Pain of Death (16 page)

Staffe knows he has to make the call on Bridget Lamb himself. Pulford is working on the off-licence and payphones down on the New North Road. He needs to dig deep into Bridget, where she is most tender. But he had to drive past, get Given’s DNA sample to Janine, and also to end the flickering of his phone.

Marie has called him twice more, has messaged that she has to see him, that she’s waiting in for him.

He pulls up outside his old house in Kilburn, which he rents to Marie for two hundred a month plus bills. It’s a
three-storey
, four-bedder and the two hundred is half what he has to pass onto the Western Shires Building Society; a round two grand less than he would clear each month on the open market. It gives him a tax loss that he can offset, and this is what makes it not charity.

By calling on Marie, rather than speaking on the phone, he will have some kind of an upperness of hand. It is the nature of their relationship that this is something he wishes to hold over a sibling. He speaks to his nephew Harry at least once a week, but seldom to the boy’s mother. It is a dead cert that, after months of silence, Marie wants something.

Marie opens the door and her mouth shapes into a widening, spaced-out smile. She holds out her arms and says, slow and wasted, ‘My brother. I called you. Just today, I called you.’ She leans forward, puts her hands on his hips and kisses his cheek. ‘Wasn’t it?’

‘Where’s Harry?’

‘Broken up, for Easter. He’s with his dad.’

‘Paolo?’

‘No. Silly. Paolo’s here. With his
real
dad.’

‘But he’s a wanker.’ Not, of course, that Paolo isn’t a wanker, Staffe iterates silently.

Marie lets go of him and takes an unsteady step away. ‘Paolo and I have a plan. We need to be together much more. A proper family. It’s why I called you.’

Staffe thinks, Oh, shit, poor Harry. What’s in store for the boy now?

As she leads him through his house to the kitchen, he feels a wash of nostalgia for the few months he made this his home. They were good times, he thinks – until Jadus Golding. Until Sally Watkins and that awful case. Briefly, he thinks of his old boss, Jessop. He corrects himself. Those times were a mess.

They pass the open door to the drawing room which seems to be tidy. The kitchen is orderly, with only a light dusting of condiments and unwashed mugs. Paolo is out back in the tiny garden, where he drags, chilled, on a joint.

‘We’ve something to tell you, Will,’ says Marie, beckoning Paolo in.

He takes a long, last toke, and stubs the half-smoked spliff out in his fingers. His eyelids are heavy and his lips are malleable as he says, at the very limit of his powers, ‘Will. Dude. How’s it going, man?’

‘Shall I tell him?’ says Marie.

‘Tell him,’ beams Paolo.

‘I’m pregnant, Will.’ Marie actually jumps clean off the floor and claps her hands like an infant.

‘Shit,’ says Staffe. He says it out loud and instantly apologises, but it’s too late. The damage is well and truly done. Marie is utterly crestfallen.

Paolo tells him his herb business is going ‘Gangbusters, fucking gangbusters, man.’

The reason he came, rather than call her on the telephone, was to catch her unawares, not be caught out like this. But, like an idiot, he says, ‘If there’s anything you need. Anything – you know – I’ll see what I can do. At least you’ve plenty of space here. And your landlord’s not going to kick you out. He’s not a complete bastard.’ He laughs and she does not.

Eventually, she smiles. Then she hugs him, saying into his chest so she can’t see his expression, ‘It’s all right, Will. Everything’s forgotten. I know you love me, and especially Harry. And there’s going to be a new little person. A niece for you, or another nephew.’ She unlocks the hug and leans away from him. ‘And as it goes, there is something.’

‘What is it?’

The front door swings violently open and a tumbling resounds from the hallway, and then a scream. They each turn towards the sound and Harry enters, dressed as a Native American, his chest bare and war-paint smeared all across his face. When he sees his uncle, the young boy drops his bow and arrow and runs full pelt at Staffe, launching himself at his uncle’s midriff. Staffe catches him and lets Harry wrestle him to the ground, sit on his chest. When he looks up, Marie says, ‘Paolo’s got him watching westerns. He knows the cowboys are the bad guys, of course.’ She turns to Staffe, rests the flat of her palm on her bump. He can see it, now, the new life. Flat on his back, with his nephew bouncing up and down on him, he thinks how peculiar, that she should fall pregnant now.

She says, ‘We’ve found a nest. They call it El Nido.’

*

Eve is wearing a dressing gown. Staffe touches her arm and knows immediately that it is silk. They are in the doorway on the fourth floor of her mansion block on the Castelnau, where that grand thoroughfare meets the river. Staffe knows this building of old. He looked at buying here once and knows what it is worth. He knows, roughly, the salary of a nurse on the NHS. In isolation, the two things don’t equate.

He says, ‘Did I wake you?’

‘It’s afternoon.’

He knows there could be a dozen reasons to explain the mismatch: inheritance, crazy banks, a fractured relationship. ‘You’re on a ten-six.’ Her eyes are puffy and her hair is down and dishevelled. ‘Have you had your night’s sleep?’

‘How did you know I was here?’

‘It’s where you live.’

‘I didn’t tell you.’

‘I wanted to see you. So I found you.’ He takes a step closer, puts his hands on her waist. They slide a couple of inches to the soft ledge of her hips.

She smiles. Her lips are plump. ‘What can I do for you?’

He smiles, looks over her shoulder and into the flat; thinks he can smell a meal just made. ‘Like I said, I wanted to see you. Is it OK? Do you have someone here?’

‘You can see me. Of course you can. When would you like to do that?’ Eve rubs her face, as if something has irritated it.

‘You were with Sean at the hospital. Grace’s father.’

She turns her back on Staffe, goes into the apartment, saying, ‘This is your work, right?’

He reaches, takes a light hold of her wrist, just to stop her moving away from him. Her wrist is warm and thin and she turns on her heel. Even though she is barefooted, she moves like a dancer, smooth as breeze. Her big eyes are wide, now, and close to his. He puts a hand on the narrow ledge of her hip again. They fit. She moves a half-step towards him and he watches as her eyes dim, then close. Their lips come together. She presses her mouth tight to his, keeping it shut, but her hands are in his hair and she moves a quarter-step closer – as far as she can. She opens her mouth, ever so slightly, and he tastes menthol. She is cool, wet, and their heads slant the opposite way. His hands find the small of her back and the hollow of her neck. The tips of their tongues touch and she pulls away.

‘Tell me what it is,’ she says.

He can’t take his eyes off hers. ‘It’s nothing.’

‘What happened?’

He shakes his head.

‘Come in and sit down. I’ll make us a drink. Then you can tell me.’

The living room is painted warm lemon and pale orange and she has a couple of Georgia O’Keefe prints; Moorish rugs on the floor. He says, ‘How do you know something has happened?’

In the kitchen, which is knocked through to the living space, American style, she puts an Italian coffee pot on the hob then comes alongside, slumps back into the sofa. ‘You’re here, aren’t you?’

He is flummoxed, says, ‘I went to see his body.’

‘God.’ Eve hooks her arm through his and curls her feet under her bottom, rests her head on his shoulder and wraps her free arm around his waist.

They stay like that a long while.

He thinks about Kerry’s visits to the hospital that were never recorded. How could that be? And then the child is born in such a manner. And the father falls victim to an expertly conceived and precisely administered ingestion of high-octane narcotics. And Eve’s mournful presence by Grace’s bed. Her large, dark eyes. Who said to keep your enemies close?

She squeezes his hand and murmurs, ‘That poor child. No parents, now. What will become of her?’

‘Imagine, if she had a sister, or a brother, and they never met.’

‘What?’ Eve unravels herself from Staffe and sits up.

‘Have you ever come close to having children?’

‘It’s early days, Will.’

He puts an arm around her, can’t bring himself to look her in the eye. ‘I’m sorry. I ask too many questions.’

‘It’s your job,’ she says, standing.

‘I can still be sorry.’

‘You can see to the coffee. I’m going to get dressed.’

‘Don’t.’ He reaches out, takes a hold of her thigh. The dressing gown rises slowly across her skin. Her legs are brown from winter sun. He doesn’t even know where she was. She leans down, her hair tumbles between their faces as she stoops, finds his mouth and sits across him. ‘Let me.’

And he does.

*

Afterwards, as soon as he hears the shower run, then the noise slowly dampen from a closing door, Staffe takes the burned coffee pot from the stove. The handle scorches his hand but he manages not to drop it. He wraps a folded tea towel around the handle and pours a cup. The liquid is soupy, over-brewed. He looks for milk in the fridge and sees that Eve has none, then wonders if she might have a reserve of UHT or creamer in the cupboards. The first one he opens, he sees a round tin of powdered milk: the image of a baby being doted on by its mother. SMA Extra Hungry Infant Milk.

The shower is still running. With an eye on the door to her bedroom, Staffe opens Eve’s handbag. He closes it; sits and stares at it.

Still the shower runs. He hates this job, sometimes; despises the person he becomes.

When Eve comes into the living room, she is brand-new. Her hair is wet, but she has on a cream, angora sweater that leaves a seam of her tummy showing. Her midriff is brown and he could ask where she collared her winter sun, but he doesn’t. His mind has turned, to Bridget Lamb, and to the final question he has for Eve. There’s no easy way. He pours her coffee and immediately she says, ‘I take it black.’ She drinks it down, doesn’t grimace.

‘If Kerry was having twins, wouldn’t you have known about it?’

‘We have three and a half thousand babies a year through pre-nat, so of course I wouldn’t know about it. I’ve told you before, everything’s computerised.’

He looks at his watch.

She looks hurt and she takes a deep breath, as if she might lay into him, but she catches herself, steps into her shoes and slings the handbag over her shoulder. ‘I’ll come down with you. I need to get bread and milk.’

*

Once he is through the Richmond gates of the Deer Park, passage along the meandering tracks is slow. Because it is Easter, the holidaying children are out in herds, some with working mothers stealing a day; others left to play on their own by chatters of au pairs. The deer are hither and thither, mainly on the fringes of the woods on the high slopes.

Wending to Kingston Gate, he runs the conversation with Eve one more time. They had kissed in the common hall of the mansion block – her harder than him, and when they had pulled away, the look in her eyes made him feel warm, then immediately cold. He can’t get it out of his head. Was she afraid? Or was she warning him with her pouted glare?

More tangibly, why – when he looked into her handbag – had he seen, written on the back of an envelope from Thames Water, ‘Sean’, followed by Degg’s number? Had Sean called Eve with one of his many twenty-pence pieces?

He blows out his cheeks and says ‘Damn!’ aloud. He tries to think of something else, but can only divert himself as far as his sister; as if simply living under the auspices of an alien tongue will solve her problems. He fears for Harry in this new start, how he will cope in such new conditions.

Paolo, it seems, has a friend in a place called the Alpujarras, in southern Spain. It is supposedly the real Spain and land can still be had for tuppence. Paolo, genius that he is, has been wised-up to an old
finca
with twenty hectares where he can grow herbs. Also, there is a poplar wood which they can plunder and plant for beams for the building trade, They can make a little money, make like heaven on earth. Paolo’s words.

The whole thing will only take a year and Paolo and his friend will do the work on the
finca
. When it is done, half of it will be Staffe’s, naturally. All he has to do is stump up eighty thousand euros for the land and materials. When it is done it will be worth a quarter of a million, ‘all day long,’ according to Paolo the loafer, the occasional gardener; the master builder with his trowel under a bushel. And Staffe’s Spanish will help, too, according to Marie. The thought of brushing up makes him sad, reminding him of how and where his parents were murdered.

Staffe had seen the unuttered desperation on his sister. She had taken a hold of his hand and placed the palm on her swell and he had called his broker, asked if he could draw the eighty thousand euros against his Kilburn house. ‘It might take a week,’ he had told Marie, and she had burst into happy tears. Paolo rolled a fresh one.

*

Malcolm Lamb has a haunted expression. He shows Staffe through to the morning room, overlooking the garden where Bridget is kneeling amongst a crescent of meadow flowers that run across the right side of her lawn. Malcolm calls her and she waves, smiling. Then she sees Staffe and the joy evaporates, like dew. She pushes herself up and shrieks, looks down at her hand, which is bleeding.

Malcolm mutters, ‘My God. Oh no, my good God,’ and rushes out.

*

Staffe picks the last of the china splinters from Bridget’s hand. She had pressed down on the saucer as she stood, and lost barely a half-teaspoon of blood, but Malcolm had become apoplectic, repeating how he can’t bear to see her suffer.

She is upstairs changing and as they wait, Malcolm says, ‘You know, Bridget hasn’t a bad bone in her body. She’s nothing to do with any of this, Will. She keeps a brave face, but don’t let that deceive you. This is breaking her heart. First Kerry, and now Sean.’