Suffer the Children (9 page)

Staffe knows that ETA are downsizing operations, seeking to advance the Basque cause through negotiations not
explosives
. A part of him bitterly resents this. It means his parents’ deaths were in vain. He tries not to curse Extbatteria and his two sons, tries not to get excited at the prospect of unearthing the veteran terrorist’s exile.

Desire banks up within Montefiore. It presses down on him, makes his legs weak. How can there be such a thing as forbidden love? Love must always prevail – you can’t resist.

A client once said to him when they were putting together a development site of played-out shops round the back of Waterloo Station, ‘You get one chance, Guy. We all get one chance and it’s just a case of recognising it – and taking it. It’s not luck, it’s meant to be.’

He focuses in on Tanya and her friend, huddled over the mobile phone between the swings and the copse of trees deep in the heart of the park. He presses ‘send’, watches his words beam themselves down to the girls, sees the effect he has. She makes his stomach slow summersault. This close, he could reach, almost touch.

He is sad because he knows the beginning is also the end. He has made a career out of being able to spot value and evaluate risk, so he makes his way to the copse of rowan trees, tiny berries bursting from bud. He waits for her friend to do as he has instructed. If Tanya is to meet Alex, the boy she thinks she loves, the friend has to go. Alex is shy. Alex wants Tanya all to himself. Alex is miles away playing five-aside football
underneath
the Westway flyover. Alex doesn’t have a new mobile, has never texted Tanya. Never will.

Guy puts a hand into his pocket, fingers the ribbing to his balaclava. His breath is short and he is hot around his neck and shoulders. He feels as though someone is about to put a hand upon him – feels as if he can’t bear the suspense any longer, but doesn’t want it to stop.

Tanya’s friend gives her a coy wave goodbye. Between the trees he can see Tanya make a nervous smile with her top teeth tight over her bottom lip. She gives a tiny shrug of her narrow shoulders, turns, walks towards Montefiore with her head down, her shoulders turned in, as if she is ashamed of her young, beautiful body. Guy shuffles back into the copse, makes a hurried patrol of the perimeter, looking for anybody walking a dog or making a lovers’ diversion.

There is nobody within a hundred yards.

He can hear her come into the trees but she stops. She calls his name. ‘Alex?’ It’s little more than a whisper.

Guy crouches. He can see her bare legs beneath the low canopy of trees. He puts his finger on the button, presses ‘send’ and listens to her gasp at its one vibrating ring.

‘Alex,’ she says again. ‘You’re here?’

‘I’m here,’ says Guy, into the wool of his balaclava. After he has said it, he moves swiftly to his left so she follows the sound of his voice towards an empty place. As he stalks, he removes a drugged rag from a sealed plastic envelope.

She moves awkwardly between the branches. Guy is behind her now.

‘I can’t see you, Alex.’

Montefiore holds his breath and takes a silent, final stride – barely able to move. His legs are jelly and his heart beats
double
time. He is ecstatic. He is sad. He reaches out, taps her on the shoulder, watches her turn slowly. Her eyes go wide and a scream gets stuck in her throat.

He feels as happy as he ever has in all his life. He moves
swiftly
forward and places one hand on the back of her head as if he is going to slowly, softly pull her towards him for a first kiss. Her mouth does open and, rather than put his mouth on hers, he reaches up with his other, gloved hand and he silences her with the soaked rag. He can smell the chloroform as he
watches
her wide eyes lid down in fine spasms, like butterfly wings.

Her hair is softer than you could ever dream and she’s light in his grasp. He pulls the rag away quickly, wanting her to come round before he is done. He needs a response. He lays her down, easily; then lies alongside, looking around, beneath the canopy. He smiles to himself, happy to be alone with his love.

He pulls his balaclava off, nestles his face into the well of her jaw and neck. He inhales her, runs his hand along her thin, soft skin. He moves his head, kisses her jaw, kisses her closed eyes, kisses her closed mouth, makes it open by kissing her harder. He feels the soft cotton at the top of her legs and pushes her legs apart. He unzips himself and takes hold of her bottom. He feels a shadow on the back of his neck. He turns cold.

Guy twists to look up but he can’t believe what he sees. At first he thinks it’s a warped mirror, but then the mouth and eyes inside the balaclava shape a smile, and the figure talks.

‘You’re done, Guy.’

‘It’s not what …’

The man gives him a kick to his open flies and Montefiore squeals with pain.

‘Don’t hurt me,’ says Montefiore, looking at the weapon in the man’s hand. The blade glints.

‘You’re not in charge now, Guy. Put a foot wrong, and it will be Thomasina’s turn.’

‘No!’

And as if it were a full stop, the man kicks Montefiore again. While Montefiore writhes around in agony, the man says, ‘You think I’m going to kill you?’ And before Guy can respond, he puts the sole of his shoe on Guy’s balls. Leans forward. ‘But you’d be wrong. You might even say I’m going to do the opposite. But first, I’m coming to see you. Soon. And if you say a single word to anybody, fucking anybody! You’ll look your daughter in the eye from the dock and then you’ll die in prison. But not until she has. And you want to know how she’ll die?’

‘No!’ says Guy, sobbing. ‘I’ll do it. Whatever you want, I’ll do it.’

The man takes his foot off Guy, takes a step back and Guy zips up, gets to his feet. He looks down at Tanya. He loves her, still. She’s the only one. All the others turned out to be tainted in the end. Dirty. Whores.

Staffe winces as he applies a dash of iodine to his wound. He presses a fresh dressing to the cut and slides between the sheets of the first bed he ever bought. He stares at the ceiling and an image of his mother and father comes to him, waving from on deck in Portsmouth harbour on their way to Spain. His father had taken early retirement after a life of nothing but work and they were going to walk in the Picos de Europa, after first going to visit Bilbao and Guernica. Young Will couldn’t see the back of them quick enough.

He had smoked a joint on the drive back to their house in Thames Ditton, and when he had got home he went straight to the Angel and bought two grams of coke. At the end of the night he went back to his parents’ house with his friends and partied for a week – until the police came knocking, not
busting
his spoiled white ass for drugs but to tell him he had, at the age of eighteen, been orphaned.

The pain is dull. He is so, so tired, but sleep has ebbed away from him. Could Colquhoun’s murder be the work of a
mercenary
? Hired by Debra Bowker? But why now? Why after all these years? Two wives. Two suspects. And Ross Denness?

And what did Golding mean by he ‘knows’? Where is Sohan Kelly? What if the e. Gang get to Kelly? Should Staffe go and see him or is he best left alone?

Maybe Colquhoun’s wasn’t a professional killing. But they got in and got out without so much as a broken pane or the finest trace of DNA.

Far away in the white noise of low-grinding wagons beating the congestion by using unearthly hours, a siren sounds. It tails away, warps into the night. Staffe is drifting now, thinking of the children who suffered. A silence to be broken.

Johnson shows his warrant card to the minicab driver and tells him to: ‘Fuckin’ wait, unless you want someone to have a real good look over this piece of shit.’

There is no reponse from 26d so he buzzes the downstairs and is told that Paolo Di Venuto will probably be in the Golden Fleece.

‘What’s he look like?’ says Johnson.

‘Who are you?’

‘Police. Bet you got something in your place. Maybe growin’ a bit of weed. Cookin’ up some C meth?’ He takes a step back, looks up at the peering face at the curtains, holds up his
warrant
card and smiles.

The intercom crackles. ‘Skinny fuck with long hair. He’ll be in a jean jacket and a white vest. Combat shorts. Never fuckin’ changes.’

Johnson checks his watch, can’t afford to hang around, so he tells the minicab driver to wait up outside the pub. As he walks along the High Road, he works up a sweat and plots ahead to what might transpire. He feels weak and knows he should have sorted himself out before he came. He stops, hands on knees and gulps at the air, shakes
himself
down.

‘The fuck you lookin’ at!’ he shouts at a couple of youths. One black, one white, both looking for trouble. But they stop dead when they see Johnson’s face, look down at his big clenched fists. They cross the road, muttering, and he strides off, the blood flowing through him now as he pictures Di Venuto, pictures him beating up on Staffe’s sister, pictures him turning her over, pulling off her pants, pressing her buttocks out, softening her up.

The Golden Fleece is fifty yards away. He should wait
outside
until they throw out but it looks like a place that locks in. He pictures the look on her face when he’s done; hears the slap when she complains, a line of blood coming from the corner of her mouth, an eye swelling, the lies she’ll make up to cover for him. He pushes open the door and it slams into the wall. Half a dozen at the bar turn round, the smiles off their faces. Johnson points to the dark one in the jean jacket and shorts second from left and says ‘Di Venuto!’ striding towards him as he watches the others shuffle away. One of them takes a hold of his bitch pop by the throat and Johnson says, ‘Put the fuckin’ bottle down or I’ll shove it up your arse.’

He puts the bottle down.

Di Venuto opens his mouth to say something but he doesn’t get the chance. Johnson kicks him in the balls and as he doubles over, he punches him in the neck, takes a hold of his hair and drags him outside. Patsy Cline sings them on their way and out to the street. Johnson stamps on his face and pulls him to his feet. ‘You know what you done? You know what you fuckin’ done!’

Di Venuto nods, blood pumping from a gash across his nose. Johnson can see the bone. His eyes will swell good. ‘I’m gonna pay,’ begs Di Venuto. ‘I swear to fuckin’ God I’m gonna pay!’

And Johnson laughs. God shining down on him. He won’t know Staffe’s sent him. He thinks this is over some drugs he’s ripped off or a loan shark he’s crossed.

Suddenly, Johnson feels weak again. The blood has dumped and he is no longer wired quite the same tight way. He needs to be gone – and quick – so he holds a hand up, beckons the minicab. He hasn’t even got the strength to give Di Venuto a farewell slap.

As they drive off, he wonders if that was what Staffe had wanted, or will it just mean Di Venuto takes it out on someone else. If he does, he’ll come back. Next time he’ll be stronger.

Guy takes a draught of wine. His heart beats fast and his
fingers
tremble. This is the deepest night can be. It is at its most silent. Soon, the birds will sing and the newspaper boys will stir.

He hears the soft metal of the gate’s latch and quickly drains the glass. He stands, looks at his watch. It is four minutes to three. He holds his breath, prays hard that the silence will stretch, that something will occur to him.

Two loud raps at the door.

All night, Montefiore has tried and failed to fathom an option that ends with him not answering the door. If the man was going to kill him, he would have done it in the park.

The man’s portrait outline is shadowed in the door’s stained glass and the threat to Thomasina resounds. The cartilage around his knees fails and he is short of breath, light in the head. He reaches out, shoots the bolt, unlocks the door, and pulls it ajar.

Somehow, in the sliced jag of a moment, as he sees the man in the open door, Montefiore knows he is done for. He tries to shut it back, but the man puts out a foot.

He cries out, for help, but before the gushing air can make a sound, his breath is cut dead by a fast and expert blow to the Adam’s apple. Montefiore drops to his knees, makes himself into a ball and feels a rag on his face. He recognises the smell as he fades, slowly, away.

Montefiore is dead still. He is naked from the waist down to his Church’s shoes, gagged with gauze, and streaks of blood run from his eyes down his cheeks.

The final touches are applied. The tiny video camera is propped up so it takes in the whole of Guy Montefiore: his misshapen frame on the screen, bound up to a metal cross, made up from interlocking high-tensile aluminium tubes. The cross is, in turn, suspended from the ceiling by three lengths of rope. There were originally four. That was the hardest part: finding the main joists in the ceiling, something strong enough to screw into, to take Montefiore’s weight.

Montefiore’s thighs are bound to his chest with wagon lashes and he looks as if he is suspended in mid-air, jumping into a swimming pool. Bombing, they used to call it. Each of the three remaining ropes vary in length. Each rope has a number pinned to it: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Inside Montefiore, entering his body via the anus, is a
five-foot
length of two by two. The other end is securely attached to the floor by four screwed metal shelf brackets. He hangs from the cross which is in turn suspended by the various ropes.

Through the drumming of the pain, Montefiore hears a car outside. It changes gear, revs up and the engine cuts out. A door opens and shuts. Then another. He tries to slow the pain, breathes in deep. He pushes his tongue at the gauze, trying to fashion a pocket of air, some way that if he emptied his lungs, some sound might ensue. He can hear his neighbours coming up the path and he breathes in as much as he can. Pain shoots up through his body and he shakes his head as he screams,
trying
to will the sound out. It seems loud in his ears, but he watches as the figure in the hood smiles with its blood-red lips as it turns up the radio.