by Adam Creed
‘I thought you wanted me to bring in Bridget Lamb?’
‘I’ll do that.’
When Pulford is gone and the SOCO has returned to his painstaking documentation of the scene, Staffe whispers to Janine, ‘That injection. Was it administered in a professional way, would you say?’
‘It’s a perfectly clean entry and no signs of tourniquet shadowing. But all kinds of people are expert in IV these days. Why do you ask?’
‘No reason. Not really.’
*
Pennington rubs the corners of his mouth with thumb and forefinger. He hasn’t spoken since Staffe came to his office. He sighs.
Eventually, he says, ‘This Sean Degg thing, Staffe. You know, it does stack up as a suicide.’
‘Of course it could, sir. His wife died, in awful circumstances. There’s overwhelming evidence that he loved her.’
‘I said “does”, not “could”.’
‘I’ve looked into Sean Degg’s life as deeply as I can and I know the man was a scumbag, but nobody has ever mentioned that he was into speed. And he has just become a father – the first time. He actually had something to look forward to.’
‘He was on the run. Some might say he had plenty to feel guilty about, don’t you think?’
‘Are you suggesting he might have killed Kerry, sir?’
‘There’s more than enough circumstantial. Just try presenting the argument – for argument’s sake.’ Pennington laughs at his quip.
‘And maybe he took off with Zoe Bright. And fired off a threat to Cathy Killick?’
‘You know we don’t have to conflate that case with this.’ Pennington leans back, looks Staffe in the chest as he says, ‘At least present the argument.’
‘It seems you already have, sir. Perhaps you can tell me who sold him the speed.’
‘He moved in those circles.’
‘We’ll need to know precisely who. Evidence, sir.’
‘You know where to look. Be sure you take DI Smethurst with you.’
‘Given? You want me to shake that tree?’
‘Keep Smet in the loop, Staffe.’
‘If I’m doing this, I need to know what exactly it is that grants Given his immunity.’
‘I don’t know he has immunity.’
‘We know he has an alibi.’
‘Test it,’ says Pennington. ‘And you’ll need to scratch around. He doesn’t get his hands dirty.’
‘I’ll need a warrant – for a DNA test.’
‘Present the argument and it’s yours.’
‘You’ve changed your tune, sir.’
‘If Given had anything to do with what happened to Chancellor, we’ll fuck him over with all our might. You can count on that.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Do you really think he is the father of Kerry’s first children?’
‘Sean was protected by Tommy Given. They had some kind of pact.’
‘Under pain of death?’
‘Sean was in hiding. They would have needed to know where he was. It would have been someone he was talking to.’
Pennington folds his arms. ‘Let’s imagine it wasn’t suicide. For argument’s sake. Just who do you think did kill Sean, Staffe?’
‘That’s easy, sir. Same as whoever killed Kerry. Someone with the irrepressible need.’
*
As Staffe drives down to Cobham in blossoming Surrey, he thinks about how he would like to swerve into Thames Ditton and call on Bridget Lamb, then take things up with Eve. The thought of that conversation makes him nervous.
Smet is smoking out of the window and reading the News. When he’s not smoking, he is reading the News and scratching his balls. Coming off the A3, he happens upon an article about Vernon Short’s bill and how church groups in Reading and Plymouth, Wolverhampton and South Shields have put petitions together supporting the resurrection of the change in the statute governing abortion. There is talk of a national campaign and even a march on Parliament. A spokesperson for Breath of Life says, according to Nick Absolom, that if a country can march to save a fox, they can march to save a human life.
‘The way they put it – it seems to kind of make sense,’ says Smet.
‘I spoke to Absolom and asked him who his source is. He wouldn’t disclose. Sometimes, the bloody law’s against us, not with us.’
‘And did you read the bit about the woman in Liverpool?’
For the briefest moment, he considers telling Smet about Lesley Crawford having tutored Zoe Bright. ‘There’s nothing happening up there.’
‘They’ve got that Flint woman working the case, I heard.’
‘Flint woman?’
‘Oh, yes. I know her, all right. Had to mentor her when she came down for her assimilation training. She made inspector a couple years ago. A bright cookie. But you know that, don’t you, Staffe?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I heard you’ve been to Beatleland. She’d suit you, that one.’ Smet laughs.
Staffe looks at him, not amused.
‘Just your type.’
‘What’s my type supposed to be? I don’t have a bloody type.’
‘You do.’
‘So what is it, my type?’
‘I’m not saying.’
‘I’d tell you,’ says Staffe, looking across to Smet who is delving beneath his belly, scratching at his balls.
‘I don’t have that problem.’
He thinks about what it must be like, being Smet. Are his chances all behind him?
Smet says, ‘I’m no student of relationships. Christ, none of my mates have even had a sniff in years, but … no, forget it.’
‘Go on.’
‘It just seems to me, you go for women who you know won’t work out. And who can blame you? Just enjoy it.’
‘Piss off, Smet.’
‘Suffer for the rest of us. Pull in. We’re here.’
Staffe pulls off the road and stops in front of Tommy Given’s electric gates. He stares up the driveway, watches Smet talk into the videophone and as he does, Staffe’s phone goes. It is his sister, Marie. Which won’t be good news, he’s sure. He lets it ring out, prays it’s nothing bad about Harry. He loves his nephew; the closest he’s got to a child of his own.
Smet gets back in and as they drive up towards the house, gravel grinding beneath, he says, ‘If you want relationship advice, you should ask this pillar of the bastard community. Have you met his wife and kid?’
‘Why would I? You’re the one who looks after our friend Mr Given, eh, Smet?’
‘Look after? What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Just saying what I see. Is there anything you want to tell me?’
‘Just that I don’t come here a-prying. I’ve had no need.’
Staffe gets out of the car, sees the dog coming. It is a killer dog, and the ground resounds as it bounds up, spittle spraying the air.
‘Shit,’ says Smet.
Staffe makes himself limp and goes down onto his knees, holds his arms out and lets the dog bowl onto him. It licks his hands and face, and Staffe stands, rubbing its skull, scratching at its neck. ‘You getting out of the car, Smet?’
‘Is it safe?’
‘I’d say you’re safe.’
‘Nobody’s safe,’ says Tommy Given, walking up to the car, frowning, his first gambit gone awry. ‘Not from police molestation. What the fuck are you doing here?’
‘You didn’t call ahead?’ says Smet, to Staffe.
‘Why would I?’
‘I’m sorry, Tommy. I thought he had called.’
‘We’re not here to apologise. I’ve just come to drop this off.’ He hands a sheet of paper to Given.
‘What is it?’
‘It requires you to provide a sample of your DNA. Quite painless.’
‘Why the fuck do you want my DNA?’
‘Sean Degg is dead, Tommy.’
‘I heard. I’ve told you where I was.’ Tommy is thoroughly convincing with his grieving expre
ssion. He even appears to be a shade of pale.
His beautiful wife, Sabine, appears in the porch with her young daughter beneath a trellised arch of honeysuckle. She rubs her hand on the pronounced bump of her unborn child, looks a million euros, maybe more.
Tommy says, ‘Go into the house, chérie.’
Sabine looks at Tommy as she does as she is told. For an instant, they are locked in an exchange of togetherness. She twinkles her fingers and the little girl clutches at the tight calf of her leggings.
Tommy must see the look of surprise on Staffe’s face because he says, ‘Preconceptions, Inspector. They can be bad for the health.’
‘We’ve not come to cause a scene, Tommy,’ says Smet.
Staffe says, ‘And we’re not here for the good of our health, or yours. This is a murder investigation. A double murder investigation and another woman missing. In your language, Tommy, we’re not here to fuck about.’
Given turns his back on them and walks away, around the side of the house, past the stables and with a single, light pat on his thigh, his killer dog bounds up to him, snaps playfully at his heels. The horses each take a step back, their heads disappearing into their boxes.
Staffe and Smet follow him and Tommy points to a paddock. ‘This isn’t mine. I lease it. The neighbour is a farmer – old school. But we get on. His daughter is at the Sorbonne. Sabine helped them out a little.’
‘The country life suits,’ says Smet.
‘You could just tell us about Kerry,’ says Staffe. ‘It might rule you out of contention for Sean’s passing. A bit of information is all we want.’ Staffe goes into his pocket for a pair of disposable gloves, then tears open a small paper parcel, produces a swab. ‘If you don’t mind.’
Tommy looks back towards the house, which is obscured by the stable block. He says, ‘My wife gets one whiff of this and the law won’t help you, Wagstaffe.’
‘Easy, Tommy,’ says Smet.
Given opens his mouth and Staffe steps forward, sticks in the swab, runs it up the inside of the cheek. While Given is unable to speak, Staffe says, ‘We don’t buy your bullshit alibi for one second. We’ll be getting each and every one of your arse-licking hangers-on to cough you up.’ Tommy’s eyes are wide and wild, and Staffe pokes the swab right up into his mouth, thinks Given might bring his teeth gnashing down on his fingers any moment, but Given is more switched on than that. Not in front of another officer. ‘And if you had anything to do with what happened to my DC, you’ll be going down.’ Staffe pulls the swab out of Tommy’s salivating mouth and holds it up towards the house, hoping Sabine might be watching.
‘Don’t try to embarrass me.’
Staffe pops the swab into a sample bag and seals it, says, ‘We can only embarrass you if there’s something to be embarrassed about.’
‘You’re a prick.’
‘Sean was a friend of yours. What kind of bastard kills a friend?’
‘Sean didn’t have friends but I was probably as close as he had. You’ll hear plenty of shit about him, but he was a good man – I could see that. And you come here, treating me like this … accusing me …’ Tommy looks past Staffe to a line of trees on the far side of the paddock. His eyes glaze over and he looks back to Staffe, says, ‘I hope you feel proud of what you do.’
Twenty-Five
Staffe knows he has to make the call on Bridget Lamb himself. Pulford is working on the off-licence and payphones down on the New North Road. He needs to dig deep into Bridget, where she is most tender. But he had to drive past, get Given’s DNA sample to Janine, and also to end the flickering of his phone.
Marie has called him twice more, has messaged that she has to see him, that she’s waiting in for him.
He pulls up outside his old house in Kilburn, which he rents to Marie for two hundred a month plus bills. It’s a three-storey, four-bedder and the two hundred is half what he has to pass onto the Western Shires Building Society; a round two grand less than he would clear each month on the open market. It gives him a tax loss that he can offset, and this is what makes it not charity.
By calling on Marie, rather than speaking on the phone, he will have some kind of an upperness of hand. It is the nature of their relationship that this is something he wishes to hold over a sibling. He speaks to his nephew Harry at least once a week, but seldom to the boy’s mother. It is a dead cert that, after months of silence, Marie wants something.
Marie opens the door and her mouth shapes into a widening, spaced-out smile. She holds out her arms and says, slow and wasted, ‘My brother. I called you. Just today, I called you.’ She leans forward, puts her hands on his hips and kisses his cheek. ‘Wasn’t it?’
‘Where’s Harry?’
‘Broken up, for Easter. He’s with his dad.’
‘Paolo?’
‘No. Silly. Paolo’s here. With his real dad.’
‘But he’s a wanker.’ Not, of course, that Paolo isn’t a wanker, Staffe iterates silently.
Marie lets go of him and takes an unsteady step away. ‘Paolo and I have a plan. We need to be together much more. A proper family. It’s why I called you.’
Staffe thinks, Oh, shit, poor Harry. What’s in store for the boy now?
As she leads him through his house to the kitchen, he feels a wash of nostalgia for the few months he made this his home. They were good times, he thinks – until Jadus Golding. Until Sally Watkins and that awful case. Briefly, he thinks of his old boss, Jessop. He corrects himself. Those times were a mess.
They pass the open door to the drawing room which seems to be tidy. The kitchen is orderly, with only a light dusting of condiments and unwashed mugs. Paolo is out back in the tiny garden, where he drags, chilled, on a joint.
‘We’ve something to tell you, Will,’ says Marie, beckoning Paolo in.
He takes a long, last toke, and stubs the half-smoked spliff out in his fingers. His eyelids are heavy and his lips are malleable as he says, at the very limit of his powers, ‘Will. Dude. How’s it going, man?’
‘Shall I tell him?’ says Marie.
‘Tell him,’ beams Paolo.
‘I’m pregnant, Will.’ Marie actually jumps clean off the floor and claps her hands like an infant.
‘Shit,’ says Staffe. He says it out loud and instantly apologises, but it’s too late. The damage is well and truly done. Marie is utterly crestfallen.
Paolo tells him his herb business is going ‘Gangbusters, fucking gangbusters, man.’
The reason he came, rather than call her on the telephone, was to catch her unawares, not be caught out like this. But, like an idiot, he says, ‘If there’s anything you need. Anything – you know – I’ll see what I can do. At least you’ve plenty of space here. And your landlord’s not going to kick you out. He’s not a complete bastard.’ He laughs and she does not.
Eventually, she smiles. Then she hugs him, saying into his chest so she can’t see his expression, ‘It’s all right, Will. Everything’s forgotten. I know you love me, and especially Harry. And there’s going to be a new little person. A niece for you, or another nephew.’ She unlocks the hug and leans away from him. ‘And as it goes, there is something.’
‘What is it?’
The front door swings violently open and a tumbling resounds from the hallway, and then a scream. They each turn towards the sound and Harry enters, dressed as a Native American, his chest bare and war-paint smeared all across his face. When he sees his uncle, the young boy drops his bow and arrow and runs full pelt at Staffe, launching himself at his uncle’s midriff. Staffe catches him and lets Harry wrestle him to the ground, sit on his chest. When he looks up, Marie says, ‘Paolo’s got him watching westerns. He knows the cowboys are the bad guys, of course.’ She turns to Staffe, rests the flat of her palm on her bump. He can see it, now, the new life. Flat on his back, with his nephew bouncing up and down on him, he thinks how peculiar, that she should fall pregnant now.
She says, ‘We’ve found a nest. They call it El Nido.’
*
Eve is wearing a dressing gown. Staffe touches her arm and knows immediately that it is silk. They are in the doorway on the fourth floor of her mansion block on the Castelnau, where that grand thoroughfare meets the river. Staffe knows this building of old. He looked at buying here once and knows what it is worth. He knows, roughly, the salary of a nurse on the NHS. In isolation, the two things don’t equate.
He says, ‘Did I wake you?’
‘It’s afternoon.’
He knows there could be a dozen reasons to explain the mismatch: inheritance, crazy banks, a fractured relationship. ‘You’re on a ten-six.’ Her eyes are puffy and her hair is down and dishevelled. ‘Have you had your night’s sleep?’
‘How did you know I was here?’
‘It’s where you live.’
‘I didn’t tell you.’
‘I wanted to see you. So I found you.’ He takes a step closer, puts his hands on her waist. They slide a couple of inches to the soft ledge of her hips.
She smiles. Her lips are plump. ‘What can I do for you?’
He smiles, looks over her shoulder and into the flat; thinks he can smell a meal just made. ‘Like I said, I wanted to see you. Is it OK? Do you have someone here?’
‘You can see me. Of course you can. When would you like to do that?’ Eve rubs her face, as if something has irritated it.
‘You were with Sean at the hospital. Grace’s father.’
She turns her back on Staffe, goes into the apartment, saying, ‘This is your work, right?’
He reaches, takes a light hold of her wrist, just to stop her moving away from him. Her wrist is warm and thin and she turns on her heel. Even though she is barefooted, she moves like a dancer, smooth as breeze. Her big eyes are wide, now, and close to his. He puts a hand on the narrow ledge of her hip again. They fit. She moves a half-step towards him and he watches as her eyes dim, then close. Their lips come together. She presses her mouth tight to his, keeping it shut, but her hands are in his hair and she moves a quarter-step closer – as far as she can. She opens her mouth, ever so slightly, and he tastes menthol. She is cool, wet, and their heads slant the opposite way. His hands find the small of her back and the hollow of her neck. The tips of their tongues touch and she pulls away.