Never Apologise, Never Explain (11 page)

This morning, on his way to his breakfast meeting with Rosanna Snowdon, he sat at the very front of the bus, with his head stuck firmly in
The Times
. On page three, he contemplated a story about a man in Wales who had spent thirty years in prison after having been wrongly convicted of the murder of a young woman. New DNA tests had shown that he could not have been the killer. The Criminal Cases Review Commission was rushing to have the guy freed.

Reading the article, Carlyle began to feel a physical pain in his chest. The whole thing was so depressingly familiar. The ‘murderer’ was described as being mentally ill. That was no big surprise – doubtless he had been an easy way of getting a serious case off someone’s desk and a grieving family off someone’s back. At the trial, the jury had returned a unanimous guilty verdict in double-quick time. The trial judge had thrown in his tuppenceworth as well, proclaiming: ‘
I have no doubt whatsoever that you were guilty of this appalling, horrible crime
.’

No doubt whatsoever. They just couldn’t wait to throw away the key. How very satisfying. An appeal was refused. Only years later, when a new solicitor pushed for another look, did the Forensic Science Service test the bodily fluids collected from the crime scene.

In short, the case had been a total fucking mess, a serving policeman’s worst nightmare. It also raised serious concerns about the integrity of dozens of other murder convictions which would now have to be similarly reviewed. The man’s solicitor spelled it out for hopeful lags up and down the country: ‘
Anyone who believes that they’ve been wrongly convicted, and thinks DNA tests would help, should contact a lawyer immediately.
’

Carlyle wondered morosely how many of his own past cases could be undone by modern technology. It didn’t bear thinking about. There but for the grace of God . . .

Slowly, slowly, slowly, the bus struggled another fifty yards up the road to stop at a red light. Carlyle closed the paper and stumbled out of his seat towards the stairs. The five-minute wait while the bus crawled to the next stop and the driver condescended to open the doors, did nothing to improve his mood. Not for the first time, he pined for one of the old Routemaster-style buses, where you could just jump on and off the open back platform whenever you liked. Finally back on the pavement, he got off Oxford Street as quickly as possible and headed north.

Ten minutes later, he was walking up Marylebone High Street. Still burdened by thoughts of what it must be like to be wrongly banged up for thirty years, he didn’t pause to think about the purpose of his rendezvous with the alluring BBC journalist. Arriving at Patisserie Valerie, he found the place surprisingly empty for a weekday breakfast time. Deciding that he deserved a treat, Carlyle took a moment to inspect the cakes and pastries on offer, so that they could help lift his mood. Having paid for a large
pain au raisin
and a double macchiato, he repaired to a table by the window and set about cutting his pastry into quarters while contemplating a couple of minutes of undiluted pleasure before the hackette arrived. He had already earmarked a feature on the return of 1980s ska band The Specials for reading while munching. The lyric ‘You’ve done too much, much too young’ was bouncing happily around his brain. He smiled to himself, cheered by how much of the song he could still remember. Before he could reopen his newspaper, however, Rosanna Snowdon appeared from nowhere, gliding across his line of vision and pulling out the chair opposite.

Placing a glass of steaming peppermint tea carefully on the table in front of her, she sat down. ‘Good morning, Inspector,’ she began, shifting a large pair of sunglasses to the top of her head. ‘Thank you for coming.’

Carlyle made a humble gesture. ‘No problem.’ Instinctively, he looked her up and down. As always, Rosanna was well turned out, looking sternly sexy in a rather sombre but expensive grey trouser suit and a pearl-coloured blouse which had just enough buttons undone to arouse one’s interest. Looking tired and a little jumpy, she seemed to have lost quite a bit of weight since he’d seen her last, which was all to the good. On the other hand, even the inspector could see that her roots needed retouching, which was not so good. Overall, Carlyle thought, you’re not looking great, but it’s nothing that a couple of weeks in the Caribbean or The Priory, England’s health farm to the stars, wouldn’t put right.

She looked at his plate. ‘Don’t let me stop you.’

Carlyle smiled. ‘If you insist.’ He took a large bite out of one quarter of his Danish and washed it down with some coffee. For the next few minutes, they sat in amiable silence while he scoffed the rest of his pastry and she sipped demurely at her tea.

She waited until he had popped the last morsel into his mouth and was wiping his lips with a napkin before speaking again. ‘I have a slight problem.’

Still chewing, he opened his eyes wide and waited.

‘There’s a man . . .’

More silent chewing.

Rosanna let out a large sigh and cut to the chase. ‘I’m being stalked.’ She took another sip of her tea and sat back in the chair, clasping her hands together as if preparing to launch into prayer.

‘Isn’t that normal?’ He tried to present what he hoped was a cheeky grin.

She looked at him uncomprehendingly.

He kept digging. ‘Aren’t celebrities like you supposed to attract stalkers – the price of fame and all that?’

She gave him a hurt look that suggested his juvenile attempt at humour had overstepped the mark.

‘Sorry.’ He held up a hand, indicating a willingness to take her problem seriously. ‘What’s been going on? Give me the background.’

‘He’s a guy called Simon. I don’t know his surname. I guess he’s in his late thirties or early forties. He started hanging around outside my apartment building about two months ago. He’s standing there when I leave the flat. Sometimes he even follows me to work.’

Carlyle reflexively glanced out of the window.

‘Not today,’ she continued. ‘Not every day. Maybe once or twice a week. And there have been a couple of times when I’ve seen him hanging around in the evening, too.’

‘Has he physically or verbally threatened you?’ Carlyle asked in his best official tone.

Her brow furrowed. ‘No, he’s not threatening. It’s more just . . . creepy. He always keeps his distance like he’s too embarrassed to talk to me.’

Mentally ill, thought Carlyle. Another one. What must it be like, he wondered, to be a bit simple? Do you understand what kind of disadvantage you’ve been handed?

She noticed him drifting off into thought and started drumming her expensive-looking nails on the table. ‘He sends me letters too.’

Letters? How old-school. ‘What kind of letters?’

She almost blushed. ‘Marriage proposals,’ she said, staring into her lap. ‘Six of them, so far.’

‘Saying what?’ he asked, his interest not really piqued by the thought of a harmless nutter with a crush.

‘Saying just that: that he thinks we should get married and that he wants to look after me.’

If ever there was a girl who could look after herself . . . Carlyle thought. For once, he managed to keep his mouth shut and this thought to himself.

‘My boyfriend reckons it’s a joke,’ she continued, ‘but it’s not like it’s his problem. Anyway, he’s rarely about.’ She reached across the table and touched the back of Carlyle’s hand. ‘This is really stressing me out.’

Instinctively moving away, Carlyle sat back in his chair. Ignoring his feelings of discomfort, he concentrated on trying to empathise. ‘I can understand.’

‘Josh confronted the guy one morning, but he just kind of shuffled off. He disappeared for a few days, but then he came back.’

The boyfriend was Josh Harris, an England rugby player. One of those guys who was as broad as he was tall. He was a lock or a prop or something. Carlyle knew nothing about rugby, it being too middle-class for his tastes – just another one of those sad minority-interest sports that wasn’t football. He had, however, seen the pair of them once or twice in the party pages of one of the free newspapers. Helen had teased him about his ‘celebrity friend’. For some reason, he felt embarrassed about it.

‘Have you spoken to the police?’ he asked.

‘You
are
the police,’ she pouted.

‘I mean formally.’

‘Yes. I had a
formal
meeting with a Sergeant Singleton, a woman, at Fulham police station.’

‘Fulham?’ Carlyle repeated.

‘That’s where I live.’

‘Okay.’

‘I gave her copies of the letters.’

‘Do you have them with you?’ Carlyle asked.

‘Of course.’ Snowdon stuck a hand into her large tan shoulder bag, and pulled out a small bundle of envelopes held together with a red elastic band. She pulled off the band and handed the bunch of letters to Carlyle.

‘Thanks.’ He made a show of studying the envelopes. A couple of the postmarks were too smudged, but the rest had all clearly been sent via the same SW7 sorting office, suggesting, perhaps, that the guy was a local resident. Carefully removing each letter from its envelope, he laid everything out on the table. They were all written in blue biro on the same cheap, thin, white A5 paper. The handwriting was neat, but laboured, like that of a ten year old, making the sentiments seem all the more inappropriate. After what he hoped was a period of decent consideration, he replaced them all in their envelopes and handed them back to Snowdon.

‘What did Sergeant . . .’ His mind went blank.

‘Singleton.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She said that they would act on any complaint.’

‘So,’ Carlyle asked, ‘did you make one?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Two reasons.’ She sat up in her chair, flicking a strand of loose hair from her eyes. ‘First of all, I didn’t think it would make much difference.’

It was a reasonable assumption. Information prised from the Metropolitan Police Force by journalists, using the Freedom of Information Act, suggested that half of reported crimes were ‘screened out’ (i.e. ignored) on the grounds that they were unlikely to be solved. Even someone like Rosanna Snowdon was unlikely to get much joy from the system when it came to such a low-key problem as this.

‘And secondly,’ she continued, ‘I don’t want the publicity.’

Carlyle stared at her and raised his eyebrows.

She made a face. ‘Really. It would not be good for my image for this business to come out.’

‘Why is that?’

She looked at him, as if not wanting to have to spell it out.

He waited.

‘It would make me look weak,’ she said finally, ‘like a silly girl. Serious journalists don’t get stalked by fans.’ She thought about this last statement. ‘Serious journalists don’t have fans, full stop.’

Carlyle nodded as sympathetically as he could manage. Were there any ‘serious’ journalists any more? he wondered privately. Chained to a desk, churning out the same stories as everyone else, while anyone who could be bothered to read their stories could do it first, and for free, on the Internet; surely you were either just a hack drone or a celebrity ‘face’ these days? Both of them knew which one was the better option.

She reached back into her bag and pulled out a mobile. ‘I have a couple of pictures of the guy that I took on my phone.’ She hit a few buttons and handed it over to Carlyle.

There were three images showing a weary, unshaven and slightly overweight middle-aged bloke, wearing a jacket and a jumper. He looked pretty vacant and totally nondescript. ‘Why don’t you send me one of those?’ he said, handing back the handset.

‘Fine.’ She hit a couple more keys and a few moments later, he felt a familiar buzzing in his pocket.

‘Anything else?’ he asked.

‘Like what?’

‘Emails, phone calls, threats . . . anything like that?’

‘No. I’ve asked him myself to go away a couple of times. He kind of trudges off a little way down the road, and then stands hovering under a street light or something.’

Carlyle scratched his head, trying to think of what else she could tell him. ‘Has he ever asked you for anything?’

‘Like what?’

He made a face. ‘Like . . . I dunno, an autograph?’

‘He’s never asked for anything,’ she smiled weakly, ‘other than my hand in marriage, that is.’

Carlyle changed tack. ‘What else did the sergeant say?’

‘Nothing really. She said that the guy was probably harmless but that I should be vigilant and call 999 if he ever threatened me.’ For the first time this morning, she gave Carlyle some proper eye contact. ‘It wasn’t very reassuring, to be honest. I mean, it’s not like it hasn’t happened before.’

‘This has happened before?’ he asked, confused.

‘Not to me,’ Snowdon said. ‘But I’m not the first presenter to be targeted.’

‘Yes.’ Carlyle remembered the case, a decade or so earlier, of a newsreader who had been shot dead on the street. That had been in Fulham too, if he remembered correctly. Maybe all newsreaders lived down there. The place had certainly risen in the world since the days when young Master Carlyle had grown up there.

‘What a mess that was!’ Rosanna exclaimed.

‘The dark side of fame,’ Carlyle mused. ‘The thing is, Singleton’s advice is basically sensible.’ He knew that it wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but it was all he had.

‘Look,’ she said, trying to press him further, ‘I know you think that I am a bit of an autocutie airhead—’

‘A what?’

‘A pushy bimbo.’

‘No.’ He tried to put some conviction into his voice. ‘Of course not.’

‘All I want is to do my job and be left in peace, Inspector. That is reasonable enough, surely?’

‘Of course.’

‘It’s a quality-of-life issue. I know this guy is probably not such a big deal, but he is beginning to get to me.’

‘That’s understandable,’ Carlyle said. Reasonableness personified.

She traced the lip of her glass with her right index finger. ‘And you owe me, remember?’

Here we go, Carlyle thought. He had been waiting for this moment and nodded in acknowledgement.

‘Well,’ she told him, ‘if you can help me on this, it will make us even. More than even. You can come on
London Crime
any time you want, although not talking about this business, obviously. The new series starts next week and we could do with covering some decent cases for a change.’