I Live by the River

Book 20: Inspector Carlyle

by James Craig

Genres: Hard-Boiled; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

If the ravens are lost, Britain will fall . . .

Retired and restless, former Metropolitan Police cop John Carlyle is back in London and exercising his impressive talent for finding trouble. The mysterious death of his glamorous neighbour, Bella, leads Carlyle into a world of chancers, treasure hunters and criminals, via that most legendary of landmarks, the Tower of London. The ravens have vanished, bodies are turning up in the Thames, and the crown jewels are at stake.

Groping his way through myth and legend towards the truth about Bella's death, Carlyle finds himself up against his most dangerous adversary yet, a killer known simply as 'The Subjugator', whose methods are as medieval as the Tower's bloody history.

One false move, and Carlyle's golden years could come to a brutally premature end . . .

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Readers and reviewers love the John Carlyle thrillers!

'Compelling, addictive, amusing and thoroughly entertaining' - Amazon reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

'A most excellent read' - Amazon reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

'He can't write them quickly enough for me, I love them all!' - Amazon reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

'A cracking read' - BBC Radio 4

'Fast paced and very easy to get quickly lost in' - Love Reading

'Craig writes like an angel' - Crime Fiction Lover

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 90000

Sample

‘I’m feel like I’m fading out of my own life.’

What the fuck was he talking about?

‘A bit, you know?’

Dr Sandra Muller said nothing.

‘Like a Wallander novel without Wallander.’

The psychiatrist gave no indication of getting the reference. She was an elegant woman, her minimalist office like something out of an art-house movie, good at keeping her mouth shut, unlike most people.

‘Like a three-hundred-page novel in which the main character only appears for sixty-odd pages.’

An appraising look from the shrink. ‘Is that how you see yourself, the leading man in your own drama?’

Carlyle shrugged. ‘Don’t we all?’

Muller consulted her notes. ‘You were a policeman for a long time.’

‘Yes.’

She gave him a direct look. ‘Were you a good cop?’

‘Not really for me to say.’ Carlyle felt himself squirm. ‘I stayed the course.’

‘All the “Commander Coward” stuff when you were kicked out of the Police Service must have been a blow.’

‘Technically, I retired. The coward stuff was just media invention.’

‘Did it annoy you?’

Of course it annoyed me, Carlyle thought. Still does. ‘Not really.’

‘To be publicly vilified like that, it must take its toll.’

‘You’ve got to be thick-skinned to do the job. Anyway, I know what happened. I never ran away from anything in my life.’

More checking of her papers. ‘You seem to have developed a taste for trouble since leaving the police – your adventures in Florida created quite a stir.’

If only you knew the half of it. ‘I was doing a favour for a friend’s wife. She needed her husband declared dead.’

‘Dominic Silver, the art dealer.’

Among other things. Carlyle grinned. ‘Turns out there’s a lot of crazy people in America. Who knew?’

‘London must seem pretty boring, by comparison.’

Boring as fuck. One of the reasons he felt like he was fading out of his own story. He who is tired of London and all that. Throughout his life Carlyle had had times when he felt beset by gloom. Not despair, more an all-pervading sense of dismay. But it was always manageable, and it would always lift, sooner or later. This seemed more permanent.

Maybe I’m depressed, he thought. But so fucking what? Everyone’s depressed.

‘Which was why you rushed to help Bella Bremner,’ Muller suggested. ‘You needed some excitement.’

‘I was bored,’ Carlyle admitted. ‘It was something to do. A distraction. Some people do the crossword . . .’ He let the thought trail off.

‘Some people do the crossword,’ said Muller, after an extended pause, ‘but you killed a man.’

‘Self-defence.’

An eyebrow arched up. ‘I thought you said you couldn’t remember what happened.’

‘I remember a few things,’ Carlyle said weakly. ‘Not everything, though.’

Muller nodded. ‘Did you say that to Dr Vidal?’ Vidal was his second shrink, the one appointed by the police. Muller was on Team Carlyle: he had been sent to her by his lawyer, the formidable Abigail Slater.

‘I said next to nothing to him,’ Carlyle confirmed. ‘He spent most of the time just ticking boxes.’

‘All right.’ Muller glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘I’ll send my thoughts to Abigail.’ She gave her patient an appraising look. ‘In the meantime, remember that forgetting can often be a gift.’

As always, Abigail Slater made quite the entrance. Bursting past a flustered uniform, she held up a hand. ‘Stop right there.’ The lawyer glowered at Roche and Carlyle in turn. ‘Not another word.’

‘It’s all right,’ Carlyle explained. ‘Ali’s—’

‘Not another word.’ Slater glanced at the body as if it was of no more import than a vase of wilting flowers. ‘Where’s Hannah?’

It took Carlyle a moment to realise she meant his wife. ‘Helen,’ he corrected her, ‘is in Australia.’

The sly smile crossing the lawyer’s face put Carlyle in mind of a fox contemplating a chicken coop. ‘She finally dumped you, eh? Wise woman. Better late than never.’

Carlyle, who had always enjoyed a bit of banter, took no offence. ‘She’s visiting our daughter,’ he explained.

‘Have you told her about this incident?’ Slater asked.

‘I haven’t had the chance,’ Carlyle replied. ‘I don’t want to stress her out. Better to wait till things are resolved.’

Roche looked doubtful. ‘That might take some time.’

‘First things first.’ Slater invited Roche to leave. ‘I need a word with my client, in private.’

‘I’ve already breached God knows how many protocols by clearing the room,’ Roche grumbled, ‘and the technicians are waiting. If I interfere any more, I could be up on a charge myself.’

Slater couldn’t have cared less. ‘Ten minutes,’ she barked.

‘I’ll do what I can.’ Roche stared at Carlyle. ‘I’m trusting you not to touch anything or mess with the evidence.’

‘A bit late for that,’ Carlyle admitted.

Muttering to herself, the inspector carefully stepped round the body and disappeared into the hallway.

Slater waited for the door to click shut behind her. ‘Make it quick,’ she hissed. ‘What the fuck happened here?’

‘It’s a long story.’ Carlyle stared out of the window, at the grimy Thames floating by. In his head, Joe Strummer was back, screaming about drawing another breath. ‘I don’t have the whole picture, only fragments.’

His lawyer was less than impressed. ‘You’d better come up with a pretty good one,’ she suggested, ‘and pretty damn quick. Otherwise, you’ll be spending the rest of your life in prison.’

Carlyle said nothing.

Slater looked him up and down. ‘Are you claiming some kind of insanity?’

‘Yeah, right.’ Carlyle snorted.

‘It makes more sense than suggesting you’ve acquired a taste for murder in your old age. I know retirement is boring, but that’s taking thrill-seeking a bit far.’

‘Are you here to help me,’ Carlyle wondered, ‘or just to take the piss?’

‘Who says I can’t do both?’ Slater said briskly. ‘I think we’ll need to send you to a shrink. The police’ll send you for an evaluation, so we’ll need to get our own opinion.’

‘I’m not mad,’ Carlyle insisted.

‘That’s a matter of opinion.’ Slater sniffed.

‘There’s a simple explanation for all this.’

Slater raised a carefully sculpted eyebrow. ‘There is?’

‘Well, maybe not that simple,’ Carlyle conceded, ‘but I’m not losing my marbles, honest.’

‘We can worry about that later.’ Slater pulled a pen from her bag and flipped open a notebook. ‘Let’s start pulling the pieces together.’ She waved the pen at the corpse. ‘What’s the story here?’

Life comes at you fast. Valentin Repin fingered the lapel of his jacket and stifled a sob. It was only a few hours since he had handed over £5,500, in cash, for the fine, hand-made suit that currently clothed his elegant, ripped frame. The wonderful piece of craftsmanship had made him feel like a king. Now it was ruined, just so many pieces of tattered material destined for the incinerator.

Like its owner.

Three men had picked him up as he left the tailor’s shop, right outside Savile Row police station. Valentin – resplendent in his new outfit, a lovely Prince of Wales check in Super 150s Yorkshire wool – protested volubly in Russian and English as he was bundled into the back of a grey Range Rover with tinted windows. After slogging through heavy traffic, the car had turned off the Heathrow motorway and into the no man’s land of north-west London.

Rolling through a series of housing estates, each one more decrepit than the last, they finally arrived at a cluster of light industrial units. The driver pulled up to the side door of a shuttered factory bearing a sign that said Titchfield Light Engineering. Lowering his window, he slapped an electronic fob against a plastic pad stuck to the wall.

The door opened and the SUV edged inside.

‘Out.’

The door rattled shut. Standing on a greasy concrete floor, Valentin’s eyes struggled to adjust to the gloom. The smell of shit drew his attention to a bundle of rags in front of him. As Valentin started to say a prayer, a man appeared from the shadows. He wore a pair of dark jeans and a white T-shirt, covered with splatter. Slight, with delicate features, he looked little more than a boy.

‘You must be my next client.’ The man looked Valentin up and down. ‘Perfect timing. Welcome.’

Such small hands, Valentin thought, the hands of an artist.

‘You know your partner gave you up, don’t you?’ The man pointed at the bundle. ‘In the end, I think I might have overdone it a bit. But Trent did try to play the macho man, at least for a while.’

Valentin considered his partner-in-crime, Trent Bukhta, seventy-five kilos of pure muscle, now reduced to little more than a bloody smear across the filthy floor.

Valentin mumbled another prayer, partly for Trent but mainly for himself.

‘We were at it for more than twenty-four hours.’ The man scratched the back of his head. ‘The only reason I finished Trent off was because we had you coming.’

‘I haven’t got anything to tell you,’ Valentin admitted, with a sigh. ‘The money’s gone. You might as well make it quick.’

‘Why would I do that?’ The man frowned. ‘Apart from anything else, the boss wouldn’t want me to be too hasty. He expects value for money. Which is something he didn’t get from you.’

‘There were no guarantees,’ Valentin protested, ‘and, anyway, he can afford it.’

‘No one likes to be ripped off, no matter how much money they have. It’s the principle of the thing.’

‘Some you win, some you lose.’ Valentin was perfectly happy to debate the point.

‘Rich people don’t see it that way.’ The man waved a hand, and classical music filled the air. Like the stuff you got in a dentist’s surgery but much louder.

Closing his eyes, Valentin tried to focus on his breathing. If he could relax his body, he could better absorb the blows.

The first had him swaying but didn’t knock him off his feet.

The second, however, had him flat out on the dirty concrete.

Delicate or not, the man packed a hell of a punch.

‘Your pain,’ the man grunted, ‘is the client’s gain. Let’s see if you can last longer than your buddy did. Only another twenty-three hours and fifty-nine minutes to go.’

Twenty-four hours? Valentin failed to find the energy to groan. His last day on this earth was going to be a long one indeed.

‘Do you know who I am?’ the man asked.

Valentin shook his head.

The man smiled. ‘They call me the Subjugator.’

Returning from an aimless but pleasant walk around the City one afternoon, Carlyle found Bella Bremner sitting on her doorstep, in tears. She’d locked herself out.

‘Come on.’ Carlyle unlocked his front door. ‘I’ll make you a cup of tea and we can call a locksmith.’ While he filled a couple of mugs straight from the boiling-water tap – an innovation he’d been very taken with – Bella went to freshen up in the bathroom.

When she returned, fresh-faced and a little sheepish, he belatedly noticed the last vestiges of a black eye. ‘What happened?’ he blurted, handing over a mug.

‘That?’ Bella stared into her tea. ‘It was a while ago.’

Carlyle recalled being woken in the middle of the night by a violent argument next door – the soundproofing in the building was lacking – a week or so earlier. He said nothing, waiting for her to go on.

‘An accident.’

He invited her to sit on the sofa. ‘You know, I was a cop for a long time. I’d go into people’s homes, particularly in my younger days, and see all sorts.’ He felt himself slipping into the social-worker mode that is the modern policeman’s lot. ‘It’s pretty hard to get a black eye by accident.’

Bella silently sipped her tea.

‘Did someone hit you?’

A Clipper was heading up the river. Bella watched it for a while, then said, ‘My partner, Wilf, he can get a bit . . . frustrated at times.’

Carlyle remembered what Helen had told him about the boyfriend. ‘The soldier?’ He imagined a giant squaddie with a shaven head and a six-pack. ‘You want to do something about it?’ he asked gently.

‘Oh, no,’ Bella said quickly. ‘It was an accident, really. He didn’t mean it.’

They never do, Carlyle thought sourly.

‘It was a one-off,’ Bella insisted. ‘Things just got a bit out of hand. It won’t happen again.’

‘I hope not.’ But Carlyle was pretty sure that it would.

A couple of days later he passed a man going into Bella’s flat. The guy was older than he’d expected, not as old as Carlyle but certainly old enough to be Bella’s dad. Maybe it was Bella’s dad. They exchanged nods and went their separate ways without a word.

The classical music had stopped. Sitting on a rickety wooden chair, Valentin lifted his head a centimetre from his chest and spat a gobbet of blood onto the floor. The Subjugator reappeared in his line of vision holding a stick. It looked like a riding crop with bulbous weights at either end.

The Subjugator twirled the stick like a baton. ‘This is an antique press-gang cosh,’ he explained, a look of childish glee on his face. ‘It was a gift from a satisfied client.’

Valentin contemplated the weapon.

‘Simple but effective.’ The Subjugator smacked one end into the palm of his other hand. ‘One tap of this and you’re done.’

Bring it on, Valentin thought, wanting only for the pain to stop.

‘Sub-ju-gation at its most effective.’

There was the sound of footsteps. The Subjugator looked up.

‘Has he said anything?’ asked a voice from the shadows.

The Subjugator shook his head. ‘He says all the money is gone.’

‘Gone.’ A theatrical sigh crawled out of the gloom. ‘Why am I not surprised?’

‘But we did find this. It was in his pocket.’

My pocket? Valentin failed to remember putting anything into his new jacket. Savile Row seemed a lifetime ago. He was still trying to recall when his head was jerked back by the hair. ‘Argh.’

A familiar image appeared in front of his nose.

‘Where did you find this photograph?’ The disembodied voice became more agitated. ‘Is it real?’

‘Egor,’ Valentin asked, ‘is that you?’

‘Egor’s not here,’ the voice snapped. ‘Why would Egor be here?’

Alina then. A woman who sounded like a man.

The old man was so obviously crazy they would have got away with stealing his money. But they had been too quick to dismiss the daughter. Casual sexism had its limitations.

Irritated by his fatal oversight, Valentin struggled to catch his breath.

The Subjugator shoved one end of the cosh under Valentin’s chin, repeating the question: ‘Is it real?’

‘It’s real,’ Valentin croaked. ‘We did it. We found it.’

‘The place in the picture,’ said the voice, ‘where is it?’

‘It’s not far,’ Valentin teased. ‘You are close. Very close.’

‘But where, exactly?’

‘If I tell you that,’ Valentin grinned, sensing a modicum of leverage for the first time, ‘you’ll kill me.’

The Subjugator was not in the business of offering false hope. ‘You’re dead, either way.’ He caressed Valentin’s cheek with the cosh. ‘The question is simply how much more pain you want to endure first.’

I need to see Heath as a matter of some urgency. Alina Vargli ran a hand through her hair. Pulling up her hairdresser’s number, she contemplated the bloody mess sprawled at her feet. ‘Did you have to hit him so hard?’

‘I told you he might not hold up much longer.’ The Subjugator cleaned the end of the cosh with a dirty rag. ‘Valentin wasn’t as strong as his partner.’

‘He didn’t tell us where the picture was taken.’

‘That’s always a risk,’ the Subjugator shrugged. ‘Maybe he didn’t know.’ He tossed the rag onto the floor. ‘Better that than him making something up and sending you on a hopeless search.’

‘Maybe.’ Alina called the number.

‘You should have hired someone more reliable,’ the Subjugator suggested.

‘It wasn’t me,’ Alina snapped. ‘It was my father.’ Egor Vargli, a man obsessed far beyond the point of delusion, attracted fools and adventurers like a flame attracts moths.

‘I need to get something to eat.’ Yawning, the Subjugator started walking towards the door. ‘And some sleep.’

No one was picking up in the Soho salon. Ending the call, Alina asked, ‘What about the bodies?’

The Subjugator shrugged. ‘They can rot here. No one will ever find them. Even if they did, no one will ever be able to understand what happened here. No one will be able to identify these two losers. No one’s been reported missing. And two dead foreigners aren’t worth the effort.’

‘I’ve got to be going myself.’ Alina followed him out. Properly groomed or not, she was hosting a dinner party for a pair of plotting politicians. The evening’s menu still had to be signed off.

‘What will you do with the photograph?’ the Subjugator asked.

‘Nothing.’ Alina waved the print in her hand. ‘You’re right,’ she declared. ‘It’s probably just another dead end.’

Returning to the city, Alina stared at the photograph. Despite everything, she found herself intrigued by the possibility that the dead grifters might have found what they were supposedly looking for. Accidents can happen, after all.

The location in the photograph was impossible to identify but you could clearly see a crown. It was sitting on a manicured lawn in front of a crumbling wall made of rough stones, the wall of a church, perhaps, or maybe a monastery. In the background, there was a small black smudge. Alina couldn’t be entirely sure, but it looked like a bird of some sort, maybe a crow, or a raven.

‘It’s probably just another con,’ Alina said to herself. Still, she could feel a flutter of excitement in her chest. Was this what her father had spent so much time and money searching for? Could it possibly be that she was finally looking at Pugachev’s crown?

Yemelyan Ivanovich Pugachev was the leader of a Cossack insurrection during the ‘Time of Troubles’. A failed insurrection, of course, Pugachev losing his head in the grand style. Also lost in the fog of battle was the crown Pugachev had worn in 1774 as his peasant army marched on the Russian capital.

The rebels were crushed at the battle of Tsaritsyn. According to legend, the crown was hidden in a wheelbarrow during the fighting. Pugachev was captured and executed. The crown, by now credited as a priceless artefact, was never found.

A hundred years later, it was rumoured to have resurfaced as part of the Romanovs’ collection. Then the Revolution came along. Time burnished the legend. The collapse of the Soviet Union unleashed a wave of obsessives and treasure-hunters scouring Russia in search of the diadem. Egor Vargli was one such obsessive, an oligarch with a dream – a dream of possessing the crown and the power that, according to legend, came with it.

Nothing was too crazy when it came to searching for the object. Egor had even delved into the spirit world. Alina remembered, with a vague sense of disgust, the seance she’d attended with her father in the city of Voronezh, roughly halfway between Moscow and Kiev, in the land of the Cossacks. The Mazepa family had been leading Cossack mystics for more than four generations.

The current Madame Mazepa was following in the footsteps of her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. There was something about the last having been a famous courtesan at the imperial court. Sitting around a circular table in a darkened room, they held hands and the show began.

After five minutes of umming and aahing, Madame Mazepa jumped up, threw herself across the table and started thrashing about. Unsure if this was part of her performance, Alina was on the point of calling an ambulance when the psychic slipped off the table, stood up and clasped Egor firmly to her modest bosom. ‘You are he,’ she cried breathlessly, squeezing the old man tightly.

Maybe she’ll suffocate him, Alina speculated hopefully, and I can finally claim my inheritance. There were worse ways for the old sod to go.

‘You are he,’ Mazepa repeated. ‘You are Pugachev reborn.’

With his head buried in the woman’s décolletage, Egor muttered something incomprehensible.

‘You are the chosen one,’ Mazepa continued. ‘Find the crown and you will lead Russia back to greatness.’ With that, she swooned, did a half-pirouette and fell to the floor.

By the time Alina found the light switch, Madame Mazepa had made a complete recovery. Heading for the handily placed drinks cabinet, she poured three large measures of vodka from a grimy bottle.

‘Well, that was quite something.’ Mazepa handed Egor and Alina a glass each. ‘I’ve never known a session like it. I rarely go back much further than the 1840s, sometimes the 1830s when the spirit is willing.’ Not standing on ceremony, she tipped back her head and downed her drink in a single gulp. ‘The 1700s is unheard of. And such a clear message, too.’ Refilling her glass, she smiled at Egor. ‘You really have an amazingly strong connection with the spirit world.’

The old man sat in dazed silence. After several moments, he lifted the glass to his lips. Alina could see his hand shaking. ‘Papa, are you all right?’

‘I am he,’ Egor incanted, staring into the middle distance. ‘I am Pugachev reborn.’

Madame Mazepa’s benedicti. . .