Suffer the Children (16 page)

Staffe jolts from his repose.

It is a woman’s voice.

‘I’ll kill the fucker. I’ll kill the fucker!’ shouts Paolo, running to the front door. He is holding a baseball bat, flicking it expertly from the wrist.

Harry’s eyelids flicker and Staffe holds him closer, hears the fizz of the tune being piped in. He watches downstairs as Marie rants into the letter box. Paolo is behind, readying
himself
. ‘Open the door, Marie. Open it!’

‘No!’

‘I can’t take this no more. They kill me. They kill me.’

Marie turns round, looks up at Paolo and Staffe sees the pale horror in her face. He puts his hands over Harry’s ears and shouts down, ‘No! Wait.’ He rushes to the music room, lays Harry down gently and throws himself at the stairs, touching the tread three times the whole way down. He crashes into the door surround. ‘Give me the bat. Give me the bastard bat, Paolo!’

Staffe takes a grip of the bat, takes in a lungful of the air and shouts ‘Let’s have you!’ and pulls open the door. He swings the bat as he launches himself out of the door and he trips, commando-rolls down the steps and into the front garden. He waits for the punches – and worse – but nothing comes. As he blinks up towards the house, he can’t believe his eyes.

There, sitting cross-legged and weeping, is the only
ginger-haired
Indian he knows.

‘Sohan?’ says Staffe. ‘Sohan Kelly? What the hell are you doing here?’

‘They are going to kill me, Mister Staffe. And your
promises
aren’t helping. No way your promises good for what you say.’

‘What made you come here?’

‘They’re going to kill me. They said so.’

‘Where are they?’

‘You know I can’t change what I say. You have to tell your Pennington.’

‘You tell him.’

Sohan Kelly looks up at Staffe, rocking to and fro and
shaking
his head. ‘I can’t go back to him. Not him. I can’t.’

And it is clear to Staffe that Kelly is more afraid of Pennington than the e.Gang. It is also clear that Kelly won’t tell him why this is, or what hold Pennington has over him. It is enough, in the warm balm of the hot summer night, to make Staffe’s blood turn cold.

He looks back at the house and beyond the distraught Sohan Kelly, Paolo wraps his arms around Marie. She is weeping tears of joy. Behind them, young Harry, earphones in, comes downstairs slowly, singing a syncopated ‘My Heart Belongs to Daddy’, which makes Staffe think the child’s mother might be doing something right.

Pulford has been sitting in his unmarked car at the entrance to the Limekiln estate since 6 a.m. From here he can see up to the fifth floor where Leanne Colquhoun will soon be reunited with her two children. He clocks everyone going into the estate, watches for them appearing on the fifth-floor deck.

A bashed-up Mondeo parks opposite and a horribly familiar face appears. Nick Absolom is one of Fleet Street’s worst, climbing over bodies to get to the top at the
News
. Leanne Colquhoun has been free for twelve hours and the vultures are already descending.

Pulford is torn. If he gets out and tells Absolom to scratch his poisonous pen across some other poor soul’s life, his cover would be blown. If he stays put, Absolom will sink his teeth into Leanne and spread her story all across the front pages. He waits until Absolom appears on the fifth deck and calls Staffe.

‘That slimy bastard,’ says Staffe when Pulford calls him. ‘Jesus, this is all we need.’

‘What can we do?’

‘Pennington will go berserk. I’ll have to ask him to have a word with the editor at the
News
. He didn’t want her released in the first place.’ Staffe thinks of that other conversation he has to have with Pennington about Sohan Kelly.

‘What can Leanne tell Absolom that’s not already out there?’

‘We questioned her about Montefiore. The press would have a field day putting the two cases together.’

‘Hang on,’ says Pulford. A shiny purple Clio pulls up and Carly Kellerman gets out. She has a document case under her arm.

‘What is it?’ says Staffe.

Carly Kellerman ushers two children out of the back of the car. The boy has a zigzag pattern shaved into his hair and the girl has a high-up ponytail.

‘It’s the Colquhoun children.’ The kids look around,
nervous
, not sure whether to smile or snarl. They look up at the high decks of the tower. ‘It’s Absolom’s lucky day.’

‘No luck involved, Pulford. This was set up,’ says Staffe. ‘You stay put and don’t let Absolom see you. I’ll send a
uniformed
WPC round with a counsellor. They’ll get Absolom to scarper and hopefully Leanne won’t find out we’re watching her.’ He slams the phone down, curses Pennington, Nick Absolom and the day he came back for this case.

‘I knew we shouldn’t have released her till you had another viable suspect,’ booms Pennington, not even bothering to look at Staffe. ‘Jesus! This is going to be all over the press now. It’s day three of your seven and you’ve got nothing. Where are you going with this?’ He glares.

Staffe considers telling him about Kashell. ‘We’re chasing up Colquhoun’s first wife and Montefiore’s previous victims.’

Pennington’s glare morphs into an incredulous stare as he looks his DI up and down, sees the state he is in. ‘Are you all right, Staffe? You look like shit.’

‘I had a visit from Sohan Kelly last night.’

‘He’s taken care of.’

Staffe recalls the horrified look on Kelly’s face when he uttered Pennington’s name. ‘How exactly did you take care of him, sir? He didn’t seem “taken care of”.’

‘You know what that scumbag is capable of. He’s a grass for crying out loud. He’ll find a way to disappear. He certainly won’t turn crook’s evidence. Don’t you worry about that.’

There is a knock on the door and Josie comes in and Staffe can tell straight away it’s not good news.

‘Sorry, sir.’ She looks at Pennington, then Staffe, as if for permission to drop him further in it. Staffe nods at her. ‘The WPC couldn’t get into Leanne Colquhoun’s flat. There was nobody home. No answer at the door. No sound, no lights or anything.’

‘She got the right place?’

‘I spoke to her myself. We checked and double-checked. It was the right door on the right floor.’

‘This is a disaster,’ says Pennington, making his way out of Staffe’s office. ‘Absolom’s got something up his sleeve. What if she tells them you interviewed her about Montefiore? You need to get a grip on this.’

Staffe waits for him to leave. ‘There’s another visit I want you to make, Josie. A mother and daughter down in Raynes Park.’

‘The Kashells?’

‘Keep it to yourself. And when you go, I want you to …’ He softens his voice, ‘… I want you to suss the place out. See what sort of keys there are to the doors.’

‘Staffe …’

‘I need to be able to get in. Check for bolts. See if there’s a dog or neighbours overlooking.’

‘Why are you going out on such a limb, sir?’

He pulls on his suede jacket, feels the stubble on his face, almost a beard now. He looks at cloudless London, the towers of the City’s eastern sprawl scratching at the Docklands sky. He gives Josie the Kashells’ address and makes his way through the thick air of the hot narrow corridors to the
incident
room. He knows he can’t put it off any more. He has to see Jessop.

When Jessop first left Leadengate, Staffe couldn’t bear to visit his friend. Then there was a big case, then another and before he knew it, he’d left it too long and when he did call, Jessop’s bile was up. Even so, Staffe knows he should have made the effort. But he had his own problems. Sylvie was gone.

Still, he is going to see him now, but it’s because Jessop has something to offer him. These are the wrong circumstances in which to call on a friend. And say what you like, they are friends. More than friends.

‘You could have done something, Staffe. Nobody said
anything
. They just stood aside and let me go,’ Jessop had said, carrying a small box with his personal effects down the back stairs to the car park.

A voice says, ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’ Staffe twitches, looks across and sees Jombaugh. ‘Shit, Jom, I didn’t see you there.’

‘What’s troubling you, Will?’

Staffe checks behind him, as though talking about an old friend might damage him. ‘You remember Jessop.’

‘He thought the world of you. You not seen him in a while, right?’

‘Not in a while, no.’

‘You give him my best, Will.’

Staffe leaves Jombaugh to it and goes to the toilet but he notices the light switches outside are off. They’re never off. He opens the door gently and hears a sigh from the gloom. It’s coming from inside a cubicle and he crouches down, sees the feet are pointed towards the pan. Dull light comes in through the high frosted window. Another sigh, an ecstatic sigh and he recognises the voice.

He goes back out and eases the door closed, waits. The
toilet
flushes and he stands ready, to make as though he is just going in. When Johnson opens the door, he walks into him.

‘Sorry, Rick.’

Johnson looks dead in the eyes, says, ‘No matter, sir.’

‘How come the lights are off?’

‘Some prick trying to save the world.’

He watches Johnson go, slow, and once he’s out of sight, Staffe turns on the lights and goes into the toilet, inspects the cubicle. No smell, lid down. There is nothing unusual,
anywhere
, just a copy of the
Mirror
on top of the bin. He removes it, takes the top off the bin, and prods at a pile of blue paper towels. He puts his hand in, as if it was a barrel of goodies in a grotto, looking up at the tube light for some reason and he feels something sharp, as if he has been nipped by an animal. He tips the bin up, kicks the towels so they scatter and then he sees what bit him. A syringe.

Josie follows Greta Kashell into the small kitchen at the back of the house, says ‘yes’ she’d love a cup of tea. Greta puts the kettle on and continues to make small talk about the summer.

‘Is your daughter in?’ says Josie.

‘Nicoletta? She goes to her grandparents for the holidays. They’re down in Hastings. She likes it there.’ Greta stops
fiddling
with the mugs and the sugar bowl and gives Josie a short, stern look. ‘Nobody down there knows what happened. When she first comes back here, she’s almost like she used to be. Then it’s back to the way it was. School’s the worst. It happened at school. I was late picking her up. I work, see. If I didn’t work I’d have been on time, maybe … Can you believe it – a
classroom
assistant. How could that happen?’

‘You know none of that was anything to do with you, Greta.’

‘She goes to high school in September. She’s a nervous wreck about it. I want to teach her at home but the experts say she has to relearn to be sociable. Sociable! She was the friendliest girl you’d ever meet. What good does that do you in this world?’

‘Does she visit her father?’

‘No. She loves him. She loves him more than me.’ Greta Kashell looks away when she says this, and Josie slips her hand into her pocket, feels for the mobile phone. She is ashamed of what she is about to do but does it anyway. Before she came in, she had put Greta’s landline number into her mobile.

She makes sure she’s talking as she presses ‘call’. ‘There’s often a strong bond between father and daughter. I know from …’

The phone rings and Greta Kashell flinches, lets it ring. ‘She won’t let me hold her, you know. It was a woman, see. A woman that did it.’

‘You’d better get that,’ says Josie.

Greta Kashell goes into the hall, head down, and Josie moves to the back door as quick as a flash, takes the key out of the lock and presses it into the tablet of plasticine she has brought with her. The ringing stops and she hears Greta
saying
, ‘Who is it? Who is it!’

Josie hurriedly takes the key from the plasticine and replaces it in the lock. She makes sure there are no bolts on the back door. No signs of an alarm. She hears Greta slam the phone down and she flicks off her mobile, starts busying herself in the making of tea. ‘So, Greta, you say you work …’

Before she has even finished her tea, Josie makes her apologies and leaves, knowing exactly when and for how long the house will be empty, allowing Staffe to snoop for God knows what.

Staffe parks the Peugeot just off Kilburn High Road, his head pounding. He needs to change his clothes, and traces of last night come back at him, strangely reminding him of Sylvie, not Rosa. Why did she return his call so quickly? The fact that she is in his phone makes his pulse quicken.

He locks the car and makes his way up to the main entrance of Jessop’s dishevelled four-storey terraced house and even though this is a different urban backwater, a new postcode, he feels a refrain from those days when he felt like shit most of the time – going into Leadengate on two or three hours’ sleep,
having
to gargle with Listermint and spray himself down with Right Guard before the DCI clocked him.

His finger hovers over the buzzer to flat four. Funny that Jessop lives so close to Staffe’s Kilburn house. Funny, they never see each other around but maybe Jessop has seen
him
, has chosen to look the other way.

What ravages might retirement have wrought on Jessop? Jessop who loved the Force more than it loved him. He
wonders
whether Delores will have stuck by him. Delores who was younger and had a twinkle in her eye. He takes a deep breath, presses the buzzer. Perhaps he will be out.

‘Who’s that?’ The voice rattles in the cracked aluminium intercom grille: deep, belligerent.

‘It’s Will, sir. Will Wagstaffe.’ Staffe knows it’s stupid to call him ‘sir’, but can’t help himself.

‘What the hell do you want?’

‘Do I need a reason?’

‘It’s been too long for there not to be a reason.’ There is an electronic whirr and the latch clunks open. Staffe pushes the door and hears Jessop bark an instruction through the grille as though time has been rewound. ‘All the way to the top and take it slow, I need some time.’

Staffe laughs to himself and makes his way past a dismantled motorbike in the hallway. The place smells damp and he guesses it’s tenanted. The carpets are shiny and the walls are grubby. When he gets to the top of the final flight, Jessop is standing in the open doorway, practically filling the frame. He has aged more than three years; he’s wearing an old cardigan and hasn’t shaved for a couple of days. His hair has thinned and his eyes are dark; his trousers bag, and while he is well built in the shoulders and chest, the gut has dropped and the legs have gone spindly, like a drinker’s. ‘You could have called.’ A tight smile betrays him.

‘It didn’t seem right. So I left it. Then I called and you bawled me out. Remember?’

‘I always bawled you out. It never put you off before.’ Jessop smiles, like a roguish uncle as he remembers older days.

‘And you moved.’ Staffe looks around the place, trying not to turn his nose up.

‘You’re supposed to be a detective. Did I teach you nothing?’

‘You don’t snoop on friends.’

‘Aaah. I’ve got friends now? Lucky me.’ He turns his back.

Staffe follows him into what appears to be the lounge and sees that his arse has all but gone to nothing. His mother used to say, ‘His arse has gone to gin.’ She never swore, but she said that when his father’s worst friends came and went.

A duvet has been tossed in one corner, a pile of clothes in another. A thick pall of cigarette smoke hangs even though both sash windows are pulled right open. Outside, North London’s rooftops go on for miles under the cloudless sky.

‘You working that Colquhoun case, hey?’ says Jessop. ‘Got nothing?’ Jessop flops down into a threadbare chair, gestures for Staffe to sit on a piano stool at a junkshop desk and lights a cigarette. He tosses the pack to Staffe. ‘Off the booze? You’ve lost that boozer’s jowl. Doesn’t look like it’s doing you any good. Christ, I’m better off out of the fucking Force if that’s what things are coming to.’

‘What do you make of the case?’ Staffe tosses the cigarettes back. ‘Does it remind you of something?’ Staffe flicks through a magazine that was on the chair he’s sitting on. When he looks up, Jessop is making a tight smile.

‘She was still warm when I got there. You could almost hear her scream when we took the gauze from out of her mouth.’