by Adam Creed
‘I don’t know,’ says Staffe, his voice beginning to crack.
‘Don’t know what?’ A broader smile is on Josie’s mouth. Seeing her this way, she could be sixteen or thirty-five.
‘I don’t know … what I’d do.’
She nods her head and clamps her mouth shut, for fear she might say something she would regret. ‘Sit with me, will you?’
He nods, holds her hand, still.
‘Just a while.’
And after a while, she falls back into sleep, with her mouth turned up. He waits a further while and slides his hand from hers, puts his lips on hers, so they barely touch.
*
‘In five minutes, ask me how I got on at Crawford’s,’ whispers Staffe beneath the revving engine as they drive away from the City Royal.
‘Aah,’ says Pulford.
Five minutes later, Staffe answers his sergeant, by reporting that nothing whatever had turned up at Crawford’s house and he’s pissed off with this case and they’ve no chance of catching up with whoever is responsible and maybe they should just leave it to Cathy Killick and her bloody people who seem to have all the resources and unrestricted access.
For twenty minutes, they drive slowly out to the Old Street roundabout and leave the car parked up between the Limekiln and Flower and Dean. It’s where you’d park if you were staking out Sean Degg’s place. Staffe leaves Radio 4 playing low and then they get a cab to the police morgue.
‘Why are we going there?’ asks Pulford.
‘Have you met Miles and Maya Degg?’
‘Kerry’s kids? Do they have Sean’s name? That seems odd.’
‘What else would you call them?’
‘Kilbride? Archibald? I don’t know how these things work.’
‘But you wouldn’t call them babies.’
‘They’re three and five, right? I’ve not met them but I’ve read the reports.’
‘You know about babies?’
‘My sister had them. They’re not babies once they can walk.’
‘Even to the uninitiated, like you and me, Sergeant. Thanks.’ He slaps Pulford on the shoulder and leans back, watches Whitechapel come at them, with its fruit and fish and dodgy boozers and its off-piste City folk and mothers and children: some walking, some babies being pushed.
*
Pulford brings them coffee through from Janine’s kitchenette, off to the side of her half-basement theatre. High windows let weak light seep down from the Raven Lane pavement into the world of the pathologist. They sit in a midday twilight because the buzz of the operating lights drives Janine berserk.
Pulford pauses at the waxy white corpse in the corner, spills some of the coffee.
Staffe says, ‘Would you have checked for twins? Could Kerry Degg have had twins?’
‘She could. But it’s a bit late now. It would have helped if we could have looked for that when she was still alive.’
‘Wasn’t she too weak?’
‘Yes, I suppose so. But we could have checked before the post mortem.’
‘It would have shown up in the post mortem, though?’
‘You would have to be looking for it. And the elapsed time was too great, bearing in mind how traumatic the birth was. There was no collateral evidence either. Maybe if we’d known straight away.’
‘What about the placenta? What I found in the tunnel.’
Janine shakes her head. ‘Twins can share a placenta, or have separate placentas, or the placentas can merge to form one. What makes you think she was having twins?’
‘Something I heard.’
‘What difference does it make?’ says Janine.
‘They only left us one baby.’
‘Sometimes, they don’t both survive.’
‘You’d have to know what you were doing, surely – to cope with that, to administer that, even if both the twins didn’t survive.’
‘It would have been more problematic,’ she says. ‘There would have been more signs to clear – at the scene.’
‘And imagine, if there is another baby out there – if Grace’s twin is out there.’
The three of them contemplate that: the skills required, the additional twist and nuance of motive, the trail of consequences.
Pulford says, ‘If Grace has a brother or sister out there, it would be a crime for them to be kept apart. Who’d do such a thing?’
‘What exactly did you hear, Staffe?’
‘Kerry’s brother-in-law said something about Sean’s babies. He said “babies”.’
‘He’s got other kids,’ says Janine.
‘They’re not babies,’ says Pulford.
‘They might have been last time he saw them. That’s how he might see them.’
‘Hmm,’ says Staffe. ‘But they’re not Sean’s.’
‘Even if you’re right, it seems to me, this doesn’t change anything. It’s still an abduction that turned into murder.’
‘Same crime, different motive. Different motive, different suspects,’ says Staffe.
‘Did you check the records, at the clinic?’
‘As far as I could,’ he says. ‘I’ve just come from there. There was no mention of Kerry having twins. I asked the duty doctor whether, if Kerry was having twins, the last consultation would have spotted it, and he said it would have, for sure. But there’s no notes from her last consultation.’
‘All I can say is, there’s nothing to suggest she wasn’t carrying twins. Except …’ She looks sad.
‘Except what?’
‘Except we only have one baby.’
‘We’re looking,’ says Staffe.
‘Have you checked all the paediatric wards?’
‘As we speak,’ says Pulford.
Staffe turns his mind to who might want the baby. He can’t get past Bridget Lamb. But he has been to her house twice now. Not a whimper from upstairs, nor the slightest trace of a nappy. Not a grain of SMA. And Malcolm? Could Malcolm be a party to such subterfuge? He loves her enough, that’s for sure. Or he might have said ‘babies’ in all innocence. ‘You have to take babies to be weighed, right? They have to be monitored.’
Janine says, ‘Surely, if you don’t register the birth, nobody would know it exists – provided it’s healthy. As long as you get some ID by the time they go to school or got poorly, nobody would ever ask where a baby came from. If you moved away, people would assume it was yours.’
*
‘I know this place. Or should I say I’ve heard of it,’ says Eve, looking down the lunch menu. Occasionally, she issues low moans. ‘I’m hungry now.’
‘The portions are starter-sized. If the French did tapas, they would do them like this.’
Eve closes the menu and smiles at him. In the soft light, she appears different. Her face is for the night. She has picked out her cheekbones with rouge and softened her eyes with Touche Éclat. A thin line of kohl makes her eyes seem brighter, more sultry, too, and he sees for the first time that she has a dimple high on her right cheek. Her hair is half-up, half-down, teased to make it look as if she hasn’t made the effort.
As they order, he watches her eyes light up and then pinch together as she has to choose whether her ribbon of lemon sole is to be grilled or pan-fried. Her hair is the same colour as Sylvie’s – but her face is fuller, her eyes bigger. Her nails are French-manicured and she wears the Claddagh ring on one hand, a large-stoned diamond on the wrong wedding finger of the other.
Once he has ordered, Eve says, ‘It’s my mother’s ring.’
He is embarrassed.
‘Did you think I’d been left standing at the altar?’
‘No.’
‘Liar. But people our age don’t come without a little bit of scar tissue around the vital organs, do they?’
‘I don’t think we’re of a similar age.’
‘Inspector! You’re not trying to get me to disclose, are you?’
‘You’d be surprised what I know about you,’ he says, immediately realising he has said the wrong thing.
‘You checked up on me?’
‘Can we say “checked you out”?’
Eve adjusts her expression – as if not to spoil lunch. She frowns, but it is playful.
‘So tell me. Who am I?’
‘You’re not what you seem. A trained vet who gave up on animals to concentrate on humans.’
‘You think I must be mad.’
‘It can be a dirty business, that vet malarkey,’ he jokes. He feels relaxed. ‘Pushing pills and screwing owners into agreeing to futile operations. Playing on love and hope.’
‘My God. How do you know these things?’
‘I knew a vet once.’
Eve raises her eyebrows, as if to pry.
The waiter brings the wine and, even though she didn’t order it, a gin and tonic for Eve. She looks surprised and then winks at him as if to say she didn’t know how he did that, but she’s glad he did.
For a stretch, they each say nothing, but the silence isn’t awkward.
‘Usually, it’s not good when our worlds collide,’ he says.
‘We’ll have to see.’ Eve takes a lusty sip from her gin and says, ‘But this is a good start. Plymouth gin, too, hey, Staffe.’
‘How do you know people call me that?’
‘Did you go to see Bridget, the sister? Grace’s aunt.’
‘I didn’t say I was going.’
‘Come on. You’re a copper and I’ve spoken with the victim’s sister. Fire away.’
‘You know her?’
‘I know she loves that child.’ Eve finishes her gin and pours herself a small glass of wine, tops up Staffe.
As she leans forward, Staffe sees that she has no foundation on. Her skin is pale and smooth as china.
She says, ‘I went to see Grace as soon as I heard. It’s only across the way from my unit. But as much as I love children …’ The waiter brings their first dish and Eve lowers her voice. ‘… As much as I love them, it’s not the same.’
‘The same as what?’
‘It’s not blood. When I was with Grace, saying my kind of a prayer for her and not wanting to be anywhere but there at that time, it wasn’t the same as what that poor woman was feeling. I wasn’t going through anything in comparison.’
‘She said something to you?’
‘She couldn’t. She was catatonic.’
‘Catatonic?’
‘I put my arm around her and it was like hugging a rock. She was frozen. She didn’t dare move – as though, I don’t know, if she did, the baby might stop breathing.’
‘Catatonic?’ repeats Staffe. For a second, he forgets where he is, struggling to lend some order to the theories of Bridget: respectable wife and almost a teenage mother; sister of Kerry and spurned lover of Sean.
‘If someone was having twins, one of your patients, I mean – you’d record it, wouldn’t you?’
‘Of course. They need a completely different antenatal regime. And we record everything.’
No, you don’t, thinks Staffe. His telephone rings and he apologises to Eve, says he has to take it.
When he has finally done with the call, he comes back to the table, sits down heavily.
‘What’s wrong?’ She reaches out and wraps her pale, small hands around his clenched fist; he doesn’t respond. ‘Don’t say. If you can’t tell me, I understand,’ she says.
But he knows that no matter how relationships start off, in the end they never understand.
Staffe tries to evaluate the situation. He looks Eve in the eyes and says, ‘They’ve found Sean Degg.’
‘That’s good.’
‘Behind the gym at Notre Dame School, in Hackney. It’s where he used to pick Kerry up at the end of the day.’
‘That’s odd.’
‘He overdosed. Enough speed to stop a bull in its tracks, apparently.’
‘He’s dead?’
‘Oh, yes. Of a splattered heart.’
Twenty-Four
Nick Absolom manages to catch Staffe’s eye as the DI reaches the line of uniformed officers at the back gates of Notre Dame School. This is Hackney, where Kerry and Bridget Kilbride were each schooled and were courted by Sean Degg. Sean came back, a last time.
Clamouring photographers use stepladders to peek above the fence and they hold their cameras high – the opposite of meerkats looking for distant predators – hoping they might capture a snatch of what lies within the screened rectangle in the shadow of the gym.
‘Are we expected to believe that this is an overdose, Inspector?’ asks Nick Absolom, holding his dictaphone by his side. ‘An act of grief? A desire to be with his poor, departed loved one?’
‘Who told you that?’
‘It’s the word. It’s what muppets will print unless advised otherwise.’
‘And what will you print, Nick?’
‘That depends on what you tell me.’
‘Imagine I’m going to tell you nothing.’
‘I’d imagine why Breath of Life would do a thing like this.’
‘Because Sean had evidence to pin Kerry’s abduction on an individual within the organisation.’
‘Hence Lesley Crawford is in hiding,’ says Absolom.
‘So you’re not going with the suicide theory?’
‘I’m in the business of selling newspapers. Murder or suicide? It’s no contest.’
‘What about jeopardising the case?’
‘If I wanted to jeopardise the case I might speculate why you might have been questioning Kerry Degg’s sister. The husband didn’t seem too pleased with your visit.’
‘What?’ hisses Staffe.
‘I wouldn’t mention the Lambs, of course, if I had something decent to run with.’
‘People’s lives are at stake here.’
‘Really?’
Staffe grabs Absolom by the sleeve of his coat and pulls him through the line of officers, where they can’t be overheard. Absolom can’t keep the smug look from his face as he regards his peers, the other side of the line and looking daggers. ‘You’ll get first run. When it’s time to release the information.’
‘You have information for me?’
‘We haven’t found the woman in Liverpool. We have to keep her interests uppermost.’
‘But there’s something else. Let me have a whiff of it. I won’t print anything. I swear.’
Outside the screened area, two women and a man, all dressed casually smart, mill around, shaking their heads. Staffe guesses they are teachers. The oldest one, a woman with steel-grey hair, has clearly been crying.
Can he trust Absolom? He looks at the other journalists peering this way, and he realises that they are his enemy, and Absolom’s enemy, too. He can use that. ‘Take that smirk off your face. Look disappointed and keep your mouth shut until I say you can run this.’
‘OK.’ Absolom already looks pissed off. The supreme deceiver.
Staffe takes a copy of the News from his pocket. It is open at Absolom’s latest article, on the resurrection of Vernon Short’s bill. It has a quote from Breath of Life. ‘Just where did you get this quote from?’
‘I can’t say.’
‘We have to scratch each other’s backs.’
‘So you give me something.’
‘There is another child involved. A small child.’
‘Degg’s orphans?’
‘It’s all I’m saying.’
‘A baby?’
Staffe thinks how her association with the spreading misery will suit Lesley Crawford. It will keep the orphaned Grace on the front pages a while longer. Long enough to resurrect Vernon’s bill once and for all? ‘I’ll give you more, as soon as I can.’ He grabs Absolom, makes a scruff of the lapels of his jacket. He whispers, ‘Keep Bridget out of this. You hear,’ and pushes him back through the line of police.
Absolom calls him a ‘Fucking jerk!’ for all to hear. Each man looks angry; each enjoying their part, in different ways, to different ends.
Behind the screens, freestanding boards show photogra
phs of Sean Degg. He had died in a pile, head slumped to his chest and arms outstretched, hands clenched into fists. There is a close-up of a bump at the base of his skull. Behind the ear, a line of dried blood.
‘There’s only one sign of needle intrusion that I’ve seen so far,’ says Janine. ‘I’ll be going over him back at my place later, but he had been drinking, for sure. I think it was circulatory collapse, and there are signs of convulsions. A little vomit, but I need to open him up.’ She taps a photograph of Sean’s face – eyes wide open and pupils like pinpricks.
‘He took a load of speed, is what I heard.’
‘A planeful would be my guess.’
Pulford comes across, opening his notebook. ‘I’ve got Smet getting verification of Given’s whereabouts for the time of death, sir. And I spoke to Ross Denness.’
‘What about Bridget Lamb?’
‘Are you serious, sir?’
‘Too bloody serious.’
Staffe turns to the SOC officer, asks what was found on Sean Degg’s person. ‘Person’ – an odd term for a dead soul.
‘A quarter-bottle of vodka, empty. A few crumbs of rolling tobacco and half an eighth of resin, and two hundred-mill wraps of MDMA. There were four empty wraps and a syringe, too. It looks like crystal meth and we found some ice on him.’
Janine comes across, says, ‘From the pre-theatre inspection, he’s no meth mouth. It doesn’t seem to add up. And no tracks on his arms. Just the one mark.’
‘Anything else?’
The SOCO says, ‘One pound eighty in twenty pences in a coin bag in his back pocket, Yale keys and a book. Here.’ The officer hands Staffe a clear plastic bag with a notebook in it. On the cover is a pen and ink drawing of an angel in a basque.
‘Kerry’s,’ says Staffe, recognising it from his visit to Flower and Dean. ‘There’s a receipt from an off-licence down on the New North Road. The time was 19.43.’ He turns to Pulford, says, ‘Check that out and make sure you speak to the person who served Degg and get them to describe anybody else who was in the shop at the same time, or just before and just after.’ He turns to the SOCO. ‘Let me see the money.’
The SOCO shows him the plastic bag of twenty-pence pieces.
‘See if there’s a phone box nearby. Whichever phone is closest to that off-licence – in each direction – I want the details of all calls made two hours either side of when Degg was in the off-licence. Run the numbers through the case data filter.’