by Adam Creed
‘Tell me what it is,’ she says.
He can’t take his eyes off hers. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘What happened?’
He shakes his head.
‘Come in and sit down. I’ll make us a drink. Then you can tell me.’
The living room is painted warm lemon and pale orange and she has a couple of Georgia O’Keefe prints; Moorish rugs on the floor. He says, ‘How do you know something has happened?’
In the kitchen, which is knocked through to the living space, American style, she puts an Italian coffee pot on the hob then comes alongside, slumps back into the sofa. ‘You’re here, aren’t you?’
He is flummoxed, says, ‘I went to see his body.’
‘God.’ Eve hooks her arm through his and curls her feet under her bottom, rests her head on his shoulder and wraps her free arm around his waist.
They stay like that a long while.
He thinks about Kerry’s visits to the hospital that were never recorded. How could that be? And then the child is born in such a manner. And the father falls victim to an expertly conceived and precisely administered ingestion of high-octane narcotics. And Eve’s mournful presence by Grace’s bed. Her large, dark eyes. Who said to keep your enemies close?
She squeezes his hand and murmurs, ‘That poor child. No parents, now. What will become of her?’
‘Imagine, if she had a sister, or a brother, and they never met.’
‘What?’ Eve unravels herself from Staffe and sits up.
‘Have you ever come close to having children?’
‘It’s early days, Will.’
He puts an arm around her, can’t bring himself to look her in the eye. ‘I’m sorry. I ask too many questions.’
‘It’s your job,’ she says, standing.
‘I can still be sorry.’
‘You can see to the coffee. I’m going to get dressed.’
‘Don’t.’ He reaches out, takes a hold of her thigh. The dressing gown rises slowly across her skin. Her legs are brown from winter sun. He doesn’t even know where she was. She leans down, her hair tumbles between their faces as she stoops, finds his mouth and sits across him. ‘Let me.’
And he does.
*
Afterwards, as soon as he hears the shower run, then the noise slowly dampen from a closing door, Staffe takes the burned coffee pot from the stove. The handle scorches his hand but he manages not to drop it. He wraps a folded tea towel around the handle and pours a cup. The liquid is soupy, over-brewed. He looks for milk in the fridge and sees that Eve has none, then wonders if she might have a reserve of UHT or creamer in the cupboards. The first one he opens, he sees a round tin of powdered milk: the image of a baby being doted on by its mother. SMA Extra Hungry Infant Milk.
The shower is still running. With an eye on the door to her bedroom, Staffe opens Eve’s handbag. He closes it; sits and stares at it.
Still the shower runs. He hates this job, sometimes; despises the person he becomes.
When Eve comes into the living room, she is brand-new. Her hair is wet, but she has on a cream, angora sweater that leaves a seam of her tummy showing. Her midriff is brown and he could ask where she collared her winter sun, but he doesn’t. His mind has turned, to Bridget Lamb, and to the final question he has for Eve. There’s no easy way. He pours her coffee and immediately she says, ‘I take it black.’ She drinks it down, doesn’t grimace.
‘If Kerry was having twins, wouldn’t you have known about it?’
‘We have three and a half thousand babies a year through pre-nat, so of course I wouldn’t know about it. I’ve told you before, everything’s computerised.’
He looks at his watch.
She looks hurt and she takes a deep breath, as if she might lay into him, but she catches herself, steps into her shoes and slings the handbag over her shoulder. ‘I’ll come down with you. I need to get bread and milk.’
*
Once he is through the Richmond gates of the Deer Park, passage along the meandering tracks is slow. Because it is Easter, the holidaying children are out in herds, some with working mothers stealing a day; others left to play on their own by chatters of au pairs. The deer are hither and thither, mainly on the fringes of the woods on the high slopes.
Wending to Kingston Gate, he runs the conversation with Eve one more time. They had kissed in the common hall of the mansion block – her harder than him, and when they had pulled away, the look in her eyes made him feel warm, then immediately cold. He can’t get it out of his head. Was she afraid? Or was she warning him with her pouted glare?
More tangibly, why – when he looked into her handbag – had he seen, written on the back of an envelope from Thames Water, ‘Sean’, followed by Degg’s number? Had Sean called Eve with one of his many twenty-pence pieces?
He blows out his cheeks and says ‘Damn!’ aloud. He tries to think of something else, but can only divert himself as far as his sister; as if simply living under the auspices of an alien tongue will solve her problems. He fears for Harry in this new start, how he will cope in such new conditions.
Paolo, it seems, has a friend in a place called the Alpujarras, in southern Spain. It is supposedly the real Spain and land can still be had for tuppence. Paolo, genius that he is, has been wised-up to an old finca with twenty hectares where he can grow herbs. Also, there is a poplar wood which they can plunder and plant for beams for the building trade, They can make a little money, make like heaven on earth. Paolo’s words.
The whole thing will only take a year and Paolo and his friend will do the work on the finca. When it is done, half of it will be Staffe’s, naturally. All he has to do is stump up eighty thousand euros for the land and materials. When it is done it will be worth a quarter of a million, ‘all day long,’ according to Paolo the loafer, the occasional gardener; the master builder with his trowel under a bushel. And Staffe’s Spanish will help, too, according to Marie. The thought of brushing up makes him sad, reminding him of how and where his parents were murdered.
Staffe had seen the unuttered desperation on his sister. She had taken a hold of his hand and placed the palm on her swell and he had called his broker, asked if he could draw the eighty thousand euros against his Kilburn house. ‘It might take a week,’ he had told Marie, and she had burst into happy tears. Paolo rolled a fresh one.
*
Malcolm Lamb has a haunted expression. He shows Staffe through to the morning room, overlooking the garden where Bridget is kneeling amongst a crescent of meadow flowers that run across the right side of her lawn. Malcolm calls her and she waves, smiling. Then she sees Staffe and the joy evaporates, like dew. She pushes herself up and shrieks, looks down at her hand, which is bleeding.
Malcolm mutters, ‘My God. Oh no, my good God,’ and rushes out.
*
Staffe picks the last of the china splinters from Bridget’s hand. She had pressed down on the saucer as she stood, and lost barely a half-teaspoon of blood, but Malcolm had become apoplectic, repeating how he can’t bear to see her suffer.
She is upstairs changing and as they wait, Malcolm says, ‘You know, Bridget hasn’t a bad bone in her body. She’s nothing to do with any of this, Will. She keeps a brave face, but don’t let that deceive you. This is breaking her heart. First Kerry, and now Sean.’
‘But she had no time for Sean.’
‘It’s a human life, someone she had been close to.’
Bridget comes down and throws her bloodied dress into the utility room. Malcolm goes to get it, but she says, ‘Leave it, Malcolm. Just leave it.’ The smile she forces dies under its own weight. ‘Please.’
Staffe says, ‘I need to know precisely where you were, and with whom, the night before last. All evening.’
‘I was here.’
‘From six till midnight – every minute?’ He glances at Malcolm. ‘And you, too.’
‘We were here. Together,’ says Bridget.
‘Did someone phone the house?’
Mal
colm sits down, puts his head in his hands. When he looks up, his face is quite grey.
Bridget says, ‘That’s when Sean died. Am I right? You’re asking these questions because you think I might have killed him.’ Her voice tremors. She tries to catch a look from Malcolm, but he studiously looks at the floor, begins to talk. ‘We were at a meeting, in Kingston. There were plenty of people there. It will be easy to verify. We went at seven-thirty and stayed until gone ten, then we gave someone a lift home, to Petersham. We got back here at around eleven.’
‘We got the end of Newsnight,’ says Bridget. ‘I can’t abide him, that Paxman, but it was the girl. The Jew.’
‘Who did you give the lift to?’
‘The point is, we couldn’t have done it,’ says Bridget. ‘We have people who can vouch. Isn’t that enough?’
‘I don’t understand why you would be reluctant to tell me.’
‘They are good people. We are good people. It isn’t right, that’s why.’
‘What was the meeting?’
‘It was our church,’ says Malcolm.
‘Which is?’
‘It’s not a church as you would think of one,’ says Bridget.
‘Look, a man has been murdered, not to mention your sister. Your niece was in intensive care, for Christ’s sake.’
‘There’s no need for that,’ says Bridget.
‘Tell me!’
Malcolm says, ‘It’s the House of the Holy Innocents.’
‘We were worshipping, for crying out loud,’ says Bridget, standing.
‘Don’t get upset, darling.’
She goes to the sideboard, hands Staffe a leaflet. At the top, it gives an address, on Norbiton Road. At the bottom, the Reverend Laurence Hands has signed the newsletter.
‘What was the meeting in aid of?’
‘What does that matter?’ says Malcolm.
Staffe says, ‘You must understand, the more you evade my questions, the more likely I am to think you have something to be ashamed of.’
‘Ashamed?’
Staffe stands.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To see the Reverend Hands.’
‘Don’t,’ says Malcolm. He stands, but is unsteady and totters back to the sofa, lands heavily, groaning.
‘What’s wrong?’ says Staffe.
‘It’s his levels,’ says Bridget.
‘Levels?’ he says, as Bridget goes to the sideboard and opens a leather pouch. ‘Ah, insulin.’ A shabby memory emerges. Strange, how deep and dark the mind can make its recesses. Staffe looks at the floor as Bridget calmly tends her husband. They were thirteen, he and Malcolm. Staffe was just one of a gang and Woodsy had got hold of Malcolm’s bag and stamped on the kit inside. Malcolm hadn’t grassed Woodsy up, but neither did Staffe, not even when the ambulance came for Malcolm because he hadn’t got his insulin fix.
‘I’ll tell you about the meeting,’ gasps Malcolm.
‘That’s all right, Malcolm. It’s not necessary. Not now.’
‘Did you remember something? You look peculiar,’ says Malcolm. ‘So long as you don’t feel sorry for me, Will. Don’t you dare do that. It’s too late.’ He flinches as Bridget feeds him his drug.
‘I remembered when Woodsy …’
‘I was at your house when your parents were killed. The police came and Marie was at home. My father saw the police pull up and he went round. We looked after Marie when your parents died. And you went off the rails, I remember. And look at you now. Look at us both.’ Malcolm laughs, at himself, it seems – or perhaps not.
Twenty-Six
The House of the Holy Innocents is a down-at-heel, turn-of-the-century chapel which looks Methodist or Congregationalist. Nowadays, from the outside at least, it doesn’t conform to what you would expect of a holy house. The windows are cracked and the chimney is crudely pointed. Beneath the patched-up roof, the running boards hang down, rotten and flaking.
Out front is a ten-plated Mercedes with a silver fish of Saint Peter on its tail. Thirty-five grand’s worth of chariot.
Inside, the House is high non-conformist. On three walls, hand-fashioned quilts hang, and Staffe suspects that this is a place where they clap happily, where guitars strum all over the hymns.
From a back room, a dog-collared man in a red track suit strides boldly towards Staffe. He reaches out with a big hand and beams a yellow-toothed smile. ‘Laurence Hands.’ His shock of russet hair struggles against a damped-down parting. ‘You need not beat around the bush, Inspector,’ he booms, as if addressing a packed congregation. ‘I am here to uphold the law of the land. And God’s law, too.’
‘Which would you choose – if you had to?’ says Staffe, wondering how the Reverend knows he is police. A call from the Lambs, perhaps.
‘The one should represent the other, don’t you think? I am answerable to God, just like you, Inspector.’
‘And Sean and Kerry Degg?’
‘Baby Grace, for that matter. Oh, yes, we have been offering up our prayers for that innocent soul.’ The Reverend sits on the end of a pew and beams at Staffe, as if his smile is sculpted.
‘The Lambs said I was coming?’
‘I can vouch for them.’
‘Reverend, would you go beyond prayers, to save an abandoned soul?’
‘This is a church.’
‘Who prays with you, besides Bridget and Malcolm Lamb?’
‘There are many fine people.’
‘Do you subscribe to the beliefs of Breath of Life?’
‘Of course. “You knit me together in my mother’s womb.” We are God’s work from the get-go, Inspector.’
‘And what of their methods?’
‘I know Lesley Crawford. Why would I pretend that I don’t? She has a great mind, a lively mind. If you have ever heard her speak, you would understand.’
‘Do actions speak louder than words?’
‘You won’t get me to judge her. We have a Lord for such things.’ Laurence Hands’ smile grows impossibly wide. He shows his scarlet gums.
‘I will need to see a list of your congregation. And affiliated churches. Is there a denomination as such?’
‘You could say we are independent.’
‘The list, please.’
‘I’m not sure we have such a thing.’
Staffe looks around the church, sees nothing that might help him. But Hands doesn’t know that and he rubs his chin, nods to himself. ‘You’re a charity, right?’
The Reverend’s smile falters. ‘What?’
‘If you’re a charity, you will have benefactors. You will account to the Commission for your income and expenditure. All your income. Your Mercedes. It’s a nice one. A brand spanker.’
‘It’s a year old.’
‘I’m curious. Would that car belong to you or to the church? If it was the church, I suppose you would have to declare it as a benefit in kind.’
‘As you said, it’s not really your business.’
‘You’ve heard of the Crown Prosecution, Reverend? Well, we sing from the same hymn sheet.’
‘You can’t intimidate me.’
‘Is that what you call it, when a policeman takes an interest in the statutes of the land? I have to say, we do see the world in different ways. I suppose we are answerable to different deities, after all.’
The smile is back. ‘Mine is not an adversarial system.’
‘And mine is not necessarily so. I only have to dig so far. When I get what I want, I stop. Do you think there might be a list, Reverend?’
‘I can look.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
*
Janine has a mischievous look on her face as she sits down opposite Staffe in the back snug of the Hand and Shears. It’s an expression you’d never see when she has her forensic hat on.
‘What’s amusing you?’ he says.
‘When you give me something, I can tell what you want the outcome to be.’
‘The outcome will be what the outcome is. That�
��s the beauty of your job. It’s a science. You don’t know how lucky you are.’
‘So’s yours.’
‘Until people get involved. They usually crop up somewhere along the line.’ Staffe taps his glass against Janine’s large merlot and, drinking from his Virgin Mary, says, ‘A little early.’
‘I’m done. I was in at six. A rush job for some inconsiderate types I know.’
‘Damn them. And I suspect the news is not good.’
‘Tommy Given’s DNA is conclusive, Staffe. He’s not the father of Miles or Maya Degg.’
‘What?’
‘You’ll have to look elsewhere for the father.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘It’s a scientific fact.’
Staffe downs his tomato juice and stands.
‘Charming,’ says Janine. ‘I’ll just drink this on my own then, shall I?’
‘We’ll go for a drink tomorrow, if you fancy.’
‘A little birdie told me you were seeing someone, kind of a colleague of mine – in a roundabout way.’
‘There’s some big-mouthed birdies around.’
‘Are you off to see our friend Mr Given?’
‘Maybe.’ Staffe knows he has to meet Alicia Flint up in Nottingham, is calculating whether he has time to make a diversion.
‘If you can get him to cough up some sperm, I could check if he’s able to be any kind of father.’
‘I wasn’t expecting it to be that kind of a visit.’
Janine laughs. ‘You can be rather persuasive, when you want. Give it a whirl.’
‘Fortunately, I know my biology, and he is able. He has a daughter.’
‘Which might insinuate that he and Kerry weren’t lovers. She seemed to get knocked up easily enough.’
Which sets Staffe thinking.
As he drives down to Cobham, to call on Tommy, this time without Smet, he looks down at Laurence Hands’ list of members on his passenger seat. He is growing tired of the A3, doesn’t even look at the City towers, receding in his rear view, finally disappearing beneath the cusp of Kingston Hill.