went to voicemail, he felt too lethargic to even leave a message. Finishing his tea, he put his empty mug in the sink and looked out of the window, thinking about what he should be doing next. Harry was gone; now he had to look after his family.