Suffer the Children (4 page)

Pennington gives Staffe a look that could kill. He takes a step closer and lowers his voice. ‘You know that bastard Golding – and all the bastards he runs with – had it coming. And you know that poor sod of a postmaster will be a
quivering
wreck for all his days. Kelly was your witness, Staffe. Your witness. I’ll get him away from here, don’t you worry. Bloody visas!’

Staffe can’t say anything; can’t remind Pennington it was his idea to conjure up Sohan Kelly. He looks Pennington in the eye. ‘I’ve never believed that ends justify the means, sir.’

‘For fuck’s sake, Staffe’ – Pennington is talking through his teeth now – ‘I’m not going to have another ethical debate. I’m telling you, what’s done is done. And by Christ, justice has been done.’

‘Not my kind of justice, sir.’

‘There’s no place in Jadus Golding’s world for philosophers. Remember, Golding did it! And what’s more, Wagstaffe, the buck stops with you.’ Pennington jabs a finger at Staffe, pulls himself up short from actually touching the chest.

‘Don’t I know it, sir. Don’t I know it.’

Pennington plays with his cuffs again, calming himself. ‘So. You get yourself off, Staffe. Leave us to take care of this.’ He nods up at the Limekiln tower. ‘It’s a done deal by the looks of things. The wife’s gone missing. Odds on it’s her. Open. Shut.’

‘And if it’s not?’

‘Then we’ll gather the evidence. The way we always do.’

‘You’re short-handed.’

‘There’s always the Met if we’re struggling.’

‘The Met!’

Pennington turns sideways, takes a step away. ‘Get yourself off, Staffe. Trust me, we can survive without you.’

Staffe makes his way into the night. As he walks towards his car, Pennington’s Jag purrs past, red lights fading to nothing and just as he is left all alone, with the Limekiln tower
looming
like a monster in the dark sky, he hears a bang! And glass falls to ground from the street light above. The street goes dead, dead dark. Staffe stops in his tracks, fears the worst. He clenches his fists in readiness. For what?

He looks behind him and up at the dark tower, then he hears something. He peers into the dark, sees a moving shape by his car. He knows he can’t take a backward step, so he walks slowly towards his car, watching his steps. Catcalls ring out from inside the Limekiln. Dogs bark. Closer, Staffe is sure he can hear breathing, heavy. As he gets to the car he hears
something
behind him and he spins round, calls out, ‘Who’s there!’ He flicks on his pocket Maglite and casts a sharp beam out into the night. Nothing. He checks up and down the street. When he turns to his car, the beam illuminates a fresh
violation
. The letter
J
is key-carved into the car door. ‘J,’ he says aloud. ‘Jadus bloody Golding,’ he whispers to himself.

Opposite, two figures in baseball caps and hoods drawn down, look out at him from a boarded shop doorway. They could be anybody. A car speeds by. Anybody could be in it, carrying anything. In the City, there’s too many people, too many vehicles. The headlight swoop seems to show that the hooded youths in the doorway are smiling.

Back in his suit, Guy Montefiore is inconspicuous. In this part of Fulham the worlds of City and Media rub shoulders with white trash.

He switches back and forth, avoids the one or two streets that butt up from the big estates. He makes the smallest detour to pick up some tonic water from Oddbins and as he comes back out on to the street, a man in a flight jacket on the
opposite
side of the road turns quickly away. Guy checks around him. It doesn’t feel as if he’s being watched and he knows, as one who watches, what to look for.

He doesn’t have to wait long when he gets to Tanya’s street. Tanya Ford uncouples her arm from her friend and they kiss on both cheeks. Tanya skips up the steps to her tiny townhouse and the door opens before she can knock. She is loved, but she didn’t see Guy. She never does.

Within ten minutes, Guy is delving into his Gieves & Hawkes trouser pocket and sticking his key into a million quids’ worth of late Victorian terraced house. He kicks off his shoes and goes into the study that used to be the family room. He dials Thomasina’s number. As it rings – and usually it rings and rings and rings before she picks up – he tucks the phone into the crook of his shoulder and makes a middling G & T, takes a sip and shoos the cat off his armchair with the tip of a toe.

‘I want to speak to Thomasina,’ he says to the male that answers. Some dirty bastard her mother has dragged home.

‘Is that her dad? They said to say you can’t.’

‘Who are you?’ Guy’s heart goes double fast.

‘Fuck off. I’m her boyfriend.’

‘Her boyfriend? Whose boyfriend? Not Thomasina’s.’

But it’s dead.

Staffe has locked down the Kilburn flat and given Josie a key so she can take in the mail and water the plants.

The Tube doors slide shut and Staffe feels a tiny pocket of emptiness – a single air bubble can close down an entire heating system. Last night, when he got back from the Limekiln estate, visions of Jadus Golding tampered with his sleep again and now he feels tired, shakes open the
Guardian
, trying to get the mind clean, working in straight lines again, but he sees the front page of somebody else’s
News
. The headline is:

He squints at the strapline that runs beneath an old
photograph
of Karl Colquhoun.

A Crime That’s Not a Crime?
More pages 4 and 5.

He takes a hold of the
News
and tugs it down to see a
wide-eyed
young Asian man looking up, afraid. ‘It’s OK. I’m police. Can I borrow your paper?’

The young man nods, folds it neatly and hands it across.

Staffe accepts it, says, ‘Sorry. Here, have this,’ handing him the
Guardian
.

According to the
News
, Colquhoun’s murder is a crime of passion. His wife, apparently, has had to give her children up because of what Karl did to his kids from a previous marriage; and if the wife did it, could that make her more saint than sinner? She would be doing society a favour.

Staffe rereads the report but his mind is distracted by the very opposite kind of a killing: as cold-blooded and
indiscriminate
as they come. He closes his eyes, tries to picture his
coming
together with Santi Extbatteria in Spain. The train builds speed on its way towards Heathrow as the distance between stations grows. It rocks from side to side and the more Staffe thinks about what happened to his parents, the closer his eyes clench, tight shut. His stomach churns and his mouth slowly fills with fluid. He swallows. He wants to be sick. He wants to get off but knows he can’t. 

DCI Pennington scans the room to check on the team at his disposal. The temporary incident room at Leadengate Station is undersized and packed tight. ‘I want you, Johnson, to stay bang on top of this. Report directly to me and keep them at it. With a bit of luck, this should be done and dusted within a week.’ Pennington looks around the room. ‘Where is DS Pulford?’

‘On his PlayStation,’ calls out one of the DCs. The laughter spreads.

‘Very funny. Now, where is he?’

The room falls silent.

‘Well find out. I want everyone keyed into this. Done and dusted, I say. Done and dusted.’

Johnson had been off on the sick for a week but he soon got better when he heard Staffe was on his way to Spain, that Pennington needed someone to ride shotgun. Now, he stands tall, leaning against the open door, red hair receding, his sleeves rolled up showing thick, pale forearms, freckled like a salmon. He is struggling to keep the smile off when he feels a tug on the tail of his jacket.

‘You’re better, Johnson.’

He turns round, hisses, ‘Bloody hell! What are you doing here?’

‘Thought I’d keep an eye out.’

‘You heard the DCI. It’s practically done and dusted.’

‘In which case I can take my leave next week. And anyway, where
is
Pulford?’ says Staffe, leaning against the far wall, obscured from Pennington’s line of vision.

‘You heard. On his PlayStation.’

‘I know you know, Johnson, so why don’t you just tell me.’

‘He’s chasing down the wife. Leanne Colquhoun.’

‘And he’s taken a counsellor, or at least a WPC?’ says Staffe.

All Johnson can do is shrug.

‘You bloody idiots.’

‘She’s got a sister, down Southend.’

‘And Pulford’s got a warrant?’

Johnson shakes his head, feels like he’s at school again. But just as Staffe prepares to unleash a full onslaught, Johnson sees his attention wane. It’s DI Wagstaffe’s turn to play the
schoolboy
as Pennington gets wind of him.

‘Staffe!’ booms the DCI. ‘What the hell …’ 

In Staffe’s office, Pennington stands dead still in front of the window, pushes out his narrow, pigeon chest and furrows his brow. ‘I thought we agreed you should take some time away. Especially after the Golding case.’

‘It can wait, sir.’

‘I had this under control, you know. I told you – we can
survive
without you.’

Staffe wants to say,
I know your game. You’re pushing for commissioner and if you can put a front-page crime to bed without your senior DI then that’s all to the good. You
ambitious
bastard!
But all he says is, ‘I know, sir.’ He remembers the first time he ever met Pennington. Staffe was a DC and had just been taken under DS Jessop’s hard-nosed wing. Jessop and Pennington had both gone for the DI post and Pennington had won. His knife was sharper. Jessop and Staffe would be together for fifteen years and even though Jessop made DI, Pennington would always be a step ahead.

Pennington turns his back, signifying their meeting is over, and Staffe’s heart sinks as he reminds himself that Pulford has gone chasing after their only suspect without any backup. All he can hope is that Pulford draws a blank.

DS David Pulford puts the unmarked Vectra through its paces, driving it a gear higher than you’d drive your own as he cuts down off the A127, following the estuary alongside the reclaimed land they’ve taken from silt to make money.

He tries not to think of the bollocking he might get, for not waiting for the warrant. He left a message for Carly Kellerman, Leanne Colquhoun’s caseworker, and then had driven out of London as though it was he who was fleeing the scene, not Leanne Colquhoun. Nobody had seen Leanne come home to the Limekiln from her job at Surrey Racing, but around six thirty she had run off the estate screaming like a banshee.

From what Pulford has gleaned so far about Karl Colquhoun, he’s led the kind of life that takes the ‘victim’ out of ‘murder victim’. ‘Give the wife a medal not a prison
sentence
. What’s a mother to do, to protect her kids?’ – is the way it sounds to most.

Pulford knows the case could be an opportunity for him, but he quickly chastises himself for wanting to profit from such things, even though he, too, is something of a victim. He
realises
exactly what they think of him at Leadengate CID: a
fast-tracked
graduate who’s already a detective sergeant, even though (some say) he knows jack shit and has only taken four years to learn it. He had three years drinking and screwing, playing on his Playstation and watching
Countdown
while better men, men like Johnson, were getting their hands well and truly dirty, pushing back crime in the city’s sordid corners.

The satnav directs him on to a new-build brownfield estate down by the wide brown river. It’s designed for the
aspirationalists
, for thirty-somethings busting both balls to try to get ahead. It’s not where you’d expect Leanne Colquhoun’s sister to be. In other words, it’s not Holloway.

Pulford knocks twice, loud, and takes a step back. He looks at the pretty face that appears by the jamb of the door and glances down at the photo. It could be a dolled-up Leanne, he’s not sure.

‘I’m here to …’

‘Yes,’ she says, ‘we were expecting you. Leanne’s upstairs. You’d better come in. Take your shoes off, if you don’t mind.’

Pulford’s heart skips one, two beats. Now he knows she’s here, he might be in schtuck, might also be on to a good thing.

‘She just wanted some time, you know.’ She nods towards the living room and he goes through, wishing he had brought a WPC.

‘I’m Detective Sergeant Pulford.’

‘Karen Donnelly. I’m Leanne’s sister, but you know that, don’t you.’ She sits down, looks out through the sliding,
metal-framed
patio doors that give on to ten by ten of new-laid
decking
, a tiny lawn beyond, then medium-brown fencing. ‘She loved him, you know. Always did.’

‘Colquhoun?’ says Pulford, taking out his notebook,
scribbling
away.

‘She did the worst thing, but she did it for him. It’s a terrible thing, love.’

‘She killed him for his own sake?’

‘She let them take her children away,’ says Karen Donnelly, staring to infinity. ‘Love.’

‘Did she tell you she killed him?’

She fixes a stare on Pulford, lets it burn into him. He flinches and looks away as she tells him, slowly, to ‘Fuck off.’

‘Did Leanne tell you how he died?’

Karen Donnelly shrugs.

‘He can’t have treated her well.’

Karen looks at him as though she might be about to confide but decides against it. She shakes her head.

‘You’ll have to come with me to the station. It’s Leadengate, in the City.’

‘Aha. Fancy crimes.’

‘Nothing fancy about this one,’ says Pulford, stopping
himself
from giving away any details of the cause of death.

‘I’ve got to pick my children up from school at four. Then I have to make dinner. Then I’ve got to go to work.’ She looks around her home. To Pulford, it seems as though she might resent it, the things she does to pay for it.

‘What about Leanne’s kids? Doesn’t she want to see them?’

‘Children. She’s got children,’ says Karen Donnelly. ‘Goats have kids.’

‘Don’t ask her fuckin’ nothin’,’ says Leanne Colquhoun,
coming
down the stairs. She looks younger than in the photograph, looks to Pulford as though a burden might have been lifted. ‘We can get my kids on the way. As long as it’s all right with the fuckin’ caseworker. I’d like to see them.’

Pulford looks at Karen who looks at the floor. She looks ashamed.

Staffe parks the knackered old Peugeot in the Kilburn lock-up alongside another vehicle, which is covered in a dirty dust sheet. He closes the heavy steel doors, fixes the padlock and looks up at the back of his house. Built to last by the Victorians. It was a good buy but it’s not home and he thinks he might let it out, might move across to one of his better houses in a better neighbourhood – even though it isn’t long since the scaffolding came down and the skips were towed to landfill. He stops this thought, though, wondering if he is thinking this because of Golding’s threats. Has he suddenly allowed a nineteen-year-old gangster to turn him into a coward? But is it cowardly to lean away from a blow, to swerve a tackle?

There is a light on upstairs – even though it’s daylight, even though he turned everything off. He goes to the fence, presses his face against it, peers through a knothole in the wood. He can see a shadow moving across the dining window.

He rushes round the front of the building and takes out his phone to call for back-up. A closer inspection of the front door shows no sign of forced entry. He puts the phone back in his pocket and is just about to put his key to the door when he hears a scream from inside the house.

It sounds like a woman but he can’t be sure and Staffe stands, frozen. There is another scream, and the low murmur of someone crying. A raised voice – through an open window upstairs. He locked the house down, he’s sure.

Staffe runs down the steps to the lower-ground floor and bounds back up, holding a spade that he keeps in a damp storeroom. He peers through the letter box, sees nothing but can smell recent cigarette smoke. He hasn’t had so much as a drag on a Rothmans in three years.

He puts the key to the door again, hand shaking, and takes a deep breath, steps inside. The noise comes from upstairs and it is definitely a woman.

‘Oh my God. Oh my God,’ she says, as if she is pleading for mercy or for help.

As he goes up the stairs, spade in hand, Staffe hears someone crying and tracks the sounds to the back bedroom, where he had seen the light. He pauses, holds the spade out ahead of him and notices splatterings of blood on the carpet. There is a trail from the bathroom. He kicks open the door to the bedroom, rushes into the room and the howling of the woman within redoubles.

‘What the hell! What the …’

‘Marie?’ he says.

Her hands are covered in blood; horror written right across her face.

Staffe looks at a child, curled on the floor and clutching his blood-smeared head, sobbing. ‘What’s happened. Who did this?’

‘It’s your fault,’ says his sister. ‘It’s your fault, you idiot, Will.’

‘Where did they go? Where are they!’ Staffe is kneeling down by the child, taking him in his arms and saying, ‘Harry, are you all right? Oh, Harry.’

‘Of course he’s all right,’ she says. ‘It’s me that’s cut.’ She holds out her arm to show Staffe. ‘I cut it on that bloody
stupid
shower screen of yours.’

‘What are you doing here, Marie?’

‘You said I could come any time. You gave me a key.’

‘You could have let me know.’

‘You’re supposed to be on holiday. If you can call it that!’ She looks daggers at him and sits on the edge of the bed,
holding
her bleeding arm. ‘Oh shut up, Harry. Please!’

Staffe picks up his nephew from the floor and holds him to his chest then sits on the bed next to his sister, wraps an arm around her. Even though one is soaked in blood, the other in tears, he savours the moment, feels the relief course through his veins.

‘It’s nice to see you, Marie.’

‘Oh yeah. Just great,’ she says.

Young Harry is in Staffe’s lounge bemoaning the fact that there is no Nickelodeon to be had from the small-screen TV. The best Staffe has managed is to dig out an old pack of cards and quickly teach him how to play pontoon. And now he has returned to the kitchen to patch up the boy’s mother.

‘You should go to hospital.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ says Marie.

Staffe rolls her sleeve right up and looks at the wound. The glass shower screen cut the inside of her forearm but missed the vein by a centimetre or so. He cleans the cut and applies iodine which makes her flinch and as she scrunches her eyes, he takes a closer look at the fresh bruise higher up on her arm. When she opens her eyes, she catches him and rolls her sleeve down.

‘My bet is there’s another one on the other arm. Am I right?’

‘Just concentrate on the cut, Will.’

‘I always said he was a bastard.’

‘And your life is just perfect.’

‘You should report him. He’ll do it to someone else.’

‘Why do you always have to fight other people’s battles?’

‘You’re my sister, for God’s sake.’