Willing Flesh (15 page)

He places the brown envelope on the desk. It is marked
PRIVAT
in a long, elegant hand. Staffe looks closely, to see if the envelope has ever been tampered with, but it is quite plain that Rebeccah has been a loyal custodian.

Staffe takes his bone-handled letter opener, inscribed to his father for loyal service. He inserts the blade and pulls it back, quickly. Inside are four sheets, elaborately decorated and each undertaking to pay the bearer
£
25,000.

‘Elena,’ whispers Staffe. As he says it – even though he is in his locked office – he looks around, to check he is unheard.

Fourteen

Sylvie has brought crab cakes and green and red curries from the Thai Garden. When Staffe sees the thin segment of her in the opening door, he feels young.

They eat on their laps, watching the ten o’clock news and swapping curries halfway through as they always have done. Pulford pops his head in after a night in copper’s corner down the Butcher’s Hook and says he will leave them to it.

‘Don’t be silly, David,’ says Sylvie. ‘Get a plate. I’m off for an early night, anyway.’ She takes the bottle of Crianza with her and tips Staffe the wink, to follow soon. On the hearth, he sees her mermaid mug – from the weekend they had in Copenhagen, the first time they were together. It is her favourite mug and he wonders when she brought it over here, and how significant that might be.

He follows five minutes later, and she seems like a stranger, more demure and faltering in one phase; more brazen and direct in the next. She undresses him, keeping her own clothes on, pushing him back on the bed, gliding over him, using her mouth and nails, not letting him touch her.

She holds herself above him, barely touching him, and Staffe wonders where she knows this from and he wants to ask, but can see how that might harm him. Eventually, she hitches down her pants and sits astride him. She moves slowly, him inside her, and she comes quickly, falling equally quickly to sleep, still wearing her blouse and skirt, and through her soft, mumbling shudders, Staffe contemplates whether the proposal might have changed things. He wonders if, by employing such variety, she was trying to fix something she thought might be broken.

Staffe tries to find sleep but Elena, and now Rebeccah, repeat on him. Everything of tangible significance seems to be dropping into Rimmer’s lap, and all because he went on that stupid jaunt up to Suffolk. He should learn to control his intuition. And he should have declared the evidence Rebeccah had hidden. Tomorrow, he will tell Pennington.

Sylvie turns, emerging briefly from her sleep. She wraps her arm around him and says, ‘Can we do something tomorrow? Maybe go to Vicenti’s.’

‘I told Marie I’d take Harry out – in the day. If you fancy it, we could take him to the park.’ Staffe takes a hold of her hand, feels the emerald. ‘Try and get a kite up.’

As she falls back into sleep, he listens to merrymakers being chucked out of the restaurant in the square, beyond his short back garden. Their good cheer is made soft by the falling snow. White triangles and rhombus shapes of roofs against the black sky look like cubism. It might be a metaphor, he thinks, but as he slides back between the sheets, spooning Sylvie, he isn’t sure that makes sense.

*

The
Telegraph
sport section is spread out on Pennington’s desk, next to a cafetière of coffee. He pours Staffe a cup and reaches down, produces Garibaldi biscuits from his drawer. The two men keep their coats on, the central heating playing catch-up.

‘The Danya case seems to be progressing well.’ Pennington lifts his coffee cup to his lips, sips. ‘I must say, I’m pretty impressed with Rimmer.’ He laughs and a plume of his breath makes a dying cloud. ‘Between you and me, I thought the boat with those words on had sailed. And Chancellor, too, Will. You’ve done a sterling job, bringing her on.’

‘The case has a long way to go. We haven’t even got a weapon.’

‘Rimmer and Chancellor are there now,’ says Pennington, putting down his cup.

‘Where?’

‘Blears’ home. Stripping it bare. This ID from the Thamesbank changes everything.’

‘Blears couldn’t have done it.’

Pennington looks at Staffe as though he is about to confide, but decides against. ‘Sometimes, we just set off on the wrong course. The further you go, the further from the truth you get.’

‘What connects Blears to the two girls? What’s his motive?’

‘They’re prostitutes and he’s a pornographer. Some of the material he had is criminal. What more do you want?’

‘Danya and Stone were friends.’

‘That’s exactly what Rimmer’s saying. Blears found something on the first to lead him to the second.’

‘And what took him to the Thamesbank Hotel in the first place?’

‘He’s an actuary for Re-Zurich on Cannon Street. They had their Christmas do at the Thamesbank last year. He knows the place. You know how easy it is to get a girl to a room. It’s just a matter of money.’ Pennington fills up Staffe’s cup. ‘You’re the best copper I’ve got, Will. But I think we have to let Rimmer bring this one in.’

‘I understand.’ Staffe knows he can’t remind Pennington what his DCI really thinks of Rimmer, realises also that this is no time to come clean about Rebeccah’s plastic bag.

‘Take some time for yourself. Wind down.’

‘I was going to see my nephew this afternoon. We were going to fly a kite.’

‘You should do that, Will.’ Pennington smiles, benignly. An odd look. ‘Parliament Hill?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Like Pulford said, there are times when it’s best to sit on the banks, wait for the bodies to come floating by. He thinks of Elena’s cold white corpse. He feels an anger breaching, so incants a mantra. ‘Pacify yourself. Pass-if-eye-your-self,’ he repeats, thinking, ‘As long as nobody else pays the price.’

*

Gary Mulplant’s shift at the Thamesbank starts at noon. Staffe waits in the bar, looking out over the cold, wily river and browsing the Suffolk Gazettes from the dates when Markary stayed at the Signet. He also has the data matches from the two murdered girls.

Staffe looks down the computer distillation of all the information on Elena Danya and Rebeccah Stone. The matches are: profession; city of residence; absent electoral register; absent NI contributions. Criminal records do not match: Elena is clean as a whistle in that respect. Neither of the girls is licensed to drive a car and neither has a history of sexually transmitted disease, nor serious illness, though Rebeccah, it seems, has been knocked about and is prone to overdosing. In terms of their phone records, the murdered girls shared five common numbers: Arra (T-Mobile, pay as you go); Bobo Bogdanovich (Vodafone, pay as you go); Darius A’Court (O
₂
, pay as you go); Rosa Henderson (Orange, contract); Vassily Tchancov (Vodafone, pay as you go, and one of six different numbers registered to the owner).

Something disturbs Staffe about this information, but he can’t pin it down. His trains of thought uncouple, and his mind flits to Pennington being happy to see him in the back seat, and to the changes in Sylvie; changes in
them
. His eyes flop back on the
Suffolk Gazettes
and he flips through the first one, from 15 March 2008. ‘The Ides of March,’ says Staffe, aloud. It was the trip when Markary hadn’t stayed in room 14. Sure enough, the visit coincided with the announcement of plans for the Aldesworth Country Town.

So, Markary must have somehow been getting fat off that bit of land, he thinks to himself, turning his partially focused gaze back on the list of data matches. He is bogged down, needs the rough and tumble of an afternoon with his nephew Harry, up on the hill.

And then it hits him – like a rabbit punch, to the back of the head.

‘Mr Wagstaffe?’

Staffe looks up at the bellboy. He has a badge that says ‘Gary’.

‘Rosa,’ says Staffe – to himself.

‘What?’ says the bellboy.

‘Rosa Henderson,’ thinks Staffe. ‘Sit down, Gary.’ Is that her surname? How could he not know? But he checks her number in his own mobile handset, mouthing the sequence aloud and following it with his finger on the printout. Figure perfect. ‘Damn!’ he says.

‘Shall I go?’ says the bellboy.

‘No. Sit down. Please.’ Staffe directs his attention to the young man, who has the most piercing, light eyes. Almost white. ‘Who’s been talking to you?’

‘Talking to me?’

Staffe takes out the photograph of Graham Blears. ‘You say this man came here last Friday.’ He weighs up Mulplant, who is self-assured, shows no fear being interviewed by police. ‘How long have you worked here?’

‘He did come here last Friday.’

‘Is this your idea of what you want with your life?’

Gary laughs.

‘You ever been in a prison?’

‘What!’

‘That poor man could spend the rest of his life inside.’

‘He killed the woman.’

Staffe stands. ‘Who told you that?’

Gary looks at his hands, fingers knotting themselves. ‘I told them everything I know.’

‘How tall is he?’

‘Five nine.’

‘Hair?’

‘Kind of ginger. It needs a cut; styling, you know.’ Gary tries to laugh but it fails.

‘Shoes?’

‘Plastic. Black.’

‘You got a good look at him, hey, Gary?’

‘What else do I do all day?’

‘You don’t want to arouse me. My curiosity, I mean.’

‘You’re harassing me.’

‘This decision you’ve made – it won’t rest easy.’ He slips Mulplant his card. ‘Shame, to have such a thing on your shoulders. Let’s hope it works out for you. You start feeling bad about this, just call me.’

Mulplant looks down at the river.

Staffe thinks about bodies floating by. When Mulplant stops looking, the detective is gone and he is all alone.

*

From the kitchen in Marigold Gardens, Josie watches the Forensics team clear up in Blears’ snowy garden. They have practically disassembled the shed and put it back together.

‘Seems a shame,’ says Rimmer.

‘What’s that?’

‘These taters. Aren’t they lovely? All knobbled and clods of earth on them. You don’t get them like that in the shops.’ Rimmer holds the spud under the tap, rubs the soil from the skin, and holds it up. ‘See?’

Josie takes the potato from Rimmer, watches Forensics put the last deckchair back in the shed and close up. The garden is thirty feet of lawn, bordered by dwarf evergreens and flowering Alpines. ‘Home grown, wouldn’t you say?’

Rimmer looks out at the frosted garden. ‘Where does he grow them?’

‘An allotment,’ says Josie. ‘I’ll get on to the council.’ Her blood runs fast and her fingers tingle.

*

Graham Blears’ allotment is as orderly as his house; as is his potting shed, which Josie and Rimmer are systematically turning inside out, watched by two Forensics officers who have just bagged three box files of no-limits pornography, including
US Snuff
.

Josie pulls the rocking chair from the corner and rolls back the rug but nothing is there, no signs the floor is loose. She taps her heels on the boards. No variations in tone. She notices that the floor is just like the ceiling, tongued and grooved, but this feels wrong – this flatness of the ceiling.

Josie goes outside to check she is right: the roof of the potting shed is pitched. ‘He’s made it like home,’ she says, going back in, standing on a box, pressing up on the varnished pine with her nails. Rimmer follows suit and they check the ceiling from each end, working to the middle, but they don’t meet because Josie presses one length of pine that lifts. Then the next. She calls the Forensics team, to investigate every last inch of the void.