Pain of Death (21 page)
‘This is a first,’ says Pennington. ‘Bringing your girlfriend in for questioning.’
‘She’s not exactly my girlfriend. And we need to check where she was when Kerry Degg’s babies were delivered.’
‘Just how long have you thought there were twins?’
‘The paperwork at the hospital is non-existent, so we can’t be sure.’
‘Hence you think your nurse was involved.’
‘Not
my
nurse.’
‘If you’re right, we need to find this other baby. Do you think your girlfriend …?’
‘Miss Delahunty. I found powdered milk in her house. And then she hid it.’
‘When was this?’
‘The other day. We’re getting close, sir. Bridget Lamb and Tommy Given are part of the same church. Not a church, as such, it’s called the House of the Holy Innocents.’
‘Christ.’
‘And Lesley Crawford is in the group, too. I’m sure Given must know Crawford. If anyone knows where she is, I think it might be him.’
‘You want to rock the boat?’
‘Are my hands untied?’
Pennington nods, reaching for the phone. ‘Will you bring him in?’
‘No. I want him to take me to Crawford.’
‘Can’t we take the simple option for once?’
‘And risk not finding Zoe Bright? I wouldn’t want that on your conscience,’ says Staffe.
*
Tommy Given travels light and throws the holdall into the back of the Merc. For her part, Giselle is much more the seasoned traveller. She toddles across the gravel, tugging her small suitcase on wheels behind her. It keeps getting snagged and toppling over. The case is bright pink and the size of one volume of the OED. It is adorned with the image of Sleeping Beauty and Tommy comes across, scoops her up in one arm and lifts the case with two fingers of a giant hand.
Smet says, ‘You get it?’
Pulford squints into the eyepiece of the camera and squeezes, like a trigger, and the motor drive kicks in, louder than he thought, the shutter capturing four images per second through its
three-hundred-millimetre
lens. ‘Let’s go,’ he says. ‘Before he sees.’
‘That’s it?’
‘Staffe said not to follow him,’ says Pulford, walking up the lane, getting into the car. He is tempted to see where Given goes, to see if he might lead them to Kerry and Sean’s orphan twin, Grace’s sibling. Should there be such a person.
*
‘He hasn’t the guts to interview me himself.’
Josie weighs Eve up, seeing how she would appeal to Staffe. It is the first time she has seen Eve in civvies and she isn’t what Josie had expected. She is wearing a print top that Josie had admired in Whistles, but couldn’t afford, and a pair of
wide-flared
, jersey slacks; heels that would send her immediately overdrawn. ‘Inspector Wagstaffe is out of the City. We’re a team.’
Eve looks Josie up and down, smiles faintly. ‘I feel an idiot.’
‘Tell me what drew you to Grace. I remember you calling in a lot when she was in intensive care.’
‘You were there, too.’
‘The sooner you account for everything, the sooner you can go.’
‘Everything? What exactly is it that you are saying I have to account for?’
‘You had powdered milk in your apartment.’
‘So?’
‘Why would you have such a thing?’
‘Is it a crime?’
‘You can’t verify where you were when Kerry Degg gave birth and we have reason to believe a nurse was with her.’
‘A nurse wouldn’t abandon a woman like that?’
‘If you thought she was doing wrong, by putting herself before the baby.’
‘You think I’m one of them? Jesus. Would you abandon a woman like that? Could you?’
‘Listen. I found Grace. I’m not sure what would have happened if I hadn’t. That’s why I stayed with her. And now I know she is going to be fine, I have to find out who left her there. Whoever did it would feel guilty. It would haunt them.’
Eve presses her fingers to her cheeks and sighs. She avoids Josie’s eye.
‘Especially if there is another baby.’
‘Another?’
‘Twins, Eve. A child is missing and the mother was left to die. At least Grace was delivered to us, but it all went wrong down there. Were there complications?’
‘I really don’t know what you are talking about.’
‘We have a warrant. As we speak, we’re going through your place with a fine-tooth comb.’
‘You can’t do that.’
‘Did you think it would help, attaching yourself to Inspector Wagstaffe the way you did?’
‘He made the first move. I’m the one who was dragged in. Ask him.’
‘You have Sean Degg’s number in your handbag.’
‘He snooped on me. Staffe. He looked in my bag.’
‘Why would you have his number?’
‘We were with Grace, together. We said if she made it we’d celebrate. I felt sorry for him.’ The whites of Eve’s eyes are pink and she blinks fast as she fleetingly looks at Josie. ‘What makes you so sure a nurse would be involved? Childbirth is the most natural thing in the world. Hundreds, thousands of babies are born every day under a mother’s own steam.’
‘Not underground, and finding their way out of a tunnel and into our car park. And there’s something else, Eve. There was another one. At least one. Three years ago, Lesley Crawford took another woman. We know.’
Eve seems lost in thought, as if trying to recall something. Her face is grey-white.
*
Jadus Golding waits for Jasmine Cash to leave their flat on the Limekiln estate. She has Millie in a papoose, facing outwards. Jadus knows that Jasmine prefers to have Millie facing towards her, likes to cup her bottom and hug the baby close into her bosom, whispering to her. But Jasmine says it is better for the baby to look out, to be fed the world.
The instant the door closes, Jadus puts the snick up and shoots the bolt, then he watches until Jasmine and his daughter cross the tenemented Limekiln enclave, fading onto the City Road.
He goes to the baby’s bedroom and sinks to his knees in front of the wardrobe. He took art classes when he was in Belmarsh and when he got out, had painted a frieze of dolphins around the bottom of the wardrobe. He removes the boxes of toys and slips the hook from its eye at the base, lifting up a false bottom and reaching right to the back, pulling out his Browning Forty-Nine. He doesn’t want to use it, or even carry it; he still finds it an ugly weapon. He’d rather have to carry a Glock. He can’t help it, but a Glock makes him feel good about himself.
Jadus checks the clip, puts the pistol down the back of his jeans. There’s no safety on the Browning but the trigger pulls the best part of ten pounds – heavy enough to be safe.
Today, because he is carrying, he wears a belt and has his jeans hoisted a few inches higher than normal. He pulls on his Sean John jacket, suitably long, and then makes the text to Carlyle.
Within a minute, Jadus has the response he requires. The poor bastard Carlyle is shitting himself.
He makes his way across the Limekiln quadrangle, reminding himself how good his eGang had been whilst he was inside. Jasmine has her X5, still. Baby Millie wears only Monnalisa, and her Grandma Rose was flown over from Trinidad for the Christening. And now, he has to reinvest. As if he had a choice.
Jadus has to chip in. They had given him this gun. This gun, whose steel he can feel in the crack of his arse, had been pressed hard into his jaw just three days ago when he had said he wanted out. When he had placed one foot outside the circle, they had treated him like the enemy and now that treatment is going down the line, towards Dan Carlyle.
Dan is thirty-six and is waiting for Jadus in the disused underground car park round the back of Peerless Street where they are knocking down an old block. Dan is smoking. Jadus didn’t know he smoked, but there is plenty he doesn’t know about Dan, who is a director of Devere Chance, the firm that saved Jadus’s arse by giving him a job in the post room. What Jadus does know about Dan is that he has a beautiful wife who doesn’t need to work and three beautiful children, one of whom, Luke, has cerebral palsy. Dan loves Luke the most, which makes Dan sad. Lately, many things have been making him sad. And to comfort him, Dan has a friend, called heroin.
‘You got it?’ says Jadus.
Dan is standing by a pillar in the middle of the car park. Above, the ground shudders with the demolition work going on next door. He nods and produces an oversized chequebook from a Waterstone’s bag.
Jadus takes it and flicks through. ‘Shit, man. They say these are good for fifty grand. Each. I’ll get it back the day after tomorrow.’
‘No. I need it back tomorrow. Before four o’clock. It’s what you said.’
Jadus reaches behind him. He takes a step towards Dan, pulls out his Browning and kicks out at Dan’s midriff at the same time. Since he was four, Jadus has done karate. It’s the one thing he has to show from having had a father. He pins Dan to the pillar and aims the Forty-Nine. He can feel his pulse change its beat and his blood courses fast. He has a good feeling which he knows will pass but he puts the gun to Dan’s left temple. He turns it ten degrees to his right and makes the almighty squeeze. It’s the most power a man can exert and the sound is fat and sharp and Dan Carlyle screams.
He closes his eyes tight shut, then opens them, waits for the life to pour out of him and onto the car-park floor. He is trembling and Jadus watches his ear, waits for it to bleed and it does. A thin, viscous stream emerges from the folds of hard membrane. Jadus reaches out to Dan, grabs his tenderest hair, above the ear and when Dan can’t help but scream, he pushes the hot, cordite-reeking barrel of the gun into Dan’s mouth, says, ‘Day after tomorrow. Right?’
Dan closes his eyes, slow, to nod ‘Yes’.
‘You’ve got the authorised signatures, too?’
Dan closes and opens his eyes again.
Jadus removes the gun and wipes it against the shoulder of Dan’s jacket to remove the spittle on the barrel. ‘You meet me here, day after tomorrow, four o’clock, then you can have your book back.’
What Dan will receive is an extremely competent forgery of the book, down to the feint and the watermark and the serial numbers. Drafts aren’t used so much these days and this book is the next but one in line. The plan is, no one will notice until the original drafts are presented for payment, which they will be. They’ll all land the same day and that night, at close of business, the books won’t balance.
Dan will have to make up his own story, but he’s senior enough to survive. He’ll have to come up with some whipping boy.
Soon, Jadus will deliver the banker’s drafts – so many licences to print money, provided you get them precisely right. But he feels low, feels all the hope for a different life making its way to the ground beneath, sticking between his toes like sharp sand. He leaves it behind with each step as he goes.
Out on City Road, he smokes a joint and by the time he gets to Shoreditch for the drop, he feels less bad. He is dulled, but the ghost is there. He felt this way after what he did to the postmaster, but can’t see himself doing any more time. He can’t go back in there and pretend, every minute of each day, that he can fly his bird like a true soldier. Truth is, Jadus doesn’t feel like a soldier any more. Outside the back of Cutz, he finishes the joint. He knocks on the door and when they open it, he can smell the oil of Dax Wax. It’s a whiff of the Caribbean, a blast from when his dad took him to have his hair cut, to when he used to walk back to his mother feeling brand-new, his Short and Neat making him feel a million dollars.
*
Staffe watches Jadus disappear through the gate that leads to the back door of the barber’s shop.
As soon as he had seen the restraint to Jadus’s low-slung, backward-sloping gait; as soon as he saw the jeans a little high, he had suspected something was awry.
Earlier, he had watched Jadus light up his spliff and he had waited to see what else emerged from the underground car park. An expensively suited man transpired, every vestige of colour gone from his face and holding a bloodied handkerchief to his ear. He knows that he has to get to the bottom of whatever Jadus plans to do with that poor man in the expensive suit.
Staffe contemplates whether to go into Cutz, or wait. And he plots the sequence of actions that will enable him to discover who the suited man is. He will start with Finbar Hare. Or will he? He doesn’t want to pull the plug on Jadus if there might be something innocent, by way of explanation.
His phone goes and he steps away from the gate, walking round the corner. A gaggle of City boys suck on cigs outside The Nelson between the strippers’ acts. He can remember when The Nelson was for locals, when the old boys played doms and the young boys played pool while the girls took their clothes off standing on a little round table by the ladies. Who can say which is the better world?
‘Pulford?’ he says into his phone.
‘Given’s on the move, sir.’
‘Shit. Already?’
‘We let him go, like you said.’
‘Oh, God.’
‘You said to, sir.’
Staffe wonders if he is too sure about Crawford; about where Tommy might go. ‘It’s OK. Does he have the little girl with him?’
‘Yes. They’re packed for an overnight stay by the look of things. Should be easy enough to keep track of – he’s in the Merc.’
‘You got the photograph of her?’
‘I’ve emailed it in. They’re doing it now.’
Staffe is outside the front of Cutz. Jadus has his feet up in a barber’s chair and looks at himself in the mirror with more than the usual weight.
He wants to intervene, to stop this playing out, but the call is from afar and it cannot wait.
The two women unclasp from their hug. It had lingered, had involved Lesley whispering assurances that everything will be just fine, that they will have to adapt. It may not be exactly what they had planned, but an impression will be made upon the world, for the better.
For her part, Zoe Bright says nothing.
The baby kicks and she reaches out for Lesley Crawford’s hand, places it on her bump. The baby kicks again and the women look at each other in dead earnest. This joyous thing makes neither woman smile, and Zoe’s recent convictions are reconfirmed afresh. All that matters is this baby. She has to bring it to the world safe.
‘You said that the police are onto Given,’ says Zoe.
Lesley Crawford looks out of the window, follows the flight of the heron across the marsh. ‘He’ll look after himself. We must do the same.’
‘I was shown a newspaper.’
‘I’m sorry you were kept like this. It had to appear this way. It had to convince – for your sake. It gave you a way out.’
‘
Gave
me a way out?’
‘What did the paper say?’
Zoe considers what Lesley Crawford might have meant when she said it
gave
her a way out. Have her plans changed? ‘They mentioned Emily Bagshot, and Vernon’s bill, too. It seems that the public are with us.’
‘It’s democracy. The only kind that’s left.’ Lesley Crawford sits on the edge of the threadbare sofa that Zoe had pushed under the window. The sun is slanting in, low, shaved by the Welsh hills. She rests the pads of her fingertips lightly upon her knees, together. ‘There’s no such thing in Parliament. Those thieves and liars will do only what lines their pockets or plumes their power. So you have to offer them power. Sometimes, the outcome can be democracy.’
‘But will the MPs vote for the bill?’
‘They’ll vote for what the electorate want. And that’s in hand.’
‘Have the plans changed?’
‘We have to adapt. It’s the way of things.’
‘It can’t be good that Given is cut adrift. You know what he’s capable of.’
The heron swoops low. It moves fast but its wings are slow. ‘He came to us by chance. Chance was never going to be sufficient. Our interests fused, but nothing is for ever.’
‘He’ll kill us.’
Lesley Crawford looks quite demure as she turns to face Zoe, saying, with utter calm. ‘No, my love. It was me who let the cat out. He’ll kill me. If he can.’
*
Staffe closes down the image on his phone. The artist’s impression of Baby Bagshot, as Absolom insists on calling her, is in pen and ink and pictures the infant by a five-bar gate with an idyllic cottage behind. Appearing from the right, the lower arm and hand of a parent – probably her father – rests on her shoulder. The wrist is wrapped in an oversized watch. The likeness, obscured here and there and duly vetted by the solicitors at the
News
, will send Tommy Given berserk. Staffe can only pray that he and they can cope with the consequences.
Jombaugh has issued alerts to all airports and the ferry terminals, but Staffe reckons they will draw blank. His money is on Tommy having made a trip north – to either Nottingham or the Wirral. Either way, he’ll be in a hurry to catch up with Lesley Crawford for having made contact with Nick Absolom and the
News
. Right now, Staffe is unsure quite who is prey.
He raps the door. It is dusk and he has been told that Vernon Short was not in the Commons today and nor did he visit his club. Perhaps he is busy mulling the final words of his resurrected bill. Not so much resurrected as a nulling of its withdrawal. It comes before the House the day after tomorrow.
When Vernon opens the door, it is plain to see that the statute book is far from the forefront of his mind, for Vernon is not his dapper self. His hair is ruffled and his eyes are heavy. His shirt is three buttons undone and the collar is frayed, the sleeves rolled up and his moleskin trousers are bagged at the knee. He looks as if he might have been gardening, except, when he says, ‘Oh, you,’ a pall of booze hums forth. He turns his back and pads into his home, along the Minton floor and into the kitchen.
They sit at the table and Vernon pushes a bottle of Glenlivet in Staffe’s direction, then a tumbler. Staffe pours himself a modest one, not wanting it, but neither wanting Vernon to feel as if he has to drink on his own.
‘Your bill is finally upon us.’
‘Like a bloated body in the Thames.’
‘I thought you’d be pleased, though I have to say I’m surprised. How does the Home Secretary feel about it?’
‘After all these years in politics, nothing surprises me any more.’ He forces a smile and lights up a Rothmans. ‘Time was, we did what was best. Parliament was trusted to govern.’
‘And your pro quo? Is that secure?’
‘You take what you can, but really, the forces are irresistible. You can’t impose your will on the people any more. There was a time when we believed in something; something different from the other side and you wouldn’t give a toss if somebody disagreed with you. In fact, it was a good thing. That was the point of it all. It lit the fire in the belly.’
‘In your father’s time.’
‘There was an acceptance that we knew best. It’s why we were in the club and the man in the street was in the street. Now, it’s a kowtow to the press. Today’s dish is my bill. That’s all it is.’
‘And your place in the Cabinet?’
He shrugs.
‘Your father would be proud.’
‘My father.’ Vernon pours himself another and stubs out the cigarette, just two drags into it. ‘I don’t smoke. I keep them in the house for visitors. Remember?’ He looks at Staffe, trying to weigh him up. ‘I’m older than you, but not that much. When people called on our parents, you’d offer them cigarettes and a gin and they’d ruffle your hair. It was a different time. But you didn’t come to humour me, Inspector. What do you have?’
Staffe thinks about what Declan Hartson had said about Vernon not having the balls. He thinks how none of what Vernon has done this last month fits. He tries to find a not unpleasant way of saying this, but he can’t. He does his best. ‘You don’t really care about the bill, do you, Vernon? I mean, you don’t care about twenty or twenty-four or twenty-eight weeks any more than you care about the war or Eldercare or nailing benefit frauds, and if you did, you’d keep it under a bushel.’
Vernon lights another cigarette. ‘Go on.’
‘I’d like you to tell me exactly why you put yourself behind the bill in the first place.’
‘I’m not going to do that.’
‘You gave Lesley Crawford what she had to hold against the Home Secretary, didn’t you?’
‘I would never do that. And anyway, you said she gave it to me.’
‘You arranged for the details of Cathy Killick’s abortion to fall into her hands because you had no choice. She got a bag with that in it and we got it the wrong way round. And you got behind the bill because you had no choice.’
‘I was going to water the lawn. The sun is down. It’s the best time.’ Vernon finishes his drink and stands up, takes an almighty drag from his cigarette and holds it in.
‘What does she have on you, Vernon? What was in the bag that she gave to you?’
‘Nobody has anything on me.’
‘Lesley Crawford has a hold on you and I need to know. This has to stop. She has to stop and you know it.’
‘What do I know?’
‘It’s out of control and Lesley Crawford is going to do something. She doesn’t care about you or about Kerry Degg or Zoe Bright, or Tommy Given any more.’
Vernon blinks, twice. His Adam’s apple rises and falls and he reaches for the whisky, pours himself another and tries to inhale his cigarette without removing it from his lips, but this makes him splutter. He punches his chest, twice.
‘You know about the threats that Cathy Killick received?’
He shrugs; has the decency to look ashamed. ‘The strangest things can suit a cause – especially in my game, Inspector. Sometimes, you have to look a little deeper.’
‘Crawford will say it’s you who spilled the beans on Killick and her abortion all those years ago. She’ll ruin you, but if you tell me what she knows about you, I can manage the information. If I have to dig around, everybody’s going to know. I will ask whoever it takes, whatever it takes. But I don’t want to do that. Honestly, I don’t.’
‘I swear on everything that is dear to me that Lesley Crawford has not one iota of information against me.’ He looks Staffe in the eye. His eyes are milky. ‘Not a jot.’
And Staffe believes him. He says, ‘I believe you.’
‘Thank you. I’m going into my garden. You can show yourself out.’
Staffe watches him go, fiddling with the concertina security grille that keeps the unwanted from trespassing. He opens the door to his garden. ‘Who, then?’ says Staffe.
‘What?’ Vernon looks back at him, as if he has gone for his wallet and come up blank.
‘Who does she have the dirt on?’
‘I said I’m going to water my lawn.’
‘And your father’s lawn before you.’
Vernon turns his back, walks into his garden with his head down, looking older, much older, than his years.
*
‘You were on duty the day Kerry Degg went to City Royal for her final consultation. The records from that consultation have conveniently vaporised. And you refuse to provide an adequate explanation for the powdered milk.’
‘I told you, a friend came to stay. She left it and I threw it out.’
‘Give me her name.’
Eve looks stronger, now. Her resolve seems stiff and her breathing and speech are even. She has refused a solicitor, saying innocent people don’t need solicitors.
Staffe says, ‘It was convenient, us becoming friends. A coincidence. I don’t believe in coincidences.’
‘You seduced me.’
‘It didn’t feel like that.’
Eve smiles, knowingly. She runs her tongue across her top lip. ‘It looks as if you were abusing your position of authority. Was I always in your frame? Did you fuck me for information, Will?’
‘You know I didn’t.’
‘I know I had nothing to do with the events that preceded the birth of Grace Degg.’
‘You sound different.’
‘Different from what?’
‘If you tell me everything, you could leave here.’
‘Even if I am guilty?’
‘You say you are not. And I believe you.’
‘Then release me.’
‘This isn’t about you, Eve. Or me. It’s about Grace and Kerry and Sean. And it’s about Grace’s twin sister, or brother.’
‘How can you be sure of that?’
‘And it’s about Emily Bagshot.’
‘I saw something about that.’
‘She visited City Royal two and a half years ago and three days later her boyfriend reported her missing. The baby’s birth was never registered.’
‘There was another?’
‘And you saw her. You were on duty the day Emily Bagshot went to City Royal to say she wanted to end her pregnancy. And you told Lesley Crawford.’
Eve’s mouth is open but she says nothing. Her face turns pale and she doesn’t blink. ‘Not me,’ she says.
‘Do you know Tommy Given?’
She shakes her head, slowly and slightly, as if she fears her head might topple.
‘You’re in it deep, Eve.’ He stands up, pauses by the door and watches her nod. ‘And I didn’t seduce you. It suited you, to be with me, didn’t it?’
Eve looks Staffe in the eye. As he leaves her, he thinks that perhaps she has something to be ashamed of.
Outside, Staffe tells Jombaugh to keep her in the interview room and to allow no food or drink in. If she calls, he is to ignore it. The walls are thick and nobody is next door.
He goes up to the incident room and sits down alongside Josie. He pulls out the bottom drawer of her desk and rests his feet on it, leans back, blows out his cheeks.
‘Not going so well?’ says Josie.
‘She’s digging her heels in.’
‘It must be weird for you, having to interview her.’
‘Do we have any of Bridget Lamb’s photos?’
‘I’ve got her wedding photograph, from the
Kingston Advertiser
.’
‘Perfect.’
‘I’ll talk to Nurse Delahunty again, if you want.’ Josie pulls the image of Bridget Lamb from a file. The bride beams into camera on the happiest day of her life, the arm of her husband around her shoulder and him looking as if he might have done too well for himself.
‘Let her stew,’ he says, taking the photograph from Josie. ‘Do you have the rosters from City Royal there?’
Josie flicks through a different file and hands him a sheet.
He says, ‘This is for the day Kerry disappeared. What about the earlier one, from when Emily Bagshot went in?’
Josie flicks again and hands him another sheet.
Staffe looks at one and then the other, then back again.
‘You want copies?’
‘No.’ He hands the papers back and picks up his car keys.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To find out who killed Sean Degg.’
*
Staffe parks his Peugeot 406 outside the off-licence on the New North Road. He flicks the key fob, but it has died and the doors don’t lock. He should get a new car, but this one suits. Locked or not, nobody is going to steal it. And it’s not a car which a police inspector would drive.
From here, he can see the payphone that Sean Degg used the night he died. From there, he called a person who used the very same mobile phone just moments later to call the Lambs’ landline. It occurs to Staffe that the telephone in Bridget’s home might be the very one that Malcolm Lamb would have used when they were at school together. Every now and again, Staffe’s dad would come back from the Angel and say he had seen Malcolm Lamb – Malcolm’s dad, that is. He would ask Will why he was not friends with Malcolm and when Will shrugged, he patted his son on the shoulder and said, ‘His father drinks halves of shandy.
Shandy!
’ He would say it in the manner of a confidence.
Staffe takes out the photograph of Malcolm’s bride and breathes in through his nose and mouth at the same time, turning to the off-licence and going in. He waits for the manageress, Maisie Dixon, to finish serving a child a pack of ten Mayfair. He knows it is Maisie Dixon because he phoned ahead. Maisie was on the night Sean Degg came in.
