Pain of Death

by Adam Creed

He watches her go, sees that April looks glum as she watches Eve leave, without so much as a backward glance.

  Staffe gets out his notebook, jots down names in a ring around the name ‘Kerry’. He writes: Phillip Ramone, Tommy Given, Bridget Lamb, John and Sheila Archibald. Then he flicks back through his notes, finds the name of the teacher from Kerry’s poems, writes: Troheagh. Outside the circle, he writes: Eve.

  *

  Lesley Crawford looks up at Nottingham Castle, across the Trent from the university lawns, and fondly remembers picnics here. She thinks back to her first tutorial group and pictures the students’ faces. Clear as bells, and all girls – for some reason.

  Her phone rings, and from the ringtone, she knows immediately that it is the wrong phone. How could it be?

  Lesley scrambles in her bag and pulls out the bog-standard Nokia. The battery sounds as if it is about to die, and that name is on the screen. It makes Lesley want to shiver. The name is untrue, now. It fades as the battery dies.

  Lesley walks towards the river, takes out the sim card – although it only holds one name – and throws both the handset and the card into the waters, wondering who the hell was using Zoe’s phone to call her.

  Twenty

  Jombaugh whistles when he sees Tommy Given’s place, at the end of a hundred-yard track and through a five-bar gate. This is the posh side of Cobham. A breeze shimmers in the tall elms and yews. A dog barks.

  The house itself is old and stone, with low, leaded windows and mullions. Out front are a new-plated Merc GL, an old and clearly rehabilitated Alfa Spyder, and a knackered short-wheelbase Land Rover with large mounted spots like frog’s eyes and a horse box hooked up. Round the side are four newly built stables in dressed stone.

  The dog bowls up, snarling. Some kind of bull terrier with a head like an anvil and shoulders like hams, a tiny arse and slobbering chops. Pulford gasps, takes a step back, but Jombaugh goes down on one knee, as if meeting royalty, and pats the dog, slaps its shoulder and holds its muzzle with both hands, playfully shaking it left and right.

  Pulford takes a step away as the dog howls with joy.

  ‘Not lost it, Jom!’

  Jom stands up and the dog jumps up at Pulford, snarling.

  ‘Sarge,’ whimpers Pulford.

  ‘All right, Tommy? A long time,’ says Jombaugh.

  ‘Good for both of us.’

  ‘Sarge!’ calls Pulford.

  Jombaugh clicks his fingers and pats his thigh and the dog comes to him. ‘It’s not the dog that bites,’ says Jombaugh. He stabs a finger at Tommy Given. ‘This one’ll poison you.’

  ‘Very funny,’ says Tommy. He looks at Pulford as if he might recognise him. ‘Not so funny, is why you’re here.’

  ‘We need to eliminate you is all,’ says Jom. ‘Just tell us where you were last night, Tommy.’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Let’s not make a fuss, in front of your family.’

  ‘Fuck that, Jom. You can ask my wife. I was in the Duke’s Head early doors. There’s six of my mates can vouch for that, and the bar staff.’

  ‘But just your wife after that?’ says Pulford, looking down at the dog, who growls up at him.

  ‘And my daughter. And the guy from the Thai restaurant. He came round with a takeaway at half-eight. Why? What’s up?’ Tommy turns his back, walks away round the side of the house, through a loggia with honeysuckle climbing all over it. He pauses, takes a bud between his big thumb and forefinger. ‘These are too early. I don’t know what’s going on in the world.’

  Jombaugh and Pulford follow him. The dog has its head against Pulford’s trouser bottoms.

  A woman appears from a conservatory at the back of the house. A swimming pool is covered with blue tarpaulin. She wears a kaftan and has her auburn hair up in a careless bun. She is beautiful, delicate and with a young child. She says, ‘Hello,’ in a foreign accent. Probably French.

  ‘This is Sabine,’ says Tommy. He says her name in a perfect, soft accent. ‘These men want to know where I was last night,’ he continues, in his thick and wide London accent.

  ‘Ahaa. Like the old days.’ Sabine laughs. Her voice is fine as porcelain. ‘He was here, with me and our daughter.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ says Jom. ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘Giselle is napping,’ she says.

  ‘Maybe next time,’ says Tommy.

  ‘I’m not so sure you’re telling the whole truth,’ says Pulford. ‘You were with my DC.’

  Tommy nods at his dog, who jumps up at Pulford.

  Pulford steps back, bangs into the loggia.

  Sabine laughs and Tommy looks at her, adoringly.

  Tommy says, ‘Come in and I’ll show you my receipt from the Thai. Then you can be on your way – once you’ve told me what I’m supposed to have done.’

  Jombaugh smiles at Sabine, says, ‘That won’t be necessary.’

  Tommy whispers to Pulford, ‘One word from me and that dog will rip out your throat.’

  Pulford wants to tell Tommy that he saw his car last night, that he knows exactly where he was. But he bows to the better part of valour.

  As they make their way back to the car, Jombaugh says, ‘It looks like you’re going to have to tell Staffe we appear to have mislaid a detective constable.’

  *

  Anton Troheagh is biscuit thin, a ginger tom in his lap and a long, thin joint hanging from the corner of his mouth.

  ‘I am police, you know,’ says Staffe.

  The joint jiggles and the ash spills as Anton talks. His eyes are vague and watery, his speech lazy. ‘I take it for pain.’

  ‘Pain from what?’ asks Staffe. Beyond Anton, through the bay window of his first-floor flat, a thick band of Brighton’s beach lies between the balustraded promenade and the sunless, cloudless sky, the colour of kaolin and morphine.

  ‘I’m dying,’ he says, matter of fact. ‘Is this about Kerry?’

  ‘You remember her, still?’

  ‘You know, I’m amazed I don’t remember more about my children. But you couldn’t forget Kerry. She demanded to be known. Not much to look at, but you couldn’t take your eyes off her. She had mischief, you know. It made you want to be her. She didn’t give a toss.’

  ‘And that’s what Sean saw in her, is it?’

  ‘I remember him. Some of the teachers were concerned at one stage, but he wouldn’t harm her.’

  ‘He preyed on a schoolgirl almost half his age.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that. I knew Sean. I was in a theatre group. Just did the pubs, round Islington and Camden, you know. It was just before I left teaching and he was good to me.’

  ‘Because you were Kerry’s teacher?’

  ‘It was she who chased him.’ Anton Troheagh coughs. He doubles up and holds his ribs, wheezing, reaching for a glass and sipping, holding his throat as he swallows, slowly leaning back, resuming his position. ‘She was a minx. Before Sean, there was a man who’d pick her up from school in a car, but she set her sights on Sean Degg the minute he started seeing her sister.’

  ‘Bridget? Sean Degg went out with Bridget Lamb?’

  ‘Lamb? She got married, then. I always knew them as the Kilbride girls. It made us laugh. Kerry would kill the bride to get to the groom – even if it was her own sister.’

  ‘She got her man,’ says Staffe. ‘And this man who would come to pick Kerry up from school. Was he a gangster? Do you know Tommy Given, Anton?’

  ‘I’m dying, Inspector. But I don’t have a death wish.’

  Enough said, thinks Staffe. ‘Bridget has done very well for herself – living in Surrey with a doting husband,’ he says.

  ‘And children?’

  ‘She can’t have them.’

  ‘It wasn’t always thus.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ask Sean.’

  ‘Bridget had a baby with Sean?’

  ‘She left school as soon as she started to show. I heard she went the whole term and lost it right at the end.’


  ‘Is that when Sean left her?’

  ‘God only knows, but the minute Bridget left school, he was there at the school gates for Kerry. It was summer and Kerry never came back after the holidays. She could have done anything she wanted to, you know.’

  ‘I read her work.’

  ‘That’s how you got hold of me?’ Anton looks proud. Staffe tries to work out how old he is, reckons they must be the same age, even though Anton’s drawn and pallid face is thickly riven with lines and his hair is all shorn away. His eyes are dark, hollow as two halves of an egg’s shell.

  ‘If there’s anything you want to tell me, anything you remember about Kerry and Bridget and Sean; about Tommy Given – you should give me a ring.’ Staffe stands, hands Anton his card and laments the life unlived. He makes his way back out through the book-lined hallway: floor to ceiling with thoughts and memories; stories and theories. How many has Anton read? he wonders. How many unread? Lying on its back, atop a line of Bruce Chatwins, is Beloved.

  *

  When he was done with Anton, Staffe had stomped down Brighton’s pebble beach to the shore. It was heavy going and as the pebbles rattled and shifted beneath him, his muscles had begun to burn. He couldn’t remember the last time he had some decent exercise. So he had walked all the way to the pier. When he got there, the sun was disappearing down beyond the playboy beach houses that stand high, silhouetted on the pale road to Hove. He treated himself to oysters in the Regency and was pleasantly surprised that the place was much the same as he remembered it. Then he drove back against the traffic, took a call from Pennington who had asked where he was going. He told him and the DCI said he was to steer clear of Tommy Given. Pennington had received a call from the Met. Tommy was their man. Always had been, and it would stay that way.

  *

  Now, Staffe puts down his pint and looks out of the enormous plate-glass window onto Harrow Road, the walled enclosure of Wormwood Scrubs in the background. Each time a lorry trundles past, the window rattles.

  ‘Tell me what your deal is with Given, Smet,’ says Staffe, pushing away his empty glass.

  Smethurst wraps his fat fingers around his own glass and takes a mouthful. A third of the bitter disappears. ‘Do you really think that’s how we operate?’

  ‘He knows Kerry Degg. He helped get her a residency at one of Phillip Ramone’s places.’

  ‘Why not have a chat with him?’

  ‘I’ve been warned off.’ Staffe unfolds a piece of A4. As he reads from it, he wonders if Tommy Given might somehow be in the Met’s pay. The biggest grass in all of London town? ‘He did six months of a three-year in 1978 when he was just a pup. Since then, he’s only been up in court twice and neither went to trial. He’s one of the nastiest bastards in all London and we haven’t got so much as a DNA swab.’

  ‘You’ve got his dabs.’

  ‘That won’t prove he’s the father of a murdered woman’s child.’

  ‘I should be careful who you say that in front of. He’s got some mighty fine lawyers – so I hear.’

  ‘I thought we were mates, Smet.’

  ‘And you’d be right. As long as you’re in City and I’m at the Met, it’ll stay that way.’ Smet laughs, but the truth is raw enough. They spent six years together and didn’t always see eye to eye. Each of them knows that either would help the other at the drop of a switchblade – so long as it didn’t harm themselves.

  ‘All I need is a whisper where Sean Degg is. Forget Tommy Given, I’ll find some other way to cook that bloody goose. You must have heard something.’

  ‘You tried Ross Denness?’

  Staffe says nothing, wondering how Smet would know about Ross Denness. He’s on Staffe’s patch, supposedly. All Staffe has to work out is: has Smet slipped up, or did he mean to let him know he had been told about Denness? He watches Smet finish his pint and tug at his belt, look at his watch. Smet purses his lips and makes the smallest shake of his head. ‘Shouldn’t you be concentrating on that Crawford woman? It’s in the papers again, you know. That bill of Vernon Short’s is on the rebound. Now, there’s a real fish to fry.’

  *

  ‘What are you doing here?’ says the nurse, Eve, to Staffe in the reception of City Royal’s antenatal unit. She puts on a stern face and looks around, as if he might be tarnishing her in some way, but when she sees they have the place to themselves, she allows herself a smile.

  ‘I don’t have your number. Remember?’

  ‘Something tells me this isn’t a social call.’

  ‘Does it have to be one thing or the other?’

  ‘What do you want from me?’

  ‘The time you spent in the hospital, with Grace, did anybody else come to see her?’

  ‘There was the policewoman. The pretty one who found her.’

  ‘Anybody else?’

  ‘The police had someone there the whole time – to keep the press away, they said. There were other mothers there, of course, and their families. You should ask Natalie.’

  ‘The other nurse? Is she a friend of yours?’

  Eve laughs. ‘More than that. We’re from the same part of Yorkshire, we were in the same hostel when we first came down to London.’

  ‘Yorkshire, hey?’ says Staffe. ‘Which village?’

  ‘A place called Appletrewick,’ says Eve.

  ‘Aptrick,’ he says, smiling.

  ‘That’s what the locals call it. You’ve been there?’

  Staffe recalls a weekend in the Yorkshire Dales with Sylvie.

  ‘You’re not here to chat about the Dales,’ says Eve, turning towards him. Her mouth is set, but her eyes sparkle.

  ‘I’m here to coax something out of you.’

  ‘Anything in particular?’

  ‘Kerry’s sister. She’s called Bridget.’

  ‘And nothing alike, if I remember. I was with her, but you should ask Natalie. She made Natalie pray with her. I saw them together, kneeling by Grace’s cot.’

  ‘Did she come more than once?’

  ‘Not that I know. She was stuck-up. I didn’t like to think of Grace as being her niece. That sounds awful, doesn’t it? The father, he looked right with the child, but I didn’t take to that sister. Something seemed wrong, even though you could tell she loved them.’

  ‘Loved them?’

  ‘You had to look hard, but yes, she loved them all right, the baby and the mother.’

  Staffe hands her his card, then puts a hand on Eve’s shoulder, squeezes it gently. ‘Thank you. You’ve been a great help.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Let me buy you dinner.’

  ‘I can buy my own dinner, thank you.’

  ‘Let me eat it with you.’

  Eve laughs and flicks his nose with the card he had given her. ‘Maybe I’ll call you. Maybe you can pay. You can afford it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I spoke to your friend, the policewoman. I’m not sure how happy she would be, you chatting me up.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Have you taken her out to dinner, Inspector Wagstaffe?’ This time, as she goes, she looks over her shoulder. Her eyes sparkle and her teeth show, pearly white.

  He watches her go and he wonders what the hell she was talking to Josie about. And come to think of it, where has she got to? He calls Jombaugh, but he’s not in the station. Jombaugh’s always in the station. What’s happening to the world?

  Twenty-One

  Sean Degg looks down on the Regent’s Canal. From here, he can see everybody who comes: from the bus stops up and down the New North Road, and along the towpath. The only blind spot is out back, through next door’s garden. Because of the fixed, frosted window in the bathroom, he can’t see next door’s garden properly. Next door the other way is just fine.

  He knows that if they are to find him, they’ll come the back way, whether they’re the filth or the filthier – they’ll know what they’re doing. Does he have the stomach for this? Can he dig in and fight to his last breath? He’s go
t Grace now, but she seems a million miles away. That kind of a life – one they might forge together, the way he always dreamed – seems impossible. He looks at the photo he has of her on his phone.

  Sean goes to the fridge. He has a half-drunk can of Tennent’s left and a swallow of vodka in the bottom of the bottle. He has eight tins of Big Soup and two loaves in the freezer and a multipack of Jaffa cakes. He has a quarter-ounce of dried-out Drum and two spliffs short of an eighth.

  He wonders if he should phone. He’s going mad in here, but they told him not to call. It’s a funny feeling, being nowhere; having no one. He doesn’t register on any kind of radar, which ought to be a good thing.

  Sean goes through to the back bedroom, hangs out of the window and checks next door’s garden. The days are drawing out and the sky is hues of orange and coral where the sun is trying to set, way behind Canary Wharf’s oblongs and prisms of glinting glass. And then he realises that by hanging out of the window he isn’t helping himself, so he slams the sash frame down, pulls the catch across, and picks up his phone. His finger hovers over the green, but he chucks it onto the bed and counts his cash. He’s only got twelve quid left and he can’t go to the machine. He can’t leave that kind of a trail, not yet; not until it all plays out. He doesn’t know quite what that means.

  He waits for the sun to drop and the last of the dog walkers to drift away from the canal, and he puts on his coat. He hasn’t been out for two, or is it three days?

  As he pulls the door behind him, Sean’s fingers tremble and his bowels shift. He feels loose inside, feels kind of alive.

  *

  Staffe takes the record from his turntable. It was his father’s LP and not exactly his cup of tea. He prefers the later works: Miles and Coltrane; Mingus and Ornette. But he can see now, hear now, that his father was right about Ellington being the master. He puts the needle back to the first track and listens again, this time intent upon following the sweeping lines of Jimmy Hamilton’s clarinet. But by the time he has popped his coffee back in the microwave for ten seconds and settled back into his American spoonback, his mind has flitted across Eve and all the way back through to the moment he first set eyes on Kerry Degg down in the tunnel.