by Adam Creed
‘A matter of courtesy. That’s all.’
‘Would it be discourteous of me to tell you to leave?’
‘I could write, next time. Get some nice paper. Some lilac paper, like Elena used when she wrote to you.’
‘You should learn to accept things for what they are.’
‘Show me her letters, Vassily. I’ll accept them for what they are. You have nothing to hide.’
‘There are no letters.’
‘Which answers your question.’
‘What?’
‘As to why I am here. You choose to lie to me – even though we have our man. Time well spent, wouldn’t you say?’
*
Rosa strolls confidently past the concierge of the Metropole, gets into the lift with a businessman. He says, ‘Good evening,’ in a soft, low voice that suggests he thinks he is in with a chance. He is northern European, probably Danish, and she nods, angles herself away from him, pressing 4. He reaches across and presses 6, his eyes up and down and all over her. The floors come slowly.
It pings 4. He says, ‘Have a good evening.’
Although she has done this several hundred times, tonight she wishes she was home, drifting to sleep with a book slipping from her fingers. Tonight, curiously, she fears she may be in the game two or three years too many.
She goes left, down a long corridor, and left again, around the service shaft. Rosa breathes deep and runs her fingers through her hair, pulling it forward so it frames her face. Then, through her dress, she pulls up her pants at the sides and fixes them just so, hitching her stockings up. She stands erect and closes her eyes, transports herself to a place from which she can push herself all the way out. She knocks, twice. As always, her heart beats faster, harder. The door opens away from her, shows her into somebody else’s world.
He is lean and seems younger tonight – and kind, as if he couldn’t do harm. Her instincts are good.
As soon as the door is shut he puts a hand on the slope of her shoulder and neck and kisses her, mouth slightly open, on the lips. His mouth is wet and tastes of vodka, his other hand around the back already, to where her buttocks meet her thighs. He squeezes gently and she cannot help but utter a low gasp.
He asks if she wants a drink. She declines, fathoming that he is from Liverpool. Maybe from Ireland in the past or the other way round. He asks if she minds if he does and she shakes her head, watches him pour a neat Smirnoff from the minibar and go to the easy chair by the window. It is one of many hundred windows in this hotel. This one looks into the top of a department store on Oxford Street. Nobody sees in.
Rosa says, ‘You want to watch me?’
‘Undress,’ he says in his soft voice that seems to need love.
She reaches behind, to unzip her dress, and he says, ‘No. Pull up the dress. I want to see your legs. Be slow.’ He seems uncertain, almost as though he can’t believe what he is saying.
Rosa bends, crosses her hands and takes the left hem of her dress with the right and vice versa. Far away, she hears a car horn. Otherwise, in the hard and secret heart of the city, it is silent; slowly, she pulls up her dress, a translucent white chiffon, over her head. Through it, she sees only a warm amber glow from the bedside light.
‘Stop!’ he says. ‘Please. Stop.’
She can hear him stand. She smells vodka coming off him. She realises he is behind her. Again, he puts one hand on the slope of her shoulder and neck and he kisses the lobe of her ear through the dress. He brings his teeth together on her. Again, she cannot help but gasp and she feels the slow descent of his other hand, first on the plump of her hip above her pants, then on the underside of her tummy.
‘What do you want?’ she says.
‘Stay just the way you are.’
Suddenly, Rosa is afraid, is unsure whether a door has opened, perhaps the en-suite. Is there another man here? ‘Let me take the dress off,’ she says.
‘Your friends,’ he says, the tenderness seeping away and his hand tighter on her neck. ‘You know the things you know. You know the people you know. It’s no good for us and it’s no good for you.’
‘Please!’ she pleads. ‘I don’t know anything.’
‘But you do. Tell me what you know about the other two.’
She can barely hear what he is saying. Her blood drums deep and fast in her ears.
Rosa’s voice warbles as she makes her reply. All she wants to do is to scream, then sob and collapse and let this all be over. ‘Elena?’ she says, thinking that as long as she is talking he won’t kill her. He killed the others, though. ‘Elena never said anything to me, just about clothes and the books she liked to read. That’s all.’
‘And her boyfriend? The one who stuck it up her?’
‘She never said she was pregnant.’
He says, ‘I never said she was pregnant. You been talking to your policeman friend? He needs to let it all lie, wouldn’t you say?’
Rosa’s hands are still above her head. She says, ‘You said “stuck it up her”. What’s that supposed to mean if …’ She coughs, ‘… it doesn’t mean …’ She coughs again, spluttering now and feels his grip on her throat release and she brings her hand down, as if to go to her mouth to abate the coughing, but it doesn’t. She leans forward to cough again, but within the convulsion she brings her head back. Fast! As hard as she can, smashing into his mouth. She hears the crunch of bone on flesh and teeth, and in the very same instant, he cries out into the room as she takes a hold of his balls with one hand, as hard as she can – as tight as she can muster and tugging, tugging, feeling her nails splinter as she does it and twisting round to face him, seeing his bloody face and reaching up, punching him in the throat, watching his eyes bulge and then grabbing his hair, hard as she can and dragging his head down, down towards the carpet. In a single, frozen moment, she sees the detail of the carpet, burgundy with small gold diamonds. She sees his head on the floor and can’t hear his curses any more – just his head on the carpet, turning to look up at her, his whole body flexing.
‘You stupid, stupid …’
But he doesn’t finish. She lifts up her stiletto foot, and she stamps down on his head with all her might, the heel’s pointed tip skidding off the curvature of his skull, but raking down across his face, making him clasp his head with both hands.
Rosa turns, runs for the door and opens it, kicking off her shoes and tearing off down the corridor, turning right past the service shaft and down along the corridor, then right again, hearing his curses rise and diminish as she gets to the lift, punching at the Down buttons but seeing both lifts are up at 9 and 11. She pushes the fire door, takes the steps two at a time, half flight by half flight, not knowing who might be waiting when she gets to the lobby.
She bursts through the doors and barges into a group of Far Eastern tourists, checking in. She runs behind the desk, throwing herself into the arms of the concierge, screaming, ‘Save me! Save me! Call the police, I’ve been attacked. Call the police, I’ve been attacked!’
The concierge tries to usher her away into the office behind reception but she won’t have it, insists on remaining where she can be seen until they call a man called Inspector Wagstaffe at City CID. She screams blue murder until that happens, until every last one of the Japanese tourists has checked in and two security guards have sat her down, until she can be sure that the man in room 411 is gone.
When she is calm, they tell her room 411 is empty tonight. They have been in and the room is untouched.
*
Staffe is spooning up to Sylvie to keep warm. She has kicked off the sheets in a fretful sleep. He dreams that he is awakened by a ringing telephone, then is awakened by an elbow from the woman he loves. As he turns over, trying to regain sleep, Sylvie says, ‘It’s yours, Will. Your phone’s ringing.’
He fumbles for his mobile, knowing this will hardly be good news. The man on the other end speaks calmly, telling him that a friend of his has been attacked and that she was quite insistent that they call him. The
man tells him he is from the Metropole Hotel and that the woman is called Rosa.
‘Is she … is she alive?’
As Staffe wakes fully, he discerns that the man thinks this a strange question. For a sliver of a moment, as he dresses hurriedly, Staffe wishes for another life, far away from this. Then he hears somebody behind him and the rustle of clothes.
Sylvie, blinking, rubbing her face, has a silk robe around her and is padding towards the kitchen, saying, ‘I’ll make you some coffee.’
‘I have to go straight away.’
‘Will, you need to tell me about her.’
‘When I get back.’
‘I need to know if anything is going on. I won’t let that happen to me. I’ve seen what it does.’
He wants to convince her that he is nothing like her mother, that after all these years he has finally realised she is the one. But now is not the time.
‘She’s a friend.’
‘Strange kind of friend. I catch you calling her in the middle of the night and then next thing you’re off on some rescue mission.’
*
Outside the Metropole, Staffe tells the cabbie it’ll be a while before they know where they’re going but to put his meter on and turn off the intercom.
Sliding the window shut, he says to Rosa, ‘I can’t help you if you don’t tell me everything.’
‘I keep telling you, I’m not hiding anything, Will. Why would I?’ Her mascara has run and her bare shoulders tremble. She has refused his jacket, insists she is ‘boiling up’, but she is ice cold to the touch.
‘Tell me again what he said to you.’ He scoots right up to her.
‘He said, “You know the people you know.” He said, “It’s no good for us and it’s no good for you.” He asked me to tell him everything I knew about them. “The other two,” he called them.’
‘And what did you tell him? What do you know?’ She tenses up and he can feel it.
‘I don’t know anything!’ Rosa’s eyes are wide and red. ‘He asked about the one who stuck it up her.’
‘Oh, Jesus,’ says Staffe. ‘He knows she was pregnant.’ He slides open the glass screen, tells the cabbie to take them to West Smithfield, to the City police morgue.
‘I’m not going there,’ says Rosa, leaning away.
‘You want to get out?’
‘Why are you being like this, Will? You’re supposed to be my friend.’
Staffe pulls her close, watches the city lights over her shoulder, thinking who might have known Elena was pregnant.
Twenty
‘I’m not going in,’ says Rosa. Staffe has sent the taxi away and they are round the back of the Royal London, on Rook’s Way, outside the City police morgue. From behind, the grand Victorian pile looms, brooding and sinister; like Bedlam.
Through the meshed safety glass, Staffe sees the outline of Janine coming towards them.
‘What’s to be gained?’ says Rosa.
‘You could pay your respects.’
Rosa clutches her own torso with wraparound arms. Her eyes are wild now, and dark. The tears have run dry, the fear is all played out.
‘It might jog your memory,’ he says.
‘Where can I go, Will?’
‘You will come to mine,’ says Staffe.
‘If I play ball?’
‘Regardless.’ He takes her hand and leads her past Janine. Curiously, it is warmer in the morgue than outside – until they get to a metal door. All their clicking shoes come to a halt and Janine lets them in with a coded punch of the entry pad.
Inside, the light is harsh, but the perimeter of the room is black as night. Staffe shows Rosa a seat at the edge of the room and hands her a blanket. She wraps it around her and watches as Staffe follows Janine into the far dark. Slowly, into the brilliant light, they each wheel a trollied bench. Staffe has Elena and Janine Rebeccah.
Rosa tries to look only at their hair and their faces. But her eyes trail down to the cross-stitched scars of their autopsied bodies and she grabs her mouth. The dead girls are the colour of the moon.
‘You know what I’m going to say,’ says Staffe.
‘This could have been me.’
‘It could be somebody else, too. If there’s anybody else who knows what you know, Rosa.’
Rosa shakes her head. ‘I don’t know what I know.’ She walks to the dead girls and reaches out, laying her palms flat on the faces of the two girls. Rosa closes her eyes, stays like that for a minute, then two. Five.
Eventually, she lifts her hands, opens her eyes, and she turns to Staffe. ‘Whatever I know, once I’ve told you, that’s it. That’s all I can do. I don’t have any more cards to play.’
‘You have to tell me.’
Janine turns off the operating lights and leaves Staffe and Rosa in the soft light from the washroom at the back of the morgue theatre. Staffe raises a hand to bid her farewell then turns to Rosa, taking her hands in his. ‘You must believe that anything you tell me won’t harm you. I won’t allow it.’
‘For Elena and Rebeccah and me … It’s us against the world – it has to be. You let so much in, you give so much of yourself …’ Rosa talks into her lap, running her thumb along Staffe’s knuckles. ‘… You have to keep something for yourself, for each other. We trust each other.’
‘That has to change now,’ says Staffe.
Rosa sighs, choosing her words, with the greatest of care. ‘Elena started behaving differently, the last couple of months or so. She kept saying I should find a way out. I always thought she was happy in the game. It was a while before I understood.’ Rosa looks at Staffe, shakes her head and looks back into her lap.
‘Understood?’
‘That she was getting out.’
‘They didn’t kill her because she was getting out, surely? She was having a baby. Markary’s baby, for Christ’s sake.’
‘I don’t think it was anything to do with the baby. No, Elena knew something.’
‘Did Rebeccah know it, too?’
‘Becx had her own plans. They wouldn’t have worked out if Tchancov had got wind of them. She has a little girl, you know. Her mother looks after her.’
‘Her mother!’
‘Her mother loves her, Will. As best she can.’
‘Maybe she and Elena have been blackmailing Markary.’
Rosa shakes her head and Staffe can’t tell whether she is still holding back.
‘Did Bobo know it wasn’t his baby?’
‘His baby!’ Rosa looks up at Staffe.
‘Jealous lovers lose their minds.’
‘You don’t know? That was all an act. Elena was Bobo’s sister.’
‘What!’
‘He followed her over here. That’s how he got his job with Tchancov. He’s nothing to do with any of this.’
Staffe lets go of her hands and sighs. ‘There’s nothing more?’
Rosa says nothing.
‘What is it?’ he says.
‘Becx was complaining that she wasn’t in the club.’
‘Not pregnant?’
‘No, not that. Elena would talk with Arabella. They had secrets.’
‘Arabella Howerd,’ says Staffe, as much to himself as Rosa.
‘Elena had a thing for Darius.’
‘Arabella’s boyfriend?’ says Staffe. ‘It seems like everybody had a piece of Elena.’
‘Elena had a piece of everybody, is how it was. But if you ask me, it was the real thing for Elena.’
‘With Darius? More than Markary?’
‘She’s a young woman, Will. And they all seem to go for Darius. I don’t get it myself, but he’s got something, that boy.’
They get back into the cab, and as they go into the dark night – towards Jombaugh, who will tend her until Staffe is all done – Rosa whispers into his chest that the man who lured her knows she has a ‘policeman friend’. ‘You have to let it all lie, Will.’
*
Staffe has impressed on Rosa that he will return to the station for he
r in an hour or so and that she will stay with him. Now, in the dead of the London night, Jarndyce Road slumbers, tranquil. The skips and builders’ vans are bathed in mist like a natural part of a timeless landscape.
It is clear that only one floor of the house is occupied and Staffe lobs up a handful of gravel, smattering the main window. There is no response, so he lobs up another. And another, until a light comes on and an angry young man opens a window, shouts, ‘Fuck off!’ holding a breeze block. Fair to say, he is used to trouble.
‘A’Court!’ calls Staffe.
‘I said fuck off!’
‘Police. Watch your language and let me in.’ As he waits, Staffe sees that despite the commotion, the street sleeps on. It would appear that most of the houses are either under, or awaiting, redevelopment.
‘What do you want?’ says Darius A’Court, opening the front door, seemingly coming down from something.
Staffe pushes past him and up the stairs, following the sweet smell of weed. ‘Is Arra in?’
‘Leave her alone.’
‘It’s a bit late for that.’ When Staffe gets to the top of the stairs, he stops dead.
Arabella’s long, thick blonde hair is tangled and her skin is dry, but with her long, fine features and her powder-blue eyes, the young Howerd looks as if she is Elena Danya, back to life. ‘I’m here about Elena,’ says Staffe.
‘Is it a mistake? Is she all right?’ Arabella speaks slowly and her words drift into each other, like snow on the wind.
Staffe shakes his head.
‘Say nothing,’ says Darius. He puts an arm round Arabella. It makes her smile.
‘You were in her phone. And Rebeccah’s.’
‘They’re my friends.’
Staffe makes his way into the living room. The walls are bare and a hippy throw hangs at the window. The scent of weed is thick and it smells as if they might have rustled some soup. It is damp, cold as outdoors. ‘You don’t need to live like this.’
‘I look after her,’ says Darius.
Staffe turns on Darius, stands nose to nose. He can see what women might find in him. His eyes are dark and glassy. He has a faraway, lost look. Staffe whispers, ‘I bet you do.’