Willing Flesh (14 page)

Sylvie is on all fours and moaning, low and deep. Her hair is up and held by a quarter-inch paintbrush. Shavings litter the Bokhara rug he bought her. She applies the final stroke to a thin sample of wood and sits up, cross-legged, swivelling to face him.

‘What do you think?’ She looks at the strips of stained wood.

‘Who’s it for?’

‘Some spoiled brat at St Paul’s. Father’s a Syrian.’

‘The walnut one,’ he says, pointing.

‘You think?’ She looks up at him, quizzically, then back at the sample, squinting. ‘Hmm. You’re right.’

Staffe sits on the beanbag under the hip window. He watches her tidy up. She keeps the studio immaculate. A place for everything. Hands on hips, she looks down at the violin carcass, the components that will govern her next days.

‘I didn’t know you’d gone back to the MA,’ he says.

‘I’m sure I told you. I spend my life talking to wood. People are sometimes more interesting. You should know that.’

‘Give up work, then,’ says Staffe, taking himself by surprise with this sudden tack.

‘What?’

‘Let me look after you.’ He slips his hand in his pocket, fingers the old velvet of the ring’s box.

‘I’ve only just got business steady, Will. I’m getting a few referrals now.’ It is less than a year since she set up on her own.

‘But you want to study psychology.’

‘Everybody does, sooner or later. It’s very probably a phase.’

‘Displacement,’ says Staffe.

‘Very good. Have you been reading my books?’

‘You could study and we could live off my wage. It will be no hardship.’ He takes out the velvet box and looks at it. He daren’t look at her. Suddenly, he feels sick. The muscles in his arm can barely extend as he reaches out, hearing himself mutter, ‘I thought you’d like it.’

Sylvie slides the box from his fingers, says, ‘Oh, my,’ and goes to a tallboy that stands all the way up to the beam in the gable. She places the unopened box on the cabinet and pours them each a glass of Bushmills. She hands him his and goes back to the tallboy, picks up her gift.

She looks at Staffe, then at the box, as if she is on a game show and considering whether she might be better off leaving it unopened. Now, for Staffe, it feels as if life will never be the same again. She licks her lips, slowly lifts the lid.

When she sees the Urals ring, her smile spreads all the way to her temples and she purrs, ‘Inspector, they can say what they like about you, but you’ve got impeccable taste.’

And with that, she slides the ring onto the third finger of her hand and reaches out, fingers splayed up, considering her jewel. ‘Do you mind, Will, if we think about it.’

‘Think about it?’
Staffe realises the ring is on the right hand. The wrong hand.

‘I don’t want things to change. It’s often for the worse, isn’t it?’ She looks like a child when she says it – not quite understanding her own words.

On his way downstairs, he turns on his phone, sees
Josie Josie Josie
scroll up on his missed calls list. He picks up the last message first and listens as she tells him he has twenty minutes to get back to her or else she’ll have to take Rimmer with her to the home of the second dead. He checks his watch and makes the call, with a minute to spare, wondering what kind of omen that is.

*

The man who lets Staffe and Josie into 21D Arlington Road has said he is called Mitch and that he has no papers at this gaff to prove it. He sits, cocksure and strangely removed as Josie tells him his girlfriend has been stabbed to death.

Staffe considers what Josie has told him about how Rebeccah Stone was murdered, and he appraises her supposed boyfriend with the harshest eye. ‘What are you coming down from, Mitch?’ he says.

‘’t you talkin’ about.’ He pronounces it
abaarht
, which gets right up Staffe’s nose. This reconstructed, trendy, dealer cum pimp talks half wannabe black, half mockney. Staffe wants to knock his withdrawals right into next week. He might do.

Staffe looks at Josie, says, ‘The girl was stabbed six times. Correct?’

‘That’s right, sir.’

‘And this
prick
is a suspect, right? If we find something here to charge him with, he has to be held on remand because he’s likely to abscond.’

‘They’re waiting between two and four months for trial at Pentonville.’

Staffe hitches his chair right up to within inches of Mitch.

Mitch leans away from Staffe, not looking him in the eye.

‘Or,’ says Staffe, reaching out and removing Mitch’s porkpie hat, ‘we could be done in an hour. We wouldn’t even charge you for what we found in this place. And I wouldn’t let it slip to the guys up the food chain that you’ve been a blabbermouth. That means
grass
, where you’re going.’ He pronounces it
graahs
. ‘You get me?’ Staffe whispers in Josie’s ear, ‘You sure Pulford’s on his way with that warrant?’

She nods.

‘You OK on your own with this one for five minutes?’

She nods.

‘I need the loo.’ Staffe plonks the hat back on Mitch’s head, so it comes down over his eyes.

He double-locks the front door and shunts all the bolts across the door. In the bathroom, he looks down out of the window, susses that this truly is the pad of a mid-level drug dealer: the bolts, the escape via the bathroom; the first floor, low enough to risk jumping, high enough for a pursuer not to follow suit.

Staffe lifts off the cistern lid and sees the outline of tape marks, but nothing there now. He sees the way the linoleum curls at the skirting boards and kicks away the stained, damp rug, pulls up the lino. Sure enough, one of the floorboards is screwed down, not nailed. He pulls out his keyring and uses the tiny penknife to unscrew. The board rises. Pinned up to the underside of the next board is a plastic bag full of wraps – each housing a fat corner of powder, amounting to forty, fifty grammes. Minimum. Staffe smiles. In different circumstances he would have kissed the big bag.

As he rolls the lino back, on his hands and knees, he sees that the plastic sealant around the bath is loose and the panel isn’t secure. He pulls the panel away and peers in. Nothing there, it would seem, but he reaches right in, smells the damp and dirt of the floorboards. He bangs his head on the shell of the bath and reaches as far as he can, feels plastic against the tips of his fingers. A nerve in his shoulder pinches and he bangs his head again, curses, and snags the plastic between his fingers, wrenches it.

Staffe sits back, cross-legged, and looks at the bag. Not what he expected. He can see there’s a Post Office savings book, and a notebook, some doodlings, and an envelope with
PRIVAT
written in a long, elegant hand.

There’s a rap at the front door and Staffe stands up, trousers the drugs and tucks the plastic bag full of Rebeccah’s secret world down the back of his trousers. He unlocks the bathroom door and rushes into the hallway, sees Josie letting in Pulford.

‘You got the warrant?’

Pulford hands it across and Staffe tosses the stash bag onto the floor between Mitch’s feet. ‘Sing, birdie.’

Mitch furrows his brow. ‘You what?’

‘Elena worked for Taki Markary. You know that.’

Mitch makes a bad job of trying to look blank.

‘Who did Rebeccah work for?’ Staffe prods Mitch’s bag of goodies with the toe of his Chelsea boot.

Josie says into the radio, ‘Sergeant? It’s Chancellor. We need a car up at Arlington Road, Hackney. It’s number 21. Possession and Dealing.’

‘All right!’ says Mitch. ‘All right.’ He sparks up a cigarette. ‘He’s a Russian.’

Staffe takes the radio off Josie. ‘I said, “Sing.”’

‘I want my lawyer.’

‘Six times, she was stabbed. Once for every year you’ll do for this,’ says Staffe, picking up the bag of wraps, tipping them on the floor. He picks up a clutch of wraps and walks over to the recumbent Mitch, pressing his knee into the dealer’s chest and grabbing his nose. When Mitch opens his mouth, Staffe shoves in the wraps and grabs Mitch’s face, clamps his mouth shut.

‘Sir!’ calls Josie.

‘Six fucking times, and left to die where dogs go to piss and perverts jack off. Now you tell me what you know or you’ll swallow this bastard lot and it’ll be just another junkie dying. See who mourns you! You …’

‘Sir!’ Pulford takes a hold of Staffe’s shoulder.

Mitch’s eyes are bulging and he is gurgling, trying to spit.

‘Sir, he’s going to play ball. Look!’

Staffe takes his hand away and Mitch spits out the wraps. One of them has burst and he foams, is sick down the side of his armchair. ‘I don’t know anything,’ he sobs and coughs and clutches his guts, spitting out again and guzzling from a can of lager by the fire. ‘Without me, she’d have been dead years ago. On the game since she was fucking thirteen so don’t blame me for her life. You think I like what she does?’

‘It didn’t stop you skimming off her.’

‘She needs me to fix her up. She can’t ever give it up. You think I didn’t try?’

‘What about Elena?’

‘Becx was always going on about how beautiful she was and how fucking smart. Just like Arra.’

‘Arra?’

‘Thick as thieves.’

‘Was she one of Markary’s girls, this Arra?’

‘I never heard of him.’ Mitch puts his head in his hands, talking to the floor. ‘Arra’s just some posh bird playing street.’ He is trying to work out if the rock is more harmful than the hard place. Eventually, he says, ‘Becx worked Tchancov’s patch. Parlours and suff.’

*

When he gets to Leadengate, Staffe re-rigs the incident room chart. Josie and Pulford input and sort Rebeccah Stone’s data.

The murders of Elena Danya and Rebeccah Stone featured different methods. You might say they don’t connect – unless it is tit for tat. Markary’s girl is killed. Tchancov’s girl is killed.

Pulford says, ‘I don’t see how they have to be linked.’

‘Rebeccah called Elena hours before she strolled to her death in the Thamesbank.’

‘But why would Tchancov kill Elena Danya?’

‘Why would Rebeccah Stone have been in the Kennel on her own? See if Janine has got anything off Stone’s body.’

‘We’ve got traces of semen, sir, from the mouth. She wasn’t penetrated.’

‘Neither was Elena,’ says Staffe.

‘That’s consistent with a frustrated sexual attacker,’ says Josie.

Staffe turns round, frowning. He sees Rimmer coming into the room.

‘We’ve got him. We’ve bloody got him!’ pronounces Rimmer, coming into the room, pinning a typed document to the evidence board.

‘What’s that?’

‘Blears has been identified as being at the Thamesbank Hotel at ten to four on the seventh. Ten minutes before Danya was killed. Ten bloody minutes.’

‘Who by?’

‘The bellboy, a young man called Mulplant. Gary Mulplant.’ Rimmer taps the document with his finger. ‘It’s all there. Graham Blears is our man. Maybe you should go off on your wild-goose jaunts more often, Staffe.’ Rimmer pats Josie on the back and says to Staffe, ‘Just so long as you leave me this one – hey, Josie!’

Staffe leaves the rest of them to celebrate getting their man and, once in his office, locks the door, lays out the contents of the plastic bag from Rebeccah’s bath. He is beginning to regret not submitting it with the rest of the evidence. It tells the story of a girl on the brink of getting away, on the back of ‘foreigners’, paid in to her Post Office account once a week. From the jottings and calculations on the papers inside the savings book, it seems her debt with Tchancov was dragging her down.