Suffer the Children (15 page)

‘Looks like he’s right, then.’

‘He doesn’t always get it right,’ says Janine.

‘I heard you and him used to see each other.’

‘I wouldn’t have called it that, and the club isn’t that select.’

‘He plays his cards close, doesn’t he?’

Janine stands up, brushes a piece of cotton from the thigh of her skirt. ‘You don’t want to be in that club, do you, Sergeant Chancellor?’

‘Who’s Sylvie?’

‘You’d better ask him that.’ Janine opens the door, turns. ‘He won’t tell you, of course.’

‘What happened to his parents?’

Janine leans against the door frame, puts her head to the back of her hand and talks to the floor. ‘I studied Jung at med school and he reckoned that to understand a man you have to know what his grandfather lacked. Staffe’s parents died before he was a man. He doesn’t really know what made him.’ She looks up. ‘But what do I know?’

‘Did he hurt you?’

‘He only hurts himself. At least that’s his aim.’ The phone rings. ‘You’d better take that, before I say something I might regret,’ says Janine, closing the door.

‘Chancellor, do you know where the hell DI Wagstaffe is?’ says Pennington.

‘No, sir. Can I help?’

‘You can tell him he’s got his way. Tell him I hope it’s not enough rope to hang himself. Leanne Colquhoun will be released sometime tonight.’

Josie gathers her things together, including a scrawled
message
in Staffe’s hand:
Why no CPS push for LS’s prosecution? Call WW, nil written.
‘LS’, Lotte Stensson. ‘WW’. DI Will Wagstaffe.

She pulls out the Stensson file that Smethurst sent over from the Met and scans through ‘all known contacts’, sees that Ruth Merritt was the lawyer representing the CPS on the case. Josie notes that she is different from the Crown’s lawyer on the dropped Colquhoun and Montefiore cases. No obvious
conspiracy
theory to be developed, then.

On her way down the back stairs to the car park, Josie is wondering why the Stensson case isn’t on the whiteboard, why Staffe is keeping it close to his chest, then she sees Stanley Buchanan a flight below, making his way up. He’s out of breath and has a sheen of sweat on his face, a film of booze all around him. When he talks she gets a draught of freshly sucked mint.

‘Staffe in?’ he says.

‘Out and about, I’m afraid.’ His eyes are on her – like hands. He gives out a lascivious smile. She leans back against the metal handrail, and watches him look away, swapping his papers from one arm to the other.

‘Well if he’s not here, I may as well come out with you.’ When they get to the door to the back car park, Josie swipes her pass and Buchanan holds the door open, says, ‘Fancy a drink?’

She looks him in the eye, thinks ‘no way’. ‘I’d love to,’ she purrs, thinking she might save herself an afternoon of reading up on CPS policy on child abuse – vast tomes that twist
themselves
up in knots of policy speak.

Outside the Griffin, Josie opens the door and lets him go in first. It’s pay day tomorrow and she’s down to a pound coin and coppers. ‘I’ll get a table,’ she says, smiling. ‘Let’s split a bottle of white, shall we? I’m off duty.’

When Buchanan gets back with the wine, he sits down
heavily
and looks around. House music plays up in the wooden eaves, bounces around the exposed brick walls. ‘Great place.’

‘You’d remember it as a proper pub, I suppose.’

‘I’m all in favour of progress.’

‘Progress is one thing we’re not seeing much of at the moment,’ says Josie. ‘There’s so many departments pulling in different directions.’

‘Hey, I’m only doing my job, just the same as you.’ Buchanan takes an unhealthy slug of his wine, tries a stoic ‘What can I do?’ smile. ‘It’s an adversarial system. That’s the way the truth gets squeezed out.’

‘I’m not getting at you, Stan. It’s the CPS I can’t get my head round.’

‘We share the same enemy, then,’ he says.

‘They seem to drop the most unlikely cases.’

Stan Buchanan leans back, cups his glass on the ledge of his gut. ‘They’re only flesh and blood. Same as coppers.’

‘Success rates are important, I guess.’

‘Ahaa. You’ve nailed it, girl. You’ve nailed it.’ He takes a slug and recharges both glasses. ‘You might call it economy of effort.’

‘And it could depend on which particular person there is at the CPS?’

‘It’s only human beings at the end of the day.’

Josie softens her smile, sips from her wine without taking her eyes off him. ‘I’ve come across a woman, Ruth Merritt. What’s she like?’

‘Ruthie? Straight as they come.’ He laughs to himself. ‘Too straight for her own good. I always fancied my chances with Ruthie, but I haven’t seen her for ages. I assume she’s gone off somewhere quieter. Maybe having babies.’

Josie wants Ruth Merritt to be a cold-hearted career woman, playing the percentages and building a glittering career, but this doesn’t fit. Surely she would have pressed the Kashell case. ‘What else might stop someone like Merritt from pushing for a prosecution?’

‘The disclosing officer is the key to the evidence. If the officer doesn’t fancy their chances of a successful prosecution, they may stymie the whole thing. Workloads and targets, my girl.’

She gathers up her handbag, drains her glass.

‘You’re not going?’

‘I’m going out for dinner,’ lies Josie. ‘Shall we split this?’

Stan shakes his head and holds up a hand as Josie pretends to search in her bag. ‘Some lucky fella?’

‘No. It’s a girlfriend, actually.’ Josie winks at Buchanan as she stands up, watches him twitch, go red in his fat face. On the street, she looks through the large plate-glass window and sees Buchanan blowing his cheeks. He gestures at the barmaid for another bottle.

Staffe boots the Peugeot down the A1. It is pale dusk and as he sees signs for Cambridge he is tempted to stop for an overnight. An aperitif in a backwater hotel, a stroll along the backs. Spires, young lovers and a leisurely dinner. Pulford is asleep and Staffe drives on, beyond tired now. He has pictures to hang back at Queens Terrace, and records to unpack. He should call Pepe Muñoz if he gets home before ten. He will phone the Thai Garden for a takeaway and he may also make another call. Sylvie.

Pulford grunts and Staffe turns the CD player up a notch. The loud swell of Charles Mingus retells Duke Ellington, and Staffe feels it, guns the Peugeot way, way over the limit down the bottom stretch of the A1, switchbacking across the North Circular, barrelling into London against the law.

Deliberately, Staffe brakes hard, jolting the car to a halt in the neon glow of Golders Green’s Tube station front. ‘Thanks for the conversation, Sergeant, you’re fantastic company, you know.’

Pulford blinks, bleary-eyed as Staffe leans across, pushes the passenger door open and points up at the station lights.

‘What? Where …?’

‘You’ve had your beauty sleep. I want that list of everyone released from Wakefield and living in London. Don’t go
advertising
it to Pennington just yet. And I want a list of all
unprosecuted
molestations in the last three years. Anything the CPS has dropped.’

‘Why’s that?’ says Pulford, rubbing his eyes, stretching.

‘Because if there’s going to be a next victim, there’s every chance an aborted CPS prosecution will be in their descriptor.’

Pulford puts up a sleepy thumb and makes a forced smile, slams the door shut, and Staffe pulls out into traffic. A red Merc stops short in front of him and Staffe block changes,
undertakes
, sees the driver holding a mobile phone, happy as Larry. But he lets it go. He sees the road three, four moves ahead and within fifteen minutes is pulling up outside his flat. On the street, he looks up at the night sky: starless and orange blue.

‘There will be another. There
will
be, but why put me in the picture?’ He says it out loud. ‘Why call me? Why watch me?’

Staffe needs to slow down. He breathes long and deep,
leaning
back against the car, crossing his arms over his chest,
closing
his eyes, saying under his breath ‘pacify yourself, pacify yourself’.

Crossing the road, he is stopped in his tracks. The E-Type is parked up a few doors down. It has a parking ticket and when he gets inside, he opens an envelope with the bill from the garage and the keys.

He makes a rooibos tea, whips up some eggs for an omelette and puts some porcini mushrooms on the soak with the final slug of white wine that Josie left last night. He picks up his messages and hears an echo of the way his name sounds in her mouth, telling him Leanne Colquhoun is about to be released on bail.

He calls her straightaway. ‘Is she out yet?’

‘Some time soon,’ says Josie. ‘Do you want a tail on her?’

‘Get Pulford to wait outside the Limekiln. Tell him to keep close tabs on her. He’s had plenty of sleep.’

‘I checked up on the CPS and it was a Ruth Merritt that dealt with Stensson.’

‘Merritt? I know that name. I’m sure I do.’ He runs a hand through his hair, closes his eyes.

‘Sir?’

‘Good night, Josie.’ He hangs up, trying to dredge a story to go with the name. Ruth Merritt. He presses ‘messages’ again, wanting there to be more but he gets only silence after the long beep. Without thinking, he taps out Sylvie’s number. She answers and his heart misses a beat. ‘Hello. Hello? Who is that?’ she says.

He hangs up and turns his phone off, goes back into the kitchen and puts cling film over the soaking mushrooms. His appetite is gone and he pours the egg mixture into the sink, runs a modicum of hot water. In the lounge, he leafs through his Muñoz file and begins to read about the Extbatteria
brothers
, goes back through the clippings of their father’s pièce de résistance: the Bilbao bombing of 1986.

Old man Extbatteria was hardcore ETA, raised by
poverty-stricken
grandparents in Franco’s Spain. When the old General died, he soon became a part of the inner sanctum of the rebel Basques, hellbent on independence.

Staffe can understand that in the scheme of things, a little misery inflicted on the few might be justified by a greater good. Liberation from a cruel dictator. But what of the lost and lonely lives of those left behind in the carnage of the bombs deliberately aimed at the innocent, not the enemy.

He leans back in his father’s straight-backed Sheraton and hears an ancient creak that whispers of many, many evenings. He didn’t tell his parents he loved them that last time at the ferry. All he had wanted was to burn the E-Type up the A3 to a houseful of party. He calls Muñoz but all he gets is a
mechanical
, foreign voice, presumably telling him that Muñoz is out for the night.

A red light flashes a missed call. It is from Sylvie. She didn’t leave a message. Suddenly, blood prickles in his veins. All chance of sleep is gone, so he puts on his suede jacket and picks up the keys for the E-Type, takes a night drive.

He remembers the day his father turned up with the E-Type and his mother went up the wall. But young Will also saw the truth beyond his mother’s words, saw the smile that lurked: how much she loved his father. Even then, when he was fifteen and not wanting to have anything to do with them, he saw the kind of a man his father was and feared he would never come up to scratch. He made himself come up to scratch, though, and once asked Jessop what he thought of him. ‘You’d pass muster,’ Jessop had said. It made him want to weep.

Staffe turns the ignition off and looks up at the Barbican. Rosa’s curtains are only half shut and he knows she’ll be alone. As he presses and waits, he doesn’t quite know how he came to be here. When he says who he is, she kind of gasps his name. ‘Will,’ she says, ‘you should have let me know. You should call.’

‘Let me in.’

The lock clicks open. He takes the stairs slowly and by the time he gets there the door is open. She’s playing Bessie Smith and when he sees her, dressing gown open and a tiny pair of white lace pants through which he can see her shaven pubis, he knows she has been drinking.

‘I’ll put something else on.’

‘Don’t.’

‘You’ve come to talk, right?’

‘I don’t know, Rosa.’

‘Let me get you a drink.’ She puts a hand on his chest and goes up on tiptoes, kisses him full on the mouth. She tastes of lemon and booze.

He takes off his coat and walks into the bedroom, sits on the edge of the bed and removes his shoes, socks. ‘You got some whisky?’ he calls, lying back on the bed. He can feel the beat of his heart. The light above turns off and he hears her pad up to the bed.

‘What are you saying, Will?’

He looks up at her, kneeling on the bed, smiling down at him. ‘You decide.’ He reaches out and puts his hand on her face. She turns her head and takes his forefinger in her mouth. She sucks on it and looks him dead in the eye. He feels her, through her pants. She pulls her mouth away, takes a slug of whisky and kisses him, lets the spirit trickle into his mouth. She probes him deep with her tongue. He can feel her getting wet, feel her blowing the lid off what prostitutes are supposed to do.

‘Don’t leave it so long next time,’ says Rosa. She steps into a pair of jeans and breathes in as she buttons up. ‘I’ll be fatter and older and then you’ll just want to talk.’

‘What do we talk about, Rosa?’

‘Can’t you remember?’

‘I ever tell you about my father?’

‘Not a word.’

‘Maybe next time.’

‘Or your girlfriend.’

He puts on his shoes. ‘You got anyone coming round later?’

‘Why are you so angry, Will?’

‘Now?’

‘Most of the time.’

‘We don’t know anything about each other, do we?’

‘Maybe that’s the beauty.’ She comes up to him and kisses him, full. She puts her hand inside his trousers.

‘You be careful, Rosa,’ he says, not knowing what to do – whether to offer her money. Surely not.

‘You go, Will. And don’t be a stranger.’

He walks through the living room, closing the door without taking a look back. He takes the stairs two at a time and steps into the street, feeling brisk.

Then he sees it.

‘Bastards!’ he says, walking towards the E-Type. He studies the meticulously spray-painted, stencilled message.

‘Watch your back,’ Staffe repeats, leaning on the E-Type’s roof. He closes his eyes, feels his pulse quicken as he realises they have spoken down his phone line, peered through his windows and now they have etched themselves on his father’s pride and joy.

Staffe checks the padlock and can’t help feeling the vandalising of the E-Type is some kind of back-handed slap from a higher authority. He shouldn’t have gone to see Rosa. He shouldn’t have done what he did there. He likes her, but could never love her – if he knew what that was. He has never been cruel to her, he tells himself.

He walks away from the lock-up and round to the front of the Kilburn house. He is certain he can hear someone
following
him, but when he turns around, the streets are empty all the way to Shoot Up Hill. Up above, the lights are on and the house has a warm glow, as if it were a home to someone. Staffe resolves to be civil to Paolo and, as he knocks, he hopes Johnson hasn’t left too vile an imprint on the man his sister loves.

When she opens the door, Marie breaks into a smile. Her eyes sparkle – none of it tallies with what Staffe knows of the recent events in her life.

‘Is everything OK?’ he says.

‘Everything is just great, Will. I’m so glad I came to you when I did. So glad.’ She stands to one side and welcomes him in with a sweep of her arm. ‘We’re having supper. Paolo has done saltimbocca. We’re having it on our knees.’

Paolo appears in the doorway to the lounge, holding a large plate and a small ream of napkins, as if he is waiting on them with canapés. He takes two long strides up to Staffe and holds out the plate and offers a napkin. His eyes are both black and his pupils glisten from within the slits of the swollen flesh. His smile glints with gold.

‘Christ! What happened to you?’ says Staffe, taking a slice of the pork. It has a leaf of sage and a smear of prosciutto.

‘I cross the wrong people,’ he says casually, still smiling.

‘It’s a sign, Will. It’s all a sign. He’s away from those people now.’ She links an arm through his and rests her head on Paolo’s shoulder, looks up at her brother. ‘We’re together.’

‘Here, I keep my head down.’ Paolo is six foot and lean. His arms are wiry in a vest top and his jeans are trendy shabby. His hair is black and shiny and long. Even though he is all beat up, Staffe can see what a sister might see in him. Paolo places a soft hand on Staffe’s forearm. ‘How’s the saltimbocca?’

The pork and ham and sage have melted in Staffe’s mouth. ‘It jumps in the mouth,’ he says.

‘You know,’ says Paolo, wrapping an arm around Staffe and guiding him into his own living room. Staffe reasserts his preconceptions: that this man is bad; bad for his sister and bad for him.

‘Where’s Harry?’ asks Staffe.

‘He’s flopped out, listening to his music. He’s never without that iPod you got him,’ says Marie. ‘Go see him later, when you’ve eaten. You can put him to bed, but don’t wake him.’

They sit and chat and Staffe lets his mind wander to the
vandalising
of the E-Type. He looks at Paolo and tries to work out if he knows who did for him. He pictures Paolo being kind to Marie and tries to imagine her driving him berserk, giving him little choice than to take a hold, shake her out of it. He feels his blood heat up and he stands, shakes his arms down. As he does, he thinks he hears something outside, but the curtains are drawn.

‘Stay, Will. You and Paolo need to get to know each other.’

‘I won’t be long.’

‘She told me all about you, Will,’ says Paolo. ‘The man who has it all. Her big brother.’

‘I haven’t got it all. Far from it.’

‘I’m sorry about what happened,’ says Paolo.

‘Sorry?’

‘Go see Harry. See your nephew.’

When he goes upstairs, Staffe looks out of the landing
window
. Two street lights are out and the double-glazing is too good to let any sound in. He’s sure somebody is out there, but there’s no evidence.

Harry has fallen asleep in the space that was intended to be Staffe’s music room. The alcoves either side of the Arts and Crafts fireplace are shelved at thirteen-inch intervals to accommodate his vinyl. Sylvie picked out the fireplace a couple of years ago on a weekend that re-established them as friends. That soon
faltered
. But the room is a success and as if to prove its purpose, young Harry has music piping through his Apple white buds as he sleeps.

Staffe wonders what his mother’s grandson is listening to, but daren’t disturb the flow. He gets gooseflesh when he thinks what his dead parents would have given to hold their grandson.

Harry is lighter than Staffe expects, like marshmallow. Staffe smells the clammy crook of his neck. He hopes he will be big when he grows up, not take any shit. But he questions this and revises his wish. He says a quick prayer that Harry is everything his mother’s mother would want him to be. As they stand in the half light, tears run down Staffe’s stubbled jaw and fall on his nephew’s hair. He has no clue what his mother would wish for her grandson. He doesn’t dare think how wide of that mark his own life has been.

He carries Harry out of the room and sits on the stairs. He rocks gently back and forth and whispers a story. He makes it up as he goes along and in the end young Harry saves a princess who didn’t ever know who Harry was. She lived happily ever after.

‘What the fuck!’