Pain of Death (11 page)
Her clothes tack to her when she tries to move. Her bones ache and her head feels brittle. She tries to move, but it hurts too much and she thinks she might have broken something. She opens her eyes and it is too bright. She blinks, squints at an oval light which has a cage around it; and she can smell excrement and bleach.
Josie raises a hand to her face and feels her chin and cheeks and eyes. She puts her other hand to the floor. Is it the floor? She pushes herself up and grimaces through the pain as she swivels, looking around the room.
She is on a bench with a mattress no thicker than a pack of cigarettes; a steel toilet in the corner and a steel basin; a thin window, high up, and a big steel door with a spyhole in it.
‘Shit,’ says Josie, realising where she is – that she is on the other side.
She tries to remember how she came here. She was up at the Archibalds’ house and she was waiting for Pulford. Wasn’t she?
Josie looks down, sees her legs swing from the bench. Her bare legs. She looks again and feels for her clothes but all she has on is a short, tight minidress that has ridden up and which is ripped across the midriff. It’s not her dress. She doesn’t have a dress like this.
She heaves herself up and has to lean on the bench for support. She tugs the dress down and makes her way, gingerly, to the door, pounds on it.
Eventually, a metal plate slides across and a female face appears. Josie says, ‘What am I doing here? I’m police.’
‘Yeah, right,’ says the woman. ‘You sticking with that shit?’
‘My name’s Josie. Josie Chancellor. DC Chancellor.’
‘It’s not what your ID says.’
‘What?’
‘You give me a shout when you’re through wasting our time.’
‘I want to make a call. I’m entitled.’
The metal plate slides shut, with a sharp clank. Josie’s head resounds with pain and her thirst burns. She bangs on the door but it hurts her hands. She shouts at the spyhole but her throat is dry as ash.
Eventually, she eases herself back to the bench and tries to recall what happened to her, but the last thing she can remember is being held, thinking it was Pulford. And music. Was there music?
*
Vernon Short knows better than to drive his own car. Six months ago, after spending nine hours over lunch at his club, he was pulled over by the police just a quarter of a mile from his town house in Pimlico. He blew eighty milligrams and immediately insisted on being allowed the opportunity to give a blood sample. Then his lawyer turned up and discovered that Vernon had only been given one shot at the breathalyser. He instructed his client not to proceed with the blood sample unless he could be breathalysed again. The duty sergeant had every confidence in his bag of crystals. The second time, two and a half hours later, and having drunk an entire bottle of Milk of Magnesia, Vernon blew twenty-nine; the Milk of Magnesia, being alkaline, had defeated the alcohol in Vernon’s system. He drove home, licence intact. The first thing he did next day was to hire Bob Tomkins, driver.
Tomkins waits for his client on double yellows in Berkeley Square, the engine running – to keep him warm and to present the argument that he’s not actually parked.
Staffe taps on the passenger window, opens the door and gets in alongside Bob, says, ‘How’s it going, Tomkins?’
‘I don’t know you.’
He shows his warrant card and says, ‘Let’s keep it that way. When’s your boss back?’
Ten minutes later, Vernon Short gets in the back and tells the driver to take him home. Five minutes after that he says, noticing Staffe in the front and breathing alcohol fumes all over the car, ‘What in God’s name are you doing here? I have nothing to say to you.’
Staffe turns round, raises a finger to his lips. ‘I’ll be honest with you, Vernon. I’m not supposed to be here.’
‘So get out.’
‘You need to tell me what Catherine Killick promised you.’
‘What makes you think I’ll say anything to you?’
‘Because there isn’t a cat in hell’s chance you’ll get a place in the Cabinet. She’ll fob you off with some talk of a reshuffle and by the time it comes around, you’ll have fucked up. It might be another driving mishap.’
‘How d’you know about that?’
‘Or a woman, or whatever it is that floats your boat. I bet she hasn’t even told you what they’ve done now?’
‘They?’
‘They? Maybe it’s you. I don’t think you’ve got the gumption, or the balls. But you might know someone who has.’
Vernon Short looks perplexed, and is clearly a quarter cut. He rubs his temples and screws up his eyes. They practically disappear into the podgy flesh of his face. ‘The balls to do what?’
‘I can’t tell you. It’s a matter of national security.’
‘You know nothing.’
‘What was in the bag, Vernon?’
‘Bag? I don’t know anything about the bag.’
Strange, thinks Staffe, to employ the definite article. Poor Vernon shouldn’t drink.
‘Drop me at the end of the street. There’ll be someone watching your place when you get there. You say nothing, just go in and wait five minutes then go out the back. I’ll be there. You let me in.’
‘Why should I?’
‘Because it wouldn’t do for Cathy Killick to know you’ve been exchanging favours with Lesley Crawford. Not after what’s happened.’
‘What
has
happened?’
‘Honestly, Vernon, you don’t want to know.’
‘It involves the Home Secretary?’
Staffe raises his eyebrows.
‘Sweet Jesus,’ says Vernon, leaning back, blowing out his cheeks. A man out of his depth, it would seem.
*
Short holds a thick, cut-glass tumbler of scotch as he opens the back door and lets the inspector into his home.
Staffe mooches around the kitchen. He opens the door to a utility room and downstairs loo. The room is stacked to the gunnels with Glenlivet and San Pellegrino. But contrary to what you might expect, Vernon recycles. Of course he does. The press probably goes through his rubbish. And he puts his empty bottles in a hessian eco-friendly bag – from Waitrose,
naturellement
.
Staffe wraps a plastic bag around the handle and picks up the eco bag, shows it to Vernon. ‘Whose prints do you think I might find on this?’
‘What?’ Vernon is incredulous. Then the penny drops, his mouth agape.
‘The question is, Vernon, what was in it?’
‘I’m calling my lawyer. Anybody could have touched that bag.’
Staffe weighs up his options, trying to think four, five, six moves ahead. He has his finger on Vernon’s queen. Why not take it? He says, ‘Put down the phone, Vernon. This is for your ears only.’
‘What?’
‘You have what came in the bag, don’t you?’
‘No.’
‘I’ll do you a deal. You needn’t tell me a truth until I’ve told you a truth.’
The Rt Hon Vernon Short sits at his kitchen table, looking at the bottle of Glenlivet. Sometimes, all he really wants, has ever wanted, is an easy life and he curses his father, his family – the tradition. ‘Tell me. What has she done?’
‘No matter what we tell each other, Vernon, this is our secret.’
Vernon nods.
‘They have made a threat – against the baby inside her.’
‘Good God.’ Vernon leans forward, elbows on knees, blowing his cheeks out.
‘I’m your only friend, Vernon. Nobody else would tell you. You have to put your faith in me. Imagine, after what has happened to her, what Catherine Killick will do if she knows you have been in touch with Lesley Crawford.’
‘You don’t know that.’
Staffe holds up the bag, wiggles it. ‘What was in it, Vernon?’
‘How can I trust you?’
‘I’m all you have.’
Staffe takes out his phone, scrolls through his numbers, knowing that the Home Secretary does not feature amongst its data. ‘I will talk to Catherine Killick.’
Vernon sits at the table, puts his fat, balding head in his little hands. His nails are perfectly manicured.
‘Tell me, Vernon.’
The would-be Minister for Enterprise gives the inspector a pitying, withering look. ‘How did you know about Lesley Crawford?’
‘I’ve told you my truth.’
Vernon reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket, hands two documents to Staffe.
The first is dated the second of May 1997 and is confirmation that Catherine Killick had been selected as candidate for East Hamlets. It is still, Staffe knows, the safest of safe seats.
The second document is confirmation of an appointment for a procedure at the City Women’s Clinic, and dated the sixth of May 1997.
‘Apparently, tennis players do it all the time, poor cow,’ says Vernon. ‘If she’d come clean before she was made up to the Cabinet, she would probably have been all right. But this bill of mine won’t go away. You’ve seen the papers. If this gets out, she’s finished.’
‘Why wouldn’t Lesley Crawford just publish this?’
‘It’s an ace up the sleeve. Only one ace and only one sleeve. You wait for the chips to pile to their highest. You’d do well to remember that,’ says Vernon.
‘You mean Lesley wants her bill back.’
‘It’s my bill, Inspector.’
Staffe realises that Vernon is already plotting ahead, seeing how this might come back to kiss him on both cheeks. ‘If the police reveal this information, it puts your bill back in play. It will destroy the Home Secretary, but you’re OK. You’ve just lost a leg-up in the next reshuffle.’
‘I could never reveal this. You know that.’ Vernon nods at the papers in Staffe’s hands. ‘How could I? A man of my integrity?’
*
Staffe meets Pulford at the end of Lesley Crawford’s street in Southfields. He has picked up the long-term unclaimed car from the pound, arranged by Jombaugh, in case the Queen’s men are surveilling on behalf of Cathy Killick.
‘I’m sick of the sight of this bloody street,’ says Pulford.
‘We wouldn’t be here if you’d kept tabs on Crawford.’ Pulford looks exhausted, and Staffe says, ‘I tried to get Chancellor to take a turn, but she’s nowhere to be seen.’
‘Oh,’ says Pulford, sheepish.
Staffe looks at him, sidelong. ‘What’s up?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Call her, then.’
‘I’ve tried. She’s not answering.’
‘We’ve worked together how long? Three years? Long enough to know when you’re lying.’
Pulford eases off the plastic lid to his designer coffee, nods in the direction of Crawford’s house. ‘We’ve checked the ports and airlines and issued a trace on her car, but it seems to have disappeared completely.’
‘It could be anywhere. There’s thousands of lock-ups in London alone. What about her family?’
‘A sister in Nottingham. Her father passed away five years ago and her mother is in New Zealand.’
‘What about her bank accounts?’
‘I’ve applied for a warrant to track her use of cards but that’s been blocked.’
‘Who by?’ Staffe knows there couldn’t ever be a straight answer to that question. ‘Never mind. Don’t push it.’
‘Are we going in?’
‘Not a chance.’ Staffe looks at his weary sergeant and contemplates how much he should disclose about his conversation with Vernon Short, decides that in Pulford’s case, ignorance is as blissful as this case will get. ‘Let’s bide our time.’
‘For what? You don’t know how many hours I’ve spent on this street.’
‘Not enough,’ says Staffe. ‘Now, tell me where Chancellor is.’
‘I don’t know.’ Pulford looks Staffe in the eye. ‘It’s the truth. I’m worried about her.’
‘Is this anything to do with Tommy Given?’
‘I didn’t say anything about Given.’
‘I know. When were you going to?’
‘We know he is something to do with Kerry Degg.’
‘Smet told me. He’s probably the one looking after Sean.’ Staffe opens up his newspaper, swallows away any temptation to tell his sergeant what Short spat up earlier in the day.
He flicks through to the inside pages, doesn’t have to read far before he finds an article on the withdrawn bill. There is a third-string paragraph in the editorial about the ‘Unborn Rights’ bill – not commenting on the pros or cons, but casting aspersions as to the erosion of the democratic process which the withdrawal of the bill would imply. And there are two letters, too, both demanding that the bill be resurrected, at least to present the argument to Parliament.
‘What’s this, sir?’ says Pulford, pointing up the street.
Two men in dark-blue suits get out of a car outside Crawford’s house. The car drives away and the men march up to the front door, are let in without knocking.
‘She’s not in,’ says Pulford. ‘I’m bloody sure of it.’
‘I don’t doubt it, Sergeant.’
‘Who are they?’
‘The good guys,’ says Staffe.
‘We could follow them,’ says Pulford. ‘If they find something and it leads them to her, we could …’
‘Forget it. They’d have us before we got to the South Circ.’
The good news, which Staffe keeps to himself, is that Lesley Crawford is, without doubt, involved with Kerry Degg and Zoe Bright, as well as Cathy Killick – according to the most informed people in the land. And Tommy Given, too, apparently.
‘Get hold of Chancellor, Sergeant. Tell her to call me straight away. Day or night.’
Staffe puts on his mask. Through the glass, hatched with reinforcing wire, he watches the two nurses leaning over Baby Grace’s cot. The plastic bubble is gone. She will live.
The fair nurse looks up and catches his eye, she smiles and immediately whispers something to her friend – dark and altogether more serious. The fair nurse comes out, extends her hand, says, ‘I’m Nurse Natalie. I haven’t seen your DC Chancellor recently. You must tell her to come. Grace is going to be fine, just a case of building up her strength, getting her ready for the big bad world.’ Nurse Natalie puts her hand on Staffe’s arm. ‘Keep your mask on. Go see her.’
‘Is it OK?’ He nods through the glass towards the other nurse, doting over Grace.
‘That’s only Eve,’ and she chuckles, makes a zipping motion with her finger and thumb across her mouth, then pats Staffe on the back and goes on her merry way.
Staffe stands beside Eve. She smells of crisp laundry and fine soap. She looks up at him and smiles, barely moving her mouth; turns back to Grace and sighs, happily, like a freshly sated child.
‘I’ve been away,’ says Staffe. ‘Up north.’
‘Nice for you. Any burlesque up there?’
‘I’m not that big a fan.’
‘You could have fooled me.’
The baby has colour in her cheeks, now, and tiny, circular plasters on her wrists and arms, where once there were tubes. She looks straight above her, blinks. Staffe wonders what she makes of the world.
‘She can’t see, not properly,’ says Eve. Her voice is brittle at its edge.
‘Poor thing.’
Eve looks up at him again, shifts her body. Her eyes glisten. ‘It’s normal. She will see the shadow of you.’ She looks down and up at him, ‘But not your hair or your face.’
‘If only she could talk,’ says Staffe.
Grace kicks her legs, makes a grumpy expression of her face.
‘She wants something,’ he says.
Eve reaches for the board, hooked on the foot of the cot. ‘Almost feeding.’
‘Will she know she has no mother?’
‘I’m afraid she’ll know more than you’d want her to know. You ask strange questions.’ Eve looks at Staffe a third time, enquiringly.
He says, ‘She looks unhappy. Will you feed her?’
‘Not my job.’
They each look at the baby, watching her kick her legs and blink at the ceiling. After a while, Grace becomes less grumpy and Staffe even thinks she smiles. Whatever it is, something has passed, something better has replaced it. One day, she will know that she has no mother and slowly, surely, he feels the full weight of the passing of Kerry and he knows he must find Sean, must discover what dragged this baby’s mother below ground and into the dark.
‘You look done in,’ says Eve.
He laughs. ‘This is me on a good day.’
‘This is a very good day.’
‘You should celebrate,’ says Staffe.
Eve looks sad, and turns back to the baby. It is as if, suddenly, she is alone in the room.
‘You have someone to celebrate with?’
Eve shrugs, and as she does, with her back to him, Staffe feels something between his heart and his stomach. It is a familiar, absent feeling that makes him sad and joyous. It makes his nerves jag. After a while, just watching the back of her, he says, ‘My favourite place is just around the corner. I could, we could … They make great sandwiches. Proper bread. I like the corned-beef sandwich. They get the beef from an Argentinian restaurant. It’s amazing.’
She turns round, looks unsure about him. ‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Neither am I.’
‘But I’m partial to gin. Plymouth gin.’
‘It’s just the place for Plymouth gin,’ he says.
Eve touches her fingers to her lips and places her hand on Grace’s cot as she leaves the room. It is precisely the same thing that Sean Degg had done. The baby is asleep now.
*
‘What’s wrong with you, son?’ says Jombaugh.
Pulford stirs his tea, down in the station kitchen where the smell of microwaved meals never quite fades to nothing. He has eaten a quarter of his biscuit, has been down here an hour.
Jombaugh pulls up a chair, says again, ‘What’s wrong?’
Pulford knows that Jom is the closest this place has to a trustworthy confidant – even though he’s Staffe’s mate. ‘There’s something I have to tell Staffe, but I can’t.’
‘Try me. I’ve known him fifteen years. Sometimes, I’m sad enough to know how he thinks.’
Pulford laughs, keeps looking into his tea. He is sure the only person who would be involved in anything bad happening to Josie would be Tommy Given.
Jombaugh says, ‘It’s not to do with your … you know, your habit.’
‘What! How do you know about that?’
‘Everybody knows,’ laughs Jombaugh.
A mist descends and Pulford feels his hands move away from him, fists clench.
‘We’re all human,’ says Jombaugh.
Pulford can’t believe his gambling problems are out of the bag. ‘It’s not that.’
‘Aah, lady problems. Well, she’s a belter if you ask me.’
‘What?’
‘Josie. I thought it was all over between you two. But I see she’s not been around the last day or so.’
‘I’m worried about her, Jom.’
‘I’d worry too, son.’
‘She’s gone. I mean, really gone. I’m sure she’s in trouble.’ He puts his hands to his hair. ‘Shit, Jom. I think we overstepped the mark. Staffe’s going to kill us. Me, at least. I’m going to have to see Tommy Given.’
‘Tommy Given? Christ, lad. What have you been fucking with? You don’t want him on our patch.’
Pulford weighs up whether to tell Jombaugh what he and Josie did up at the Archibalds’, but he knows they don’t yet have the evidence to nail down any relationship between Tommy Given and Sean Degg, or between Given and Kerry; let alone that Tommy might be the father of Kerry’s children.
Jom grabs hold of Pulford’s arm and hoists him out of the chair. ‘You can tell me on the way.’
‘The way where?’
‘If you’re involved with old Tommy, I’m coming with you. Nothing like winding back the years. I’ll need to change, though. This is a social call, right? It has to be.’ Jombaugh smiles, which irons away the creases from all the reams of paper that are piling up beneath his desk. Suddenly, Jom looks ten years younger.
*
‘Where is the other one?’ says Anthony Bright. ‘What’s his name? Wagstaffe.’
‘You’ll be dealing with me now, Anthony,’ says Alicia Flint.
‘You will find Zoe, won’t you? She’s not …’
Alicia Flint watches the doubt peter out into a wordless gaze. ‘We have to address the implications of what Inspector Wagstaffe was asking you, about Zoe.’
‘I know!’ Anthony Bright’s hands clench into fists. He flinches as his stitches nip.
Alicia Flint moves her seat away from Anthony, sits in silence. She waits, and waits.
‘I know your game,’ says Anthony.
‘If only we could ask Zoe if this is a game.’
‘It was hard for her, to be with me.’ He laughs, a paper-bag laugh, sadness punching through. ‘Love, eh? That’s a bastard. I thought when we were having the first baby it would change her. Change us.’
‘Did she see other people?’
‘I can’t say no. Not for sure. I didn’t want to know. I still don’t. She did love me, you know. Once. I’m not a nutter. When we were at school, it was her who made the running, and again when she came back.’
‘Was she seeing someone special, Anthony?’
He shrugs.
‘What about Petal Broome?’
He laughs. ‘That dyke! Jesus. No way.’
Alicia Flint has checked all the numbers that Zoe called from her contract phone and the landline, and the calls logged to her extension at the university. ‘Did she have two mobiles?’
‘Two?’
‘You ever had an affair, Anthony?’
‘Aah,’ he says. ‘You don’t know what it’s like. We’d go months without, you know …’
‘What made Zoe want another baby?’
Anthony is ready for this question. It’s the one that keeps him awake and his response, as far as Alicia Flint can tell, is the unmodified truth. ‘Our first baby, the one that died, was blocking us, everything we did. Zoe wanted to do something with her life. That dead baby was stopping us. It was stopping her going forward. I knew she had to have another and she had to have it with me. I said I’d love that baby and look after it, no matter what happened and I still will.’ He looks at the floor, puts the palms of his hands to his face, says through them, ‘I still fucking would, no matter.’ He looks up. ‘Said on the radio that baby in London’s going to be fine. They saved her, that Baby Grace.’
‘But not the mother.’
‘I asked if you were going to find her.’
‘Did you force Zoe, Anthony?’
‘She was cruel to me. She made me feel like I was nothing.’
‘And then the baby came.’
‘Are you married?’ says Anthony.
‘No, thank God. I have a child, though.’
‘You reckon that’s the best way?’
‘I need to know about the phone, Anthony. Zoe’s other phone. The one with just the one number in it.’
He nods. ‘She loved her garden, you know. Always in it.’ Anthony laughs. ‘Check the bird table. Check in the feed. It’s springtime now. The little birdies have been pecking. She never knew I knew. How sad is that?’
*
Nurse Eve has the rest of the afternoon off. She sips her Plymouth gin slowly. This is her second glass and she has stretched the first tonic.
April winks at Staffe from behind the bar of the Hand and Shears, gives a thumbs-up. Eve can’t see her. Staffe takes the drinks back to the tiny snug with the fire.
‘So you’ve nothing to do with the Degg baby,’ says Staffe. ‘Not directly.’
Eve shakes her head. ‘I was in the hospital when she was admitted. I do some liaison work but I’m in pre-nat.’ She smiles, reservedly. ‘I never drink in the afternoon.’
‘There’s cause for celebration.’
‘You’re a bad influence.’
He spots her looking at his hands. He looks at hers – no significant rings. Her Claddagh ring is the right way up, if you were interested. ‘It must be hard, working with expectant mothers. I bet you’ve got some stories to tell.’
‘It gives you hope, no matter what the parents are like or how they carry on.’
‘Doesn’t that make you worry – for the children? How to break the cycle.’
‘We make sure they are as healthy as they can be, give them the best shot. And I pray they rise above. Some of them do.’
‘You pray?’
‘I’m not religious. Are you?’
Staffe shakes his head and finishes his drink, wishes he could stay for another, but he needs to get back into Kerry’s life. He needs to peer long and hard at Tommy Given, now.
‘I should get your number,’ he says.
‘And why should you do that?’
‘Because I’m going to want to talk to you again.’
‘Really?’ For a blink of the eye, two, Eve looks worried.
‘And I might need to talk to you about Grace, too.’
‘Aah.’ Her smile is broad and her eyes sparkle in the fire glow. ‘I barely know you.’
‘That’s why you should give me your number.’
‘It’s not something I do. Not often.’
‘I don’t ask often.’
‘I bet you don’t.’ She finishes her drink, pulls on her coat, says, ‘It’s not a good time for me. Thanks for the gin. It takes me back.’
‘Back where?’
‘Mainly a bad place.’
He watches her go, sees that April looks glum as she watches Eve leave, without so much as a backward glance.
Staffe gets out his notebook, jots down names in a ring around the name ‘Kerry’. He writes: Phillip Ramone, Tommy Given, Bridget Lamb, John and Sheila Archibald. Then he flicks back through his notes, finds the name of the teacher from Kerry’s poems, writes: Troheagh. Outside the circle, he writes: Eve.
*
Lesley Crawford looks up at Nottingham Castle, across the Trent from the university lawns, and fondly remembers picnics here. She thinks back to her first tutorial group and pictures the students’ faces. Clear as bells, and all girls – for some reason.
Her phone rings, and from the ringtone, she knows immediately that it is the wrong phone. How could it be?
Lesley scrambles in her bag and pulls out the bog-standard Nokia. The battery sounds as if it is about to die, and that name is on the screen. It makes Lesley want to shiver. The name is untrue, now. It fades as the battery dies.
Lesley walks towards the river, takes out the sim card – although it only holds one name – and throws both the handset and the card into the waters, wondering who the hell was using Zoe’s phone to call her.
