by Adam Creed
‘Tell that to Sally Watkins and her father.’ Staffe wonders why he omits the mother, realises how high the bar has been raised in this case – to call yourself a victim.
Montefiore raises his arm towards the nurse and Staffe adjusts his tack. He takes hold of Montefiore’s arm and pulls it down, says, ‘No matter what I think of you, you’re my only witness.’
Montefiore raises his eyes, his mouth breaking into a half smile.
‘I’m on your side, whether I like it or not.’ The nurse comes up, tells Staffe his time is up. ‘You make sure nobody comes in here. Nobody!’ She flinches and he checks her name badge. He smiles. ‘It’s really important, Judy. Life and death.’ As he goes, he says, ‘How would they know me?’ turning to Montefiore. But his eyes are closed.
*******
Staffe waits for Carly Kellerman outside Parsons Green tube. He calls Johnson and as it rings, his temperature rises. He puts his hand in his pocket and feels the syringe, wants to ask what the hell is going on. What the hell it is that Johnson’s on. No wonder he can’t afford anything better for his family. But he knows he has to wait. He is down to the bare bones on this case. Perhaps he’ll do something when Janine has the findings on the syringe.
‘It’s good news bad news, sir. We think we know where Ruth Merritt is,’ says Johnson.
‘What’s the bad news?’
‘She’s in India. Down in the south, according to her sister but she hasn’t heard a word for six months. Hasn’t got a clue how we’d get hold of her.’
‘Send me a transcript of the conversation. I’m in Fulham …’ Carly Kellerman comes up the steps and Staffe waves to her. ‘… just going to see Tanya Ford. You want to come along? We can wait.’
‘I can’t sir, I …’
Staffe hangs up and he and Carly walk down towards Tanya Ford’s house, a new block of houses crammed in between the railway sidings and the Purbeck council estate.
‘Her parents are absolutely adamant they don’t want her to even see the accused, let alone press charges,’ says Carly.
‘If the Watkinses had followed it through when Montefiore raped Sally, we wouldn’t be having to do this. Nothing would have happened to Tanya Ford.’
‘It’s for the victim to decide, Staffe. Not us. And anyway …’ Suddenly, Carly looks sad, kind of ashamed.
‘What is it?’ says Staffe.
‘He’d have been released by now. We just have to do what’s right, don’t we, Staffe? Do our jobs.’
‘That’s all we can do, Carly.’
At the house, Tanya Ford’s mother answers the door. It leads straight into a small lounge where Tanya is curled into a ball in an armchair. She has the corner of an old, crocheted blanket in her mouth. Tanya’s father, Tony Ford, stands against a radiator under the window, arms crossed over his chest and thunder on his brow. He looks as though he can handle himself.
‘We want this done with, soon as,’ says the father.
‘I do need to speak to Tanya, Mr Ford,’ says Staffe. ‘We think we know who attacked her.’
‘Tell me his name and where he lives, then. We don’t need you no more.’
‘I’d like Tanya to come with me, to identify him.’
‘She saw nothing,’ says her mother.
‘This man, if we’re right, might have done this before. He might do it again.’
‘Do what? He didn’t touch her. My Tanya’s …’
His wife shoots him a glare.
‘I’m fed up of you people. Fed up to here.’ He puts his hand way above his head, almost touches the ceiling.
Staffe goes across to where Tanya is curled up, goes down on his haunches, keeping half a yard between them. ‘Did you see him, Tanya?’
She shakes her head.
‘Did he have something over his head? There were two of them.’
She nods her head.
‘Is there anything you remember? The aftershave? Their eyes? The voice?’
She shakes her head.
‘Tell me who he is and get the fuck out of here,’ says Tony Ford.
Staffe stands up. He thinks of Sally Watkins turning tricks in her bedroom while her father watches TV. He tries to calm himself, faces Ford.
‘This man used chloroform on Tanya. He did the same thing to another girl three years ago. But he only uses enough to knock them out for a while. He has smelling salts too. He likes them to come round, if you get my drift.’
‘Shut up,’ says Ford, taking a step towards Staffe.
‘Maybe we should go,’ says Carly.
‘He likes them to be awake when he’s …’
Ford lunges at Staffe and tries to get him in a headlock, but Staffe dips his shoulder. He uses the father’s own mass against him, drops him to the floor and as he falls, Staffe twists him, makes sure he lands on his stomach. Hating himself for it, he kneels between Ford’s broad shoulders, twists his arm up his back. Between breaths he says, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. We’re going.’ Then he leans down and whispers to Ford. ‘If you want, I can tell you exactly what he did. And because you won’t help me, I’ve got to nurse this fucking pervert and get him back to health and I’ve got to make sure nobody ever lays a finger on him. You want me to do that?’
‘Fuck off,’ says the father. ‘I’ve got you, you bastard. I’ve got you.’
Carly Kellerman takes a hold of Staffe and ushers him towards the door. On the way out he glimpses Tanya Ford crying in the arms of her mother.
Friday Evening
Staffe sits alone on Parsons Green platform. Carly Kellerman has left him be, not knowing quite what to say about his confrontation with Tony Ford, but saying that she would have to make mention of it in her report.
Trains are announced and ‘Wimbledon’ stands out. He gets slowly to his feet and follows an instinct – as if the station announcer is some warbling Pied Piper. Greta Kashell and Raynes Park is down that neck of the woods anyway but meantime he has a notion of going further out. Further back.
There was a time, not long after his parents died and in the early days at Queens Terrace, when Staffe would run out west to Putney Bridge where the river curves to meet you. He would do it at night when the moon was full and the river was silver. A couple of times, awash with nervous energy, he would carry on and veer to and through Richmond Deer Park. The deer would sit and stand in groups on the fringe of the woods and watch him all the way down to Kingston Gate. There, he would stop and contemplate a meeting with the river again, a short run along its path to where he used to live. But he always refrained from following it further, towards its source. Back in time.
Thames Ditton railway station is thirteen miles from Westminster, but alighting now, ahead of the weekend rush, it could be a million miles from that bustle. Here, people disappear down narrow paths between hedged fields. Oaks sprawl. The clapperboard station house has its original burgundy livery. This is England: of Lord Peter Wimsey or Wooster’s fearsome aunts. This was once home to Staffe.
He walks slowly, leaning backwards down the gentle hill from the sidings to the village and can see his old house nestling up to the George Inn. He wishes he wasn’t here and he also wishes he had never left.
When Staffe’s parents died, his grandfather came from his place in France to stay for a while. He was the opposite of his father, as happy-go-lucky as his father was earnest. Staffe wonders now what his grandfather might have made of the life his father carved out for himself. When the old man left, the last time, he said to young Will, ‘You must do what’s right for you, Will. Nobody else.’
His grandfather declined quickly, was dead within two years and it didn’t occur to Will until too late, the toll it must have taken: to survive his son. Now, Staffe’s blood flows fast as he conjures what he could do to Santi Extbatteria, the man who killed his parents. He walks on with an extra clip, past the church where he and Marie were christened, and he tries to swallow away thoughts of vengeance.
On the corner of the high street, where an estate agen
t’s and deli stand in the stead of the bakers and the butchers, he takes pause. A 4 x 4 Porsche pulls up into his parents’ gravelled driveway and out steps a career mum, Chanel shades perch in her punk-posh coiffure. She is Prada all the way down to her Seychelles thighs and calls her children out of the car with a King’s Road husk. He should be happy a family is making a home from his old house. He wonders if the children see more of their father than he saw of his.
The children stare down at their hands as they go, as if reading prayers. But these are the gospels according to Nintendo. They don’t talk to each other or even notice that the garden is beautiful. His mother planted the trees – for a better time. She would be so happy the way they have prospered. He turns, goes back to the railway station, and this life.
*******
Staffe rubs his thumb along the curved spine of the brass key inside his pocket. He watches Greta Kashell come out of her house and make her way towards Raynes Park Tube. He follows her, to make sure she is going to the restaurant. From behind – when you can’t see the bags under the eyes, the clutch of skin at her neck – she looks ten years younger. She is a tall, thin woman with coat-hanger shoulders and black hair that shimmers in the low, early evening sun. She walks with her back straight and chin held high, cuts a sad figure as she disappears through the Delphi’s front door.
Staffe slips down the side of the house to the back door, slides in the key, and makes his way through the Kashell home. The only signs of family here are the photographs of a man who doesn’t live here any more. Nico Kashell is in every room: laughing with a turquoise sea behind him; laughing with a raised glass in his hand; laughing with his arm wrapped around Greta and little Nicoletta pushing her head between Mum and Dad, trying to get in on the picture; Nico stood between Micky and Minnie Mouse, laughing.
There is nothing of note in the kitchen drawers, or in the sideboard in the lounge. There is no junk mail, no prison letters from Wakefield, no bills waiting to be paid, no school-books or casual reading, just a TV guide on top of the DVD player under the modestly wide TV.
Upstairs, Greta’s bedroom is like a hotel room and Nicoletta’s is surprisingly tidy for a teenage girl. He goes through her wardrobe. There should be some pink, somewhere in the room – but there isn’t.
There’s one room left, a box room by the bathroom and when he pushes open the door, Staffe’s heart rate goes up a notch. There is a desk under the window and no bookshelves or cabinets, but clearly this is where Greta comes to run the house. There is a neat stack of wicker boxes, each half full of paid bills and bank statements, invoices and school reports. In one box there is a huge pile of correspondence with a solicitor concerning her husband’s case and in another more papers for the restaurant.
Staffe checks the drawer to the desk and finds nothing but biros. He switches the computer on and takes out his memory stick. The screen fires up with a screensaver of the whole family dressed in togas in front of a painted Acropolis backdrop.
My Recent Documents is all spreadsheets and Nicoletta’s school assignments, a couple of downloaded iTunes and a letter to the accountant saying the restaurant’s books are ready for inspection for the June year end.
A quick flick through the Word folders reveals nothing and Staffe is about to close down and call it a day when he sees an icon on the desktop called Contacts. He double clicks and sees an Excel address book. He closes the file down and drags the icon to his own memory stick icon and watches the information scoot across. Outside a car parps its horn and he jumps up, sees a girl in Brownies regalia run down the path and hug her friend. A mother drives them away.
Checking the time, Staffe grants himself a quick pry into Greta’s contacts and reopens the address file. There is nothing to strike a chord under B for Bowker, or C for Colquhoun or M for Montefiore or S for Stensson or W for Watkins.
But something is amiss. His mind is fuzzy and he wonders if it is the lunchtime booze or the spat with Tony Ford, the visit to his old house or the heat. He scrolls back through the file thinking he is missing something and when he gets to the Vs, he sees it – something vaguely familiar. VABBA. A London number.
*******
It’s nine thirty on Friday night and back at Leadengate the uniforms have returned to file their findings and quickly drift off towards the weekend. Half of them are coming in tomorrow to finish the data matching. All the names have been inputted and now it’s time to see if the same people appear from more than one source. This is relationships reduced to numbers.
Staffe has plugged in his memory stick and is calling VABBA. Victims Against Being Buried Alive. It’s a Kennington number and doesn’t answer.
He hauls himself over coals for pushing Tony Ford too hard, but considers whether Tanya’s father has his own simmering agenda. He certainly displayed the traits of a man able to inflict damage on Guy Montefiore or any of that ilk. But two things count against him as a live possibility: the method of the assault on Montefiore (being premeditated and showing the perpetrator must have been on Montefiore’s case for some time); and the lack of evidence that Tanya had been stalked before – that is to say, how would Tony Ford have known his daughter was under threat, unless he was himself stalking her or keeping an unusually vigilant eye?
There are stories, and Staffe recalls a particular instance in Holland, of parent paedophile rings. They tout their children to the criminals. Some even have children specifically to pay that kind of rent. Staffe rubs his face, knows he has to draw a line somewhere. Tony Ford couldn’t be that kind of man.
He clicks into Pulford’s transcript of the Linda Watkins interview and allows himself a smile. On the screen: You probably think I’m a bad person, but you know if I had stayed I would have been buried alive. They’d have come for me in fifty years or so and put me in a box and nobody would ever have known I had been there.
‘Buried alive,’ he says out loud and alone, recalling the leaflet in Tyrone Watkins’s kitchen drawer. Victims Against Being Buried Alive. ‘VABBA.’
He checks on the internet for VABBA but the search engine fails to come up with a pure match, which strikes him as being strange. Support groups are normally charities and the funders invariably require public recognition of their philanthropy, a dissemination of their good work. Nor does VABBA appear in the Yellow Pages or in the UK Register of Charities. He switches back into Greta Kashell’s Excel file.
Outside, he can hear a group going from one pub to the next and he looks out of the window, sees it is a gang of girls. More flesh than clothes on the streets tonight, but it brings a smile to his face and he thinks it’s a wonder that sometimes there is not more trouble on the city streets. Now the girls are clustering around a tramp in the Ritedrug doorway. They kneel beside him and give him cigarettes, push money at him. One of them gives him a kiss on the cheek. For a second, Staffe thinks they might be taking the piss, but they’re not. They pull the tramp to his feet and link their arms through his and walk him to the pub. They flirt with the doorman and persuade him to let the tramp in. He’s got a smile all the way into next week.
Greta Kashell’s grid of contacts seems unfathomable. If you can’t predict a random act of kindness in a small corner of the city, how can you hope to make sense of people’s motivations? The rows and columns of Greta Kashell’s spreadsheet address book look like a Magic Eye painting you have to stare at without focusing to see a hidden image. The columns are so ordered, all the same.
Except one.
A number pushes itself sideways. He counts out his own telephone number on the fingers of his hands. Eleven digits. He tests another number. Eleven again.
He presses ‘9’ on his phone to get an outside line and dials the thirteen digit number. He looks at the name the number is ascribed to and can’t think what Dennis Brown has got to do with anything.
A female voice answers in a broken foreign tongue. She sounds English. Staffe hangs up and as he checks for the city dialling code, Dennis Brown begins to make sense to him. DB.
The code is Santa Cruz, Tenerife.
DB is Debra Bowker.
Greta Kashell knows Debra Bowker. Lotte Stensson and Karl Colquhoun connect. Linda Watkins talked about being buried alive.
Tyrone Watkins had a leaflet for the same support group as Greta Kashell. Lotte Stensson and Guy Montefiore connect.
Now, if that’s not a cause for celebration …
*******
The Boss Clef is an old-school jazz club just off the Old Street roundabout and although Stan Tracey’s lad is playing downstairs with his latest band, Staffe takes a position at the upstairs bar. He’s only there five minutes before Smethurst arrives.
‘So, the wagon sees another one topple off the back. Must be a rocky old road, Staffe,’ says Smethurst.
‘A healthy balance, Smet, that’s all I want.’
‘And what’s wrong with an unhealthy balance?’
‘I’ll drink to that.’
They clink glasses and each takes a swig from his bottle of Beck’s. Smethurst shouts up a couple of shots of Scotch and Staffe tells the girl to put it on his tab, begins to tell Smethurst about the connections between Debra Bowker and Greta Kashell, and between Greta Kashell and Tyrone Watkins.
‘Shame you didn’t get a search warrant. If the Kashell woman gets wind you’ve found something and erases her address file, that evidence is inadmissible.’
Staffe questions whether he has told Smethurst too much. Can he trust him? If he can’t, then who can he trust?
‘How would she get wind?’
‘Why not get a search warrant? You afraid Pennington would think you were wasting your time? His money?’
Staffe looks Smethurst in the eye, smiles. ‘I’d appreciate it if you’d keep it to yourself, just till I get my ducks in a row.’