by Adam Creed
And the sound. Again. Again. She falls to the ground, away from herself and the lemon sun slips and the forest is white. The ground is sharp on her face. Far away, a dog yaps.
And there is nothing.
Eleven
The sun disappears to Staffe’s right, behind the sands, tufted with dunes. Staffe’s lungs begin to burn. He is close to the sea, where the sand is wet and firm, but it still makes his leg muscles weep. He has come a mile or so south, towards Warblingsea and in the distance he can see the masts sticking up from the harbour. Beyond, the lights twinkle in the Lord Nelson, on the other side of the reeded estuary.
It will be completely dark soon and the clouds have come in, obscuring the moon. It is not yet five but he turns himself round and begins the run back. As he does, he thinks he sees somebody dive to ground at the top of the beach where the dunes run out.
He stops, squints into the gloam. The final strip of purple sky burns to nothing and he walks up the beach to check if his eyes were deceiving him.
Nobody is up in the dunes. Staffe has the beach to himself and even the seagulls have stopped squawking. He is cold now and begins to run again but the dry sand drags him down and he runs back to the sea, checking over his shoulder as he gains speed. The sea air saps him and hunger advances.
*
There is a thin smattering of diners in the Signet’s restaurant, which is white linen and silver service; a sweet trolley and a Jacobean sideboard for the cutlery. The floorboards groan and the china chinks whenever the waitress passes by.
A couple in their thirties are awkward around each other. The male tries to order for both of them, but he is uncertain, failing to catch the waitress’s eye. A salesman studiously avoids contact of any kind, squirrelling an off-piste treat for himself. A lean man comes into the room, sits on his own, as far away from the others as he can. He looks fit. His face is ruddy, as though he has been exposed to the elements. He seems sure of himself.
Laying the napkin on his lap, Pulford sips from his water, says, ‘All those bookings, for her and Markary. It gives you the sense of a real relationship. Markary couldn’t have killed her. Surely.’
Staffe downs the last of his pint of Adnams Broadside.
‘We didn’t come here to eliminate Markary, though, did we sir? You’ve got it in for him, haven’t you.’
‘I’m going to have oysters. How about you?’
‘The prawn cocktail. Then the grilled prawns. I love prawns.’
Staffe raises his eyebrows. ‘The oysters are natives.’ Pulford shudders at the thought and Staffe pours them each a glass of the Mercurey. ‘I think we should give the ball a kick tonight, Sergeant. This is my treat.’
The service is slow and they drink the first bottle before the starters arrive. Staffe orders another, which they drink before pudding. When he suggests a half-bottle of Sauternes, Pulford grimaces on the first sip, says it’s sickly sweet, which makes Staffe laugh. He says, ‘And you’re the one supposed to have the education.’
‘Where exactly do you think I am from, sir?’
‘Just missed a first in history and politics from Durham. You captained the first XV at your public school. God knows why you wanted to join the police.’
‘There was no silver spoon.’ Pulford looks serious. His eyes are glassy, his mouth slack.
‘You should make more of an effort to get on with people.’
‘Like you?’
‘You’ll have a glittering career if you play the game right. You want to play the game, don’t you?’
‘I’ll be true to myself, if that’s all right, sir.’
Staffe leans back, puts the fork and spoon across the remains of his lemon tart. ‘There’s better careers, surely.’
Pulford sips at the pudding wine and says, ‘When I was eleven, I was happy, just me and my mum. My dad had run off with her sister. My mother poured her whole life into me. She fought and fought for me to take this entrance examination and I walked it. That’s how I got into that school. My uncle took us, the first term, and I had all my stuff in an Adidas bag and a rucksack. The other boys had trunks with their initials on.
‘When she had to leave me, my mum cried buckets and my uncle took me to one side and clipped me, said, “You dare show her you’re upset.”’ Pulford swallows, takes a moment. ‘She wasn’t crying because she was upset and she’d be going back to an empty house and have no one at all in the whole fucking world … She was proud.’
Staffe says, ‘I can be a prick sometimes.’
‘That night, I had her lipstick on my cheek. I shared with three other boys and that night, they got me. Took a limb each and stretched me out, then an older boy came in. He had rugby boots on. He made a right mess of me. They had to call an ambulance.
‘A policeman came to the hospital; I can remember him now. DS Cropper, he was called, and he held my hand like my dad never had and he said I could press charges if I liked but these boys had a story and would probably get off and I’d have to do my time at the school or leave. Then he leaned right up to me. His voice was so soft. He said, “You can get these bastards if you’re clever.” And one by one, I waited for them to step out of line. I grew big, fast. I made my own friends, the hard way.’
He finishes his glass of pudding wine down in one and fills himself back up. A smile implies itself.
‘What happened to the boys?’
‘DS Cropper said to me, “People do you wrong, you sit on the bank of the river; wait for the bodies to come floating by.” So I did, and they did. One of the bastards got into class B drugs; one used to get drink and sell it to the other boys. The older boy who kicked the hell out of me was demanding money with menaces.’
‘And you let Cropper know?’ Staffe wonders how he could work with someone and not know these things.
‘Wednesday afternoons we went into town. It was Cropper’s jurisdiction.’
‘You got them all?’
‘Three out of four.’
‘Expelled?’
Pulford nods.
‘And the fourth?’
‘He’s my best mate, still. He was there the other day, when you caught me, playing poker. And that’s the beauty of it. Things are never what they seem. There’s no simple justice. My mate, they used to beat him up every night –’ til I arrived.’
‘You never know,’ says Staffe, looking away, catching the lean man with the ruddy face watching them.
*
Graham Blears reaches for his dog’s lead. It is on the bow-fronted cabinet his mother bequeathed him. The moment he raises his hand to reach for the lead, Useless begins to yap, jumping up and down on her hind legs. It is only three hours since they were last out and little does Useless know that Graham gets so much more out of these excursions than she does. For her, it is merely exercise. Important, that he takes full advantage of this day off work.
He checks his watch and pulls open the bureau, takes a Durex from the secret drawer and pops it in his pocket. Graham looks in the mirror and ruffles his sandy hair up. For work, he dampens it down, defines the parting the way a mother would.
It beggars belief how he can ghost through life, so unnoticed. A weaker man might think himself unappreciated, but on balance, the view the world takes of him suits Graham Blears just fine. He knows how to make his marks. He’s man enough, for sure.
As he walks to the front door, he feels a weakness in his knees, pockets of air in his lower stomach. Oh, the anticipation!
Outside, the snow is clearing. It will be the longest night soon and the hippies will come to the forest with their cheap cider and their fires and their makeshift Druid priests. But not tonight. Tonight is for normal people.
*
Graham’s pulse quickens as he and Useless leave the High Street behind them. Within ten minutes they are through the kissing gate and into the Forest. The slow rumble of cars deepens the further he goes along the track, their lights are dimmed and the remnants of snow give off a yellow fluorescence. He stops to
clip the latex muzzle on Useless. She yaps, doesn’t like it, but she is trained not to stray.
‘Stay here, Yooce,’ whispers Graham. He has picked out the Mondeo on the edge of a group of four cars. The rear courtesy light is on and he sees the busy outline of a familiar woman. He stiffens, feels so, so weak in the knees as the blood rushes to his heart, all around his body. Even in this cold, his fingers tremble. If he was to say anything – which he never has – his voice would quake.
Useless goes into the trees, scratches at the leaf mulch in the patches where the snow has faded completely.
As he reaches the cars, Graham Blears can hear the muffled coaxing and moaning of people going about their business. On the far side, a man stands outside a Renault Mégane, by an opened window, busying himself, arching down to see inside. The Mondeo’s rear window glides down and the middle-aged woman recognises him. ‘Same?’ she says, softly.
Graham nods.
‘You all right?’ she says to the man alongside her.
Graham watches as the man puts his large, rough hands inside her blouse. She leans on the open window, her head half in the car, half out and she shifts herself so her backside juts at her ready companion who is now up on his knees. Graham peers around her head, to get a proper look as the kneeling man pushes up her skirt, works himself in.
‘He likes it rough,’ says the woman, looking up at Graham, ‘don’t you, love.’ She opens her mouth, half closes her eyes, and Graham unzips himself, puts on his Durex, lest he catch something off this dirty, dirty whore who looks up at him the whole time that he goes in and out of her mouth.
When he is finished, he slopes back to the trees where Useless is still scratching around.
‘Yooce,’ he says in a low voice. ‘Here, girl.’ He feels flat, just wants to be home now, hating himself for doing the things he does. That will wane; resurrect.
The scratching continues and Useless whines.
‘Yooce!’ he hisses. ‘Come here. Now, girl!’
She responds with a whimper and Graham thinks something must be wrong. If anything happened to her, he doesn’t know quite what he would do.
He feels his way into the trees, ducking his head down low, fearful that a branch or twig might have his eye out. The hum of a new car emerges into the clearing and a slow sweep of sidelights follows, illuminating the shape of Useless, just a few feet away.
Graham stops dead.
Useless has unearthed a girl, but she looks unrecognisable – as a human, the life all gone from her: just flesh, slitted in her side and stomach. In her face, she seems so afraid.
*
When he had got home, Blears put Useless into his room, upstairs at the front of the house, and began his deliberations. These soon became preparations. He had kept his cool, earlier, maintained a silence and carefully scraped the leaves and mulch back over the body. This was his body. But what to do with it?
This evening, Blears has bathed and combed his hair flat. His parting is perfectly defined and he is dressed in his best suit. He makes tea in the Prince Albert service and pours the milk into the jug. He brings out the sugar tongs, even though it is only him. He should have gone to the Castle tonight. But this will make up for that.
Indeed, these will prove to be momentous days. He once heard that everybody gets a single chance in life. Graham realises that the same world which can turn a shoulder to him – which can look past him on the High Street or at the checkout or on his ocasional sorties to the Cross Daggers – has today finally beckoned.
This is a time to do. He makes a small clap and rubs his hands together. As he gives the tea a final stir and applies the milk and the sugar, he realises he is trembling. He says, aloud, ‘Why not,’ going across to the bow-fronted cabinet. He takes a quarter-bottle of brandy, pours himself a half-schooner of the Three Barrels and shifts his chair to look down the garden. He is overlooked at the back, and now they will read about him. He will have to explain why he was in the Forest in the first place, but he has a plan for that. And if they don’t play it his way, he simply won’t tell them where the woman’s body is.
He sips the brandy and shudders, takes a full swallow of the tea and looks up at his mother’s porcelain Our Lady. Standing, he feels invigorated as he goes to the glazed kitchen door. His knees are rock solid now. His heart is even. He looks out at his neighbours’ windows. ‘Let’s do it,’ he says.
Waiting for the phone to be answered, he regards his watermark reflection – first, one three-quarter profile; then, the other. He settles on the latter.
The phone is answered by a woman; not what he had expected. ‘I’d like to …’
‘Ambulance, Fire –’
‘Police! Yes, please. I must speak to the police. I have discovered a murder and my name is … My name is …’ Blears looks at the phone and his head thickens. The woman on the telephone sounds ever so distant. She echoes. He will abort, his nerve suddenly seeping all the way out of him.
‘Mr Blears?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘It’s here on my read-out. You know, it’s a criminal offence to make bogus calls to emergency services.’
‘It’s a murder, damn you,’ says Blears, reaching for the chair, dragging it across the linoleum and sitting heavily upon it.
‘I hope so,’ says the woman. ‘For your sake.’
The oddness of the remark escapes Blears who foggily prepares how he is going to present himself to the world.
Twelve
Staffe pounds his way along the sea’s edge to the southernmost jut of the beach, the sun low above the North Sea horizon. He considers what he has learned of Elena Danya: that she was certainly more than a passing fancy of Taki Markary’s; that she developed her own affection for this place, separate from Markary’s, who seems to have an affiliation with the man called Howerd.
By the time he gets to Warblingsea Harbour, his shins begin to splint and the sweat drips, saltily, into his eyes. Breathless, he stops, hands on knees, gulping for air and enjoying the burn to his lungs. He stands up, stretches, and lets the wind chill the sweat. When he gets back, he will soak in a hot bath, then stand for a minute under the coldest shower, then have porridge with honey; kippers with a poached egg. He licks his lips, tastes the salt, sees someone in the dunes.
He blinks, sweat in his eyes. It is a man, watching him. It is the lean, ruddy-faced man from dinner last night. He is sure. He rubs his eyes and looks again, but nobody is there.
When Staffe returns to the hotel, he settles his bill with cash, is told that Pulford has already paid for his room, and for half the cost of dinner. ‘Has the ruddy-faced man left yet?’ asks Staffe.
‘I don’t know who you mean,’ says the receptionist.
Staffe thinks she might have enquired as to whether he had a name for the ruddy-faced man, or a further clue to describe his appearance more fully. ‘He is a slender man. He had dinner last night.’
The receptionist smiles wearily at Staffe, as if it is more than her job could be worth to divulge such a thing.
*
Josie takes the ACL printout to the morning meeting. Today, she has ringed only one item on the Area Crime Log – the list of offences committed outside the limits of the City Police. It is the death of a young woman aged twenty to twenty-six, five feet four, mouse-coloured hair that had been dyed blonde. She had been killed within the past twenty-four hours and buried in a shallow grave in the southern reaches of Epping Forest on the fringe of a clearing which is known to the police as the Kennel. The body was discovered by a Graham Blears, a single, forty-one-year-old actuary who works for Re-Zurich in the City. He has not a single blemish on record and was walking his dog.
The woman had been stabbed six times.
Josie bides her time and when she gets an opportunity to bring up the Kennel murder, the usual gallows humour percolates – fast as morning coffee.
‘Mixing business with pleasure, hey Chancellor,’ quips one DS.
‘You should check
it out,’ retorts Josie. ‘Everyone should try straight sex at least once.’ This draws a bigger laugh, followed by a bellow from Pennington, who looks across at Rimmer as if to say, ‘You should be controlling this lot.’
‘There’ll be none of this,’ shouts Rimmer. He goes red in the face and leans back against the desk at the front of the room, steadies himself. ‘Now, Chancellor, what are you saying? That this poor girl might be connected to the Elena Danya murder?’ He looks at Pennington who gives him the mildest encouragement in the form of a rueful nod.
Josie says, ‘The body is fresh and according to the coroner there’s plenty of dental and medical history – two gold teeth, appendix scar and a metal plate in her left leg. We should get an ID later today. There’s no harm checking her out and West Essex CID have said they’d be happy to share.’
‘But is she a prostitute?’ says Rimmer.
‘It’s unusual for prostitutes to frequent the Kennel. But she might have been there out of hours and she had miniscule traces of semen in her mouth. Nothing in the stomach. No signs of recent vaginal penetration, but there is junkie scarring to the arms and thighs. Janine hasn’t seen her yet but the local pathologist says if we pushed him on it, he’d hazard she was on the game.’
With another look towards Pennington, which receives nothing more than a flat smile, Rimmer says, ‘Follow it up, then. But don’t get sucked in.’ A tempered trickle of testosterone seeps.
‘That’s enough!’ snaps Pennington, standing, signifying the meeting is over and as the room empties, he catches Josie. ‘You make sure Rimmer goes with you to interview Blears. This fella’s probably going to be a sex pest, you know, if he’s been going down the Kennel.’
‘Of course, sir.’
‘Where’s Staffe? I take it he’s taken Pulford with him.’
‘He’s following a lead, is all I know, sir.’
Pennington takes a half step towards her. ‘You know, Chancellor, this could be a chance for you.’ He looks up at her, smiles his thin smile. ‘You’re doing well.’ He touches her elbow with his fingers.