Pain of Death

by Adam Creed

  ‘Have you got a minute, sir?’ Josie Chancellor helps herself to the chair opposite Staffe and begins to read the preliminary forensic findings from the tunnel. As she reads, she winds strands of her shoulder-length, smooth brown hair around her fingers. ‘Only one blood type. Kerry Degg’s.’

  ‘And no signs of a placenta?’ says Staffe.

  ‘… Not a sausage. There’s no sign of a birth down there. The scene was cleaned up, spick and span. We’re checking all the hospitals. But what Sean said is true, sir. Kerry Degg is on our missing-persons list. From the tenth of January.’

  ‘That doesn’t make what he said true. I assume he was the one who reported her missing.’

  ‘He did.’ She pushes the papers across the desk and leans back, brushing her hair from her face. ‘Why’ve you got it in for Sean Degg?’

  ‘I’ve got it in for whoever put that woman down there. For whoever knocked her up and abandoned her. I’ve seen nothing to tell me he didn’t do those things. Unless you know who else might have.’

  ‘She’s the promiscuous one – by the sound of it. She’s the mother who let her kids go into care and got herself knocked up again.’

  ‘If there’s two sides to this story, let’s hope she gets to tell hers.’

  ‘She’s a victim. It doesn’t mean he can’t be, too.’

  Staffe smiles, stands up. ‘Where d’you get all that wisdom from, Chancellor? Let me buy you a drink.’

  ‘Have you forgotten?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s Pulford’s party tonight. His new place.’ Josie shakes her head slowly, smiling. ‘You should know, you used to be his landlord. Surely you’re coming.’

  ‘Of course I’m coming,’ says Staffe, lying. ‘Doesn’t mean we can’t have a quick sharpener, though.’

  ‘Where are you suggesting we go?’

  ‘You’ll see,’ said Staffe, dialling reception. ‘Jom, have you got that search warrant for the Deggs’s place? Good.’

  ‘You said a drink.’

  ‘And I meant it.’

  ‘But Sean won’t be there. He’s gone back to the hospital.’

  On the way out, Staffe picks up the pile of paper for his properties, tugs out the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet with the toe of his Chelsea boot, dropping in all the accounts and leases and variations. It makes a metallic thud and he kicks the drawer shut, fast. As he leaves, he feels life flutter in his chest. The prospect of the ordeal ahead makes him glow, like a chance meeting with someone you secretly adore. This reaction is not something he admires in himself.

  *

  The Earl Marshall sits as proud as it can in the shadow of the mid-rise, late-Victorian Limekiln tenements. The Limekiln Tower looms above. The pub hasn’t been knocked about with any vigour in over a hundred years. The rooms are separated by etched-glass panels and the spring sun floods in through smeared, ceiling-high windows. The swagged, heavy drapes look like they haven’t been cleaned since they buried Queen Victoria, and the red-topped, veneered tables are sticky with glass rings and weeks of spilled beer. There is a smell of dog and the punters are sitting down, rather than standing at the bar. They sit on their own and look into their pints and chasers, or at their shoes, or into the racing pages.

  Sean Degg, however, is talking animatedly to a tall, sharp-dressed man ten years his junior, Ross Denness. Sean Degg doesn’t know that in a recent phone call, Ross fingered the Earl as Degg’s local. And to preserve this deceit, Denness takes his leave, edging away from Degg, towards the door. He will wait for Staffe in a car down on Jellicoe, the other way from Degg’s place on Flower and Dean.

  Josie says, ‘How did you know he’d be here?’

  Staffe nods towards the man leaving the pub by the side door.

  ‘Aah. Ross Denness. You’ve still got your paw on his tail?’

  Staffe takes a step towards the bar and everyone looks up. The side door slams shut. Sean Degg clocks Staffe, who takes the warrant from his pocket and waves it at Degg. ‘Thought you were desperate to get to the hospital, Sean? Finish your drink and take me to your place.’

  ‘You’re harassing me.’

  ‘I’m protecting the public, and that involves going through your home. If your wife doesn’t recover, it’ll be murder, according to our legal department. Whoever took her down there left her to die and we won’t be settling for anything less. There’s a baby’s life here, too.’

  ‘I haven’t seen her for three months.’

  ‘Eighty-eight days, by my reckoning.’ Staffe puts his hand heavily upon Sean Degg’s shoulder and Kerry’s husband tenses up, blinking. Staffe knows everybody in the pub has him down as a copper, so he leans right up against Degg, whispers in his ear, ‘I’ll see you back at yours in ten minutes. Get the kettle on, eh?’ And he pushes a folded twenty-pound note into Sean Degg’s shirt pocket – for everyone to see.

  *

  Denness is in the driver’s seat of his Audi A4, dragging on a Benson’s and listening to some high-revving dance music.

  ‘Nice motor, Ross. Things must be rosy for you just now,’ says Staffe, sliding into the passenger seat, turning down the music.

  Denness turns the music back up, says, ‘That’s my business. We had an understanding.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that. What can you tell me about our friend Sean?’

  ‘He’s a fucking loser, man. He loves that slag and if you ask me, he wouldn’t harm a hair. But he did say something.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Are we even?’

  ‘I guess so – if it puts him on the hook.’

  ‘What if it gets him off the hook?’

  ‘Let’s have it, Ross.’

  Denness powers up the engine and toys with the accelerator. The throaty surges of power clash with the dance beats. ‘He was desperate for her to have that baby. Reckoned it was his. You know the other two aren’t.’

  ‘How’d he know it was his?’

  ‘She beat him up. Proper mashed him. Used a wheel-nut spanner on him when she found out she was knocked up. Said it was his fault. She must have given herself a coupla months off from sleeping around, or stuck to giving head, or …’

  ‘All right, all right. I get the picture.’

  ‘Muppet reckoned the social would let them keep this one on account it was botha theirs. He’s in pieces, man. I kinda feel sorry for him, you know. And he loves her. You’d better believe that. Sad fucker.’

  *

  Sean’s house on Flower and Dean is a modern, urban-infill house from the eighties. Inside, Kerry Degg is everywhere: framed and posed, black and white portfolio photographs, colour shots of her on stage with jet-black hair and showing silk and flesh.

  Staffe walks across to the laminated kitchen pier and lifts his mug of tea, delves into Sean’s shirt pocket for the twenty-pound note.

  ‘They all think I’m in your pay now,’ says Sean.

  ‘You’re going to have to tell the truth, then. Don’t want both sides of the law holding it against you.’ Staffe picks up one of the many framed photographs of Kerry. She pouts into camera with her face tilted up and a hand gripping her head; one foot up on a piano stool, showing her legs off. She wears a tight-bodiced, slit dress. The look is unmistakably burlesque.

  ‘Kerry’s a singer.’

  Staffe looks around the flat. Its interior contradicts the building it is in, and its locale. Hippy scarves hang from light fittings and theatre prints and record sleeves adorn the walls. Patchouli is ingrained and all the LPs are alphabetised, from Oleta Adams to Frank Zappa. An eclectic mix of blues and soul, jazz and vaudeville. In the kitchen, an optic rack holds Pastis, Tanqueray and Havana Club. Over the years, Staffe has been in many houses and flats, bedsits and squats. None quite like this.

  He pulls open a drawer and suggests to Josie that she makes a start on the bedroom.

  ‘These things are precious to us. This is our life,’ says Sean.

  Staffe picks up a flyer for a show last October at the Boss
Clef. ‘Lori was her stage name?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  He does know her.

  On the flyer is written, LORI DOS PASSOS. Below the photograph of Kerry, pouting, DOES BURLESQUE. And, for sure, Kerry’s performances were risqué. Staffe had seen for himself, in that drunken hinterland of the final break-up from Sylvie.

  Josie calls down from the bedroom and he goes up, telling Sean to sit down and keep his hands off everything.

  Standing in front of a whole wall of opened wardrobes, Josie says, ‘This lot doesn’t come cheap. Christ. Why do they live in a place like this?’

  ‘Because they spend all their cash on Kerry’s career?’ says Staffe, running his hand along the rails of sequined, brilliantly coloured silk and satin dresses, skirts and blouses. Above, hats and scarves. Below, neat pile after neat pile of corsets and knickers, bras and belts.

  ‘And it might have been about to pay off,’ says Josie. ‘That burlesque is all the rage, you know. Look at this. It was in her bedside drawer.’

  Staffe takes the letter, an acknowledgement of receipt of contract from Rendezvous Enterprises. Phillip Ramone runs the two most successful clubs in Soho, and has seemingly offered Kerry a residency at Rendezvous. Fifteen hundred quid a week.

  ‘What a shame,’ says Josie. ‘Just as she was about to break through.’

  ‘Into motherhood again,’ says Staffe, storming back towards the lounge. He takes a deep breath before going in, walks slowly towards where Sean sits. He wants to lift him up by the throat and launch him into the wall, see what the weasel would say under real duress. But he forces himself to concoct another way.

  ‘Were you going to look after the baby, Sean?’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘Different, when the biological father’s intent on giving it a home. And things picking up, too – with Kerry’s career. This one was yours, wasn’t it?’ Staffe sits alongside Sean, puts his big hand on Sean’s small, bony knee. ‘You’d make a good dad, Sean. That’s my guess. And all the support you’ve given Kerry over the years. She was growing away from you, wasn’t she?’ He looks around the room. ‘Getting too big for all this.’

  ‘I don’t know what she’s done with the baby. Honest, I don’t.’

  ‘There is no baby, is there, Sean? Kerry had her career to think about.’

  ‘I helped her every inch. Not that I got anything out of it. But she’s worth it. She’s special.’

  ‘I know. I’ve seen her.’ Staffe takes the Boss Clef flyer from his pocket. ‘I was there, that night. Some show. You wouldn’t have guessed she had your child inside her.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘And I wouldn’t have guessed she’d have beaten up her husband – so bad he had to call the police.’

  ‘I asked for it.’

  ‘What exactly did you ask for, Sean? You said you didn’t get anything out of her. Why should you?’

  ‘I curated her. I found her and developed her. I saw what nobody else did – before it was even there.’

  ‘You curated her?’

  ‘It’s what I do. I just wanted her to love me. That’s all.’

  ‘They say you should never marry too good.’

  ‘That’s shit. You’ve got no choice who you love.’

  ‘But Kerry did.’

  ‘She loves me, all right. In ways you’ll never understand. We’ll always be together. She knows that.’

  ‘I’ll understand, Sean. Don’t worry about that.’

  Josie comes in, swinging a clutch of clear plastic bags. ‘Driving licence, passport, bank details. She hadn’t planned to be away for long. Not exactly doing a runner, was she?’

  ‘You could have told us that, couldn’t you, Sean? But you decided to withhold on us.’ Staffe stands up, looks down at Sean Degg and holds out his hand. Josie unclips the cuffs.

  ‘I never touched her. I never could. I never could!’ Staffe goes down onto his knees and takes a hold of Degg’s chin with finger and thumb. ‘If that’s so, there’s nothing to worry about. And nothing to fear from the truth – which you’d better start spewing up. Because if you don’t, and if Kerry never comes round to give her side of the story, you’ll be going to a dark place.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ says Degg. ‘I can’t do time. I can’t.’

  Three

  As soon as the uniformed officers had arrived at Flower and Dean to take Sean Degg back to Leadengate station, Staffe walked back to City Royal to see how Kerry Degg was progressing.

  He sits alongside her, hoping with everything he can muster that she pulls through. Lying there, with her greasy hair combed straight and her skin deathly white and her broken lip butterfly-stitched, you could not compute that she lives her life upon a stage, that her house is adorned with such exotica, that she can estrange her own children.

  ‘Her chances are slim.’

  Staffe turns quickly as a dark-haired nurse pulls up a chair. She has olive-coloured skin, smooth as Wedgwood, and dark eyes. She is solemn.

  The nurse says, soft and northern, ‘How on earth will you find the baby?’

  ‘We have alerted all the hospitals and clinics.’

  ‘How did she get down there, after she’d given birth? Your sergeant told me about the tunnel.’

  ‘My sergeant should watch his tongue.’

  ‘He seems a decent sort. He said he was having a party.’

  ‘And no doubt he invited you.’

  Now, the nurse smiles. ‘As a matter of fact he did.’ She looks at Kerry Degg. ‘It doesn’t seem right. Not tonight.’

  ‘You can’t have that attitude in your job, surely.’

  ‘Sometimes, it gets to you. It’s awful, to see a mother and no child.’

  ‘A party might take your mind off it.’

  ‘Are you going?’

  ‘I have to.’

  ‘You make it sound like a chore.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Nurse Delahunty. Eve.’

  ‘I’m Staffe.’

  ‘Aah. I heard,’ says Nurse Eve.

  *

  Pulford’s flat is in the eaves of a Victorian town house and Staffe is pleasantly surprised at the turnout. Pulford has never been the most popular of sergeants, on account of his fast-tracked progress, courtesy of a degree in history, but there is a smattering of officers from Leadengate and a couple of dozen others who are patently not police.

  He has laid on an impressive spread, with a full range of spirits and a dustbin full of beers on ice. Some kind of Northern Soul morphs with House. The young people represent a side of Pulford he never saw when the young sergeant lived at Staffe’s flat in Queens Terrace.

  ‘We’ve brought Degg in,’ he says to Pulford as he gives Staffe and Nurse Eve a tour of three small rooms.

  ‘I never said, not properly –’ Pulford is the worse for wear, has lipstick on his face. ‘– how grateful I am, sir.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘No.’ He turns to Nurse Eve. ‘He took me in when nobody else wanted to know. I was up to here.’ He raises a hand to the ceiling. ‘But I’m over all that shit now. I’m all set, and it’s thanks to him. Have a beer, sir.’

  ‘Just one,’ says Staffe. Nothing worse than being amongst the half-cut. He thinks this might be the first party he’s been to since he split with Sylvie.

  He sits on the edge of the bed, alongside Nurse Eve, and Pulford brings their drinks, gets pulled away by a drunk girl who looks about eighteen. ‘She was into burlesque,’ he says. ‘Kerry.’

  ‘I’ve never been.’

  ‘You should.’

  ‘It’s strange. When they come to us, in states like that, they could be into anything and we’d never guess.’

  ‘They could be guilty of anything.’

  ‘Cynic,’ she says, laughing. When she laughs, her eyes glisten and the flesh between her eyes crinkles.

  Staffe thinks, Nurse Eve should laugh more. He thinks she has a good spirit, has sadness close by. He also thinks that
she is unlike Sylvie, that she lacks Sylvie’s confidence. And he wonders if he has a type.

  ‘I should leave you alone. You look as if you have some thinking to do.’

  ‘I have. But I don’t want to.’ He raises his bottle, clinks it against her wineglass. ‘So, you’ve never been to burlesque. You should try it.’

  *

  Josie turns away from Sean Degg who is disconsolate in the holding cell. She says to Jombaugh, ‘Do you want me to do it?’

  ‘You look done in. Leave him to me. It’s a withholding charge, you say?’

  Josie beckons Jombaugh outside, keeping an eye on Sean Degg, who looks as if he might be coming down from something. She whispers, ‘Staffe wants to leave him a few hours. Keep Buchanan away from him and let him stew. He knows more than he’s letting on.’

  Jombaugh looks into the cell. ‘Is he on something?’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘I’ll run a piss test on him. That’ll buy some time. You get yourself home. It’s been a rough day.’

  Josie lets herself out the back of the station, into the car park. She thinks she hears something. An animal or possibly something human. She can sense a presence. She sniffs the air, thinking it might be a crafty fag being had. No smell. But something is moving in the car park. She can feel it, and peers into the corner of the yard, where the bins are kept, listening intently.

  This time of night, the car park is less than half-full. Josie makes her way slowly to the far wall, which adjoins Cloth Fair. She shines her torch along the gap between the parked cars and the wall and hears a shriek, then a scamper of padding feet. Her heart pounds, then stops. The cat jumps onto a ledge, up onto the high wall and beyond, into the night. Josie’s heart starts up again and she laughs to herself. Pure relief. She switches off her torch and makes her way towards the pedestrian gate.

  A car draws along Cloth Fair, its headlight beam sweeping towards Josie, then away. She sees it. She isn’t going mad.

  At the foot of the railings, wrapped in a tea towel, the baby seems blue. Its eyes are shut, tight. Its lips are white. The silence of the tiny creature makes Josie’s heart pound harder this time, and for several moments she is frozen.