by Adam Creed
‘She was going to get rid of her baby, wasn’t she, Michael?’
‘It’d be a life sentence, to bring it up when you think where it came from. A constant reminder. I can see how she saw it.’
‘But you wanted her to keep the baby, even so?’
‘That’s because I just can’t imagine her not. You know, what that involves.’
‘I need to know exactly what you did that day. Where you were.’
‘I wouldn’t harm her. I couldn’t. I just didn’t know what to do for the best.’ He stands up, takes a marbled blue notebook from his pocket. It has an elastic band around it and when Michael removes the band, he takes a stack of betting slips from the back of the notebook. ‘It’s my weakness. She thinks I don’t do it no more.’ He laughs: the weak satisfaction of a meaningless victory. ‘I keep track, see, of what I stake and what I win.’ He flicks through the pile of pink slips and picks out half a dozen. ‘All losers from that day.’ He reads out the names and the racecourses and the times, even the odds, from the 1.05 handicap chase at Wincanton to the 5.43 dog race at Walthamstow.
‘But I had a winner.’ He flicks through the notebook. ‘Thrice in Bundoran. I had two quid on at fifteen to two. I ended the day a quid down. Not much, for a whole afternoon’s entertainment.’
‘You could have got these slips from off the betting-shop floor.’
Michael looks hurt, says, ‘Ask in the shop. They know me.’ He sits back down and they watch the two fishermen for a while. ‘She came to me for help and what did I do? I made it worse. I said she had to let it run its course. I was worried for her. You should have seen her the last time, when she lost it. I couldn’t bear the thought of her having that done to her. I was being selfish, that’s what it was.’
‘Anthony knew, didn’t he?’
‘She was scared and she came to me. He knew all right, the bastard.’
‘What do you think he might have done?’
Michael shakes his head.
Staffe says, ‘Anthony told me he couldn’t ever hurt Zoe.’
‘He did that to her, though – when she wasn’t interested.’
‘Do you think …?’
‘Don’t!’ says Michael. ‘I can’t think about that. I’d kill him. Fucking kill him.’ His hands turn into fists and he bites his lip. ‘I’m sorry, Inspector. I don’t swear. Not normally.’ After a while, Michael stands up and says, ‘I turned a blind eye. It’s not what a father should do.’
*
Josie watches DI Smethurst walking down from Putney Bridge to the riverbank. He is Smet, to his friends – not that he has many – and he’s with the Met; and some kind of a mucker of Staffe’s, though Josie would never put them together.
Every so often, Smet tries to hitch his belt a little higher, but it doesn’t last more than a dozen paces. He sucks on a cigarette and has a sheen of sweat on his forehead and jowls. As he gets close, it is clear that he doesn’t know what he’s looking for, so Josie stands up from the low wall that runs between the Duke’s Head and the Thames and says, ‘DI Smethurst?’
His eyes light up and he can’t help himself look her up and down. ‘Chancellor? Have we met?’
‘I was in uniform.’
‘Is he here?’
‘Given? He’s inside.’
‘You have got the all-clear to do this?’
‘Yes,’ says Josie, looking away, across the river.
‘You spoke to Staffe. He said it was OK?’
‘Yes.’ She turns quickly, pouts at him, watches him blink.
‘Good. This is a favour, you know.’ Smethurst leads the way between the luncheon stragglers and the early bar, through the dining room and right into the front snug. There, dappled in the low spring sun, is a suited heavyweight with a steely mop of golden hair. He has an open shirt with thick gold around his neck and jewels on most of his fingers; a loose-fitting watch the size of a manhole cover. He is flanked and faced by cronies who are in tucks of laughter at something he has said. The table is littered with empty and full heavy-glassed tumblers of whisky and half-pints of lager.
‘To what the pleasure?’ Tommy calls to Smet, raising a glass. He doesn’t see Josie straight away, but when he does, he stands, cuffs his neighbour and offers her the chair.
‘Maybe not here,’ says Smet.
‘I’m drinking.’
Smet leans down, puts a hand on Tommy’s shoulder as if they are on the same side and whispers something.
‘This lot can fuck off,’ says Tommy. ‘Ten minutes?’
Smet nods and the cronies gather up their drinks. As one, they take out their packs of cigarettes, no doubt glad of the relief.
Josie figures that Smet must have told Tommy they were here about Sean Degg, and that Sean isn’t a subject to be discussed in front of that particular group of hangers-on.
Tommy holds up his hand towards the barman and makes a rapid gesture with a twist of his golden hand. By the time Josie and Smet have settled into their seats, three whiskies and three halves of lager have been brought to the table and the occupants of the neighbouring table ushered away.
Tommy clinks glasses with Smet, then Josie. Smet necks his whisky and Josie follows suit, swallowing away her flinch.
‘Didn’t take you long,’ says Tommy.
‘You’ve read about Sean’s wife?’ says Josie.
‘Who’s running this?’ says Tommy, swiping Josie with a sideways, dismissive glance.
‘This is DC Chancellor, City CID,’ says Smet. ‘I’m only here for the beer.’
Tommy laughs from deep within his keg chest, says, ‘Constable skirt, hey? I must be going down in the world.’
‘Sean Degg has gone missing,’ says Josie. ‘He’s a suspect for his wife’s murder and we know that we’d find him in no time if people would talk to us. It seems that people won’t talk about Sean, though. Some say that Sean is a low-life and would have got his comeuppance years ago if it wasn’t for you.’ She tries her damnedest to hold Tommy Given’s look.
‘Tongues wag in the strangest ways,’ says Tommy.
‘Maybe Sean told us about you and him.’
Tommy plays with his heavy watch and looks past Josie as he addresses her. ‘You’ll get to hear some fucking shit in your line of work, Constable. People might call Sean “low-life”, but take it from me, he’s not. He has integrity. That’s a hard thing to find.’ Tommy curls his lip.
‘What makes you and him so close?’
‘What makes a tight little missy like you want to work with scum like Smet?’
‘Whoah, Tommy.’
‘You steer clear. You go asking questions about me and I’ll know. It’s bad for business.’
‘Sean’s in trouble, Mr Given. He needs to hand himself in. Why do you protect him?’
‘Fuck off.’ Tommy raises his hand again and flicks his wrist. The barman collects the empty glasses and the hangers-on come back in. They sit close to Josie, eyeing her up and getting lewd.
Josie says, ‘You’re a part of this investigation, Mr Given – until you can prove we’re wasting our time.’
‘You just try, missy. See what happens.’
‘Come on, Chancellor,’ says Smet, taking her by the arm.
She wrings herself free, watches him weave his way out through the crowded bar, and then follows him – at a distance.
*
Staffe persuades the constable at Liverpool General to let him see Anthony Bright, dark-eyed and with his left wrist heavily bandaged. He is pale, seems to have lost much weight this past week.
As soon as Anthony sees Staffe, he can tell the inspector means business. He drags a chair up to Anthony’s bed, talks fast, in a raised whisper.
‘We need to go way back, to when you first impregnated Zoe. Shall we call it that? I guess we could call it a lot of things, couldn’t we? How long were you with her before you realised she found you vile? Before you had to persuade her because you just didn’t do it for her? You must have felt small.’ Staffe brin
gs his finger and thumb almost together, right in front of Anthony Bright’s eyes.
Bright looks up at the uniformed PC by the door. He leans right back in his bed, but Staffe leans further forward – still in his face. ‘It’s a strange kind of love, that, isn’t it, Anthony? You’ve got your house and that’s a two-year-old car in the drive. But it doesn’t count for much when your wife won’t carry your baby unless you force her, hey, Bright?’
‘Get away from me.’
Staffe reaches into his hip pocket, puts the parcel on the bed. He unwraps it, painstakingly. Immediately, you can smell it. The herring skin is grey and silver. It is shiny and the smell of its souse is sweet and acidic. ‘For you,’ says Staffe, offering Anthony the rollmop.
‘Get it away from me. I hate that shit. Why d’you bring that? Why?’
Staffe reaches into his inside pocket and slams a piece of paper on the desk, followed by a pen. He turns to the uniformed officer, shouts, ‘Get this bastard’s lawyer in here. He needs to think again about his statement. Now!’
‘I can’t, sir. I …’
The PC looks around, shifts from the doorway, standing to one side to let DI Alicia Flint into the room. ‘Inspector Staffe,’ she says. ‘A word.’
In the corridor, Staffe and Flint face each other.
She says, ‘You shouldn’t be here. Not after the other day. Not without me.’
‘I got him herring. He doesn’t like it.’
‘What?’
‘Zoe used to buy rollmops in Parkgate. They should be for him, but he doesn’t like them.’
‘You need to leave him to me, Inspector. You really do,’ says Alicia.
*
Catherine Killick hangs her keys on the coat stand’s hook in the Minton-tiled hallway of her fine cottage on the outskirts of the New Forest. The nights are beginning to draw out and she makes her way into the large farmhouse kitchen, listens to her security aide manoeuvre his way across the gravel drive and drive away, into town for the Chinese.
She places her red ministry box on the scrubbed pine table and kicks off her shoes. Miss Etheridge has been in and set the fires, and a smell of burning wood hangs in the house. She rubs her stomach and opens the box, flicks through the papers. She will do them first thing in the morning, knows she will rise at first light, if not before; she doesn’t have to be at the hospital until ten.
Cathy wonders how the press – or, God forbid, the people – will react to Vernon Short’s bill being laid to rest; and what of the missing woman in Liverpool? Will she be superseded by some different kind of news altogether?
Her husband, Alex, is in Brussels until Friday and she misses him. He should be back tomorrow, and she was quite cruel when he left. She wants to take back what she said. He is a good man, will be a good father.
The wood crackles in the grate and she eases herself slowly down to her knees and removes the guard, riddles the fire, feels its heat on her face. This baby is a long time coming. Upstairs, the floor creaks and she looks behind her. For a moment, she thinks Alex might have come home early, but then the radiators rattle and she realises it must be the house groaning as it warms through.
Cathy watches the flames and loses herself, wonders how much time she will ever have for this baby. She will be forty-two next year and when she found out she was heavy with child she had cried tears of unrestrained joy. Alex had been shocked, said he didn’t know why she was so happy, said that she had never said she wanted a baby so badly; had said nothing about the baby that she could have had, fourteen years earlier when she was first shortlisted for that safe seat in East Hamlets.
She stands, heaving herself up on the brass coal box at the side of the fire, not wanting to think about that. Cathy puts a milk pan on the Aga and pours in some blue top. She watches it begin to roll, sliding it off the heat so it doesn’t boil, and she thinks what a wonder it is, that she has made it so far – to here. All she ever dreamed of. She tips a wary glug of whisky into the pan and puts it on the table, lets it sit until the spirited milk forms a skin, which she will skim. She will sleep well tonight.
After the first sip, her head feels gladder, as if she is better prepared for what’s coming at her.
The floorboards creak again, and again she turns around, hoping she might see Alex in the doorway and she gasps, thinks for a moment that he is here. She actually puts her tongue hard on the roof of her mouth to say the ‘D’ of ‘Darling.’
The eyes of the man in the balaclava are wide and mad, and his lips are the red of pillar boxes. His teeth are yellow. ‘Sit down,’ he says, coming towards her and tapping a leather cosh against his thigh.
Cathy cannot move. The baby presses down on her bladder as the man takes her by the arm.
His breath is sweet and bad. He places the end of his leather cosh on her stomach.
Cathy misses her breath and her heart misses two. Her mouth loses its form and her lungs are empty. ‘Why?’ she whispers, unable to look at him.
‘You know why. You can’t pick and choose just to suit your own fancy.’
He touches her and she makes tiny steps as he directs her towards an armchair beside the dresser. He takes out a phone, presses a number and she hears her own tone pipe up from within her handbag. It is ‘Dreams’ by Fleetwood Mac and for an instant she catches a scent of that young girl. Less blemished.
The man grabs her bag and takes out the phone, then removes the battery. He throws the two parts of the phone on the fire. Curiously, Cathy calls out, ‘You can’t do that.’ She doesn’t actually know what happens if you put batteries on a fire, just that it’s bad.
‘You think I want to do this?’ He drags a dining chair to her and sits on it. Once more, he rests the end of his cosh on her belly. It is heavy, harder than it looks and she thinks it has lead in it. She bites her lip, can easily imagine herself crying.
The man says, ‘You kill babies, don’t you, Home Secretary? That’s what people will say. They’ll say, what’s so special about her baby?’ When he talks his lips seem mad and out of kilter with his words. ‘They’ll say that you choose who lives and who doesn’t, so why can’t someone like me?’ He presses the cosh and she shifts back, the chair hard to her spine and nowhere further to go. He follows, with the tip of the cosh.
‘I don’t …’ says Cathy, unsure what she could say for the best.
‘You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? I’m here to speak for the ones who have no voice.’ He says this by rote, like a child in a classroom. He stares Cathy in the eye. Everything is still. ‘And that includes your child.’
Cathy loses her breath again. She gasps.
‘You had your career, then. And now, you are having your baby. Now it suits.’ He stops talking, leans back and his wet lips spread into a smile.
Cathy sees a slackening in the man’s eyes.
He lets the cosh slide down and away from her stomach and he stands. He breathes deep. His chest rises and falls, slower. He envelops his top lip within his bottom, then opens his mouth, saying as slowly as he can make himself. ‘We want the killing to stop but we know that can’t happen, not overnight. But we can make it better. You can make it better. We get the bill, right? This way, or the other. It is our time. It’s what the people want – for Vernon to change his mind, before it’s too late.’
He tosses the cosh to Cathy and she catches it, just, but its tip knocks into her. She holds it, watches him go. She hears the door close, then his steps across the gravel. And she cries, and cries, holding and loving her baby – and mourning, too.
Seventeen
Staffe tips a third miniature into the plastic cup which the Metropolitan Hotel has provided for his bathroom. He is now on the brandy, having drunk the Bell’s and the Glenfiddich. He should really go down to the White Star, which is his kind of pub – cloistered with panelled booths, segregated from the bar by stained-glass panes and with an array of proper beer. But here he is, sitting at the foot of his bed looking out onto the city. Between the civ
ic monoliths he can see the top of the Liver Building, the black sky beyond, laid out above Wales.
He slowly goes over what Zoe’s father had said to him and what he said to Anthony Bright, and what Flint had said to him. He knows Bright is still holding out on him, but can see that he might have gone too far. Sometimes, though, you have to go too far.
Staffe looks at the brandy and swirls it, watches it catch the light. Round and round.
The phone rings and he downs the spirit in one, feels its burn, easing into the gut of him. ‘Yes,’ he says.
‘We’ve got a problem.’ It is Pennington and he sounds unnerved. Pennington is never unnerved – or so he would have it.
‘You’ve got a problem?’
The phone is silent. He can practically hear Pennington seething.
Pennington says, ‘Jesus.’
‘What is it, sir?’ In the window, he can see himself looking him in the eye. He seems lost, with the waterfront city behind him.
‘I’m in bloody Hampshire, man. In the middle of nowhere. This case is out of control.’
‘Hampshire? Why didn’t you send Pulford?’
‘I’m trusting you, Staffe. This goes no further.’
‘Go on.’
‘I’ve just been with the Home Secretary.’
‘Cathy Killick?’ Staffe feels bilious. He should have eaten.
‘She’s been threatened. They said they’d kill her baby. The Home Secretary! It’s a bloody disaster.’
‘It must be that bill of Vernon Short’s.’
‘Straight to the top of the class, Staffe.’
‘You need to get hold of Lesley Crawford.’
‘She’s gone missing. Quelle bloody surprise! You’d better get yourself back down here. Tout suite, man. I don’t care what time you get in. You call me. And not a word of this to anyone.’
Staffe puts down the phone and packs as quickly as he can. When he is done, when he looks out on the city, glimpsing the estuary between the buildings, it feels wrong. His work here is not done and he picks up the phone, calls Alicia Flint.