Pain of Death

by Adam Creed

  He closes the door behind the child and flips the sign to show ‘closed’.

  ‘Oi!’ says Maisie. ‘I got an alarm. I got a fuckin’ alarm an’ fuck all in the till.’

  Staffe says, ‘I’m DI Wagstaffe.’

  Maisie squints, as if she’s trying to read film credits. ‘You’re no copper.’

  He approaches her, shows his card and Maisie eyes him up and down. She smiles, says, ‘I done nothing. I told you on the phone I done nothing.’

  ‘You were working on the fourteenth, right? In the evening.’

  ‘I work every fuckin’ evening. It’s shit. My mother is charging me rent. To live in my own house. Is there a law against that?’

  Staffe takes out the photos. He is careful not to mix them up and he shows her the image of Sean. It is Sean a year or so ago in a Hawaiian shirt at a free concert in Victoria Park. In the background it says: Sing Haiti. Dance Haiti. ‘Did you serve this man, on the evening of the fourteenth?’

  ‘What he do?’

  ‘Did you serve him, Maisie? It’s important.’

  ‘He could come back. Do for me. I’m not saying nothing.’

  ‘He won’t come back. I promise you. He’s dead. You served him, didn’t you?’

  ‘Dead?’ She nods. ‘Cheap fuckin’ vodka. He started payin’ me in coins then changed his mind. I remember him all right. He gave me the creeps. How’d he die?’

  ‘And this person?’ Staffe takes the photo of Bridget on the happiest day of her life. He folds it, to focus Maisie’s attention.

  Maisie squints again. She shrugs and then her face screws up, like a flower, her nose the centre. ‘Aah, right. That’s it.’ She nods up at the top shelf where there are three glass sweet jars. They are misted up and the labels are scratched away at the corners. Humbugs on the left and sherbet lemons on the right. In the middle, a jar half-full of tubes of Parma violets.

  ‘Parma violets?’ says Staffe.

  ‘How d’you know?’

  ‘I’m a copper, aren’t I?’ he smiles.

  Maisie smiles back, quite radiant.

  ‘You’ve been a great help, Maisie.’ He hands her a tenner. ‘Treat your mum to a fish supper tonight, and cut her some slack. And try not to serve fags to the children, hey? It’ll kill them in the long run.’

  Thirty-Three

  ‘I know who the friend is – the one who came to stay with you. The one with the powdered milk.’

  ‘You can’t hold me here indefinitely,’ says Eve.

  Staffe says, ‘I have to go away soon. They won’t release you without my say-so. I could be gone a few days.’

  ‘I want a solicitor.’

  ‘You were offered one.’ Staffe feels relaxed. He thinks he might see how everything makes sense. What he has been working with, throughout this case, are many separate pockets of nonsense. People’s lives don’t make sense. The things we do are difficult to fathom. We act illogically. Put the nonsenses together and the sense rises to the surface, like subjecting silver nitrate to light and then immersing it in chemicals. It tells the story of what happened at a moment in time: a marriage, a death, a birth.

  And the more he feels relaxed, the more unease he can detect in Eve.

  She says, ‘What are you smiling about?’

  ‘Look at this.’ He takes out a piece of paper. He is deliberate, wants his hand to be neat. He writes two dates, side by side. Beneath each date, he writes two names. The names are the same. He turns the paper around, so Eve can read it. He rests his pen above the second date, 6 January 2011. ‘You know this date.’

  Eve nods. ‘When Kerry disappeared. You keep asking me about it.’

  ‘And the other?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘Just another date. Why would you remember it? And I don’t need to ask you about the names, do I?’

  Eve shakes her head. She looks disconsolate.

  ‘Nurse Eve Delahunty, Nurse Natalie Stafford. Nurse Eve Delahunty, Nurse Natalie Stafford.’

  ‘I can read.’

  ‘Nurse Eve Delahunty, Nurse Natalie Stafford. Nurse Eve Delahunty, Nurse Natalie Stafford.’

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘Nurse Eve Delahunty, Nurse Natalie Stafford. Nurse Eve Delahunty, Nurse Natalie Stafford.’

  ‘Will, please.’ Eve can’t look at him and she wraps her arms across her chest. Her shoulders tremor.

  ‘Two nurses in London. They each came down from a village in Yorkshire.’

  ‘Stop. I asked you to stop.’

  ‘You can’t separate them. So much so that they were the only two nurses who were on duty on both the night that Emily Bagshot was abducted and the night Kerry Degg was abducted.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about an Emily Bagshot.’

  ‘That’s bad luck. Do you think we take heed of bad luck in this business? You’re going down for this, Eve. It’s conspiracy. It’s withholding evidence. It’s obstructing the course of justice. It’s almost as bad as if you had been the one who took them. And you looked after Grace’s twin, didn’t you? You fed it.’

  ‘I’m a damned nurse, Will. What could I do?’

  ‘You could have saved Kerry Degg’s life. Sean needn’t have died. And God knows what the hell happened to Emily Bagshot.’

  Eve looks up at Staffe, her mascara is melting down her cheeks and she bites down on her bottom lip. ‘It’s a boy.’

  ‘Grace has a brother? You know where he is?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘Where is Natalie? We sent cars round to her house and the hospital. She’s not there. You could text her, arrange to meet her. We could make things easy for you. You could save Zoe Bright.’

  ‘You keep talking about a woman called Bright. I don’t know her.’

  ‘What about Emily Bagshot?’

  She shakes her head without looking at him. ‘I’d only be guessing.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have to serve time, Eve. Your instincts were good: to protect a friend, to save a baby – two babies. We could keep you from going to prison.’

  ‘I’m scared.’ Eve is trembling, now. ‘Would you hold me, Will?’

  Staffe says, ‘Interview ends,’ and flicks off the recorder, fumbles in his pocket and finds a stick of Wrigley’s. He sucks on it and presses it into the spyhole on the door of the interview room and he goes across to Eve. He sinks to his knees and wraps his arms around her. Despite everything she has been through, she smells of barely anything at all. He whispers, ‘Tell me about Natalie. What happened to her?’

  ‘I told her, you can’t bury the truth.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  Eve talks against his neck. Her breath is warm. She presses her ear against his, tight, and he thinks that maybe she might have liked him a little; that perhaps she was not using him, entirely. He banishes this, listens as her softly spoken story drums lightly in his head.

  ‘We were only fourteen. We’d go into town the first Saturday of every month, just me and Nat. My dad would give me a fiver and so would my mum. Nat only had a dad. Her mum ran off. She only ever had a fiver but we’d share my mum’s fiver, but this one time, we got on the bus and the driver said to Nat, “You again?” I said, “What d’you mean?” and he said, “She’s always off into town,” and Nat pulled me down the bus and shouted at him to watch his tongue, that customers had privacy rights. She said “Privacy rights”.’ Eve laughs softly at the memory. ‘But that was the end of the line for our Saturdays.

  ‘As soon as we got to town, Nat said she had to do something and she’d meet me at the station for the ten past five. I knew her dad always waited for her at the stop in Grassington. He’d run me home, too, so Nat needed me to be on the bus with her. Her dad loved her enough for two. He’s a lovely man.’ Eve exhales and it tickles Staffe’s neck. ‘I let her go, but I followed her round town. I almost had to run to keep up, so I knew it was something she was excited about. I knew her better than a sister and round the back of Vickery’s, I got scared for her. She was meeting a boy. But
he was a man. He had a sports car, an MR2. He kissed her full on and put his hand on her and she patted it away. They both laughed and she got in his car. When he got in, he wasn’t laughing. He had that look. I could see he was intent. I should have stopped them.’

  ‘You couldn’t,’ whispers Staffe.

  ‘He ruined her. Years later, she told me exactly what he did to her. He had a friend who came along later.’

  ‘She got pregnant?’ says Staffe.

  ‘I met her at the bus station and we went home on the bus, as if nothing had happened, even though she could hardly walk and she had her coat tied around her waist to cover the blood. Her lip was cut and her eye was puffed up. She tried to cover it with make-up. Her dad knew the minute he saw her and he dragged her along to the police. They did nothing.’

  ‘She can’t have children now?’ says Staffe.

  ‘Her solicitor said we shouldn’t have got the bus home. He said it as though getting on the bloody bus was the crime.’

  All Staffe can say is, ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘Can’t you let her be?’

  Staffe pulls away from Eve and brushes strands of her hair from her cheeks where it tacks to her tears. ‘Did she tell you how she came to meet Lesley Crawford?’

  ‘Can’t you see, she’s a victim?’

  ‘The only victim is the victim. It would make a difference, if you could tell us Crawford approached her.’

  ‘Crawford approached her.’

  ‘You’re just saying that.’

  ‘Nat knew Emily Bagshot. Emily is from Otley, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nat and Emily played netball together. Years later, Emily turns up at the Royal saying she wants an abortion. It was me who saw her. If I’d kept my mouth shut … Nat didn’t say anything to me. Not at the time.

  ‘Every now and again, the last couple of years, Nat goes down to Cornwall. She doesn’t tell me. But I worry about her, so I checked in her handbag once when we were out together and she was in the loo and I saw the tickets. She went to Truro. It was an open return. There’s a bottle of ginger mead in her cupboard from a cider farm. Lizard Cider, it says.’

  ‘You think Emily Bagshot is living in Truro?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not supposed to know anything. Nat said it was better that way. It would protect me.’ Eve looks up at him. ‘I thought you would protect me.’

  ‘Is that why we were – the way we were?’

  ‘I’m no different from anyone else. I’m just looking to be loved, a little.’

  He wants to be able to say he could, given different circumstances. Instead, he says, ‘If the law can protect you, it will. I promise you that. You tell me everything you know and I’ll have a word with the Crown. The CPS. Will you try calling her again for me?’

  Eve nods and punches in the number, to no avail. She shows Staffe the screen.

  ‘Can you write down all the names and addresses of everyone Natalie knew well enough to take refuge with?’

  Again, she nods, says, ‘I should have known better.’

  Staffe goes to see Jom, who calls up Evidence, gets the herring and Zoe Bright’s dissertation brought down – sealed and signed for.

  *

  Zoe is on all fours, breathing in and out and gasping for air as if she has just been rescued from the deep. Lesley Crawford kneels beside her, is told, time and again, ‘Don’t touch me. Just get me a doctor.’

  And time and again, Lesley says, ‘I’ve made a call.’

  ‘Just get an ambulance – a doctor – for God’s sake. Please! Do it for the baby.’ Zoe twists, looks up at Lesley Crawford. She snorts when another contraction comes. In reality, as opposed to the story she spun to Doctor Fahy, she is thirty weeks. It’s the same time as the last one came, and she fears she will lose this one too. She knows that these circumstances are no chance misfortune. The blame weighs like a stone slab.

  ‘Call Anthony.’ She blows her cheeks out.

  ‘What use is he?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Zoe blows her cheeks out again and walks backwards with her hands so she is kneeling up.

  Lesley Crawford says, ‘Is it better? Is it getting better?’

  Zoe nods and Lesley helps her to her feet, supports her as they walk across to the sofa. She eases Zoe down and kisses the top of her head. She kneels between her legs and rubs her hands up and down along Zoe’s thighs. ‘Better?’

  Zoe nods.

  ‘I’ve made a call and she’s coming.’

  ‘Natalie? You’re sure she can help me?’

  ‘She’s delivered thousands of babies.’

  ‘You won’t let me lose it.’

  ‘We can’t lose it. We’ve come too far.’

  ‘I want this baby,’ says Zoe. She feels the mist rise now and she breathes deep, feels the baby low on her. It feels almost out of her, as if it is further along than the last one. Dare she hope?

  She looks down on Lesley Crawford, knows that something is afoot; a change to proceedings. Lesley is always a step ahead, but now she is unsettled, constantly looking at her phone and her watch and down along the thin track that leads to the Strand. Today, it seems far, far away. It is deadly quiet again. The Easter weekend has come and gone, and now there is not a soul in any direction.

  Zoe says, ‘Will Natalie come alone?’

  Lesley Crawford hesitates. ‘Yes. I’m sure she will.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t she come alone? Lesley? Please look at me.’

  Crawford turns away from the window. She looks stern. ‘There is the other child, too. The boy.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘There is plenty to think about.’

  ‘Is it time?’ asks Zoe, putting both her palms on her swollen belly.

  ‘It can’t be far away.’

  ‘You will tell me. I have to prepare. Mentally as well as physically. I have the baby to think about. Don’t let me lose it, Lesley.’

  Crawford looks hurt. ‘How could I? We need the baby to come, now it is showing the desire.’

  Thirty-Four

  Pennington wasn’t best pleased about releasing Eve Delahunty from custody. It had seemed perverse to him that the very statement which confirmed her as a conspirator was also grounds for releasing her – that she may bait the principal perpetrator. And the thought of the press getting hold of his DI’s relationship with the nurse made him shiver. In the end, and despite himself, he was persuaded of the benefits.

  Staffe watches her come back down the path. They are in Marlow, which is where Nurse Natalie’s favourite aunt lives. Eve has been here many times and Auntie Barbara wasn’t remotely surprised to hear from her niece’s friend.

  ‘She wanted me to stay. I couldn’t get away,’ says Eve, sitting in the passenger seat. She smells of marzipan. ‘We had tea.’

  ‘Natalie isn’t there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’d tell me if she was.’

  ‘I said I would.’ Eve looks sad, the realisation that her friend is destined for incarceration only just fully dawning.

  ‘Has Natalie been to see her?’

  ‘She was here yesterday morning. She had the baby with her. Barbara said the baby was called Samuel. She said that Natalie was looking after it for a friend.’ Eve laughs – nervous. ‘She said she had a suspicion it was mine.’

  ‘Where was she going?’

  Eve shakes her head. ‘And I didn’t get the impression Barbara thought anything was wrong. Nat’s always been a good liar. I should know.’

  Staffe calls Jombaugh, tells him that they can stop surveilling the hospital and Natalie Stafford’s home. There’s no chance that she will turn up, not with the child back in her keeping. But they should step up at the airports and ferry terminals.

  ‘Where now?’ says Eve.

  It is Staffe’s turn to shake his head. ‘Yorkshire?’

  ‘As good a place as any,’ says Eve.

  ‘Or Cornwall?’

  ‘Because of what I said about Emily Bagsh
ot? All I know is Nat got the train to Truro a couple of times. How would we know where to look?’

  ‘Yorkshire. Cornwall. They couldn’t be further apart.’ Staffe looks along the high street, past the green. North or west? ‘If you’d come clean straight away, we’d have been here in time,’ says Staffe, unable to help himself.

  Eve says nothing. Perhaps she still doesn’t know if trapping Natalie is a good or a bad thing. ‘Well?’ she says.

  ‘Vernon Short’s bill is coming up before the House tomorrow.’

  ‘They’re going to vote? At last. It seems to have taken for ever.’

  ‘He tried to withdraw it but now the government want it. At least want the vote – so they said the withdrawal was unconstitutional. Which way do you want it to go?’

  Eve shrugs. ‘You can’t have that kind of opinion. Not in my job. But I wouldn’t want it to be driven underground. And twenty weeks, I don’t know. How many people change their mind after twenty weeks? You’re backing people into a corner. I’m just glad I don’t have to make decisions like that.’

  ‘I think we shouldn’t rush this,’ says Staffe. ‘How about we drive across towards the M40? It’s a good spot to start from. And I know somewhere for lunch.’

  ‘That feels weird,’ says Eve. ‘Lunch. Us?’

  ‘I can do weird,’ he says. He feels an upperness of hand in the air, can’t be sure which way it will blow.

  *

  Tommy walks the long, gentle path up from Demorna Cove. He carries Giselle, cupped in one arm, as easy as if she were a sweater he had taken off. The sun is hot on the side of his face and as he rounds the final curve by the lone ash tree, he sees the house. There is nothing romantic about the building itself: a rendered, blockwork bungalow with grey slate roof and a dormer window poking up, but it has a garden that peters to a slim paddock which in turn runs quickly to the cliffs. The cliffs here are two hundred feet above the ocean – sheer. The wooden fence between the paddock and the cliff edge fails in places, and because of the way the sea has met the land for millennia, Emily can enjoy views all the way along the coast from north to south. Her plot is on a promontory and she can see all the way from Kelsey Head to Navax Point on a good day. And on a bad day, all she can hear is the rush of the sea and the gulls above.