Suffer the Children

by Adam Creed

  ‘Sally …?’

  ‘You want to look at them letters, don’t you?’

  ‘Would you mind?’

  ‘What you want my mum for? He done it again? That bastard done it again?’

  ‘He might have.’

  ‘I’ll get the address. You don’t have to read the letters, do you?’

  Staffe wants to read the letters, realises they might hold clues as to what Linda Watkins has been doing. ‘Not if you don’t want,’ he says, ‘but they might help. It’ll be just me reads them. I promise.’

  She looks at him and smiles, says, ‘I’ll get them.’ She takes a cigarette from a packet of a budget brand and lights it too deftly with a Zippo lighter she pulls from the back pocket of her little denim skirt.

  Staffe takes a bite of his tuna Marie Rose sandwich and chews, swallows it down against his will. Far too sweet. It’s a kid’s snack. He tears off a piece of kitchen roll and wraps the rest of the sandwich, puts it in his jacket pocket, waits for her to come back.

  He finishes his tea and goes to the door, calls out, ‘Sally, you OK?’

  There’s no sound, just the whiff of burning, getting stronger. A thin scarf of smoke plumes up from under the bathroom door and the toilet flushes. Sally Watkins appears, Zippo in hand and wearing a sad face. She hands him a scrap of paper and says, ‘That’s her address. Least it was last I heard.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have burnt the letters, Sally.’

  ‘I can’t trust you. I’m sorry, but I can’t.’

  ‘It’s an obstruction to the course of justice.’

  ‘What you going to do? Hang me? And, anyway, you couldn’t prove there was anything in them letters that would’ve got justice.’

  Staffe takes the scrap of paper with Linda Watkins’s address and says, ‘You can trust me, Sally. I wish you could believe that.’

  ‘How d’you like the sandwich?’

  ‘Best I’ve had in a long time,’ says Staffe.

  He makes his way out of the flat and down the stairs and by the time he gets to Pulford there’s a gaggle of about thirty people milling around the E-Type. Some are drinking from cans; most are thirty, forty years old and you’d think that in a decent world men like these would be out working, shedding their bad juice through sweat and toil.

  ‘What d’you get?’ says Staffe to Pulford.

  ‘Nobody’s seen the mother since she left. Said she was a bit stuck up. Thought she was too good for the place. My guess is she got knocked up by Tyrone and had to settle for this.’ He looks up at the tower, back down at the ne’er-do-wells, drifting back to where they came from.

  ‘Let’s not jump to any conclusions.’

  ‘They reckon her daughter’s not exactly a chip off the block, though.’ Pulford gets in the car and Staffe starts the engine. He says under his breath, leaning across, ‘She’s on the game by the sound of things. Reckon the old man never leaves the flat. Like never.’

  ‘In which case we can cross him off the list.’

  ‘What about her? Sally?’ says Pulford.

  ‘Sally’s going to need an alibi, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You reckon she did it?’

  ‘No. But what I do reckon is that her alibi’s probably one of this lot here and they won’t want to be owning up to it.’ Staffe reaches into his pocket, pulls out the sandwich. ‘Here, have some tuna Marie Rose à la Sally Watkins.’

  ‘Where we going now?’ says Pulford.

  ‘Harrow on the Hill. Let’s see how the other half live.’

  ‘On the other side of the law.’

  As they drive off to interview Helena Montefiore, Pulford chews away at the sandwich. When he’s done, he says, ‘This is great. You make it? It’s better than that feta and shit you normally have.’

  Staffe drives under the Westway and looks up to Wormwood Scrubs.

  ‘This isn’t the way,’ says Pulford.

  ‘I have to meet Smethurst,’ says Staffe.

  ‘From the Met?’

  He pulls off Scrubs Lane and parks the E-Type up on a side street of Victorian cottages that have front gardens piled high with mattresses and dead white goods.

  ‘Call the office and dictate a report on the Watkins visit. Get it emailed across to Smethurst. All they need to know is we’re checking up Sally Watkins’s alibi and following a lead to the mother. Get a doctor to go see the dad and verify the bedsores; and see if a WPC can get Sally some safe-sex counselling. And get the Met to send us the Watkins file.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we pull Sally in if she’s underage?’

  Staffe ignores him, not knowing whether Sally’s lot would improve if they did prosecute her. For the moment he has no evidence and it would get ugly if he started digging around her life. On the balance of probabilities, his instinct dictates against charging her.

  He looks up at the Fusilier. It’s a bad joke of Smethurst’s that they’re meeting here. He knows Staffe of old, from when the Force had to share a thrusting young DC Staffe with the whisky bottle. Staffe readily agreed to the venue – Smethurst isn’t the sort of bloke to show your weaknesses to.

  The place hasn’t changed a great deal over the years: a rambling, tall-windowed corner pub that curves with the fork in the road, gets its windows rattled once a minute as the buses and wagons trundle by. The locals are sat in ones and twos all around the edge of the pub – drinkers, not socialisers.

  Smethurst raises his pint as Staffe approaches, as if to say ‘Same for you?’ He has a drinker’s nose and a sheen of sweat on his round face, blotched red and white.

  ‘I’ll have a Scotch and water,’ says Staffe.

  Smethurst raises his eyebrows as if to say ‘Back on it again, are we?’

  ‘I’ll take a Laphroaig, and I’ll do my own water,’ he tells the barmaid. ‘Give me a glassful.’

  They take the drinks to a seat by the window where the conversation will be drowned out by the sound of traffic.

  Staffe puts down the separate glasses of malt whisky and water. ‘I’ve been to see Tyrone Watkins and his daughter. You’ll be getting a report from my DS.’

  ‘Johnson? How’s he doing? A damn good copper, if you ask me. I had him as a DC a few years back.’

  ‘No. Pulford.’

  ‘That pup?’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with Pulford,’ says Staffe, taking a sip of the water and raising the malt to his lips. He lets it touch and – in the thick of everything that’s been going on with Colquhoun and Montefiore; with Marie and the move to Queens Terrace – he can picture himself by a Highland burn with a beautiful woman, drinking their way through the bottle and watching clouds go by.

  ‘You’re too loyal, Staffe. It’s a fool’s trait.’

  ‘Then you’re no fool, eh?’

  ‘Funny fella. You still getting plenty?’

  Smethurst would be the runt of any litter: pug nose in a pink bloated face and a squat body on short spindly legs. He’s always been drowned in his clothes and his suit sleeves come right down over his hands. ‘Not so many that I’m taking your share. Anyway, let’s leave the wit and repartee for later, shall we? I suppose I should thank you for running with us on this one.’

  ‘We’ll be taking it on soon enough. Unless you’ve got it cracked already.’

  ‘I’ve got a strong enough pull, don’t you worry.’

  ‘Why do you want Montefiore so badly, Staffe?’

  ‘It connects with the Colquhoun murder we had last week. Both victims are child rapists, the first a familial abuser, the second an assault by penetration. Both were unprosecuted.’

  ‘You get a photo for Montefiore too?’

  ‘Photo!’ Staffe feels his blood rush. ‘How d’you know about the photo?’

  ‘We know everything. Suspects?’

  And here, Smethurst has him. He can’t say Leanne Colquhoun because she was banged up the night of the Montefiore assault. And Debra Bowker is in Tenerife. ‘We’re checking alibis.’

  ‘Not the Watkins girl?’

/>   ‘Routine follow-up. You’d be doing the same. We’ve got a trail on the mother, but the father’s clinically attached to his sofa.’

  ‘And what would the mother’s connection be to Karl Colquhoun?’ asks Smethurst.

  ‘To throw us off the scent, maybe.’ Staffe doesn’t believe this himself. He wants to be chasing the case down, not explaining himself to Smethurst.

  ‘Montefiore was a pro job, and so was Colquhoun – from what I’ve heard. But if you’re right and there’s been two so close together, you can bet your skinny arse there’ll be another.’

  Staffe takes another sip of water, rests the Laphroaig up against his lips again. ‘What if it’s not “two close together”? What if there are other cases? I know there’s been nothing on our patch.’ Staffe looks Smethurst in the eye, sees a flickering of life, like a faraway light through a thick sea fret. ‘Have you had any vengeance killings or assaults? Say in the last, I don’t know, two or three years?’

  Smethurst stares out the window. It is years since they worked a case together. He lifts his glass, takes a good slug, puts it back on the table, scratches at his head. ‘There was one, but it’s a long time ago. And funnily enough, if I’ve got it right, it was your old mate, Jessop, worked on it, just before he was pensioned off. Wasn’t my case and it got tied up pretty quick but they fucked this woman right over.’

  ‘Woman?’

  ‘Yeah. A foreign woman.’ Smethurst scratches at his head again, downs the remains of his pint. ‘Stensson. Lotte Stensson was her name. But like I said, they got the bloke that did for her. He was the dad. She’d been having a go at boys and girls, for years they reckon. She was a classroom assistant in a junior school. Makes you wonder who’s doing the best job – us or the ones we bang up.’

  ‘We get it right more often than not.’

  ‘Sometimes we get it wrong when we get it right.’

  ‘This Lotte Stensson, she was known to us as a risk but the CPS never pushed, right?’ says Staffe.

  ‘She lost her job, but yeah, the CPS couldn’t push it through. How d’you know that?’ Staffe stands up. ‘Hey, you getting ’em in? You’ve not drunk that. Hey, Staffe!’ But Staffe is halfway to the door.

  He looks back at Smethurst, calls, ‘My young pup’ll be in touch for those Stensson notes. I’ll get ’em in next time, Smet.’

  ‘Smet? No one calls me that any more.’ And he smiles, as if he can remember a better time.

  ‘According to Helena Montefiore’s statement,’ says Pulford, ‘The Watkins’s had gone round hoping that Sally had been lying. They had all waited for Montefiore to come in from work. Apparently, the minute they saw him, they knew she wasn’t lying.’ Pulford refers to his notes and reads verbatim. ‘Sally’s mother gave Helena Montefiore a photograph of Sally, and …’ Pulford looks away from Staffe, ‘… she saw a photo of Montefiore’s daughter on the mantelpiece. The child was with a pony and Linda Watkins took the photograph out of its frame, went up to Helena Montefiore and pushed her little finger through the picture. She made a hole at the top of the girl’s legs and pushed the end of her finger through. Then she fainted.’

  ‘What did Montefiore’s wife do?’

  ‘She’s a diamond, sir. She called the police.’

  Staffe drives up into Harrow. With its grand old school on top of the hill, the steeply inclined, winding high street and its half-timbered bank and tea rooms, you could, for a hundred and fifty yards, be in the Cotswolds. He swings the E-Type on to a gravel driveway.

  The house is double-fronted, brilliant white, and Georgian. ‘Not bad for a disaffected divorcee,’ he thinks as Helena Montefiore opens the door. She stands in the porch, leaning against the stone portal with sunglasses perched in her perfect hair. She has finely arched eyebrows and full lips; sculpted cheekbones and plump breasts in a tight white cashmere sweater; a tiny brown suede skirt and kitten-heeled slingbacks. He smiles at her from the piping hot leather seat of his overheating classic. She smiles back and Staffe could swear she licks each corner of her lips with a tiny poke of her tongue. He blinks it away.

  ‘You take this one, Pulford.’

  ‘You sure?’

  Staffe stops, ten feet short of Helena Montefiore, turns to Pulford and says, ‘We’re a team, right?’

  ‘Thanks, sir.’

  The drawing room is beautifully finished in a high French country style and, as Pulford runs through the circumstances of Helena’s separation from her husband, Staffe takes stock of her willingness to talk, takes further stock of the period pieces. There is a walnut chiffonier and a late-eighteenth-century credenza he’d be more than happy to have.

  ‘Nothing was ever proven, the Crown never prosecuted the allegations, Mrs Montefiore,’ says Pulford. ‘But you left him.’

  ‘He’s done it again, hasn’t he?’ She shows a hint of disgust in the faintest curling of her lips. ‘Someone’s given him what he had coming, have they?’

  Pulford takes pause and Staffe thinks the young DS has lost his way. He prepares to take over, hones a question, but Pulford leans back, interlocks his hands on his chest, says, ‘If that had happened, what feelings would you have towards the person who did it?’

  Helena Montefiore looks out of the window, stares into the sun-fired green of the weeping willows that flank the driveway.

  ‘I know what happened to the Watkins people afterwards. I made it my business to find out how they fared. I think it’s a crying shame.’ She looks at Pulford, then Staffe. ‘I could understand and forgive whatever happened to Guy.’ She flinches when she says his name.

  ‘You’ve been well looked after.’

  ‘He loved Thomasina. He loved her more than me and if you really want to know, he was a better father than a husband.’ She looks at Staffe.

  ‘And he still sees Thomasina?’

  ‘He’s not allowed within a mile of her. He signed up for that. It broke Thomasina’s heart. She loved him more than anything.’ She sits down on the edge of a chaise longue, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees and her head bowed.

  Staffe says, in his softest voice, ‘We are going to have to speak to Thomasina, I’m afraid. I’d rather it was here.’

  Helena Montefiore stands up, smooths down the suede of her short skirt, draws her hands across her bottom. At the door she pauses, turns. ‘You think I might have done it, to Guy, don’t you? You think he might have … you know, with Thomasina?’

  ‘You couldn’t do such a thing. Surely.’

  ‘You’d be amazed.’ She smiles. ‘I didn’t, of course. But you’d be amazed.’

  ‘And Thomasina …?’

  She glazes over again, stares out to the weeping willows. ‘I’m as sure as I can be. She does love him, you know. I can’t take that away from her. You can’t take love out of a girl’s life. You never know how little she’s going to find.’

  Helena stands by the door, holds it open as if to indicate it is time for Pulford and Staffe to leave. ‘You’re not going to speak to her. I won’t let him touch her, not in any way at all, you see. I’ve spoken to a silk – he’s a family friend.’

  In the hallway, Staffe sees a teenage girl at the top of the stairs, as if she was on her way down but had been frozen, perhaps caught in a spell. He says to Helena, under his breath, ‘We’ll need to know where you were, midnight till six in the morning.’

  ‘I was here all night,’ says Helena in a stage voice, looking up the stairs. ‘Wasn’t I, darling? Come on down, Thommi.’

  Thomasina Montefiore has none of her mother’s striking beauty. She still has puppy fat in her face and legs and around her tummy. Her hair is cut short and dyed jet-black and she’s wearing a London’s Burning Clash T-shirt. Staffe remembers seeing them at the Roundhouse when he was just thirteen. His dad had picked him up after the gig – a rare event.

  ‘Mummy said you were police,’ says Thomasina. ‘You don’t look like police.’ She looks at Staffe, gives him a tight smile.

  ‘I was here, wasn’t I, darl
ing?’ says Helena. ‘The policemen want to go, Thommi.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Thommi.

  ‘We sleep together.’

  Thommi raises her eyebrows and shoots a look out of the corner of her eye at her mother as if to say, ‘It’s her idea. She doesn’t realise I’m a woman for crying out loud,’ and Staffe makes an instant prayer that Guy Montefiore never laid a finger on his own little girl.

  Wednesday Evening

  It is bumper to bumper all the way into the City. The sun and exhaust fumes take their toll as Pulford clicks off his mobile and blows out his cheeks. He looks at his notes in disbelief.

  ‘What’s up?’ asks Staffe.

  ‘That was Josie. She’s checked up on Lotte Stensson.’

  Staffe clocks the temperature gauge, reaching into the red.

  ‘It was a bloke called Kashell who did for her. Nico Kashell. He’s doing life up in Wakefield.’

  ‘And his MO?’

  Pulford’s voice drops a few decibels, half an octave, too. He reads from his notes.

  ‘He broke her fingers.’

  ‘Her fingers! And that killed her?’

  ‘He broke them one by one. Twenty-two of the twenty-eight phalanges were fractured. Then he broke both ulnas, both tibias,’ Pulford swallows hard, sounding as though he might gag, ‘and then the femurs.’

  Staffe pulls the E-Type over to the side of the road, puts his hazards on and turns off the engine. ‘Carry on.’

  ‘They reckon it was the sheer pain that killed her. It brought on a coronary. The shinbones were shattered to bits.’

  ‘And was she gagged?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Gauze?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In her own home?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Jesus,’ says Staffe.

  ‘And there’s more,’ says Pulford. ‘It was your mate took Kashell’s statement. Jessop. But he got pulled off the case. There was a conflict ’cos he was involved in the CPS investigation, you know, into Kashell’s daughter’s allegations.’

  The unrelenting sun beats down hard and Staffe feels a squeeze from his past.