Pain of Death

by Adam Creed

  ‘I thought you wanted to talk about when we were young,’ says Malcolm.

  Staffe looks at the photograph of Bridget, Malcolm beside her. She is beaming into camera and he is looking at her, a frightened smile creasing in his face, as if he can see that one day he might have to do anything for her.

  ‘Sean called a mobile number. And that mobile phone then made a call to your home.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ says Malcolm.

  ‘You have a mobile phone, don’t you?’

  Malcolm shakes his head.

  ‘You’d do anything for Bridget, wouldn’t you? You can’t give her children, though. But you could help her have Kerry’s.’

  ‘I’ll support her however I can.’

  ‘Sean ruined her.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re driving at.’

  ‘That young woman in the shop who served Sean remembered him. She remembered who else was in the shop just afterwards. I have her statement here.’ He holds up the photograph. He puts a finger to it. ‘She remembers you going in.’ Staffe looks at Malcolm, says, ‘I remember that time at school, Malcolm. When the ambulance came.’

  ‘You were there. You could have stopped that bastard.’

  ‘You know how to inject. You have done it all your life. And you work with druggies, down at the exchange that the church helps with. You could get your hands on it.’

  ‘Hands on what?’

  ‘Sean called you on that mobile phone you say you haven’t got.’ Staffe pulls a phone from his pocket. The device is sheathed in an evidence bag and Malcolm’s eyes hood down. ‘You called Bridget from this mobile, Malcolm. There are some bastards out there who are paid by the government to get convictions. They look for accessories in crimes like this. They don’t like loose ends.’

  ‘I called to see how she was, that’s all. Bridget knows nothing. She knows nothing at all about this.’

  ‘If you’re saying you did it on your own, you’ll have to tell me how.’

  ‘How? How is easy, Will. If you love somebody – have you ever? If you love somebody and somebody hurts them … you get a hate. You get a hate as big as the love. That’s how it works and you can’t do anything else.’

  ‘You killed an innocent man.’

  ‘I brought peace to a beautiful woman, an innocent woman who had her inner being, her holiest element, taken away from her. She can be complete.’

  ‘I thought Sean was guilty, once. But I was wrong. You killed an innocent man, a father.’

  ‘You said you wanted to talk about when we were young.’

  ‘They killed my father, my mother, too.’

  ‘I know, and I’m sorry.’

  ‘And I don’t doubt they had their reasons.’

  ‘It’s not the same.’

  ‘It’s always the same, Malcolm. It has to be. It can’t be any other way. How could I bear it if they didn’t have a damned good reason?’

  Malcolm leans heavily against the wall. He looks through the window in the door, watches Bridget and her family. ‘Can I be with them, a little longer?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’ As he says it, Staffe feels a little less decent about himself.

  *

  The uniformed officers take Malcolm Lamb away. His wife is not with him as he is led away – at his insistence. Staffe cannot help speculating what his father might make of him and the things he has to do.

  ‘If only that was the end of it,’ says Josie. On their way out of City Royal, she hands Staffe a bound SOC printout of the forensics down at Emily Bagshot’s bungalow on the Cornish coast.

  ‘Where is Emily?’

  ‘She’s had the tests – to prove she’s Giselle’s mother – and now she’s with social services.’

  ‘They’ve released her from custody?’

  ‘We have a scalpel and a syringe found less than a mile from Emily’s bungalow – both taken from City Royal. Natalie Stafford has admitted to it. Her prints were on them.’

  ‘And what do the Crown say about Natalie?’

  Josie shakes her head. ‘It’ll be murder, sir.’

  ‘And people talk about innocence,’ says Staffe. ‘What about her innocence?’

  ‘She’s as guilty as they come, sir. Conspiracy, abduction, concealment and destroying public records as well as murder.’

  ‘And finally, Emily will be with her daughter.’

  ‘And Rob Hutchison. They’re together. You should have seen them.’

  ‘The happy family. But …’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘But for Natalie’s interventions.’

  ‘There’s something else, sir.’

  Staffe watches Malcolm Lamb being manhandled into a police car on the hospital forecourt and he thinks about when the police came to see his sister Marie and how he wasn’t there when she was told her parents were murdered, but Malcolm and his father were. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s the bank draft fraud, sir,’ says Josie. ‘We can deal with it.’

  ‘No!’

  An ambulance roars up the approach road and screeches to a halt in front of them. The siren stops and from within the vehicle, a scream cuts the city afternoon. They are asked to stand aside.

  When the man is wheeled past, blood proliferates, from the chest of what some people would call a patient. To others, he is a victim. It could be a knife wound, or gunshot.

  ‘Tell me,’ says Staffe. ‘Did they catch anyone with the banker’s drafts?’

  ‘Nearly, with the first. They used it to try and buy a car out in Ilford. After that, they must have got word round the gang and it looks like they dropped the scam.’

  ‘Any prints on the cheque?’

  ‘No. But we’ve got a definite ID on the one who presented it. He’s got a record and it’s the eGang all right. But they’ve gone to ground.’

  ‘Have you checked Jasmine Cash’s flat?’

  Josie nods.

  ‘How was she?’

  Josie says, ‘We can do this, sir.’

  Staffe watches the bloodied victim disappear between the automatic doors of the hospital. ‘Fine.’

  ‘What?’ says Josie, and she watches as Staffe walks away from City Royal, but in the opposite direction to Leadengate station.

  *

  Staffe is a little worse for wear. He tried to sleep and knocked back a couple of stiff nightcaps, but his brain couldn’t stop ticking and now he feels even worse, needs to do something. He had called Finbar and is waiting for him now. It is one of their haunts, of old.

  He drinks from his bottle of Moretti and twists on his stool at the bar of the Boss Clef. The performer is singing ‘Lili Marlene’ and has a crimped bob of golden hair and blood-red lips, is wearing a basque and a tight black skirt, split all the way to her hip. It has a scarlet lining. The place is all dark, save a single shaft of light from above that picks out her sway of the song.

  With her golden hair, the singer reminds him a little of Natalie. Poor Natalie, who has borne the brunt of the charges that the CPS have brought in the abductions of Kerry Degg and Emily Bagshot, the manslaughter of the former and the murder of Tommy Given. For her part, Lesley Crawford is copping conspiracy charges and, according to the CPS, who are talking to her brief, Jasper Renwick, she is probably facing as little as two years. She might even get the lot suspended.

  Her attachment to the abductions was opportunistic, superficial and political. Renwick has sufficient argument to pin the abductions to dead Tommy Given and the stunt with Zoe Bright is political, also, and conducted with the absolute consent of Zoe, according to the wily Jasper. Because of Crawford’s testimony, Zoe Bright will probably be charged with conspiracy.

  When Staffe had called Alicia Flint, she had said that Lesley Crawford was cold as ice. It had made her blood boil and when she visited Zoe, Anthony Bright had been there, holding the baby beside the hospital bed that Zoe was chained to. Alicia said, ‘If you looked at them quick, you might think they were a family. It shows how much we know.’


  The applause for ‘Lili Marlene’ subsides and Staffe recognises the opening chords of ‘Shir Hatan’. The singer introduces the song over the piano prelude and he is sure he has heard these spoken words before. It is a homage to Dietrich and he is sure Kerry had done this also, back in the winter when she was Lori Dos Passos and he had chanced upon her – little knowing. He could swear she had.

  The words drift into a verse of animals crying because they are hungry. The child cries, too, because he is lonely. Staffe closes his eyes, pictures Zoe Bright chained, her baby in the arms of Anthony Bright. He wonders if his love of Zoe is diminished now.

  He looks around the audience as the chorus belts out in Hebrew. From the dark, some of the audience join in.

  ‘Penny for ’em.’ Finbar Hare draws up a stool alongside Staffe and orders up two more bottles of Moretti and large Laphroaigs.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Fin,’ says Staffe.

  ‘Don’t ever apologise to me, old boy.’ They clink. ‘You were only trying to help someone, so don’t beat yourself up about it. There’s others can do that.’

  Staffe feels a smile spread across his face. It feels alien to him, seems as if he is a long way from himself.

  Fin talks across the music and drinks quickly, playing catch-up, draining his malt and ordering another for himself – a ‘hollow legs’, as he calls it – and three songs further into the set, he begins to muse on how he would like his evening to pan out, unable to take his eyes off the singer. He raises a glass to her and she winks at him. Staffe doesn’t know how he does it, but when he turns to the bar to take a swig of his Moretti, he sees the barmaid undressing the foil from the neck of a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, and Fin miming the action of putting it on ice. When he catches Staffe watching him, he says, ‘That poor bastard Vernon Short, eh? You were involved in all that, weren’t you?’

  Vernon’s bill had lost its vote by three bodies. He had stepped down, immediately, with a smile upon his lips and – the first time Staffe had seen this in him – a glint in his eyes. He looked like a different man. Nothing like his father. He had said he was done with Parliament and was going to see if vines would take on his small parcel of land in Puglia. When the interviewer had asked him about Lesley Crawford and was he involved with her political activities, he said, ‘Of course not. She’s a maverick and the laws of slander prevent me from being candid.’ The interviewer persisted and Vernon had said, ‘The beauty of stepping down is I don’t ever have to give fools like you the time of my day. I suggest you stuff yourself.’ He had thrown back his head and laughed, then walked away. As he went, you could hear the crew guffawing.

  ‘What’s happened to Dan Carlyle?’ Staffe asks.

  ‘We’re looking after him. He’s booked into the Hermitage for as long as it takes for all this to die down. Rehab’s the best bastard place in the world to hide.’

  ‘I’ll catch up with Golding, I promise, Fin.’

  ‘Don’t knock yourself out. We didn’t lose a penny and the chances are it might have saved Dan Carlyle’s marriage and career in the long run. You know he was hooked on heroin?’ Fin drains his third large Laphroaig and slams the glass on the counter. ‘Fucking heroin. For the love of God.’

  The singer finishes the first half of her set and comes to the bar, sits on a stool between Staffe and Finbar and the barmaid brings across the chilled Veuve Clicquot.

  ‘I’ll leave you two to it,’ stays Staffe.

  ‘Don’t go,’ says Finbar.

  ‘I know you from somewhere,’ says the singer to Staffe. Fin has a hand on her hip.

  Staffe thinks right back to the beginning of this case. Some have passed and some been born. He says to the singer, ‘You know The Blue Angel?’

  ‘Of course. I just sang something from that.’

  Staffe says to Fin, ‘Thanks for trying. We’re even.’

  ‘No!’ says Finbar. ‘I’ll never be even. Not with you.’ He takes his hand from the singer’s hip and grips Staffe’s shoulders. ‘And that’s the bastard truth.’

  *

  The night is quiet and as the door of the Boss Clef closes behind him, the music from inside shuts to almost nothing. Staffe skirts around the Old Street roundabout, making his way past Peerless. He looks up to the Limekiln Tower beyond. Jasmine is there, with Millie, her man on the run and hopes all gone to dust.

  For some reason, he walks on up towards Flower and Dean. It is warm and his thoughts won’t slow. Nor can he impose any order on them. The melodies, the staccato rhythms of Brel and Schultze, the ghosts of Dietrich and Lori Dos Passos, stay with him, snagged.

  On New North Road, he pauses outside a row of shops. The line about the lonely child who is hungry and cries in the night swirls like wind in a cove. He stops and he looks, feels a familiarity. These shops are run down, but they serve. There is a fruit and veg shop, a newsagent’s. Then two carcasses, a caff and a bookie’s. Finally, a hairdresser’s. Cutz. He knows this place, and the familiarity takes shape. The reason he has, subconsciously, brought himself here becomes apparent.

  Above the shop, a dim light glows within, presumably from a room at the back. He crosses the road and works his way round along the narrow road that runs along the back of the shops. He counts the units as he goes and, right enough, there is somebody in an upstairs room at the back of Cutz.

  He calls Jombaugh and gives precise instructions, saying he wants a 10–39 to Cutz on the New North Road.

  Jom asks what is wrong and Staffe tells his sergeant it is a matter type five. Under no circumstances must the officers get out of their car. He hangs up and waits. He thinks of what Finbar had said to him about them never being even and how he might have changed since that sequence of events, those years ago. For sure, Finbar has changed and Staffe wonders what perverse circumstances can contrive to make a sad man happy.

  The squad car’s response is quick and as he hears the siren grow gradually louder, like a first movement, he wonders if he is correct; how prepared he really is.

  He positions himself by the back gate and he waits. His muscles harden and his breathing deepens. The blood pumps faster and only now does he fear the worst.

  The police car is out front already, wailing, and the light in the upstairs back of Cutz flicks to black. A couple of beats and he hears the back door open and then a curse and heavy footfall. The bolts on the other side of the gate are shot and the door opens inward.

  ‘Jadus,’ he says.

  ‘Fuck.’ Jadus smells of coconut oil and his hair is slicked back. The moon catches it, silver and black. He closes and opens his eyes, slow; makes an ironic and disparaging slow shake of his head. ‘You shouldn’t have.’

  ‘The officers out front aren’t coming. Don’t worry. Don’t do anything stupid – it’s just me and you. I want to be the one.’

  ‘Not you,’ says Jadus. ‘Not you, man.’

  ‘It has to be,’ says Staffe.

  Something glints in Jadus Golding’s hand. ‘You’re not taking me. Not you. Not any fucker.’ He sounds like a boy, a frightened boy.

  The gun rises and Staffe takes a step back. All he can think to say is, ‘Please.’

  ‘You going to let me go?’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You have to.’

  ‘You can’t do that, Jadus. You can’t do that to Jasmine, or Millie. Put it down. Come of your own accord.’

  Jadus shakes his head again. He is rueful, resigned.

  Staffe recognises the look. He thought he knew him.

  The sound is fearsome. He feels the sound and it is all he feels. And then another.

  He was wrong.

  The street comes to meet him and he can’t feel the bang to his head, just the worst stitch you ever had in your chest. He looks up and in the indigo sky, sees a constellation, close. He tries to keep his eyes open, but he can’t. He feels himself being lifted and held: the warmth of a fellow man. And then he falls back to ground, but the ground doesn’t come.

  About the Author


  Adam Creed was born in Salford and read PPE at Balliol College Oxford. He abandoned a career in the City to study writing at Sheffield Hallam University, following which he wrote in Andalucia then returned to England to work with writers in prison. He is now Head of Writing at Liverpool John Moores University and Project Leader of Free to Write.

  Pain of Death is the third novel in the D. I. Staffe series, which also includes Suffer the Children and Willing Flesh.

  By the Same Author

  SUFFER THE CHILDREN

  WILLING FLESH

  Copyright

  First published in 2011

  by Faber and Faber Ltd

  Bloomsbury House

  74–77 Great Russell Street

  London WC1B 3DA

  This ebook edition first published in 2011

  All rights reserved

  © Adam Creed, 2011

  The right of Adam Creed to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–0–571–27589–2