Suffer the Children (32 page)

Staffe looks Montefiore up and down. He tries to forget what Johnson has just said and imagines what Montefiore has suffered, what chances there are of finding some sort of treatment to remedy him, what chance to fashion some kind of justice.

Johnson draws back the machete and sizes up the rope. Another spurt of urine falls on Montefiore’s thigh and Johnson laughs. Staffe holds his breath and thinks of Josie trapped in Gibbets Lane; his parents in body bags in the hold of an aeroplane.

Staffe holds the breath, still. He holds it and imagines his blood turning silver. He closes his eyes, summons all his strength and in one movement he stoops down, pulls a plug from the wall, grabs hold of the TV and launches it at Johnson. In the same instant, he screams, making Johnson look away from his target and as the TV hits him full in the chest, Staffe takes one, two, three strides and throws himself at Johnson. They fall to the ground and he hears the metallic clang of the machete’s steel, loud, close by his head.

Johnson is underneath him, the hood all askew and he looks up. His arms are spreadeagled and he still has hold of the machete. He brings it up sharply. Staffe sees it coming and ducks his head, as sharp and fast as he can, full in the face of Johnson. He hears the slap of flesh and the cracking of bone. Johnson groans weakly and the machete drops from his hand. Staffe leaps to his feet and kicks the machete away, puts his boot on Johnson’s throat, but there is no need. He is all done in.

He looks down at Johnson, pulls off the hood. Up close and amidst the subsiding panic he can see now just how grey his skin is, and everything begins to make a little more sense. ‘What
exactly
is wrong with you, Rick?’ says Staffe, lifting his boot from Johnson’s throat.

His gums and the inside of his mouth are brilliant red. ‘As if you care.’ He coughs again and spits out blood. He turns on his side and draws his knees to his chest.

‘Are you in pain?’

He nods and puts a hand in his pocket. Staffe watches him closely, picks up the length of steel and readies himself. Johnson pulls out a small medicine bottle.

‘It’s terminal?’

Johnson nods.

‘And you’re close to the end?’

‘This would be a good time … you reckon?’

Staffe reaches down and grabs the bottle off Johnson.

‘Let me ease the pain.’

‘You’ll want to say goodbye properly,’ says Staffe, knowing Josie’s well-being hangs on the slender whim of Sally Watkins.

‘Call Sally off and you’ll get the goodbye you’d want.’

‘Go to hell.’

‘The goodbye Becky would want.’

‘She’s taken care of, don’t you worry.’

‘Is that what the fifty grand was for?’

Johnson looks up, a last blast of adrenalin feeding his shock.

‘Fifty grand won’t get her and the kids very far. I bet you invested that money – was it an insurance policy, Rick? Was it?’

‘That’s none of your business.’

‘It won’t be valid.’

Johnson sneers up at Staffe. ‘It is. Trust me.’

Trust me.

‘Is it a life policy? Even if you weren’t diagnosed when you took it out, they won’t pay if you commit suicide.’

‘What?’ says Johnson.

‘And believe me, if you don’t call Sally Watkins now, I’ll make sure the world thinks you committed suicide.’

‘You wouldn’t do that.’

‘Try me.’

‘You couldn’t.’

Staffe thinks of Josie, curled up in the corner down at Gibbets Lane; thinks of Errol Regis, too, and the terrible fate that awaits him, lying prostrate alongside the axe and the tar – a long, drawn-out death, another cycle of suffering and healing. A fate that is worse than death.

He bends down, goes through Johnson’s pockets and finds what he is looking for: a syringe. ‘There’s more than enough morphine here. Maybe you just couldn’t take the pain any more, or the humiliation of being caught.’ He puts his boot on Johnson’s chest and takes the top off the morphine and depresses the syringe, making sure all the air is expelled. He puts the needle into the liquid and draws it up into the barrel of the syringe. ‘There was only you here, Rick. I can remove myself from a scene just as well as you. I’ll do it. Believe me, I’ll do it. They’ll find you all alone and pumped full of all this.’ He thrusts the hundred-mill bottle of morphine into Johnson’s face.

‘Leave her alone. Leave Sally. Please. You don’t know.’

‘Call her!’ Staffe bends down, his knee on Johnson’s chest, pushing out a rattling wheeze.

Johnson shakes his head, closes his eyes.

Josie comes round, slowly. A dull pain comes from her ankle but when she tries to straighten up, it sears up her leg like a series of stabs. Now she is conscious, it is an effort to breathe. She slumps back to the floor, her face on the rough carpet. She can see Sally Watkins’s heavy boots on the other side of the table. She can’t see Errol Regis, but she knows he is there. It is his incessant, muffled moaning that awakened her.

She inches herself on to her back, so she can lift her head, straining to see what is happening. Errol is still laid out, stock still on the table. Sally is in a white robe and hood and she is tightening the lashes that pin Errol to the table. As she makes her way around the table she curses and spits at him. He is crying.

Josie says, ‘Let him have his say, Sally.’ She tries to struggle to a sitting position in the corner under the window. Her arms are tied behind her back and her legs are bound at the thigh and ankle. She thinks her right ankle might be broken. Her skirt has ridden up around her waist and she feels exposed. Strange, in these circumstances, but she is embarrassed.

‘He had his say in court. Don’t you believe in justice? And he had his say when he done what he done to Martha. You seen Martha, have you? She’s fucked, man. Fucked.’ Sally picks up the axe from the table and lets it swing by her leg. She moves round the table, picks up a saw.

‘What will you do, Sally?’

‘Cut him off at the knee.’ As she says it, Sally shakes her arms and the heavy weaponry flails. The axe and the saw seem too heavy for her to wield. ‘I know how. Then put the tar on. Stop the bleeding, see. So he gets it long and slow. Long and slow, man.’ She paces round the table, wired, and Josie wonders what the girl might be on.

‘But what will
you
do? When it’s done,’ says Josie. She reckons that if she can keep Sally talking, the local response might get here in time.

‘I got somewhere to go, don’t you worry.’

‘Will you meet Jessop? In India?’

Sally laughs. ‘You people are just shooting in the dark, right?’ She swings the axe and saw to punctuate her words.

‘You can’t kill him, Sally. I have back-up coming. I called in before I came here.’

‘You should of waited for them.’

‘Go now, Sally, while you can.’

‘I’ve got time, more time than you think.’

Sally puts the saw down and places a hand on Errol’s leg, just above the knee. She holds the axe high. He squeals through his gag and his body convulses – as much as it can. Sally slowly removes her hand from his leg and holds the axe high with both hands. She plants her feet, square and bends at the knee, setting herself like a boxer or a gymnast. Her breasts rise and fall against the robe.

‘No!’ shouts Josie.

In the distance, a police siren warps, gets louder. Josie curses AMIP – giving the all-clear for the locals to use a siren to cut through traffic, shaving a few minutes or so off their journey time.

‘I told you, they’re coming.’

Sally slowly lowers the axe and hisses at Regis, ‘Don’t worry, it’s gonna happen. I’m gonna cut you up and stop the blood. You’ll live for days, man. It’ll kill you. The pain.’ She takes the saw and swings it through the air, as if it is a toy. Then she uses it to cut into the curtain and tears a strip off. She reaches inside the robe and pulls out a ball of gauze.

Josie says, ‘We’re on to you. We know Jessop’s got Montefiore. DI Wagstaffe’s gone to get him.’

Sally laughs again and leans down, takes hold of Josie’s face. ‘You know fuck all.’ She squeezes Josie’s mouth, forces the gauze roughly into her mouth and secures it by tying the strip of curtain tight around Josie’s head. ‘Now! We’ll have some quiet while they come and go.’ She switches off the lights and goes out of the room. The front door opens and closes and when Sally comes back into Errol Regis’s front room, she throws a number
18
on the floor. Then she tightens the gag around Errol’s mouth and sits cross-legged on the floor, her head dipped, as if she might be in a primary school assembly.

No sooner is she sitting comfortably than the police-car doors slam. The footfall is steady. She hears the police knock, but it’s too far away. There are voices, raised in argument, then falling in a calmer trail of resolution.

‘Silly police, they’ve gone to the wrong house. Someone must have got the number wrong.’

Josie tries to work this out. She thinks back to how she came to know the house. She came with Johnson. But even if they had a bogus number, or even if the numbers on the houses have been switched, surely the police will check the houses either side. She tries to recall exactly what she had said when calling for back-up. A break and enter, is what she said; a connection to the Colquhoun murder but no mention of Errol Regis. She should have referred to him by name and she silently chastises herself, holding her breath, praying for the knock to come on Errol’s door.

A glimmer of torchlight shines across the window. She can hear the police talking, a few feet away on the other side of thin glass. It seems the storm might have abated. And Josie thinks that maybe this could be what God wants. She considers how it might be: that what Sally is about to do, might be for a greater good.

‘What did they say?’ says one policeman.

‘A break and enter.’

‘You sure you got the number right?’

‘Course I have. It’s derelict by the look of things. There’s no one in here. We can check back with the station.’

The voices fade and the car doors open and slam shut.

In the dim quarter light, Josie watches the headlights beam and curl away.

Sally resumes her preparations. She says to Regis, ‘See, you got plenty time to suffer. Suffer like the children.’

Staffe puts the syringe between his teeth and takes hold of Johnson’s arm. ‘You’re going to call Sally, Rick.’ He slaps Johnson’s arm with the back of his fingers. He inspects the red flesh for an emergent vein, and slaps again. He takes aim. Can he kill a dying man?

He feels sick, that he might be able to do this to a man he’d call a friend. Many times in their shared lives, Johnson had stepped in and saved Staffe – on the street and in station politics. You have to trust – that’s how it works.

Staffe moves the syringe quickly to the raised vein on Johnson’s white arm and closes his eyes. Time seems to stand still. He feels resistance, feels the needle go slowly into the flesh and Johnson’s body goes stiff. Staffe’s thumb begins to press the plunger and Johnson wheezes, ‘Stop! Stop, you bastard.’

Becky Johnson sits at the dining table, young Charlie on her lap and Sian and Ricky at her feet: battling each other in a handheld, virtual world. Ricky whoops and Sian says nothing – as if there is no pleasure in it at all for her.

And all the time, their mother stares at the computer screen with tears running down her face. She can see Montefiore trussed up and lashed to the aluminium cross, but wonders where Rick is, wonders when the man she loves will kill the child rapist. She prays with all her might for that salvation. She reaches down, runs her fingers through Sian’s hair and feels her daughter flinch, go stiff.

When he makes it back to her, she will nurse Rick to death. God willing, they’ll be granted the time to do that together. She hopes that everything he planned comes to fruition.

‘Oh, Rick,’ she says, full of fear. Full of pride. ‘Why did it have to be you?’ On the table by the side of the laptop is a pile of documents from the insurance company. She has been re-reading them. Now the time is near, she can’t believe there isn’t some kind of loophole. But it is clear. Even should he be convicted and die in prison, the policy will still bite. It will reach out and comfort them – the family of a murderer. A serial killer, is what he said it would be. How sweet the law can be, sometimes. She remembers the way Rick smiled when he worked it all out – even though it was his life that was ending.

She begins to sob and Ricky reaches out to her. He does it instinctively, doesn’t stop playing his
Call of Duty
with his free hand.

‘Don’t mind me,’ she says to her children. ‘Just being silly again.’

‘Is Daddy coming home?’ says Ricky.

She can’t bear to answer. She doesn’t want to lie more than she has to, which makes her wonder about the lies Rick might have told her. He swore that he got the diagnosis as soon as he could, that he didn’t wait until the policy took hold. But how could that be true? She holds the baby tight and she looks down at her eldest. Poor Sian. She looks at Sian and she hugs young Charlie so tight that he begins to cry. She wants to hold Sian this tight but she knows she can’t.

‘You’re hurting him, Mummy,’ says Sian. ‘Stop it, Mummy. You’re hurting him.’

Becky Johnson looks back to the screen, where Guy Montefiore hangs like a Scorsese Christ, and she wills her husband to stick it to him. For the children.

‘Will you call her?’ pleads Staffe. ‘Call Sally. Call it off.’ The needle is in Johnson’s arm and Staffe’s thumb is on the barrel.

Johnson’s eyes well with tears. He nods his head.

Staffe takes his thumb off the barrel and says, ‘Give me your phone.’ He leaves the needle in Johnson’s arm while he twists his torso, reaches round the robe and into his trouser pocket. He tosses the phone on the floor.

Staffe removes the needle, stands up. He picks up the phone and scrolls down through the numbers, is amazed that she is there, under
Sally
. He presses ‘Speaker’, then ‘Call’, and listens as the number beeps through the handset. They look at each other, listening as the phone rings and Sally Watkins answers.