Pain of Death (6 page)
In no time, and with a rackful of reservations, Staffe is transported to Liverpool. The railway tracks have magicked him with their tittle and tattle, and along the way he spoke to Pulford about staying on Lesley Crawford’s case. Then he had called Josie, to tell her to follow up on Kerry’s list of friends.
Now, the daylight is almost gone and the train jolts, slows. People press their faces to the windows. As the carriages draw towards Lime Street station, the tracks breathe in and the train is sucked along a narrow chasm in the sandstone bedrock. Anybody who has travelled into this Celtic city will know that its gates open like rock thighs, as if it were delivering you into a new world.
And then it is dark.
In the vaulted, glass-roofed station, he steps down, valise in hand, and looks for a uniformed welcome. There is none.
A tall, beautiful woman approaches him. She has layered red hair, cut to her shoulders. She is, in fact, very tall. ‘Inspector Wagstaffe?’ she says.
‘How would you know?’
‘You have to be able to spot your friends as well as your foes.’
‘You’re police?’
She offers her hand. ‘How else would I know you were coming?’
He takes her hand, finds a firm grip. She looks him in the eyes. Hers are the palest green.
‘I’m Flint,’ she says.
‘Christ.’
‘Charming.’
He expects her to smile, but gets the reverse and she spins on her heel, shows him her back and walks off at a fine clip.
*
Anthony Bright’s house was a model for modern living when Lord Salisbury gave the land up for artisans and clerks in the preamble to the First World War.
Now, on a tree-lined street of immaculately coiffeured gardens and ringing birdsong, Staffe walks up a gingerbread path and has the front door opened for him by a bright-eyed constable who looks about twelve.
In his back room, sitting in a modern Swedish chair, Anthony stares into his garden. Staffe has read all the case notes and the interview transcripts. He wants to like Anthony but all he gets is a scowl. Nonetheless, he introduces himself, pulls up a dining chair.
‘She’ll be back. There’ll be some explanation, but if you lot are here, she’ll never call. She’d hate the fuss. I should never of called.’
‘It’s a serious matter, Anthony. I’m from London and we have had an abduction similar to this down there. We need to know everything about Zoe; everyone she saw, ever since she was pregnant this second time.’
Anthony stares at the trees at the bottom of his garden. Through the windows, you can’t see any other property.
‘Did she bring anybody new to the house in these last few weeks?’
He shakes his head.
‘Anyone new in her phone or her address book?’ he says as much to Alicia Flint as to Anthony.
‘I would never pry,’ says Anthony.
‘We’re having her phone analysed,’ says Flint.
‘She didn’t take her phone?’ Staffe takes the address book from Alicia Flint and scans quickly, looking for new names – in bold ink or interposed between old names. Zoe Bright is clearly very orderly and all the names are alphabetical. In four cases, names have been squeezed in, between lines.
‘Is this a new book?’
‘She spent all night copying everything across.’
‘Where’s the old one?’
Anthony walks, round-shouldered, to a small pine sideboard and hands Staffe a dog-eared notebook. In turn, he gives it to the constable, along with the new book. ‘We need a list of all names that are in the new book, but not the old one.’
Alicia Flint hands Staffe a typed list of three names. ‘These are they,’ she says, smiling.
‘You said in your interview that Zoe likes to read,’ he says, looking around for bookshelves. ‘Where are her books?’
‘She takes them to a charity shop when she’s finished them. She only keeps ones that are on the go. They’re upstairs.’
On the landing is a small bookcase: photo albums and an atlas below, half a dozen paperbacks above. In the front of each book is a stamp which says ‘The Curious Cat’. On it, the outline of a cat in a fireside chair, legs crossed, reading. He checks in the bedroom and even in the loo. ‘What was the last book she bought?’ he says, coming back into the sitting room.
‘
Beloved
.’
‘Toni Morrison?’ says Flint. Her eyes flit as if she thinks she might have missed a trick.
‘It’s not here. We’ll leave you in peace, Anthony,’ says Staffe.
Anthony nods and on the way out Staffe thinks how peculiar, that a missing woman would take a novel with her but not her mobile phone.
*
Pulford watches Lesley Crawford leave her Southfields home. She looks furtively up and down the street of mid-sized,
late-Victorian
terraces with modest bays and front gardens the size of picnic blankets.
Staffe had warned him not to take any risks, just to monitor who came and went, but he has been here, off and on, for the best part of two days and the boredom has got to him.
He calls Staffe and curses as the screen of his phone tells him the call has been ignored. He gets out of the car and locks it up, loiters out of Crawford’s eyeline behind a tree, waiting for her to reach the corner and then he catches up, going up onto Replingham Road towards the Tube.
Pulford rummages in his pockets, pulls out his travel warrant and follows her across Wimbledon Park Road and into the station, which is like something from Betjeman’s England, red brick and with tall, mock-Jacobean chimney stacks.
He picks up the evening edition of the
News
and gets into the same carriage, sits on the same side as her so he can monitor her reflection in the window from above his paper. He looks at her as she stares right ahead. She has an exotic face: a hook to her nose and dark eyes. He knows from the case bio notes that she was educated at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Blackburn, then studied Greats at Cambridge. She did some lecturing but abandoned her DPhil and worked in Papua New Guinea with the VSO before doing a PGCE. From what they can gather, she hasn’t had a full-time job in five years.
At Embankment, she stands up and moves smoothly to the doors. She is the first to step down. The train is not crowded and he waits as long as he dare, feels a tingle around his heart and a slow fold in his belly as he follows her onto the platform. She carries a hessian eco Waitrose bag. Did she have it before? He thinks not. He is sure of it. He lets the gap between them extend. The carriage doors close and the train jolts.
As it moves out of the station, Pulford tries to clock anyone who was in her locale. A middle-aged man and a small group of foreign kids. He tries to picture her coming out of her Southfields house again. Did she have a bag? When he turns around, she is gone.
‘Shit!’ he says, too loud, and checks to see if anyone has heard him, but he is alone. He quickly calculates what connection she might make and realises there is only the Bakerloo or the Northern Line. He walks as briskly as he thinks you can without looking like a nutter – or a copper.
He chooses the Bakerloo, because he hates the Northern Line, and as he approaches the platforms, with steps down, dividing, he opts for north because there are more options. A train-gathered gust builds and the rattle of the train gets louder. He bowls onto the platform, which is mainly full of twenty-something folk. Again, he tries not to move quickly or look concerned and waits, not seeing Lesley Crawford anywhere.
There is a final push. He steps on and the doors close behind him. He works a pocket of space. There is little room and although he is tall, in the two minutes it takes to reach Piccadilly Circus, he can’t spot her, despite his surreptitious looks and adjustments of stance. The doors open and he takes the opportunity to step out, to allow people off. Seeing nothing, Pulford steps back into the thinned carriage and the doors close behind him. The train jolts and stutters out of the station. As it goes, he scans the platform for signs of Lesley Crawford.
There she is, with a straight back and a high head, turning into the tunnels that will take her above ground or, more probably, further along on her journey.
Pulford curses and tries to calculate where Lesley Crawford is most likely to be going. Before he knows it, the train is slowing again as they enter Oxford Circus. He could chase to the opposite platform and get the next train back, but he knows there is no point, so he sits on a seat and lets the long ribbon of travellers wend past him, into their night. He looks at their shoes and their faces and wonders where they might be headed. He looks at their clothes and the bags they carry, decides to get back to Southfields to at least glean how long Lesley Crawford stays out for.
Then he sees it. A hessian eco Waitrose bag. There must be thousands of them, but he can’t recall ever having seen one before tonight.
When she left, was Lesley Crawford carrying hers? He doesn’t think so, but he is already up, following the man with the bag. He is young and lean. He walks quickly and climbs the moving escalator. The neon mayhem of Oxford Circus meets them. The lean man barely wavers as he strides out through the hordes of late shoppers. Pulford struggles to keep up, but then the man slows, goes into the Argyll.
Pulford follows him in, carries straight on through, clocking, in a panelled and paned snug on the right, who the lean man is here to see.
This is a pub for tourists, but there is an upstairs bar, which is where the man and his companion go, sipping from their pints as they climb out of sight, achieving a further degree of privacy.
Ten minutes later, when the Rt Hon Vernon Short comes down and leaves the Argyll, he is alone, save for his hessian eco Waitrose bag.
*
Staffe sees he has a missed call from Jasmine Cash. He trousers the handset and gives his undivided attention to the conversation between Alicia Flint and the doctor with whom Zoe Bright was registered at the Waverley Park Medical Centre for Women. Doctor Fahy looks at her watch repeatedly and punctuates her speech by blowing out her cheeks. She is homely with freckles and bright blue eyes. ‘I’d love to be able to tell you exactly what we talked about, but we’re not at that stage. All I can do is confirm that Zoe had an appointment that day and she attended.’
‘This woman is undoubtedly in a situation which
compromises
her well-being,’ says Alicia Flint, for the umpteenth time.
‘Then get your court order.’
‘It’s coming.’
Staffe says, ‘What proportion of your consultations are related to terminations? This is a generic question.’
‘A significant percentage.’
‘A hundred per cent?’
‘Not quite.’
‘Anthony didn’t accompany her?’
‘Like I said …’
‘I’m telling you, he didn’t attend. She was twenty-four weeks and you saw her about a termination. Fair to say, you set her up with a date for the deed just an hour or so before she went missing.’
‘That’s what you’re saying,’ says Doctor Fahy, blowing out her cheeks for the longest time, staring at her watch. ‘In fact, it would have been only our second consultation. And I shouldn’t even be telling you that.’
‘You do a difficult job and I’m sure there’s good achieved here in some ways. I don’t give a toss about that. I’m here to do my job.’
‘Then we’re peas in a pod, Inspector,’ says Doctor Fahy.
‘Not quite,’ says Alicia Flint. ‘The lives we save are cut and dried. We have to do what we can how we can. Are you a partner in this practice?’
‘Yes.’
‘You wouldn’t want it to be closed down, indefinitely.’
‘Of course not. I hope …’
‘You have had a patient abducted and a national
organisation
, vehemently opposed to what you practise, has claimed responsibility. I’m not sure we wouldn’t be derelict in our duty to the public if we allowed such a situation to persist – at least until we have found Zoe Bright.’
Doctor Fahy sucks her cheeks in and stares at Alicia Flint. After a long while, she nods, looks at her watch. ‘I have an appointment which I simply can’t miss.’ She clears her desk into a drawer, save for one file. She logs off the computer, says, ‘I’m sorry I can’t be more help. Please show yourselves out.’
All three of them look at Zoe Bright’s file, on the desk.
When Doctor Fahy gets to the door, Alicia Flint says, ‘You should think about security. I could send an officer down, to take names and addresses of everyone entering, and log vehicle registrations, too.’
‘That’s very kind, but we started doing that ourselves as soon as we heard about Zoe. We are a professional operation, Inspector Flint, we just don’t have quite the same access to double standards as some. Thank God.’
She closes the door and Flint says to Staffe, ‘We got there in the end.’
Staffe is reading the first sheet of the file. ‘Christ,’ he says.
‘What is it?’
‘Zoe Bright signed up for a termination. It was going to be today. And Anthony was in the consultation with her.’ Staffe continues to read, sees Doctor Fahy’s handwritten notes ‘
pre-scan
required. Patient dates dubious.’
Staffe and Alicia Flint have discussed what to do about Anthony Bright and, for the moment, DI Flint has won the argument. Given that the information they have procured is by no means admissible, they will bide their time to use his deceit against him.
Now, they are in the ten-foot-square front room of Teresa and Michael Flanagan on Gladwys Street. Teresa and Michael are Zoe’s mother and father. This is Toxteth and dusk has gathered. The kids are playing football in the street, watched over by adults. The women are already in pyjamas, ferrying fish suppers from the Chinese, and the men are in Everton and Liverpool replica tops. Never far away is the searing siren of a pursuit car.
Teresa Flanagan dips into her box of Bestco tissues as if they are a dish of peanuts, constantly wiping her eyes and blowing her nose. Michael Flanagan sits silently as Teresa bemoans her daughter’s disappearance. On the floor, all today’s papers are piled. Teresa has given up on her daughter, says, ‘I don’t know what happened to my girl. All she ever wanted was a family like her sisters. They lead proper lives, but she had to go off to
that place
and she never was the same again. I lost her. She was never the same again.’
‘What place?’ asks Flint.
Teresa addresses Staffe, as she has done throughout, and Alicia Flint quietly fumes. ‘That university. None of us have ever gone and it done us no harm, so what made her think she was any better?’
‘You see her regularly,’ says Staffe. ‘Anthony said she came round once a week.’
‘Anthony, now there’s a lad. I thought the first time she brought him round he might sort her out. A lovely lad, sees his mum all the time. She’s in Old Swan and he goes every Sunday teatime to see her. But oh, no, I don’t know why he said that. We don’t see Zoe one month to the next.’
‘Teresa,’ says Michael Flanagan. ‘It’s not like that.’ He talks into his lap and stirs his mug of tea.
‘It is and you know it is. I’m fed up of giving that girl chances.’
‘Why would Anthony say she came round if she didn’t?’ asks Alicia Flint.
‘He wouldn’t lie, that lad,’ says Teresa, to Staffe.
‘You’re not proud, that Zoe is an educated woman?’ says Flint.
‘And I bet you don’t know that’s not her name. Changed it, she did. She was Anne-Marie and one Christmas, that first Christmas she came back, she said she was Zoe. Disowning us, that’s what she was playing at.’
‘How did she meet Anthony?’ asks Staffe.
‘Had to come home, didn’t she? Tail between her legs when she couldn’t get a job with that fancy degree that got her into all that debt. And we put her up without a word.’ She looks daggers at Michael, mutters, ‘Soft lad.’ Teresa stands up. ‘They went together at school and she dropped him. But when she came back …’ She collects the mugs on a tray. ‘He did the right thing, like a shot. Loves her to bits, he does.’
‘Zoe was pregnant, so they got married?’ says Staffe.
‘What do you think?’ says Teresa, leaving the room to get more tea on the go.
As soon as the door closes, and without looking up from his lap, Michael says, ‘She’s the baby, you know. My baby and always has been. She’s a lovely girl. Different from the rest, but I love them all the same.’
‘How often did you meet up with her, Mr Flanagan? Once a week?’ says Alicia Flint in a softer voice.
‘I never said that.’
‘She didn’t even tell her mum she was pregnant again, did she?’
He shakes his head. ‘She would’ve made a wonderful mum, you know.’
‘She will, still,’ says Alicia Flint, putting her notebook into her briefcase and slipping Michael Flanagan a business card. ‘You should come to see me, Michael. On your own. We’ll find Zoe, don’t you fret. If there’s anything we can do, it’ll be done, but we can’t be having all these lies. Every hour counts. Every hour, Michael.’
Staffe follows Flint out. Back on the street, the kids flock around them.
‘I need a drink,’ says Alicia Flint.
‘Where do you suggest?’
‘I have no choice. I’ve got to get home, it’s only round the corner.’
‘There’s a pub over there.’ Staffe nods at the Empress, recognising the tall and slim, embossed early-Victorian hostelry from the cover of a Ringo Starr album.
‘I have a child,’ says Alicia. ‘My mum puts him down for three hours in the afternoon so I can bath him. You go to the pub if you want.’ She gets in and revs the car and Staffe turns back to the house, sees Michael Flanagan’s face in a chink between the nets. His wife must catch him because he flinches and the curtains quickly close.
*
Josie checks her watch and looks down the list of contacts that Staffe had distilled from Kerry Degg’s phone records, address books and her old Christmas cards, and from the interviews on the neighbourhood knock. This one is Cello Delaney, a club singer, who sent Kerry a card on her birthday and was in her phone and was also mentioned by another singer she had interviewed the day before
yesterday
– describing Kerry and Cello Delaney as ‘thick as thieves’.
The house is a tidy little terrace off the New North Road, by the Regent’s Canal. When the door opens, a smell of cooking oozes from the darkened hallway, and Cello Delaney looks put out. She says, ‘Police? I was wondering when,’ and steps aside, showing Josie in, not bothering to scrutinise the warrant card.
The blues is being sung from the kitchen and Josie listens, thinks it might be Billie Holliday – not her bag, though, so she asks.
‘Bessie Smith,’ says Cello. ‘Kerry loved her. I miss her already.’ Cello looks at Josie with wide eyes and smiles, as if touched by a good memory. ‘She always came on a Wednesday and I would make soup.’
‘That explains the smell,’ says Josie. She thinks Cello might be out of it. She looks more intently, sees her pupils are dilated. ‘It’s a bit late for lunch.’
‘Is it? I don’t believe in time.’
Josie wants to ask how she gets to her gigs on time and what would happen if her audience didn’t believe in time. ‘Tell me about the fathers,’ says Josie. ‘The fathers of Kerry’s children.’
‘She loved them. I never met them, of course, but Kerry would never have slept with anyone she didn’t love and when she had Maya, she absolutely wanted her. But she just couldn’t cope. It’s a responsibility, isn’t it? I remember we went shopping in the market up Dalston and we got stuff for goat curry and some saucy pants and some other stuff and then went to the Nags and I said, “Where’s Maya and Miles?” And Kerry said, “Shit! Not again.” And Maya was in a pushchair. I mean, how can you forget you’re not pushing a pushchair?’ Cello laughs, fondly.
‘And Sean? Where was he when she was with her men?’
‘Sean? She was better than him. I don’t know why she kept going back to him – but she did. She never loved him. She loved the others.’
‘So the two children have different fathers?’
Cello shrugs. ‘They’re both the spit of Kerry. How would I know? It’s not Kerry’s style to bang on about that sort of thing. She lived in the moment, not the past.’
‘Did she want this latest baby?’
Cello shrugs again.
‘What do you make of Sean?’
‘Don’t you know, he doesn’t have friends. Not any. Only Kerry. I’ve got to stir my soup.’
Josie follows Cello into her kitchen. The units are
hand-painted
in thick oils: bright colours and abstract. The tiles are multicoloured and jars are everywhere. Vegetable peelings litter the work surface.
Cello bends down and opens the oven door. The draught of heat is fierce and Cello reaches in. Before Josie can call out, Cello takes a hold of the bread tin. When she hears Josie’s voice, Cello turns round, the piping hot tin in her hand, and then the pain must prick whatever narcotic bubble she has around her and Cello screams, but doesn’t drop the tin. She places it onto the worktop and then wrings her hand.
‘You should put it under water,’ says Josie.
Cello nods, her eyes wide; she holds her hand under a rushing tap and begins to stamp on the ground, moaning. ‘Shit! I have something for this upstairs.’
‘Shall I go?’
‘No!’
Which arouses Josie’s curiosity. She watches Cello go up the stairs, then rushes back into the kitchen, unlocks Cello’s phone handset and clicks through the last numbers called, all the way back to the last time Cello called Kerry, just a week ago, but the call history tells Josie it was not answered. Then she reads the texts, shuffling along the hall and listening for a tread on the stairs.
Earlier today, a number not assigned had texted Cello to meet at the Half Moon – tomorrow night.
Josie hears Cello on the landing, above. She goes back into the kitchen, noting the number that texted Cello, and locks the handset, puts it where she found it.
‘You say Sean had no friends, but he must have been well connected, to be in that game.’
‘What game’s that?’
‘He’s an impresario. A curator, he says.’
‘A dodgy cunt is what he is. I don’t know how he’s got through life without someone having a right pop at him. Well, I do …’
‘Go on,’ says Josie, trying not to appear overly interested.
‘I need to sort this soup. I really do.’
‘Sean had somebody to look out for him. That’s what you’re saying.’
‘I’m not sure I’m saying anything.’
‘You said you knew why nobody had taken a pop at Sean.’
Cello suddenly looks more alert. ‘No, I didn’t.’
Josie nods upstairs, says, ‘Do I get a tour?’
‘No.’
‘Never mind.’ She knows Cello has clammed up, and knows also that there are Half Moons all over London. But she knows for a fact that the one in Putney is known for its music.
*
Alicia Flint’s mother has left and her daughter is bathing her son, Ethan. Before she disappeared upstairs, in the duplex apartment she owns overlooking Princes Park, Alicia had tossed a wad of takeaway menus onto the ornate, far-eastern coffee table and given Staffe a bottle of Amstel without even asking, had said, ‘You decide. I’m starving. Anything spicy.’
He feels the beer hit his throat and leans back in the sofa, swallows, then takes out his phone, sees he has a missed call from Pulford. He makes the call.
‘Crawford hadn’t left the place or had any visitors for nearly two days,’ says Pulford. ‘But today she went on the Tube.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I followed her.’
‘I told you not to take any chances.’
‘She didn’t see me. And I lost her because I didn’t get too close, but she had this bag. Or, she didn’t have this bag but someone gave it her on the Tube and she gave it to someone else.’
‘You saw it?’
‘No. But I saw another man with it.’
‘What?’
‘And he gave it to Vernon Short.’
‘How do you know?’
‘They met in the Argyll in Oxford Circus, and Short had the bag when he left the pub.’
‘The same bag?’ Staffe hears Alicia coming down the stairs.
‘It must be. What are the chances?’
Staffe smiles at Alicia and raises his eyebrows, to give the impression it is an unwanted social call.
‘What should I do?’ asks Pulford.
‘Things are fine up here,’ says Staffe. ‘You take it easy.’ He hangs up, thinking how it suits them, for Lesley Crawford to know Vernon Short, for there to have been contact.
‘What did you order?’ asks Alicia Flint, now in a running vest and jogging bottoms, her hair in a high-up ponytail and all her make-up scrubbed away. Her skin sings.
‘Don’t you cook?’
‘You’ve got to be joking.’
‘I’ll do us something,’ says Staffe, standing up, going into the open-plan kitchen area which has a window overlooking the park. Way down below, it is getting dark. A group of youths with straining killer dogs loiter by the gates, exchanging something barely disguised. ‘Can I?’
‘Go ahead.’
He opens a cupboard.
‘I can’t wait till we can hit Anthony Bright with that appointment at the clinic. Why’d he lie to us?’ says Alicia, beside him in the kitchen. She pulls a beer from the fridge. ‘I don’t know what you’ll find to cook. Rusks and baby jars is all I buy,’ she laughs, swigging from her bottle. She bends down, reaches into a cupboard and plonks a butternut squash on the work surface. ‘I don’t know what to do with this. Mum brought it round.’
‘Do you have any garam masala?’
‘What?’
‘It’s OK,’ says Staffe, finding some cumin and chilli powder at the back of the spice cupboard. He toasts the cumin and puts the oven on; dices the squash and thinks about whether to tell Alicia Flint about the connection they might have established between Lesley Crawford and Vernon Short. He roughly measures out the risotto rice and pops the kettle on to make an instant stock.
‘What’s happening your end? Any news about Sean Degg or that bloody Crawford woman?’ she says.
‘How spicy do you want this?’
‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’ she says.
‘As soon as I know anything, you’ll know. I need to make a quick call.’
‘What did your DS do to piss you off?’
‘My DS?’
She frowns. ‘Don’t take me for a fool, Inspector.’
‘He followed Lesley Crawford and lost her.’
‘Could she be tied up with the private members bill of that idiot Short?’
‘It’d be nice,’ he says.
‘Very nice,’ says Alicia. ‘You’d better make your call. And as much chilli as you like, for me.’
Staffe shakes up the roasting squash and puts the boiled water to the bouillon, then calls Finbar Hare, his old friend and string-puller. It is no surprise that he gets no response. At this hour, Fin will either be sleeping off a long lunch or having an aperitif – either with his beautiful wife, or somebody else’s.
He says, into that message board in the ether, ‘It’s Staffe. Just wondered about getting together some time. Give me a call. And, oh … I’m looking for a job for someone I know. He’s pretty desperate, just something menial. It doesn’t matter, really, just to keep him occupied. Better if it didn’t involve a police check. He’s a good lad. Love to Flick and let’s hook up some time.’ He blows out his cheeks, trousers his phone and gets a raise of the eyebrows from Alicia Flint who is pulling out another pair of Amstels from her fridge.
