Suffer the Children

by Adam Creed

  ‘How could she have got to Montefiore if she was in our custody?’

  ‘As we speak, these are two separate cases. I’m asking you to liaise with the Met, Will.’

  ‘Give me two weeks. Two weeks with full support.’

  ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘They called me at home. There’s something personal going on here.’

  Pennington nods.

  ‘And …’ Staffe thinks about the ropes, numbered 1, 2, 3, 4. The last one to be cut was three. Could Montefiore be the third? That would mean Colquhoun was the second.

  ‘Staffe?’ says Pennington.

  And if Colquhoun was the second … maybe they should be looking backwards for a pattern.

  ‘Staffe! If they are playing you along – and quite frankly, I think that sounds a bit fanciful – why give them what they want?’

  ‘I can’t find Karl Colquhoun’s killer unless I follow up on Montefiore. I’m sure of that.’

  ‘I’m worried about you, Will.’ He looks past Staffe to the door. Lowers his voice. ‘Sohan Kelly’s car was torched last night.’

  ‘You said you had taken care of him.’

  Pennington looks at Staffe’s bandaged wrist, dirty from the morning’s exertions, with petals of blood seeping through the lint. ‘You should know better than to get involved.’

  Staffe hears the van outside, tooting. He grimaces. ‘You lined Sohan Kelly up, sir. You asked me to take his statement. He had already changed his statement by the time I interviewed him.’ Instinctively, Staffe puts his hand on his heart, feels the folded, first statement through the suede. As he does, he sees the tear in his sleeve where the knife went into him yesterday.

  Pennington makes a tight smile at Staffe and picks up the phone. He dials. ‘Geoff, I’ve got my DI here and we’d like to run with the Montefiore assault for a few days, if only to eliminate the case as a link to the Colquhoun murder.’ He nods, says ‘Hmm … hmm … but this is a critical time for us, too. We’ll copy all the evidence to you, send transcripts. I can assure you, Geoff, we’ll bend over backwards for you. Yes … yes, very funny.’ He makes a fake laugh – which must work. ‘Thanks, Geoff.’ He puts the phone down and logs the conversation in his notebook, leans back, and says to Staffe, ‘You’ve got a week and your liaison at the Met is Smethurst. You know Smethurst, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Just make sure you get something. This could cost me. And if it does, it will cost you too.’

  ‘Thanks, sir.’

  ‘I don’t want your thanks, Staffe.’ Pennington picks up a file, hands it to Staffe, readjusts his glasses to the end of his nose, and turns his attention to his laptop.

  On the stairs down, Staffe opens the file and takes out the photograph of Karl Colquhoun’s Ku Klux killer and reads the Imaging Notes, squints at the remastered enlargement of the supposed killer’s face. According to Imaging, they have tried to extrapolate the width of the shoulders and hips, the hands, the shadows above the lips, but they cannot be sure whether it is a man or a woman.

  Staffe sees Stanley Buchanan a flight below. He skips down to catch up and slaps Buchanan on the shoulder. ‘Now then, Stanley,’ he says. ‘Tell me why we should release your client and make it good. I think we’ve held her long enough.’

  ‘What the hell do you want, Staffe?’

  ‘Justice, Stanley. Same old, same old.’ He is about to drip-feed Buchanan the prompts to get Leanne released when Pulford comes in through reception.

  ‘Can I have a word, sir?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Stan. Wait here, will you?’

  As they go outside, they get a blast of heat. Pulford says, ‘It’s Debra Bowker, sir. She did come back to England, according to Budjet Air. Except she travelled as Debra Colquhoun. So I checked with the Secretary of State and her old passport was sworn as lost. Sounds fishy, don’t you think?’

  ‘Clue up on the extradition procedures. Don’t do anything yet, just be ready if we need to get her over here. And check the BA flight times from Tenerife into Heathrow.’

  Pulford nods, clearly pleased with himself. ‘Weird thing is, sir, she travelled alone. She left her kids in Tenerife. I’ve been looking at the case notes for her kids, Danielle and Kimberley.’

  ‘I’ve seen them.’

  ‘Both the girls said Karl Colquhoun touched their genitals “too much” when he bathed them. He gave them baths until they were seven and nine years old. Danielle Colquhoun told her mother what was happening when Colquhoun started bathing the younger one alone. Sound familiar?’

  ‘Just like Calvin and Lee-Angelique Colquhoun,’ says Staffe.

  ‘Except Debra Bowker went to the police.’

  ‘How long was she here, on her last visit?’

  ‘It was six weeks ago and she stayed for a week. So far, there’s no evidence that she met up with Karl Colquhoun. Leanne Colquhoun called Bowker a “fucking whore”, sir. There’s no love lost there.’

  Staffe smiles, says, ‘All the more reason to release them from their captivities, hey?’ He slaps his hands and goes back in to see Stanley Buchanan.

  ******

  ‘Thanks for doing this, lads,’ says Staffe, taking his favourite armchair from Pulford who is standing on the tailgate of the van. It is a nineteenth-century American spoonback and the last item to be loaded off.

  ‘You’ve got some fancy shit, if you don’t mind me saying.’ Johnson is sitting on the step at the front of the house in Queens Terrace. He looks tired and Staffe would love to be able to tell him to get himself home, but he knows the subtext. Johnson will be damned if he’ll let Pulford get ahead – in any respect.

  Staffe hands the chair to Johnson and stands back, drags his forearm across his sodden forehead, and looks up at the windows of his flat. He thinks of Sylvie and immediately claps his hands, shakes the thought away, shouting up to Pulford, ‘Come on. Let’s get down to the Villiers estate.’

  ‘Sally Watkins?’ says Pulford.

  Staffe goes across to Johnson, lowers his voice, ‘I need you at the station. I’ve got something I’d like you to do for me.’ He ushers Johnson towards the house. ‘Check back, see if any other similar crimes have taken place in the last two or three years.’

  ‘Similar crimes? We’d remember.’

  ‘Further afield. Check the Met, even Thames Valley.’

  ‘What are you saying, sir?’

  ‘Let’s just see if there’s anything in the past that might connect, that’s all.’

  ‘Are you taking this a bit personal, sir?’

  ‘Let’s just pretend I’m in charge, eh, Johnson? Just pretend that you’re here to do as you’re told.’

  ‘It’s just …’

  ‘Yes, I know! This would have been your case if I’d taken my leave. And it would probably be in the hands of the Met already. But it’s not, Johnson. It’s mine. Now here’ – he tosses the key to the van – ‘take the van back to the compound. And Johnson …?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I want you to know I appreciate everything you do.’

  Johnson forces a smile, far from heartfelt.

  ‘How many houses you got, sir?’ says Pulford as they park up outside the Kilburn lock-up.

  ‘What kind of a question is that to ask your boss?’ Staffe opens the lock-up door and pulls the dust sheet off his other car.

  ‘Jesus, sir!’ says Pulford.

  ‘You stay there and lock it straight up as soon as I pull out,’ says Staffe, tossing Pulford the keys to the lock-up. Staffe fires up his pride and joy, his Series 3 E-Type. He knows exactly what kind of cliché it is, knows most people will think he uses it – like most men who’ve rounded forty would use it – to help attract the ladies, help somehow turn back the years or stem a receding hairline. Not Staffe, though. He loves this car because his father did.

  With the top down and driving down to the Villiers estate along the A24, it’s a breeze. Through Clapham South and Balham and Tooting, Staffe drives it without irony. Wh
en he sees the signs for the A3 and Guildford, he feels sad.

  For the main part, the E-Type sat in his father’s garage but occasionally, on Sundays, his dad would take young Will out for a spin – up the A3 to Kingston Hill. He always thought it strange that his dad didn’t take his mother. She could look beautiful, with her headscarf and dark glasses. Like something from the movies. On the way back, they’d drive real slow through Richmond Deer Park. The closer they got to home, with the Thames like a silver ribbon running to Hampton Court, the less they spoke – as if they knew life was waiting for them.

  As they draw on to Villiers Avenue, Pulford says, ‘Don’t you think the Peugeot would have been, I don’t know …’

  ‘More discreet? I don’t want to be discreet, Pulford. I want everyone on this estate to know we’re here. I want them crawling all over my baby. And when I’ve finished talking to Sally Watkins, I want you to have worked out who knows what about her mum and dad. That’s Tyrone and Linda and, as far as we can gather, the mother flew the nest a while ago.’

  Staffe parks up at the bottom of the Bevin Tower, avoiding the broken glass. Pulford blows his cheeks out, says, ‘You not going to put the top up?’

  Staffe laughs, tosses the keys. He checks the address in his notebook and swings his suede jacket over his shoulder, looks up at the towering wall of concrete and glass, the lowest of the low living in the sky.

  Sally Watkins lives on the sixth floor but Staffe doesn’t bother with the lift. The way things are going, he won’t get a run today and he takes the stairs two at a time, pauses to get some breath on the fourth and looks down, sees a gaggle of people already gathering around the E-Type. He smiles to himself: just as he thought, it’s the dads that are coming to see, not the kids.

  Tyrone Watkins lets him in and immediately Staffe can’t imagine him doing what was done to Montefiore, but he dismisses the facts that Tyrone Watkins is gnarled and malnourished; is unshaven and looks as though he hasn’t seen the light of day in months.

  Tyrone runs a neat ship. There is nothing on the shelves. No books or CDs or DVDs. A cable TV guide is in the middle of the floor. It looks well-thumbed. Tyrone sits straight back down and rests a dead gaze on the gigantic plasma TV screen, watches somebody preparing a meal on a beach. Staffe can hear a TV elsewhere in the house, either that or a stereo.

  ‘Nice TV, Mr Watkins.’

  ‘You can get them bigger, now. When I got it, it was the biggest. Just about.’

  ‘When was that?’

  Watkins doesn’t answer, he just looks a little bit more sad, and Staffe guesses he’s had the TV three years. An attempt to distract his daughter Sally from what Montefiore did to her. Allegedly.

  ‘Is Sally here?’ says Staffe.

  Tyrone says, ‘She’s sleeping. She’s not seeing no one today. No one, you hear.’ He squints up at Staffe. ‘Who you say you were?’

  ‘Police, Mr Watkins.’

  ‘Aah. That’s right.’

  ‘I’m from City of London. Leadengate.’ Staffe wonders where to go next, contemplates telling Watkins about Montefiore but decides against it.

  ‘Where is your wife, Mr Watkins?’ Staffe sits opposite Tyrone and sinks back into a leatherette armchair. From here he can see into the open-plan kitchen area, separated from the living room by a breakfast bar. Staffe looks around the room, can’t see a dining table, guesses this is TV-dinner land. ‘She’s gone, right?’

  ‘Said she was going to get cigarettes. She loved a smoke. I remember the first time we met, my mum said when I come home: “You been smoking, Tyrone? You don’t smoke, Tyrone,” she said. And I didn’t. Never have. She could smell Linda’s smoke on me. My Sally smokes but I don’t mind. It reminds me.’ He looks lost, looks as though he has exhausted himself just by talking. ‘Plenty else for her to die of, this day and age.’

  He looks up at Staffe with cloudy eyes. ‘You police, you say?’ He points the remote control at the TV and watches the giant image change to a house overlooking a foreign sea.

  ‘I’d like to find your wife, Mr Watkins.’

  ‘Said she was going for cigarettes.’ A middle-aged couple are being shown round a Croatian waterfront home.

  Staffe waits for Tyrone’s eyes to lid down. As soon as his head lolls back against the chair’s high, winged back, Staffe makes his way quietly down the hallway, following the sound of R & B music.

  He taps lightly on the door. It says: ‘Sally’s Room. Enter at Your Peril’. He taps again and presses the door open as softly as he can, pokes his head round.

  It’s a small room. The translucent pink curtains are drawn and the light is soft. An orange glow comes through a scarf that’s draped over the shade of her bedside lamp.

  Sally Watkins is sitting on her bed in a short denim skirt with her back against the wall and her long, coltish legs dangling halfway to the floor. She’s made up and wearing a tight-buttoned, cropped blouse that shows her flat, teenage tummy, makes the most of her cleavage. Her hair looks done. When she clocks Staffe with big, glazed eyes, she shifts her position, makes a smile, says, ‘Aah. Not seen you before.’

  ‘I’m with the police, Sally.’

  ‘I’ve not done nothing wrong.’

  ‘I’m looking for your mother.’

  ‘Bit late, aren’t you? She’s been gone three year.’ Sally Watkins laughs and sneers. It makes her pretty face look ugly for a moment.

  Staffe wants her to cover her legs and stop sitting back on her bed like that, as if a grown man in her bedroom offers no threat. He looks around the room a second time: no posters or dolls or teddy bears.

  ‘Where do you think she is, Sally? Does she have family?’

  ‘I’m her family and she’s not here.’

  ‘Does she have a brother or a sister?’

  ‘Me uncle Barry lives up north somewhere. I don’t know.’

  ‘And what’s his second name?’

  ‘Wilkins. It’s like Watkins. Me dad used to joke it was too much the same, her name. I didn’t used to get it. But I do now. He was always jokin’, me dad. Always jokin’.’ She looks away, out of the window at the tower block next door. Staffe follows the gaze and when he looks back at her, she’s got a pillow over her legs.

  ‘I know what happened, Sally. I might be able to help, if you want.’

  ‘They let him get away with it. Said it was better for me if we did nowt. Well plenty happened, didn’t it?’

  ‘Do you go to school, Sally?’

  ‘You havin’ a laugh?’

  ‘Do you have a job?’

  ‘I get by,’ she says. She tries to sneer again but doesn’t quite have the heart.

  ‘Your dad … is he ill?’

  ‘He’s good for nothin’ without her. He doesn’t have a clue apart from how to use that fuckin’ remote.’

  ‘Does he ever leave the house?’

  ‘Never. I do all the shoppin’, pick up his social an’ that.’

  ‘Was he in the house the day before yesterday – in the evening, during the night?’

  ‘He’s got fuckin’ bedsores, man. Covered in ’em. Gross. Have a look if you don’t believe me. He’s only thirty-five. It’s disgustin’.’

  ‘I’d kill for a cup of tea,’ says Staffe. He sits on the small stool in front of her dressing table, covered in make-up and brushes; straighteners, curling tongs and a hairdryer.

  A car horn sounds outside and Sally jumps off the bed, peers out of the window. She presses her face up against the glass and says, ‘Nice motor. Is it yours?’

  ‘The E-Type? Yes.’

  ‘I’ll make you a cup of tea. How you take it? You don’t look like a copper.’

  ‘I’m CID.’

  ‘CID? Fuckin’ ’ell.’

  As soon as she’s gone, Staffe rifles the drawers. The first is all bras and knickers, way sexier than a fifteen-year-old should be wearing. Second drawer are T-shirts, pristinely ironed. Third drawer is tissues and condoms. A whole load of condoms, and lube.

  The bot
tom drawer is a whole childhood in miniature: a doll and a teddy bear; sugar sachets and matchbooks and some souvenir pencils from Chessington World of Adventure, Thorpe Park, Brighton Pier. There’s a stack of photographs with an elastic band around, and a slim stack of letters still in their envelopes, all opened with a knife. The top postmark is six months ago. Middlesbrough.

  Staffe is on his knees when the door creaks back open. He sees her milky white legs and his heart sinks.

  ‘If you’d asked, I’d of told you. You didn’t need to go snooping,’ says Sally Watkins, standing in the door. ‘The kettle’s boiling.’

  ‘Sorry,’ says Staffe. He looks up, wants forgiveness.

  She makes a smile without the sneer and says, ‘I’m going to have a sandwich. You want one?’

  ‘I’d love one, Sally. I’ll come and give you a hand.’

  She leads the way, saying as she goes, ‘Looking for me mum, eh?’

  In the kitchen, there’s just two of everything: knives, forks, dessert spoons, teaspoons. He opens a wall cupboard and sees sad pairs of side plates, dinner plates, cereal bowls and mugs. All neatly stacked. The inside of the cupboard is spotless. A waft of bleach as he closes the door.

  As Sally makes the tuna and mayonnaise sandwiches, he looks for a towel. In a drawer there is a pile of ironed tea towels and at the side of them is a photocopied A5 flyer that reads:

  VABBA

  MEETS LIFE HEAD ON

  Victims

  Against

  Being

  Buried

  Alive

  VABBA. Staffe knows what they’re getting at – the need to move on, to reclaim your life after being sinned against. But he can’t see any amount of victim support working for Tyrone Watkins or Sally.

  ‘Here you are. Tuna Marie Rose.’ She hands him the sandwich. ‘I put a bit of tomato puree in with the mayo. It makes it go pink. It’s better with seafood, see. Me mum taught me to do it.’