Willing Flesh

by Adam Creed

  ‘I take it you would like a cup.’

  Staffe had seen the lever-pull Italian machine and says, ‘I’d like it cut, please. A thimbleful.’

  Roddy smiles, approvingly, grinds beans afresh.

  As he does it, Staffe takes a close look at a framed Onslow print of the Great Eastern Hotel, with diners dwarfed in its pillared and domed dining room. ‘I’d hazard you’ve been through Liverpool Street Station a fair few times, hey Roddy?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘All those trips up to town from The Ridings?’

  ‘What do you know about The Ridings?’

  ‘They’re building one of those brand spanking new country towns up there.’

  ‘Do you have news of Arabella?’ says Roddy.

  ‘What did you do?’ says Staffe, jokingly. ‘Sell off a few acres of the estate?’

  ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘I need to know more about Arabella’s friends. And I need some photographs, as recent as you’ve got.’

  Roddy hands Staffe his coffee, served in a thick Illy cup, with saucer. ‘I wouldn’t know about her friends. Not my type of people.’

  ‘She had a boyfriend, Darius.’

  Roddy shrugs.

  ‘She used to go back up to The Ridings?’

  ‘Never.’ Roddy is quite adamant.

  ‘She must have favourite haunts. Places she went with her mother when she painted, for example.’

  ‘They didn’t get on.’

  The coffee is thick and hot and bitter. Staffe waits for the rush. Gets it. ‘How bad was it, Roddy, between Imogen and Arabella?’

  Roddy turns on his heel and says, over his shoulder, ‘I’ll see if I can find a photograph.’

  Staffe follows him into the hall, having noticed Howerd’s study at the back of the house. Looking into the drawing room, he says, ‘I’m a bit of a collector. Do you mind if I have another look in here?’

  ‘I won’t be long,’ says Roddy, climbing the stairs.

  The moment he has disappeared from view, Staffe takes a half flight up into Howerd’s study, goes straight to a slant-lid desk. He thinks it might be Queen Anne and daren’t even guess at its value.

  In the top drawer is a small leather ring binder with Howerd’s current-account statements in it. Coutts. At the last count, he was £220,000 over-drawn. Staffe looks quickly back through the statements, sees that amounts of £25,000 had been withdrawn in cash four times in the past four months. The last, three weeks ago.

  He can’t believe the Howerds are quite on their uppers, but wonders why Leonard might run a personal overdraft at such levels. He goes through the small drawers on the desktop and takes out a batch of correspondence. Two letters from the Nationwide, approving in principle a mortgage of £750,000, and a letter from Binns Contractors in Ipswich, quoting £320,000 for repairs and renovations to The Ridings, Little Mumplings, nr Aldesworth.

  In the bureau’s galleys, Leonard keeps old envlopes, to make lists or notes. Seeing a solitary pale lilac envelope, Staffe eases it out, takes it in his fingers, sees Leonard’s name and address, drawn in a long, elegant hand.

  Staffe hears a fast tread on the stairs and slides the letter back, returns the drawer and positions himself in front of a large framed photograph. A beautiful woman, crinkling at the eyes but tall and with a model’s frame, stands beside a man in cardinal red. He has her cheekbones and straight nose. The same as Arra, also.

  Roddy appears in the doorway, ‘You were going into the drawing room,’ says Roddy.

  ‘This is Imogen and Uncle Bernard, I take it,’ says Staffe.

  Roddy looks out of the window, as if Imogen might rise from a crouched tending of the Michaelmas daisies beyond the arbour and wave up to him.

  He holds open the album at a page that has three photographs of a teenage Arabella. Staffe takes a firm grip of the album and pulls it towards him. Roddy keeps a hold, saying, ‘Choose the one you want and I’ll remove it. My father won’t be pleased that the album has been tampered with.’

  But Staffe smiles him in the eye and tugs, once, firmly. He sits in a club chair to the left of the window, leafing through the album.

  ‘It’s private.’

  ‘The more I know about her, the more chance we’ve got.’ And then he sees why Roddy was so reluctant.

  Two young men are standing by a taberna with a turquoise sea beyond. They are laughing and the fair Roddy has his elbow on the other’s shoulder. The darker of the two is unmistakably familiar. Darius A’Court.

  ‘Is this how Arabella met Darius?’

  ‘I met him on holiday,’ says Roddy, his voice cracking at the edge.

  ‘I asked Darius if he knew you. He said he didn’t.’

  Roddy shrugs, unable to disguise the fact that he is hurt.

  ‘Why would he do that, I wonder?’ says Staffe, leafing back to the photographs of Arabella. He removes one, hands back the album to Roddy. ‘And why would you – when I asked you earlier – imply you didn’t know him?’

  ‘I have things to do,’ says Roddy.

  ‘When was the last time Vassily Tchancov visited here, Roddy?’

  ‘I have never heard of the man.’ Roddy speaks without hesitation, is utterly convincing; almost as if somebody else had spoken for him.

  ‘I believe I know where I might find Arabella.’

  ‘What!’ Roddy’s assuredness collapses. He is neither happy nor relieved that his sister might be found. ‘Where might you find her?’ He is, no doubt about it, afraid.

  *

  The Elder has quite taken to driving his hackney carriage and can’t help but smile at the realisation that his plan has panned out so sweetly. He even has his story plotted ahead, should his Knowledge fail him. He looks in the mirror at his quarry, who desires to be driven to Barnes. The inspector, up close, has kind eyes and a soft look to his face, despite the hard lines of his jaw and eye sockets, his two-day stubble. But he seems troubled, the poor man, as if struggling with an impossible crossword clue.

  He decides to go through the park, thinks this will show that he is what he purports to be. But halfway in, he takes a left around the Serpentine and immediately realises the error. It is a wrong turn no true cabbie would make.

  ‘I’m afraid we should have gone straight on. Unless you’re caught short,’ laughs the inspector.

  Best tell his best lie, he thinks. And whilst he makes his volte-face, he says, ‘To be honest, sir, and I shouldn’t be saying this – but you look like a decent kind of fellow – this isn’t my cab.’

  ‘Aaah.’

  ‘No, it’s my son-in-law’s. Had it three years and going gangbusters he was, then they hit rough water, so I said I’d help out – doubling up on the shifts. I do my best, but this Knowledge business, it’s no walk in the park.’ The Elder laughs out loud. ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he says, eyeing Staffe in the mirror. ‘Have this one on me. All this fannying about!’

  ‘Absolutely not!’ says the inspector.

  When they pull up outside Sylvie’s urban cottage, Staffe looks up and down the street for signs of anything unusual. All the way, he has been checking whether they are followed. As he gets out, with the cabbie gushing his thanks, he stops, leans against the hackney carriage and says to the driver, ‘How do you fancy a proper fare, and a good run out?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I need to go up the coast. It’s a couple of hours. Switch off the meter and I’ll pay you a ton and a half. Same again tomorrow if you bring us back.’

  ‘You bet!’ says the cabbie, giving Staffe a thumbs-up and looking as though he’s got six numbers up on the lottery.

  ‘I’ll be twenty minutes … What’s your name?’

  ‘Thomas. Who’s going? You and the wife?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ smiles Staffe.

  *

  Sylvie has to draw back the net curtain with her elbow because she is up to her forearms in resin. She watches Staffe chit-chatting with the cabbie, looks up and down the str
eet to make sure nobody has driven past or parked up, keeping tabs on him, but the road is quiet as Cotswolds.

  She rubs her hands with a spirit rag, then plunges them into a dilution of lavender oil and camomile. She dries on a terry-cotton towel and makes her way down from the loft studio, wringing her hands together with a coating of moisturiser.

  As she walks down the floating cedar treads into her open-plan lounge–diner–kitchen, she hears Staffe and Rosa talking in suppressed tones. It seems Rosa is resistant to whatever persuasion he is attempting, and when she clocks Sylvie, she gives him the eyes to say that they have company.

  ‘I need to go away,’ says Staffe.

  ‘I’m a burden here,’ says Rosa.

  Sylvie looks daggers at Staffe. ‘Oh no! No way. That’s not happening, not after …’

  ‘She has to come with me. I have to protect her. You know that.’

  ‘That was before I knew what you chose not to tell me.’

  ‘I don’t want to come between you two,’ says Rosa.

  ‘I can’t leave her,’ says Staffe. ‘And I won’t put you at risk by her staying here.’

  ‘That’s chivalrous.’

  ‘This is serious, for crying out loud, I’ll be back in a day or so.’

  Sylvie ushers Staffe into the kitchen area and hisses, ‘There’s only so much I will take.’

  ‘Everything will be fine,’ he says, pulling her towards him, making to kiss her on the lips, but she turns her head, looks into the garden. It is tiny but when she bought the place, she was going to do all sorts with it. Lately, she has been thinking of not having another summer here.

  ‘We’ll see,’ she says. ‘You do what you have to do, Will. You always do.’ She opens the door to the garden and goes out, feels the cold, plays with the Urals ring on her wedding finger.

  Later, Staffe comes to her and kisses her on the cheek and says he’ll be back and everything will be fine. She has barely moved, staring at the overgrown garden. The front door closes and she feels afraid, doesn’t want to go back in. But where else could she go?

  Twenty-four

  Thomas the taxi driver and Rosa watch Staffe tramp across the building site towards the two-storey Portakabin that is Aldesworth Country Town’s site office. ‘You married?’ says Thomas, drawing his thumb across his pencil moustache.

  Rosa draws heavily on her cigarette as she leans against the cab. ‘No!’ she laughs, ‘He’s getting married. But not to me.’ She looks away, to a gaggle of workers dragging speedily on shared cigarettes, kicking their boots. ‘I’m not the marrying kind.’

  Rosa takes out her Bensons, walks up to the bricklayers who are waiting for a fresh mix. It will be nice to use the bits and bobs of foreign tongues she has picked up down the years.

  *

  Clay and gravel cloy to Staffe’s shoes and he kicks off the mud against the enormous wheels of a dumper truck. A group of labourers make their way out of the office, keen to get back to work in a hurry; they talk earnestly to each other in what could be Polish or Russian. He watches them go and looks around the site. Everywhere, trucks and men are on the move, delivering materials or taking away waste; laying blockwork or kneeling bolt upright on sloping roofs and throwing tiles. Staffe taps on the door.

  ‘Fuck off!’ is the reply.

  He pushes the door and steps in. The place is oppressively warm, and fuggy with farts and butane gas. Behind a draughtsman’s desk, strewn with charts and plans, sits a fat man.

  ‘Police,’ says Staffe, showing his card. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Small,’ says the fat man. ‘Lawrence Small. It’s a piss-take, isn’t it?’ he laughs. He reaches across the desk with all his might, as if taking a circuitous swimming stroke, picking a business card from a pile and holding it out for Staffe to take. It leaves Lawrence Small breathless.

  ‘You’re the project manager?’

  Small nods and smiles, seemingly relaxed that CID have sent an inspector to see him. Almost as though he was expected.

  Staffe says, ‘This is one hell of a site. How many men you got here?’

  ‘Depends. Four hundred at the moment but soon we’ll be swamping the place with sparks and chippies.’

  ‘You’re lucky. Seems like the roofs are on just in time for winter.’

  ‘That’s not luck. It’s my job,’ says Small as proud as punch. It is almost as if he had said, ‘Look at my beautiful wife.’

  ‘You using local boys for the electrics and woodwork?’

  Small looks at Staffe, suspiciously. ‘Gas work, we have to. They’re all Corgi registered. This is a tight site, inspector, but I can say that I have no problems with my foreign casuals. They’re on site at half seven and work through ’til six. Just half an hour for lunch and they work like stink.’

  ‘You get long days out of them.’

  ‘They get all the breaks specified by law. And they’re all legal.’ Small reaches around his stomach to open a drawer. He slaps a pile of documents onto the desk.

  Staffe flicks through the papers. The odd one or two are Polish and some are Ukrainian. Most seem to be Russian, on special ninety-day permits, due to expire in two weeks or so. ‘Good thing for you they work like stink. These permits are about to expire.’

  ‘We’ll get them extended if we need to. All our men have enough points, don’t you worry.’

  ‘I’d have thought it’s a pain in the arse, dealing with immigration.’

  ‘Our sponsors are very good. The men are given all the help we can.’ And Small stops himself.

  ‘I suppose your directors are pretty well connected,’ laughs Staffe.

  ‘Never see them.’

  ‘It’s that local fellow, isn’t it? What’s his name …?’

  ‘You haven’t said why you are here, Inspector.’

  ‘Leonard somebody.’

  ‘I don’t know any Leonard.’

  ‘And that Turkish chap. Markary! That’s him. Taki Markary.’

  ‘I’ve got a meeting to go to,’ says Small, pushing himself away from the desk with all his might, the castors on the chair squeaking and groaning.

  ‘You must have good Russian connections – for the permits. You mentioned your sponsors.’

  ‘I mentioned that I have to go,’ says Small, gathering papers together, hurriedly, randomly.

  ‘How many units are on site, you say?’

  ‘I didn’t.’ Small tosses a sales brochure to Staffe. ‘Hot off the press.’ He pushes past Staffe, but Staffe takes hold of the big man’s arm. Small is sweating now, smells of burnt onions.

  ‘What’s the build period on a development like this?’

  ‘Sixty weeks.’

  ‘Impressive,’ says Staffe, standing, happy to have learned as much from Small’s evasions as what the project manager had volunteered, but with a final shot across the bows.

  ‘Do you work for Vassily Tchancov, Lawrence?’

  Small’s eyes flicker and his chin fails him. ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Does he get the men for you?’

  ‘They just arrive. If anything goes wrong …’ Small, quite unnecessarily, looks behind him, ‘I can call him. Look, I have a family. You know what it’s like in construction right now.’

  ‘I need to know who the workers’ sponsors are.’

  ‘I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘The site is legal, right?’

  Small nods, now sweating violently.

  ‘Then you have nothing to fear, surely.’

  ‘What has he done?’

  ‘What kind of a gun does he have to your head, Lawrence?’ Staffe knows he will achieve nothing more here. But he has what he came for.

  Lawrence shakes his head, looks as if he is standing at a stake, dry as tinder.

  ‘You’d best forget I was here,’ says Staffe, leaving the hot fug, feeling the chill, like a welcome breeze. ‘For both our sakes, you had better keep this visit to yourself.’

  Back at the car, Rosa tells him the men say they’re on two hund
red quid a week, for a six-day week, but they get another hundred a week sent straight home. Staffe does the maths, which isn’t rocket science.

  Given that he’d have to pay local builders at least a hundred quid a day, Small is saving at least £300 a week per man. For sixty weeks, that’s £18,000 a man. Minimum. Four hundred men, that’s over seven million quid that the developers are making – over and above. Courtesy of the licences.

  ‘Did you ask them how they get their licences?’ he asks.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They clammed up.’

  *

  They park up in Saltburgh’s Georgian square and in this snow-petalled dark, it looks unchanged from across the centuries. You expect to see ladies in hooped, corsetted dresses and men in frock coats walking into the Signet. The Elder says, ‘I might stay the night. What I save on diesel will pay for a B&B and some fish and chips.’

  Through the front doors of the hotel, the Christmas lights pulse on and off, winking that Saint Nick is close. Somewhere, beyond, the sea comes and goes, comes and goes, in the dusk. The sweet smell of hops drifts from the brewery.

  The detective looks at him: long, as if appraising, says, ‘Which regiment were you in, Thomas?’

  ‘What?’ The cabbie seems shocked, wary.

  ‘Your shoes. They’re so spick and span. You must have been in the army.’

  ‘Aah,’ says Thomas, mustering a smile.

  ‘I’ll give you a ring in the morning, Thomas, when we’re ready to go back.’

  The Elder watches the two of them go into the hotel. He thinks that they would make a good couple; that he wouldn’t mind being in the inspector’s shoes tonight. And he also thinks he will need his wits about him; thinks also about the regiment and the Troubles, how he met the Younger.