by Adam Creed
‘Sir!’ calls Josie.
‘Six fucking times, and left to die where dogs go to piss and perverts jack off. Now you tell me what you know or you’ll swallow this bastard lot and it’ll be just another junkie dying. See who mourns you! You …’
‘Sir!’ Pulford takes a hold of Staffe’s shoulder.
Mitch’s eyes are bulging and he is gurgling, trying to spit.
‘Sir, he’s going to play ball. Look!’
Staffe takes his hand away and Mitch spits out the wraps. One of them has burst and he foams, is sick down the side of his armchair. ‘I don’t know anything,’ he sobs and coughs and clutches his guts, spitting out again and guzzling from a can of lager by the fire. ‘Without me, she’d have been dead years ago. On the game since she was fucking thirteen so don’t blame me for her life. You think I like what she does?’
‘It didn’t stop you skimming off her.’
‘She needs me to fix her up. She can’t ever give it up. You think I didn’t try?’
‘What about Elena?’
‘Becx was always going on about how beautiful she was and how fucking smart. Just like Arra.’
‘Arra?’
‘Thick as thieves.’
‘Was she one of Markary’s girls, this Arra?’
‘I never heard of him.’ Mitch puts his head in his hands, talking to the floor. ‘Arra’s just some posh bird playing street.’ He is trying to work out if the rock is more harmful than the hard place. Eventually, he says, ‘Becx worked Tchancov’s patch. Parlours and suff.’
*
When he gets to Leadengate, Staffe re-rigs the incident room chart. Josie and Pulford input and sort Rebeccah Stone’s data.
The murders of Elena Danya and Rebeccah Stone featured different methods. You might say they don’t connect – unless it is tit for tat. Markary’s girl is killed. Tchancov’s girl is killed.
Pulford says, ‘I don’t see how they have to be linked.’
‘Rebeccah called Elena hours before she strolled to her death in the Thamesbank.’
‘But why would Tchancov kill Elena Danya?’
‘Why would Rebeccah Stone have been in the Kennel on her own? See if Janine has got anything off Stone’s body.’
‘We’ve got traces of semen, sir, from the mouth. She wasn’t penetrated.’
‘Neither was Elena,’ says Staffe.
‘That’s consistent with a frustrated sexual attacker,’ says Josie.
Staffe turns round, frowning. He sees Rimmer coming into the room.
‘We’ve got him. We’ve bloody got him!’ pronounces Rimmer, coming into the room, pinning a typed document to the evidence board.
‘What’s that?’
‘Blears has been identified as being at the Thamesbank Hotel at ten to four on the seventh. Ten minutes before Danya was killed. Ten bloody minutes.’
‘Who by?’
‘The bellboy, a young man called Mulplant. Gary Mulplant.’ Rimmer taps the document with his finger. ‘It’s all there. Graham Blears is our man. Maybe you should go off on your wild-goose jaunts more often, Staffe.’ Rimmer pats Josie on the back and says to Staffe, ‘Just so long as you leave me this one – hey, Josie!’
Staffe leaves the rest of them to celebrate getting their man and, once in his office, locks the door, lays out the contents of the plastic bag from Rebeccah’s bath. He is beginning to regret not submitting it with the rest of the evidence. It tells the story of a girl on the brink of getting away, on the back of ‘foreigners’, paid in to her Post Office account once a week. From the jottings and calculations on the papers inside the savings book, it seems her debt with Tchancov was dragging her down.
He places the brown envelope on the desk. It is marked PRIVAT in a long, elegant hand. Staffe looks closely, to see if the envelope has ever been tampered with, but it is quite plain that Rebeccah has been a loyal custodian.
Staffe takes his bone-handled letter opener, inscribed to his father for loyal service. He inserts the blade and pulls it back, quickly. Inside are four sheets, elaborately decorated and each undertaking to pay the bearer £25,000.
‘Elena,’ whispers Staffe. As he says it – even though he is in his locked office – he looks around, to check he is unheard.
Fourteen
Sylvie has brought crab cakes and green and red curries from the Thai Garden. When Staffe sees the thin segment of her in the opening door, he feels young.
They eat on their laps, watching the ten o’clock news and swapping curries halfway through as they always have done. Pulford pops his head in after a night in copper’s corner down the Butcher’s Hook and says he will leave them to it.
‘Don’t be silly, David,’ says Sylvie. ‘Get a plate. I’m off for an early night, anyway.’ She takes the bottle of Crianza with her and tips Staffe the wink, to follow soon. On the hearth, he sees her mermaid mug – from the weekend they had in Copenhagen, the first time they were together. It is her favourite mug and he wonders when she brought it over here, and how significant that might be.
He follows five minutes later, and she seems like a stranger, more demure and faltering in one phase; more brazen and direct in the next. She undresses him, keeping her own clothes on, pushing him back on the bed, gliding over him, using her mouth and nails, not letting him touch her.
She holds herself above him, barely touching him, and Staffe wonders where she knows this from and he wants to ask, but can see how that might harm him. Eventually, she hitches down her pants and sits astride him. She moves slowly, him inside her, and she comes quickly, falling equally quickly to sleep, still wearing her blouse and skirt, and through her soft, mumbling shudders, Staffe contemplates whether the proposal might have changed things. He wonders if, by employing such variety, she was trying to fix something she thought might be broken.
Staffe tries to find sleep but Elena, and now Rebeccah, repeat on him. Everything of tangible significance seems to be dropping into Rimmer’s lap, and all because he went on that stupid jaunt up to Suffolk. He should learn to control his intuition. And he should have declared the evidence Rebeccah had hidden. Tomorrow, he will tell Pennington.
Sylvie turns, emerging briefly from her sleep. She wraps her arm around him and says, ‘Can we do something tomorrow? Maybe go to Vicenti’s.’
‘I told Marie I’d take Harry out – in the day. If you fancy it, we could take him to the park.’ Staffe takes a hold of her hand, feels the emerald. ‘Try and get a kite up.’
As she falls back into sleep, he listens to merrymakers being chucked out of the restaurant in the square, beyond his short back garden. Their good cheer is made soft by the falling snow. White triangles and rhombus shapes of roofs against the black sky look like cubism. It might be a metaphor, he thinks, but as he slides back between the sheets, spooning Sylvie, he isn’t sure that makes sense.
*
The Telegraph sport section is spread out on Pennington’s desk, next to a cafetière of coffee. He pours Staffe a cup and reaches down, produces Garibaldi biscuits from his drawer. The two men keep their coats on, the central heating playing catch-up.
‘The Danya case seems to be progressing well.’ Pennington lifts his coffee cup to his lips, sips. ‘I must say, I’m pretty impressed with Rimmer.’ He laughs and a plume of his breath makes a dying cloud. ‘Between you and me, I thought the boat with those words on had sailed. And Chancellor, too, Will. You’ve done a sterling job, bringing her on.’
‘The case has a long way to go. We haven’t even got a weapon.’
‘Rimmer and Chancellor are there now,’ says Pennington, putting down his cup.
‘Where?’
‘Blears’ home. Stripping it bare. This ID from the Thamesbank changes everything.’
‘Blears couldn’t have done it.’
Pennington looks at Staffe as though he is about to confide, but decides against. ‘Sometimes, we just set off on the wrong course. The further you go, the further from the truth you get.’
‘What c
onnects Blears to the two girls? What’s his motive?’
‘They’re prostitutes and he’s a pornographer. Some of the material he had is criminal. What more do you want?’
‘Danya and Stone were friends.’
‘That’s exactly what Rimmer’s saying. Blears found something on the first to lead him to the second.’
‘And what took him to the Thamesbank Hotel in the first place?’
‘He’s an actuary for Re-Zurich on Cannon Street. They had their Christmas do at the Thamesbank last year. He knows the place. You know how easy it is to get a girl to a room. It’s just a matter of money.’ Pennington fills up Staffe’s cup. ‘You’re the best copper I’ve got, Will. But I think we have to let Rimmer bring this one in.’
‘I understand.’ Staffe knows he can’t remind Pennington what his DCI really thinks of Rimmer, realises also that this is no time to come clean about Rebeccah’s plastic bag.
‘Take some time for yourself. Wind down.’
‘I was going to see my nephew this afternoon. We were going to fly a kite.’
‘You should do that, Will.’ Pennington smiles, benignly. An odd look. ‘Parliament Hill?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Like Pulford said, there are times when it’s best to sit on the banks, wait for the bodies to come floating by. He thinks of Elena’s cold white corpse. He feels an anger breaching, so incants a mantra. ‘Pacify yourself. Pass-if-eye-your-self,’ he repeats, thinking, ‘As long as nobody else pays the price.’
*
Gary Mulplant’s shift at the Thamesbank starts at noon. Staffe waits in the bar, looking out over the cold, wily river and browsing the Suffolk Gazettes from the dates when Markary stayed at the Signet. He also has the data matches from the two murdered girls.
Staffe looks down the computer distillation of all the information on Elena Danya and Rebeccah Stone. The matches are: profession; city of residence; absent electoral register; absent NI contributions. Criminal records do not match: Elena is clean as a whistle in that respect. Neither of the girls is licensed to drive a car and neither has a history of sexually transmitted disease, nor serious illness, though Rebeccah, it seems, has been knocked about and is prone to overdosing. In terms of their phone records, the murdered girls shared five common numbers: Arra (T-Mobile, pay as you go); Bobo Bogdanovich (Vodafone, pay as you go); Darius A’Court (O2, pay as you go); Rosa Henderson (Orange, contract); Vassily Tchancov (Vodafone, pay as you go, and one of six different numbers registered to the owner).
Something disturbs Staffe about this information, but he can’t pin it down. His trains of thought uncouple, and his mind flits to Pennington being happy to see him in the back seat, and to the changes in Sylvie; changes in them. His eyes flop back on the Suffolk Gazettes and he flips through the first one, from 15 March 2008. ‘The Ides of March,’ says Staffe, aloud. It was the trip when Markary hadn’t stayed in room 14. Sure enough, the visit coincided with the announcement of plans for the Aldesworth Country Town.
So, Markary must have somehow been getting fat off that bit of land, he thinks to himself, turning his partially focused gaze back on the list of data matches. He is bogged down, needs the rough and tumble of an afternoon with his nephew Harry, up on the hill.
And then it hits him – like a rabbit punch, to the back of the head.
‘Mr Wagstaffe?’
Staffe looks up at the bellboy. He has a badge that says ‘Gary’.
‘Rosa,’ says Staffe – to himself.
‘What?’ says the bellboy.
‘Rosa Henderson,’ thinks Staffe. ‘Sit down, Gary.’ Is that her surname? How could he not know? But he checks her number in his own mobile handset, mouthing the sequence aloud and following it with his finger on the printout. Figure perfect. ‘Damn!’ he says.
‘Shall I go?’ says the bellboy.
‘No. Sit down. Please.’ Staffe directs his attention to the young man, who has the most piercing, light eyes. Almost white. ‘Who’s been talking to you?’
‘Talking to me?’
Staffe takes out the photograph of Graham Blears. ‘You say this man came here last Friday.’ He weighs up Mulplant, who is self-assured, shows no fear being interviewed by police. ‘How long have you worked here?’
‘He did come here last Friday.’
‘Is this your idea of what you want with your life?’
Gary laughs.
‘You ever been in a prison?’
‘What!’
‘That poor man could spend the rest of his life inside.’
‘He killed the woman.’
Staffe stands. ‘Who told you that?’
Gary looks at his hands, fingers knotting themselves. ‘I told them everything I know.’
‘How tall is he?’
‘Five nine.’
‘Hair?’
‘Kind of ginger. It needs a cut; styling, you know.’ Gary tries to laugh but it fails.
‘Shoes?’
‘Plastic. Black.’
‘You got a good look at him, hey, Gary?’
‘What else do I do all day?’
‘You don’t want to arouse me. My curiosity, I mean.’
‘You’re harassing me.’
‘This decision you’ve made – it won’t rest easy.’ He slips Mulplant his card. ‘Shame, to have such a thing on your shoulders. Let’s hope it works out for you. You start feeling bad about this, just call me.’
Mulplant looks down at the river.
Staffe thinks about bodies floating by. When Mulplant stops looking, the detective is gone and he is all alone.
*
From the kitchen in Marigold Gardens, Josie watches the Forensics team clear up in Blears’ snowy garden. They have practically disassembled the shed and put it back together.
‘Seems a shame,’ says Rimmer.
‘What’s that?’
‘These taters. Aren’t they lovely? All knobbled and clods of earth on them. You don’t get them like that in the shops.’ Rimmer holds the spud under the tap, rubs the soil from the skin, and holds it up. ‘See?’
Josie takes the potato from Rimmer, watches Forensics put the last deckchair back in the shed and close up. The garden is thirty feet of lawn, bordered by dwarf evergreens and flowering Alpines. ‘Home grown, wouldn’t you say?’
Rimmer looks out at the frosted garden. ‘Where does he grow them?’
‘An allotment,’ says Josie. ‘I’ll get on to the council.’ Her blood runs fast and her fingers tingle.
*
Graham Blears’ allotment is as orderly as his house; as is his potting shed, which Josie and Rimmer are systematically turning inside out, watched by two Forensics officers who have just bagged three box files of no-limits pornography, including US Snuff.
Josie pulls the rocking chair from the corner and rolls back the rug but nothing is there, no signs the floor is loose. She taps her heels on the boards. No variations in tone. She notices that the floor is just like the ceiling, tongued and grooved, but this feels wrong – this flatness of the ceiling.
Josie goes outside to check she is right: the roof of the potting shed is pitched. ‘He’s made it like home,’ she says, going back in, standing on a box, pressing up on the varnished pine with her nails. Rimmer follows suit and they check the ceiling from each end, working to the middle, but they don’t meet because Josie presses one length of pine that lifts. Then the next. She calls the Forensics team, to investigate every last inch of the void.
Fifteen
Charged with the murder of Rebeccah Stone, Graham Blears is being held at Pentonville nick. Yesterday, Josie and Rimmer had corroborated the bellboy’s identification of Blears at the Thamesbank, and his fingering of the proven pervert at the line-up was immediate and unwavering. Mulplant has no criminal record and is in the first year of a sandwich degree in tourism at the University of South London. Josie and Rimmer feel he will stand up to any cross-examination Blears’ defence may concoct, but for the moment they are confining Blears
’ charges to the Stone murder.
And as for Blears’ defence, he has no alibi for either murder. There are no witnesses from the Kennel yet, but Josie is hopeful that will change after the raid tonight, and this quest is aided by the fact that, so far, they have managed to keep both murders out of the papers. The hardcore doggers – those most likely to identify Blears – will be at the trough again tonight.
‘I can’t bear this,’ Blears says, hands pressed to his drawn, grey face, repeatedly lamenting the separation from his beloved Useless.
Tara Fleet is with Rimmer and Josie: a criminal psychologist specialising in sex-crime profiling, and a little older than Josie. Tara asks Blears if he prefers animals to people. He replies in the affirmative. ‘Especially women, Graham?’ Tara says.
Blears is clearly distracted and looks at Rimmer, studiously avoiding both Tara Fleet and Josie Chancellor. His eyes look fit to bleed. He says, ‘Oh, yes.’
Tara Fleet is like a dog with a bone. She is dressed in a Prince of Wales check suit, tailored to the shoulders and waist. Her golden hair is down in long curls. She forces a smile upon her stern face and waits for Blears to dare look at her, says, ‘Women put you here, didn’t they, Graham.’ She leans back, slowly, crossing her legs. His mouth has opened. ‘You’re well shot of them.’
He nods, repeats her words in a breathy, penitent’s moan. ‘Well shot.’ Blears looks at Josie, as if he has only just realised she is there. She smiles at him, wetting her lips. ‘This will be done soon, won’t it? I’ll know, soon, won’t I?’ he says.
‘Just as soon as you have told us everything.’
‘I want to see a priest.’
‘It’s that bad, is it, Graham?’ says Josie.
Blears blinks rapidly, looks at Rimmer, as if he is waking from a moment’s sleep. ‘Who are these women? I don’t have to speak to them. Get them out!’
‘Of course, Graham,’ says Rimmer, standing, walking across to him, crouching and whispering low, under the murmur of the tape machine, ‘You can have whatever you want. We can tell each other everything. And it will all be over. Then we can bring the priest.’