by Adam Creed
*
Graham Blears wishes he had never told the police about the dead slut from the Forest. Now they are coming to his house. How could that be normal procedure? Surely the one visit up to Ilford Police Station – to give his statement, receive his recognition – was sufficient. They were ever so impressed with him up in Ilford and thanked him profusely. His head was spinning so much he can’t remember if they commended him for his citizenship. They said something akin to that. But why are they coming down from the City? What the hell did it have to do with them?
He can’t be too careful, so he has disconnected his computer and put it in the bottom of the wardrobe, covered in blankets. ‘It’s a good job we’re one step ahead,’ he says to Useless as he passes the door to the dog’s room. He looks back into his bedroom, double-checks that the wardrobe doesn’t draw attention to itself. His suit is laid out, alongside his brushes and comb. All these years, he has kept his head down, gone about his business, tended his secrets, unseen. It doesn’t pay to involve yourself with the law.
*
Rimmer fidgets all the way from Leadengate out to Snares brook, scribbling in his notebook and checking the notes from West Essex CID.
‘You spoke to Profiling?’ she says.
‘Yes. I don’t see why we have to come all the way out here. We should have got him into the station.’
‘Staffe always interviews in situ. It gives a fuller picture.’
‘And where the hell is he, if this is so crucial?’
‘What did Profiling say?’
‘That killers often try to involve themselves in an investigation. As many as one in four.’
‘But the killer wouldn’t report the body, surely?’
Rimmer looks at her as if she can’t quite be trusted. ‘Have you met Tara Fleet? Very impressive.’ Rimmer looks into the middle distance, dreamily. ‘Very impressive indeed.’
Josie knows Tara Fleet – a criminal psychologist who knows exactly how to play senior police officers. Especially the male of the species. Rimmer would be a suitable stepping stone for enhancing her own profile.
‘Did she say anything about the cases being linked?’
‘We need to know more about the victims. But a swanky hotel and a dogging site? Ten miles apart. It’s a difficult one.’
Josie goes quiet, slows the car a tad and as they turn into Marigold Gardens – a cul de sac of interwar semis on the south side of the High Street – she calms herself. All day, since she found the Kennel killing on the ACL, she has been buzzing. Of course it would be better if the cases were not linked; that would mean there wasn’t a maniac out there; not a third or fourth woman going about her business with some pervert preying, biding.
*
Blears can’t believe they have sent a woman.
He returns the net curtain in his front room and regards himself in the art deco mirror, damping down his parting and tightening his tie, makes his way to the front door, waits for the second knock, so as not to appear unduly anxious, and smiles as he welcomes Leadengate CID into his house.
Over tea, he recounts to Inspector Rimmer his precise movements yesterday evening; how he broke from his routine and had never been to that place before. The inspector seems to be a man after his own heart, but the girl, she seems a different kettle of fish. She drinks her tea in one, gulping it down, scribbling away constantly, giving him only the occasional, sidelong glance.
After quarter of an hour, in which Graham has totally confirmed every last detail of the statement he gave at Ilford, the inspector closes his notebook and thanks him for his co-operation.
‘Just one more thing, Mr Blears,’ says the girl, looking up at him, her pen hovering. ‘You will appreciate how keen we are to eliminate you from our inquiries.’
‘Eliminate?’ His heart skips, sinks down to his stomach and his head blurs.
‘It’s how we work back to the truth. Sometimes we have to prove innocence in order to expose guilt.’ She stares at him as she says, ‘Where exactly were you between sixteen hundred and eighteen hundred hours on the seventh of December?’
‘How can I be expected to know that?’ He looks down into his teacup. ‘I work in the City. You know that. I would have been at work, or on my way home.’
‘Can anyone vouch for when you got home?’
‘I live alone.’
‘Anything you can come up with will help us.’ She smiles at him, a thick smear of condescension in the corners of her mouth. ‘And help you, too. Of course.’
‘I don’t like what you are saying,’ he says, looking at the inspector, but the inspector is opening his notebook back up, appears to bestow a look of encouragement upon the stupid girl.
‘And anybody who can verify your evening habits. You know, to prove this visit to that place was a one-off.’
‘An aberration,’ says the inspector.
The girl looks at her superior, nodding earnestly. She flicks through some notes she has brought, says, ‘Why did you wait two hours before you called? And why cover the body up again? She was covered with leaves when the local force got to the scene.’
Graham feels his kitchen floor warp. He looks up at Our Lady but the walls seem to shift inwards on him and he feels dizzy. He reaches out to grip the table, thinks he might be sick. He hears Prince Albert shattering on the floor. Then the crackle of a radio. When he looks up, the girl is talking into her handset.
Yooce curls up in her basket. She lets out a long, low whine.
Thirteen
The pastel villages of thatched Suffolk soon give way to the suburbs and as they pass through into larger conurbations, Pulford says, ‘The Aldesworth Country Town. That’s an odd one, isn’t it?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I was talking to the night porter. He says the whole thing’s gone sour. None of the locals have been involved in the construction. It struck me …’ He passes Staffe some brochures for the new model market town. ‘… as kind of similar to Elena Danya’s game. I wonder how much of the cash gets down as far as the girls? Five hundred houses. What does that look like?’
‘A whole pile of paper,’ says Staffe.
‘Money?’
‘That too.’ Staffe goes into his pocket, hands Pulford a cheque, to cover his room and share of dinner.
The sergeant looks hurt.
‘Take it. I insist,’ says Staffe.
Pulford shakes his head, says, ‘It’s only money.’
*
Josie Chancellor watches the Scene of Crime team emerge from Blears’ house in Marigold Close with bag after bag of numbered evidence. His computer is to be fast-tracked at Data Discernment. Graham Blears was taken in to Leadengate Station for questioning over an hour ago.
As she gets into the car with Rimmer, the police dog team are parking up. They have come to take Useless into care. When Rimmer told Blears this would happen, Blears had burst into tears.
‘That was quite a morning’s work, Chancellor. You can come along with me any time,’ says Rimmer. He slaps her on the thigh and removes his hand quickly. They look at each other awkwardly.
‘Thank you, sir.’
Josie feels peculiar, today; not entirely a part of her own body. She has emerged from a shadow. But the sight of Graham Blears, looking for all the world a guilty man, had given her no pleasure. The processing of the evidence and the rigour of all the lawyers and the judge and jury will determine whether they have got their man, but she feels a heavy hand of consequence upon her.
Josie doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Instead, she calls in Data Pooling and asks them to merge all the cells from this case with that of Elena Danya.
As soon as she clicks off, Forensics flashes up as an incoming call. The second dead woman is, according to her dental records and the prints from three soliciting charges and an arrest for possession of heroin, a twenty-two-year-old known prostitute called Rebeccah Stone, of 21D Arlington Road, Hackney. She was murdered by six stab wounds. A more savage end than Ele
na Danya suffered; the same Elena Danya whom a Rebeccah had called, talking, in fact, of ‘tender petting’. Josie realises she was one of the last people ever to talk to Rebeccah Stone.
How might Blears connect with Elena Danya?
Or – as Staffe will probably see it – how does Rebeccah Stone connect with Taki Markary?
*
They call this Little Chelsea and it’s the part of Barnes the Victorians built for their railway workers. Staffe watches the accountants who live opposite Sylvie. They are putting up their Christmas tree. It should resemble something from Frank Capra, but she throws her arms about, red-faced; he stands, head bowed.
He turns the key, feels awkward using it this first time. The front door gives straight into the lounge and, as usual, she has clothes drying on hangers, drooping from the curtain poles. Books are scattered on the sofa and floor. He picks one up. Holmes’s Intermediate Guide to the Anatomy of the Mind. She had told him she had given up on her MA. He could swear she had. He sniffs the air. Lacquer is thick, as if one lit cigarette would send the whole place up in flames.
‘Who’s that?’ She calls from upstairs, sounding concerned. ‘Is anybody there?’
At the bottom of the stairs she has a photograph of her mother, taken long ago and since they last saw each other. Mont Ventoux is in the background and the woman seems without a care in all the world. Staffe doesn’t understand why Sylvie has this photograph.
‘It’s me!’ he calls.
‘Don’t look at the mess!’
He imagines what it would be like if they were married. She would improve. He would relax.
He takes the steps two at a time, and goes up again, into the studio she’s had done in the loft. He ducks his head as he rounds the top of the stairs, certain now that he will not do what he came for. He will have to concoct an excuse for dropping by. What has possessed him?
Sylvie is on all fours and moaning, low and deep. Her hair is up and held by a quarter-inch paintbrush. Shavings litter the Bokhara rug he bought her. She applies the final stroke to a thin sample of wood and sits up, cross-legged, swivelling to face him.
‘What do you think?’ She looks at the strips of stained wood.
‘Who’s it for?’
‘Some spoiled brat at St Paul’s. Father’s a Syrian.’
‘The walnut one,’ he says, pointing.
‘You think?’ She looks up at him, quizzically, then back at the sample, squinting. ‘Hmm. You’re right.’
Staffe sits on the beanbag under the hip window. He watches her tidy up. She keeps the studio immaculate. A place for everything. Hands on hips, she looks down at the violin carcass, the components that will govern her next days.
‘I didn’t know you’d gone back to the MA,’ he says.
‘I’m sure I told you. I spend my life talking to wood. People are sometimes more interesting. You should know that.’
‘Give up work, then,’ says Staffe, taking himself by surprise with this sudden tack.
‘What?’
‘Let me look after you.’ He slips his hand in his pocket, fingers the old velvet of the ring’s box.
‘I’ve only just got business steady, Will. I’m getting a few referrals now.’ It is less than a year since she set up on her own.
‘But you want to study psychology.’
‘Everybody does, sooner or later. It’s very probably a phase.’
‘Displacement,’ says Staffe.
‘Very good. Have you been reading my books?’
‘You could study and we could live off my wage. It will be no hardship.’ He takes out the velvet box and looks at it. He daren’t look at her. Suddenly, he feels sick. The muscles in his arm can barely extend as he reaches out, hearing himself mutter, ‘I thought you’d like it.’
Sylvie slides the box from his fingers, says, ‘Oh, my,’ and goes to a tallboy that stands all the way up to the beam in the gable. She places the unopened box on the cabinet and pours them each a glass of Bushmills. She hands him his and goes back to the tallboy, picks up her gift.
She looks at Staffe, then at the box, as if she is on a game show and considering whether she might be better off leaving it unopened. Now, for Staffe, it feels as if life will never be the same again. She licks her lips, slowly lifts the lid.
When she sees the Urals ring, her smile spreads all the way to her temples and she purrs, ‘Inspector, they can say what they like about you, but you’ve got impeccable taste.’
And with that, she slides the ring onto the third finger of her hand and reaches out, fingers splayed up, considering her jewel. ‘Do you mind, Will, if we think about it.’
‘Think about it?’ Staffe realises the ring is on the right hand. The wrong hand.
‘I don’t want things to change. It’s often for the worse, isn’t it?’ She looks like a child when she says it – not quite understanding her own words.
On his way downstairs, he turns on his phone, sees Josie Josie Josie scroll up on his missed calls list. He picks up the last message first and listens as she tells him he has twenty minutes to get back to her or else she’ll have to take Rimmer with her to the home of the second dead. He checks his watch and makes the call, with a minute to spare, wondering what kind of omen that is.
*
The man who lets Staffe and Josie into 21D Arlington Road has said he is called Mitch and that he has no papers at this gaff to prove it. He sits, cocksure and strangely removed as Josie tells him his girlfriend has been stabbed to death.
Staffe considers what Josie has told him about how Rebeccah Stone was murdered, and he appraises her supposed boyfriend with the harshest eye. ‘What are you coming down from, Mitch?’ he says.
‘’t you talkin’ about.’ He pronounces it abaarht, which gets right up Staffe’s nose. This reconstructed, trendy, dealer cum pimp talks half wannabe black, half mockney. Staffe wants to knock his withdrawals right into next week. He might do.
Staffe looks at Josie, says, ‘The girl was stabbed six times. Correct?’
‘That’s right, sir.’
‘And this prick is a suspect, right? If we find something here to charge him with, he has to be held on remand because he’s likely to abscond.’
‘They’re waiting between two and four months for trial at Pentonville.’
Staffe hitches his chair right up to within inches of Mitch.
Mitch leans away from Staffe, not looking him in the eye.
‘Or,’ says Staffe, reaching out and removing Mitch’s porkpie hat, ‘we could be done in an hour. We wouldn’t even charge you for what we found in this place. And I wouldn’t let it slip to the guys up the food chain that you’ve been a blabbermouth. That means grass, where you’re going.’ He pronounces it graahs. ‘You get me?’ Staffe whispers in Josie’s ear, ‘You sure Pulford’s on his way with that warrant?’
She nods.
‘You OK on your own with this one for five minutes?’
She nods.
‘I need the loo.’ Staffe plonks the hat back on Mitch’s head, so it comes down over his eyes.
He double-locks the front door and shunts all the bolts across the door. In the bathroom, he looks down out of the window, susses that this truly is the pad of a mid-level drug dealer: the bolts, the escape via the bathroom; the first floor, low enough to risk jumping, high enough for a pursuer not to follow suit.
Staffe lifts off the cistern lid and sees the outline of tape marks, but nothing there now. He sees the way the linoleum curls at the skirting boards and kicks away the stained, damp rug, pulls up the lino. Sure enough, one of the floorboards is screwed down, not nailed. He pulls out his keyring and uses the tiny penknife to unscrew. The board rises. Pinned up to the underside of the next board is a plastic bag full of wraps – each housing a fat corner of powder, amounting to forty, fifty grammes. Minimum. Staffe smiles. In different circumstances he would have kissed the big bag.
As he rolls the lino back, on his hands and knees, he sees that the plastic sealant around
the bath is loose and the panel isn’t secure. He pulls the panel away and peers in. Nothing there, it would seem, but he reaches right in, smells the damp and dirt of the floorboards. He bangs his head on the shell of the bath and reaches as far as he can, feels plastic against the tips of his fingers. A nerve in his shoulder pinches and he bangs his head again, curses, and snags the plastic between his fingers, wrenches it.
Staffe sits back, cross-legged, and looks at the bag. Not what he expected. He can see there’s a Post Office savings book, and a notebook, some doodlings, and an envelope with PRIVAT written in a long, elegant hand.
There’s a rap at the front door and Staffe stands up, trousers the drugs and tucks the plastic bag full of Rebeccah’s secret world down the back of his trousers. He unlocks the bathroom door and rushes into the hallway, sees Josie letting in Pulford.
‘You got the warrant?’
Pulford hands it across and Staffe tosses the stash bag onto the floor between Mitch’s feet. ‘Sing, birdie.’
Mitch furrows his brow. ‘You what?’
‘Elena worked for Taki Markary. You know that.’
Mitch makes a bad job of trying to look blank.
‘Who did Rebeccah work for?’ Staffe prods Mitch’s bag of goodies with the toe of his Chelsea boot.
Josie says into the radio, ‘Sergeant? It’s Chancellor. We need a car up at Arlington Road, Hackney. It’s number 21. Possession and Dealing.’
‘All right!’ says Mitch. ‘All right.’ He sparks up a cigarette. ‘He’s a Russian.’
Staffe takes the radio off Josie. ‘I said, “Sing.”’
‘I want my lawyer.’
‘Six times, she was stabbed. Once for every year you’ll do for this,’ says Staffe, picking up the bag of wraps, tipping them on the floor. He picks up a clutch of wraps and walks over to the recumbent Mitch, pressing his knee into the dealer’s chest and grabbing his nose. When Mitch opens his mouth, Staffe shoves in the wraps and grabs Mitch’s face, clamps his mouth shut.