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Authors: Adam Creed

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General

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BOOK: Pain of Death
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‘Kerry’s a singer.’

Staffe looks around the flat. Its interior contradicts the building it is in, and its locale. Hippy scarves hang from light fittings and theatre prints and record sleeves adorn the walls. Patchouli is ingrained and all the LPs are alphabetised, from Oleta Adams to Frank Zappa. An eclectic mix of blues and soul, jazz and vaudeville. In the kitchen, an optic rack holds Pastis, Tanqueray and Havana Club. Over the years, Staffe has been in many houses and flats, bedsits and squats. None quite like this.

He pulls open a drawer and suggests to Josie that she makes a start on the bedroom.

‘These things are precious to us. This is our life,’ says Sean.

Staffe picks up a flyer for a show last October at the Boss Clef. ‘Lori was her stage name?’

‘That’s right.’

He does know her.

On the flyer is written, LORI DOS PASSOS. Below the photograph of Kerry, pouting,
DOES
BURLESQUE. And, for sure, Kerry’s performances were risqué. Staffe had seen for himself, in that drunken hinterland of the final break-up from Sylvie.

Josie calls down from the bedroom and he goes up, telling Sean to sit down and keep his hands off everything.

Standing in front of a whole wall of opened wardrobes, Josie says, ‘This lot doesn’t come cheap. Christ. Why do they live in a place like this?’

‘Because they spend all their cash on Kerry’s career?’ says Staffe, running his hand along the rails of sequined, brilliantly coloured silk and satin dresses, skirts and blouses. Above, hats and scarves. Below, neat pile after neat pile of corsets and knickers, bras and belts.

‘And it might have been about to pay off,’ says Josie. ‘That burlesque is all the rage, you know. Look at this. It was in her bedside drawer.’

Staffe takes the letter, an acknowledgement of receipt of contract from Rendezvous Enterprises. Phillip Ramone runs the two most successful clubs in Soho, and has seemingly offered Kerry a residency at Rendezvous. Fifteen hundred quid a week.

‘What a shame,’ says Josie. ‘Just as she was about to break through.’

‘Into motherhood again,’ says Staffe, storming back towards the lounge. He takes a deep breath before going in, walks slowly towards where Sean sits. He wants to lift him up by the throat and launch him into the wall, see what the weasel would say under real duress. But he forces himself to concoct another way.

‘Were you going to look after the baby, Sean?’

‘How d’you mean?’

‘Different, when the biological father’s intent on giving it a home. And things picking up, too – with Kerry’s career. This one was yours, wasn’t it?’ Staffe sits alongside Sean, puts his big hand on Sean’s small, bony knee. ‘You’d make a good dad, Sean. That’s my guess. And all the support you’ve given Kerry over the years. She was growing away from you, wasn’t she?’ He looks around the room. ‘Getting too big for all this.’

‘I don’t know what she’s done with the baby. Honest, I don’t.’

‘There is no baby, is there, Sean? Kerry had her career to think about.’

‘I helped her every inch. Not that I got anything out of it. But she’s worth it. She’s special.’

‘I know. I’ve seen her.’ Staffe takes the Boss Clef flyer from his pocket. ‘I was there, that night. Some show. You wouldn’t have guessed she had your child inside her.’

‘Shut up.’

‘And I wouldn’t have guessed she’d have beaten up her husband – so bad he had to call the police.’

‘I asked for it.’

‘What exactly did you ask for, Sean? You said you didn’t get anything out of her. Why should you?’

‘I curated her. I found her and developed her. I saw what nobody else did – before it was even there.’

‘You
curated
her?’

‘It’s what I do. I just wanted her to love me. That’s all.’

‘They say you should never marry too good.’

‘That’s shit. You’ve got no choice who you love.’

‘But Kerry did.’

‘She loves me, all right. In ways you’ll never understand. We’ll always be together. She knows that.’

‘I’ll understand, Sean. Don’t worry about that.’

Josie comes in, swinging a clutch of clear plastic bags. ‘Driving licence, passport, bank details. She hadn’t planned to be away for long. Not exactly doing a runner, was she?’

‘You could have told us that, couldn’t you, Sean? But you decided to withhold on us.’ Staffe stands up, looks down at Sean Degg and holds out his hand. Josie unclips the cuffs.

‘I never touched her. I never could. I never could!’ Staffe goes down onto his knees and takes a hold of Degg’s chin with finger and thumb. ‘If that’s so, there’s nothing to worry about. And nothing to fear from the truth – which you’d better start spewing up. Because if you don’t, and if Kerry never comes round to give her side of the story, you’ll be going to a dark place.’

‘Don’t say that,’ says Degg. ‘I can’t do time. I can’t.’

 

Three

As soon as the uniformed officers had arrived at Flower and Dean to take Sean Degg back to Leadengate station, Staffe walked back to City Royal to see how Kerry Degg was progressing.

He sits alongside her, hoping with everything he can muster that she pulls through. Lying there, with her greasy hair combed straight and her skin deathly white and her broken lip butterfly-stitched, you could not compute that she lives her life upon a stage, that her house is adorned with such exotica, that she can estrange her own children.

‘Her chances are slim.’

Staffe turns quickly as a dark-haired nurse pulls up a chair. She has olive-coloured skin, smooth as Wedgwood, and dark eyes. She is solemn.

The nurse says, soft and northern, ‘How on earth will you find the baby?’

‘We have alerted all the hospitals and clinics.’

‘How did she get down there, after she’d given birth? Your sergeant told me about the tunnel.’

‘My sergeant should watch his tongue.’

‘He seems a decent sort. He said he was having a party.’

‘And no doubt he invited you.’

Now, the nurse smiles. ‘As a matter of fact he did.’ She looks at Kerry Degg. ‘It doesn’t seem right. Not tonight.’

‘You can’t have that attitude in your job, surely.’

‘Sometimes, it gets to you. It’s awful, to see a mother and no child.’

‘A party might take your mind off it.’

‘Are you going?’

‘I have to.’

‘You make it sound like a chore.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Nurse Delahunty. Eve.’

‘I’m Staffe.’

‘Aah. I heard,’ says Nurse Eve.

*

Pulford’s flat is in the eaves of a Victorian town house and Staffe is pleasantly surprised at the turnout. Pulford has never been the most popular of sergeants, on account of his
fast-tracked
progress, courtesy of a degree in history, but there is a smattering of officers from Leadengate and a couple of dozen others who are patently not police.

He has laid on an impressive spread, with a full range of spirits and a dustbin full of beers on ice. Some kind of Northern Soul morphs with House. The young people represent a side of Pulford he never saw when the young sergeant lived at Staffe’s flat in Queens Terrace.

‘We’ve brought Degg in,’ he says to Pulford as he gives Staffe and Nurse Eve a tour of three small rooms.

‘I never said, not properly –’ Pulford is the worse for wear, has lipstick on his face. ‘– how grateful I am, sir.’

‘Shut up.’

‘No.’ He turns to Nurse Eve. ‘He took me in when nobody else wanted to know. I was up to here.’ He raises a hand to the ceiling. ‘But I’m over all that shit now. I’m all set, and it’s thanks to him. Have a beer, sir.’

‘Just one,’ says Staffe. Nothing worse than being amongst the half-cut. He thinks this might be the first party he’s been to since he split with Sylvie.

He sits on the edge of the bed, alongside Nurse Eve, and Pulford brings their drinks, gets pulled away by a drunk girl who looks about eighteen. ‘She was into burlesque,’ he says. ‘Kerry.’

‘I’ve never been.’

‘You should.’

‘It’s strange. When they come to us, in states like that, they could be into anything and we’d never guess.’

‘They could be guilty of anything.’

‘Cynic,’ she says, laughing. When she laughs, her eyes glisten and the flesh between her eyes crinkles.

Staffe thinks, Nurse Eve should laugh more. He thinks she has a good spirit, has sadness close by. He also thinks that she is unlike Sylvie, that she lacks Sylvie’s confidence. And he wonders if he has a type.

‘I should leave you alone. You look as if you have some thinking to do.’

‘I have. But I don’t want to.’ He raises his bottle, clinks it against her wineglass. ‘So, you’ve never been to burlesque. You should try it.’

*

Josie turns away from Sean Degg who is disconsolate in the holding cell. She says to Jombaugh, ‘Do you want me to do it?’

‘You look done in. Leave him to me. It’s a withholding charge, you say?’

Josie beckons Jombaugh outside, keeping an eye on Sean Degg, who looks as if he might be coming down from something. She whispers, ‘Staffe wants to leave him a few hours. Keep Buchanan away from him and let him stew. He knows more than he’s letting on.’

Jombaugh looks into the cell. ‘Is he on something?’

‘Could be.’

‘I’ll run a piss test on him. That’ll buy some time. You get yourself home. It’s been a rough day.’

Josie lets herself out the back of the station, into the car park. She thinks she hears something. An animal or possibly something human. She can sense a presence. She sniffs the air, thinking it might be a crafty fag being had. No smell. But something is moving in the car park. She can feel it, and peers into the corner of the yard, where the bins are kept, listening intently.

This time of night, the car park is less than half-full. Josie makes her way slowly to the far wall, which adjoins Cloth Fair. She shines her torch along the gap between the parked cars and the wall and hears a shriek, then a scamper of padding feet. Her heart pounds, then stops. The cat jumps onto a ledge, up onto the high wall and beyond, into the night. Josie’s heart starts up again and she laughs to herself. Pure relief. She switches off her torch and makes her way towards the pedestrian gate.

A car draws along Cloth Fair, its headlight beam sweeping towards Josie, then away. She sees it. She isn’t going mad.

At the foot of the railings, wrapped in a tea towel, the baby seems blue. Its eyes are shut, tight. Its lips are white. The silence of the tiny creature makes Josie’s heart pound harder this time, and for several moments she is frozen.

She kneels down, the ground sharp on her bare knees.

Her hands shake as she lifts the baby into her breast. She presses her cheek to its head and whispers into the baby’s ear, soft as skin, ‘Please God, please don’t. Please God, please be all right.’

She rocks and holds her breath and searches for the baby’s temple with her finger, holding her breath still deeper, that she may sense a pulse or feel the whisper of breath. But nothing.

Her stomach yawns. She wants to scream and curse whoever did this. She holds the baby tighter, struggling to her feet and walking towards the back door not knowing whether to go fast or slow. And then it happens.

The baby screams. Into her ear. Deep and hurt, the baby screams with every surge of blood and well of air from its
egg-sized
lungs. A last, despairing cry to be saved. Josie slumps to the ground and rocks back and forth, back and forth, holding the baby’s head in the palm of her hand.

When they come, Jombaugh kneeling beside her and trying to prise the baby away, Josie won’t let go, simply says, over and over, until the ambulance arrives, ‘For the grace of God, for the grace of God …’

And even then, she won’t let the paramedics take the baby without her going too, quite convinced that this baby will surely die if it is taken from her sight.

*

The wine has made Eve loose. Her hair is ruffled and her eyeliner is smudged – as are her words. Her smile comes easy and she speaks faster, her northern accent thicker now. She toys with her glass and supports her chin with the palm of her hand, looks up at Staffe as if he is the only person in the room. But she had done the same with the doorman and the waiter. On the way, she told him how she came to London four years ago with a friend. She hated it, but it’s not so bad now, and she can’t imagine herself ever going back.

Staffe watches the act up on the stage. They are at a small table in the Boss Clef. The audience is hemmed in to the stage by a horseshoe of red drapes. He thinks, how refreshing, that she knows he is a copper but hasn’t delved at all into his job, or his life.

At the end of the song, Eve spins on her seat, joins in the applause and leans into him, her lips on his ear and whispering, ‘We haven’t talked about you at all, have we? But I know.’ She pulls away.

‘Know?’

The applause subsides and Eve picks up her glass and finishes her vodka and soda. ‘Your sergeant told me all about you.’

Staffe’s instinct is to tell her that he’s really not got his head round his ex, that he’s actually not made love since then and has barely had the inclination. Suddenly, he knows he should see Sylvie. It’s the least she deserves – an explanation. Perhaps she deserves to never see him again. What does he know?

‘He told me about your ex.’

‘Sylvie?’ He likes the word in his mouth.

‘Let’s not talk about her.’ She finishes her wine.

He wants to tell Eve he is too old for her. Suddenly, in his battered leather jacket and his boot-cut jeans and his grown-out hair and his day’s growth, he feels the full weight of his years.

He looks at his mineral water and Eve’s empty glass, and gestures to the waiter, asks for another vodka and a Laphroaig. ‘A large one.’

‘Don’t drink on my behalf,’ she says, straight-faced. ‘Not unless you want to.’ Her face cracks into a smile and she slaps his leg, says, ‘Let’s dance.’ She nods to the small gap between the stage and the front line of tables – enough room for a few people to shuffle. Nobody is dancing.

Eve stands and holds out her hand towards Staffe. His heart sinks and he looks around the room. He knows what he would think of a man like him dancing in public.

She tugs him and he surrenders to it. He lets her lead him between the tables and he smiles apologetically, in case anybody cares to look. He feels the heat of the stage lights on him. The singer raises her hands and claps, smiles at Eve, whose hips draw figures of eight. Staffe doesn’t know where to put his hands, what to do with his feet, but Eve reaches out and takes his hand and winds herself around him, under his hand and twirling in his grasp. By the end of the song, there are a dozen people on the dance floor.

When they get back to the table, the drinks have come. Staffe pours some water into his whisky and feels his phone vibrate.

He should ignore it.

‘You’re ringing,’ says Eve. ‘You should answer. I understand.’

 

BOOK: Pain of Death
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