Pain of Death (14 page)

‘There was a residue of Rohypnol in her blood,’ says Pulford. ‘The clothes are from Topshop and there’s no trace on them apart from Josie herself.’

‘When can I see her?’ asks Staffe.

‘When she wakes.’

‘What exactly did happen on the night?’

‘Like I said, she was supposed to have got right away from the Archibalds’. I called her to say what car Given was in and I followed. I followed Given all the way and he just drove round and went back to Putney. There must have been another car behind, following me.’

‘So you still can’t prove Given knows the Archibalds.’

‘But we know he does.’

‘What use is that?’

‘It’s the truth, sir. We can always prove the truth.’

Staffe is trying to stay annoyed with Pulford, but he can’t. ‘The truth of the matter is, we don’t know any more than before you allowed DC Chancellor to put herself in danger.’

‘No, sir.’

‘And you’ll take it on the chin, Sergeant?’

‘How will we get to Given, sir?’

‘Let me worry about that. Just remember, it’s all the more reason to stitch him up with decent evidence. Thank God you took Jom down there with you.’

He remembers being a young lad – about Pulford’s age and fresh in the force. Jom had just passed forty – the same as Jessop. He wonders if he will go the way of Jombaugh – ground down by the job. Will he ever go the way of Jessop: once his mentor but tempted too far. Would he ever take it into his own hands? There will be a case out there with his name on it. And he will be shown a way to mete justice, beyond law. It could be this one.

*

Outside, whilst he is busy examining his Peugeot, Staffe gets a missed call. It makes him happy in the pit of his stomach. He feels light in the head and loose in his loins. Against his better judgement, Staffe returns the call, then says precisely what he thinks. ‘Eve. I’m glad you rang.’

‘Really? You said to call.’

‘Are you working today?’

‘Not until tonight. I start my ten-six shifts tonight.’

‘How about an early lunch? It will help you sleep the afternoon.’

‘That’s thoughtful of you, Inspector,’ she says, jokingly.

‘There’s a place I want to try. It’s called Menage.’

‘Will there be just the two of us?’ She laughs, throatily, and he glimpses a different her – one with the guard down. Getting to know her …

*

Staffe is on his knees. In the car park at the back of the City Royal, beside his Peugeot, you might think he is answering a call to prayer. Appropriately enough, he finds what he is looking for. In the footwell of the passenger seat, he holds the tiny device between finger and thumb. It is no bigger than the decade bead of a rosary.

‘She’s asked for you.’

Staffe twists round, feels a nerve pinch. Pulford looks down at him.

‘I’ve a job for you.’ He gets to his feet and puts a finger to his lips, hands Pulford the device, knowing his sergeant embraces the continuing aspects of his professional development in a way that Staffe does not.

Pulford carefully takes the device from him, examines it and – holding the offending article tight in his fist – whispers, ‘It’s not police issue, but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s a hybrid. A tracking device and a bug. It tells them what you’re saying and where you are when you’re saying it.’

Staffe whispers, ‘Put it back where it was. Under the mat.’

‘Why?’

‘Now we know it’s there, it’s our device. Wait here.’

*

Josie is in the raw. They have bathed her and dressed her in a paper gown. She sits up with her hair combed back off her face. Her eyes are tired but there is blood back into her lips and she manages a shallow smile that soon collapses.

‘I’m sorry, sir. I was a fool.’

‘Shush. Don’t be silly.’

He sits next to her, takes her hand in both his and squeezes a little. He looks around the room, sees there is nobody and leans forward, puts his lips to her forehead. He lets the soft kiss stay there for a count of three, four.

‘Thank you, sir,’ says Josie. Her eyes are glassy.

‘I don’t know,’ says Staffe, his voice beginning to crack.

‘Don’t know what?’ A broader smile is on Josie’s mouth. Seeing her this way, she could be sixteen or thirty-five.

‘I don’t know … what I’d do.’

She nods her head and clamps her mouth shut, for fear she might say something she would regret. ‘Sit with me, will you?’

He nods, holds her hand, still.

‘Just a while.’

And after a while, she falls back into sleep, with her mouth turned up. He waits a further while and slides his hand from hers, puts his lips on hers, so they barely touch.

*

‘In five minutes, ask me how I got on at Crawford’s,’ whispers Staffe beneath the revving engine as they drive away from the City Royal.

‘Aah,’ says Pulford.

Five minutes later, Staffe answers his sergeant, by reporting that nothing whatever had turned up at Crawford’s house and he’s pissed off with this case and they’ve no chance of catching up with whoever is responsible and maybe they should just leave it to Cathy Killick and her bloody people who seem to have all the resources and unrestricted access.

For twenty minutes, they drive slowly out to the Old Street roundabout and leave the car parked up between the Limekiln and Flower and Dean. It’s where you’d park if you were staking out Sean Degg’s place. Staffe leaves Radio 4 playing low and then they get a cab to the police morgue.

‘Why are we going there?’ asks Pulford.

‘Have you met Miles and Maya Degg?’

‘Kerry’s kids? Do they have Sean’s name? That seems odd.’

‘What else would you call them?’

‘Kilbride? Archibald? I don’t know how these things work.’

‘But you wouldn’t call them babies.’

‘They’re three and five, right? I’ve not met them but I’ve read the reports.’

‘You know about babies?’

‘My sister had them. They’re not babies once they can walk.’

‘Even to the uninitiated, like you and me, Sergeant. Thanks.’ He slaps Pulford on the shoulder and leans back, watches Whitechapel come at them, with its fruit and fish and dodgy boozers and its off-piste City folk and mothers and children: some walking, some babies being pushed.

*

Pulford brings them coffee through from Janine’s kitchenette, off to the side of her half-basement theatre. High windows let weak light seep down from the Raven Lane pavement into the world of the pathologist. They sit in a midday twilight because the buzz of the operating lights drives Janine berserk.

Pulford pauses at the waxy white corpse in the corner, spills some of the coffee.

Staffe says, ‘Would you have checked for twins? Could Kerry Degg have had twins?’

‘She
could
. But it’s a bit late now. It would have helped if we could have looked for that when she was still alive.’

‘Wasn’t she too weak?’

‘Yes, I suppose so. But we could have checked before the post mortem.’

‘It would have shown up in the post mortem, though?’

‘You would have to be looking for it. And the elapsed time was too great, bearing in mind how traumatic the birth was. There was no collateral evidence either. Maybe if we’d known straight away.’

‘What about the placenta? What I found in the tunnel.’

Janine shakes her head. ‘Twins can share a placenta, or have separate placentas, or the placentas can merge to form one. What makes you think she was having twins?’

‘Something I heard.’

‘What difference does it make?’ says Janine.

‘They only left us one baby.’

‘Sometimes, they don’t both survive.’

‘You’d have to know what you were doing, surely – to cope with that, to
administer
that, even if both the twins didn’t survive.’

‘It would have been more problematic,’ she says. ‘There would have been more signs to clear – at the scene.’

‘And imagine, if there is another baby out there – if Grace’s twin is out there.’

The three of them contemplate that: the skills required, the additional twist and nuance of motive, the trail of consequences.

Pulford says, ‘If Grace has a brother or sister out there, it would be a crime for them to be kept apart. Who’d do such a thing?’

‘What exactly did you hear, Staffe?’

‘Kerry’s brother-in-law said something about Sean’s babies. He said “babies”.’

‘He’s got other kids,’ says Janine.

‘They’re not babies,’ says Pulford.

‘They might have been last time he saw them. That’s how he might see them.’

‘Hmm,’ says Staffe. ‘But they’re not Sean’s.’

‘Even if you’re right, it seems to me, this doesn’t change anything. It’s still an abduction that turned into murder.’

‘Same crime, different motive. Different motive, different suspects,’ says Staffe.

‘Did you check the records, at the clinic?’

‘As far as I could,’ he says. ‘I’ve just come from there. There was no mention of Kerry having twins. I asked the duty doctor whether, if Kerry was having twins, the last consultation would have spotted it, and he said it would have, for sure. But there’s no notes from her last consultation.’

‘All I can say is, there’s nothing to suggest she wasn’t carrying twins. Except …’ She looks sad.

‘Except what?’

‘Except we only have one baby.’

‘We’re looking,’ says Staffe.

‘Have you checked all the paediatric wards?’

‘As we speak,’ says Pulford.

Staffe turns his mind to who might want the baby. He can’t get past Bridget Lamb. But he has been to her house twice now. Not a whimper from upstairs, nor the slightest trace of a nappy. Not a grain of SMA. And Malcolm? Could Malcolm be a party to such subterfuge? He loves her enough, that’s for sure. Or he might have said ‘babies’ in all innocence. ‘You have to take babies to be weighed, right? They have to be monitored.’

Janine says, ‘Surely, if you don’t register the birth, nobody would know it exists – provided it’s healthy. As long as you get some ID by the time they go to school or got poorly, nobody would ever ask where a baby came from. If you moved away, people would assume it was yours.’

*

‘I know this place. Or should I say I’ve heard of it,’ says Eve, looking down the lunch menu. Occasionally, she issues low moans. ‘I’m hungry now.’

‘The portions are starter-sized. If the French did tapas, they would do them like this.’

Eve closes the menu and smiles at him. In the soft light, she appears different. Her face is for the night. She has picked out her cheekbones with rouge and softened her eyes with Touche Éclat. A thin line of kohl makes her eyes seem brighter, more sultry, too, and he sees for the first time that she has a dimple high on her right cheek. Her hair is half-up,
half-down
, teased to make it look as if she hasn’t made the effort.

As they order, he watches her eyes light up and then pinch together as she has to choose whether her ribbon of lemon sole is to be grilled or pan-fried. Her hair is the same colour as Sylvie’s – but her face is fuller, her eyes bigger. Her nails are
French-manicured
and she wears the Claddagh ring on one hand, a large-stoned diamond on the wrong wedding finger of the other.

Once he has ordered, Eve says, ‘It’s my mother’s ring.’

He is embarrassed.

‘Did you think I’d been left standing at the altar?’

‘No.’

‘Liar. But people our age don’t come without a little bit of scar tissue around the vital organs, do they?’

‘I don’t think we’re of a similar age.’

‘Inspector! You’re not trying to get me to disclose, are you?’

‘You’d be surprised what I know about you,’ he says, immediately realising he has said the wrong thing.

‘You checked up on me?’

‘Can we say “checked you out”?’

Eve adjusts her expression – as if not to spoil lunch. She frowns, but it is playful.

‘So tell me. Who am I?’

‘You’re not what you seem. A trained vet who gave up on animals to concentrate on humans.’

‘You think I must be mad.’

‘It can be a dirty business, that vet malarkey,’ he jokes. He feels relaxed. ‘Pushing pills and screwing owners into agreeing to futile operations. Playing on love and hope.’

‘My God. How do you know these things?’

‘I knew a vet once.’

Eve raises her eyebrows, as if to pry.

The waiter brings the wine and, even though she didn’t order it, a gin and tonic for Eve. She looks surprised and then winks at him as if to say she didn’t know how he did that, but she’s glad he did.

For a stretch, they each say nothing, but the silence isn’t awkward.

‘Usually, it’s not good when our worlds collide,’ he says.

‘We’ll have to see.’ Eve takes a lusty sip from her gin and says, ‘But this is a good start. Plymouth gin, too, hey, Staffe.’

‘How do you know people call me that?’

‘Did you go to see Bridget, the sister? Grace’s aunt.’

‘I didn’t say I was going.’

‘Come on. You’re a copper and I’ve spoken with the victim’s sister. Fire away.’

‘You know her?’

‘I know she loves that child.’ Eve finishes her gin and pours herself a small glass of wine, tops up Staffe.

As she leans forward, Staffe sees that she has no foundation on. Her skin is pale and smooth as china.

She says, ‘I went to see Grace as soon as I heard. It’s only across the way from my unit. But as much as I love children …’ The waiter brings their first dish and Eve lowers her voice. ‘… As much as I love them, it’s not the same.’

‘The same as what?’

‘It’s not blood. When I was with Grace, saying my kind of a prayer for her and not wanting to be anywhere but there at that time, it wasn’t the same as what that poor woman was feeling. I wasn’t going through anything in comparison.’

‘She said something to you?’

‘She couldn’t. She was catatonic.’

‘Catatonic?’

‘I put my arm around her and it was like hugging a rock. She was frozen. She didn’t dare move – as though, I don’t know, if she did, the baby might stop breathing.’

‘Catatonic?’ repeats Staffe. For a second, he forgets where he is, struggling to lend some order to the theories of Bridget: respectable wife and almost a teenage mother; sister of Kerry and spurned lover of Sean.