Sins of the Fathers, page 1
part #9 of Inspector Carlyle Series
James Craig has worked as a journalist and consultant for more than thirty years. He lives in Central London with his family. His previous Inspector Carlyle novels, London Calling; Never Apologise, Never Explain; Buckingham Palace Blues; The Circus; Then We Die; A Man of Sorrows and Shoot to Kill are also available from Constable & Robinson.
For more information visit www.james-craig.co.uk, or follow him on Twitter: @byjamescraig
Praise for London Calling
‘A cracking read.’ BBC Radio 4
‘Fast paced and very easy to get quickly lost in.’ Lovereading.com
Praise for Never Apologise, Never Explain
‘Pacy and entertaining.’ The Times
‘Engaging, fast paced . . . a satisfying modern British crime novel.’ Shots
‘Never Apologise, Never Explain is as close as you can get to the heartbeat of London. It may even cause palpitations when reading.’ It’s Crime! Reviews
Also by James Craig
Novels
London Calling
Never Apologise, Never Explain
Buckingham Palace Blues
The Circus
Then We Die
A Man of Sorrows
Shoot to Kill
Short Stories
The Enemy Within
What Dies Inside
The Hand of God
SINS OF THE FATHERS
James Craig
Constable • London
CONSTABLE
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Constable
Copyright © James Craig, 2015
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-47211-519-5 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-47211-520-1 (ebook)
Constable
is an imprint of
Constable & Robinson Ltd
100 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DY
An Hachette UK Company
www.hachette.co.uk
www.constablerobinson.com
For Catherine and Cate
Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.
‘Happy the Man’, John Dryden
Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
ONE
A famous American writer had died a few days ago. The guy was so famous that even Julian Schaeffer had heard of him. Julian even thought that he might have read one of his books. At least, he was fairly sure that he had seen the film of one of his books – the one with Danny DeVito in it, along with the Scientologist actor who seemed more interested in flying planes than appearing in movies. The pilot/actor was really famous, but at that particular moment, Julian couldn’t recall his name. The more he tried, the more he could feel it slipping away from his grasp.
Stress does that to you, he supposed.
Taking a sip of his coffee, Julian finished reading the newspaper obituary and calculated how old the author had been when he had keeled over. It irritated him immensely that they didn’t just spell it out in the text of the story. When they turned to an obit, the first thing that people asked was: How old was he – or she – when the Grim Reaper came calling?
Did they, as the English liked to put it, have a good innings?
That’s what the reader wanted to know. Why make them have to work it out for themselves?
So how old had the guy been when he snuffed it? Julian did the maths, hovering between eighty-six and eighty-seven for a few moments before deciding on the latter.
‘Hmm,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Not bad.’ Making it to eighty-seven made you a winner in Julian’s book. In his view, life was a competition. How long you survived was one of the most important measures of winning or losing. If life expectancy for a man was seventy-eight or -nine, anything over the average eighty surely meant that you had won.
Getting almost an extra decade over the Average Joe? He would take that. Of course, twenty years would be better but, in Julian’s book, beating the norm was the main thing. As a bare minimum, he wanted his fair whack. He didn’t want the last thought fizzing through his brain before he keeled over to be I’ve lost.
Finishing his drink, his gaze slipped to a box below the obit in which was listed the author’s top ten tips for writing.
1. Never open a book with the weather
Only an American could say that. You simply couldn’t get away with a rule like that in England. Here, the weather was a national obsession.
Dropping the newspaper on to the bench beside him, Julian looked around the large playground in search of his daughter. After a few moments he caught sight of her, laughing with some other children as they played in the sandpit. Julian felt a wave of irritation at the thought of Rebecca getting her clothes dirty in the damp sand. Then he remembered that his mother would take care of it later and the emotion subsided as quickly as it had risen.
Looking up at the sky, he shivered. It was the kind of day where the conditions seemed to change constantly. Every time you looked up it was totally different, clear blue or slate black. One minute it was early January, the next, May. The heavens were never at peace, not unlike the city sprawled out uneasily below it.
Right now, it was more like January. Sighing, Julian gently lobbed his empty paper cup towards the wastebin, his shot missing by a good six inches.
‘Damn.’
Wearily pushing himself up from the bench, he took three half-steps to his left and bent down to pick up the cup, feeling a slight spasm in his back as he did so. It was an old squash injury that flared up occasionally, each time taking slightly longer to pass than the time before. Straightening up slowly, he dropped the cup into the bin before gingerly massaging the base of his spine as he returned to the bench.
Glancing at his insanely expensive watch, Julian saw that it was already after 11 a.m., in other words, the heart of the working day. Right about now, he should have been in a meeting with Josh Samuels of Harring Wootton Mackenzie. It was a meeting he needed to take. Yet here he was, babysitting Rebecca.
He tried to recall whether the Samuels meeting had been formerly rescheduled. Again, his mind was blank, the details of his calendar replaced by the mixture of pleasure and guilt that he felt at not being at his desk.
The laughter of a group of children playing on a climbing frame twenty yards away drifted past him on the brisk wind. Buttoning up his macintosh, he re-opened his copy of The Times and turned to the business section. Ignoring the usual filler about interest rates (low) and bankers’ bonuses (high), he struggled through a story about the UK’s bribery laws before he became conscious of someone approaching the bench. Looking up, Julian smiled at the only other man he had seen in the park since sitting down. It was good that at least one other dad was on duty today. Somehow, it made him feel slightly less of a failure.
Dressed head to toe in black – Converse All Stars, jeans, leather jacket – the man looked tanned and relaxed. Aged thirty, give or take, he was around six feet tall, with wispy blond hair and a day’s stubble on his chin.
You look very full of yourself, Julian mused, feeling somewhat dowdy by comparison.
Glancing to his left and right, the man took a step closer. Bouncing on the balls of his feet, he kept his hands in his pockets.
‘Schaeffer?’
A sense of discomfort cloaked Julian’s shoulders. ‘Yes.’
The man nodded.
‘Forgive me,’ Julian asked, ‘but have we met?’
By way of reply, the man pulled out a small pistol, pointing it straight at Julian’s face.
‘Who are you?’ Julian tried to stand but his legs refused to work. ‘What is this?’
‘This,’ said the man, relaxing into his task, ‘is you dying.’
‘But—’ Over the man’s shoulder, Julian saw a woman chasing a toddler by a cluster of recently planted trees. Off to the right, Rebecca was still happily playing in the sand with her new-found friends. Thanks be to God, she had no interest in her father whatsoever. Before he could move, there was a smacking sound as the newspaper jerked in his hand, and then another, pushing him back into the bench. Looking down, he could already feel the blood seeping through his shirt and onto the newsprint.
Another burst of laughter swept past him on the breeze, followed by a popping noise. This time, Julian felt conscious of the sharp pain spreading through his chest. The disintegrating paper fell from his grasp, its pages instantly carried away on the wind.
Satisfied that the job was done, the gunman turned and walked slowly away. Tasting the blood in his mouth, Julian gazed imploringly towards his daughter, who played on, blissfully unaware of what had just happened. He tried to cry for help but all that came out was a low hiss that he himself could barely hear over the sound of the wind.
TWO
Inspector John Carlyle sniffed the air apprehensively as he looked up at the darkening sky. It had been blue when he’d left his flat, scarcely half an hour ago. At least part of it had. It’s going to piss down, he thought morosely, and you’ve come out without an overcoat. Almost fifty and he still couldn’t manage to dress himself properly, always wearing what he should have worn for the conditions pertaining to the day before. It was the one thing – the only thing, really – about the city that really hacked him off. The famous weather: always too cold, too wet, too hot, too dry – never just right.
Carlyle looked up at the fine figure of Thomas Coram.
‘So who did it then, Captain?’
Coram stared down at the inspector, looking decidedly unimpressed. If the pioneer in the cause of child welfare had seen the shooter, he was keeping his own counsel.
‘Suit yourself,’ Carlyle mumbled. Leaning against the base of the statue commemorating the founder of London’s first Foundling Hospital, he scanned Coram’s Fields. Barely five minutes’ walk from the hustle and bustle of the newly revamped King’s Cross, the park was a grass and concrete square covering a city block of seven acres at the top of Lamb’s Conduit Street. On one side, a long, single-storey building contained a café, a nursery, sand pits, a playground and a drop-in centre; on the other, a collection of pens kept a selection of moth-eaten farm animals and domestic pets. At the back, behind a row of massive oak trees, was a collection of climbing frames, a big slide, some swings, a zipwire and, behind a wire fence, a number of five-a-side football pitches. Coram’s was a welcome oasis in the middle of London where unaccompanied adults were not allowed and kids could play with relative freedom in relative safety.
Not today, of course, but most of the time.
The inspector always thought of Coram’s Fields as a summer venue. He had brought his daughter, Alice, here hundreds of times over the years; sitting on a bench, watching the world go by while she played with the friends that always seemed to be knocking about. Of course, Alice was way too old now for the place. That time in their lives had gone. He missed it, but there was nothing that could be done to bring it back. Feeling more than a twinge of sadness, he pulled a tissue from the pocket of his jacket and wasted several seconds cleaning the lenses of his glasses. Over the last few years, they had gone from being an occasional reading aide to an omnipresent necessity. Another sign of his advancing years. Placing the specs carefully back on his nose, he watched his sergeant, an annoyingly handsome Mancunian smartarse named Umar Sligo, walking slowly towards him.
Almost twenty years younger than the inspector, Umar could still, just about, claim to be in his prime. With an Irish father and a Pakistani mother, he was living, breathing proof of the benefits of the multicultural society. He had arrived at Charing Cross via Kassim Darwish Grammar School for Boys (‘the true measure of a good education is to explore the limitations of your knowledge’) and a first-class degree from the University of Manchester in Politics and Criminology. A successful spell in the Greater Manchester Police saw him become a sergeant when he had just turned twenty-three.
Umar had arrived in London a little over a year ago. At the time, Carlyle was on a dismal run, having just lost his second sergeant in quick succession. To lose a third would have been deemed more than careless, so he had made an effort to keep hold of Master Sligo, even when the young man repeatedly had seemed more interested in chasing WPCs than chasing criminals.
Just why Umar had decided to up sticks and move to the capital had never become clear. The inspector, who, perversely, lacked the basic curiosity of your average person, had made no effort to find out. Having grown accustomed to working with him, Carlyle was comfortable enough with the younger man. He considered their relationship as ‘okay’, no more than that.
‘Boss.’ Umar waved his notebook by way of greeting.
‘Sergeant.’
‘Not a great start to the day.’
‘No,’ Carlyle agreed, ‘ ’specially not when it’s supposed to be my day off.’
‘Oh, sorry.’
‘Not your fault.’ Carlyle nodded towards the rather pathetic-looking white tent, about thirty yards off to his left, which denoted the crime scene. ‘Who’s the victim?’
‘A guy called . . .’ Umar glanced at his notebook ‘Julian Schaeffer. He was here with his daughter, Rebecca. Apparently they came here quite often. A couple of the mums knew the kid from parties and things.’
Carlyle’s heart sank.
‘She’s fine,’ Umar said hastily. ‘Well, I mean she wasn’t injured or anything. She didn’t see the actual shooting, as far as we can tell. Which is a mercy.’
A very small mercy, Carlyle thought.
‘We haven’t tried to interview her yet. A doctor is checking her out and one of the PCSOs is looking after her.’
Carlyle sucked in a breath. He had a low opinion of Community Support Officers – ‘plastic policemen’ as they were known – but looking after a child for an hour or so should be just about do-able. ‘Where is she?’
‘Over there.’ Umar pointed at a series of illuminated windows off to his right. ‘In the nursery.’
‘Okay.’ Carlyle knew he would have to speak to the child and he was already dreading it. In a situation like this, dealing with adults was bad enough. ‘They’re also sending a child psychologist.’
‘Good.’ He would wait until the shrink arrived before launching into an interview. ‘What else have we got?’
‘The whole thing has caused quite a commotion.’ The sergeant gestured over his shoulder towards a group of twenty or so women and children. They were huddled on the far side of the park, around the tiny café, as far from the tent as possible. A trio of female uniforms went between them, taking statements.
‘Obviously.’ Carlyle sighed heavily. ‘A hit man walks into a playground and shoots a bloke reading his paper while his daughter plays nearby. I can see how that might cause a bit of upset among the yummy mummies and their little ones.’
‘Not many yummy mummies round here,’ Umar observed sadly. Carlyle glared at him. ‘We’ve conducted the initial canvass,’ he added, clearing his throat.
‘And?’ Carlyle never ceased to be amazed how quickly the sergeant could completely exhaust his reserves of patience before the day had even started in earnest.
‘They all want to go home.’
‘Apart from that?’
‘It would appear that no one saw anything.’
Carlyle let out a frustrated yelp. ‘But the guy was shot three times.’
‘A couple of people heard what, presumably, were the shots, but they just thought it was a car backfiring. How many people would know the difference? Anyway, it’s probably just as well. If anyone had noticed what was going on and tried to intervene, they might have been killed as well.’
‘Fair point,’ Carlyle conceded. ‘What about CCTV?’
Umar shook his head. ‘The space doesn’t really lend itself to it.’
Must be the only space in London that doesn’t, Carlyle observed. He pointed at a tall building towering over the park, a block to the west. ‘What about them?’
Umar looked round. ‘I don’t see why they’d be filming a playground, but we can ask.’
‘You know the drill. We need to check any cameras from the surrounding blocks that might show the guy entering or exiting.’ A thought struck him. ‘By the way, how did he get in?’
