Willing Flesh (18 page)

‘I’ll be five minutes, no more. And discreet. I
can
be discreet when I want.’

Dickinson looks across the lobby. The gentle clatter of pudding and wine, of cheese and port being served rings through from the echoing dining hall. Six gentlemen, three from the Far East, emerge laughing, plotting a naughty night, no doubt.

Staffe says, in a raised voice that makes the group stop and look, ‘Mr Dickinson!’ He lowers his voice. ‘If you please?’

‘Go through into the back,’ says Dickinson, referring Staffe to a cubby-hole behind the desk, as if he were showing him trifle from a trolley.

Within five minutes, Staffe has what he wants. He doesn’t quite know why he wants it, but there are three occasions on which Taki Markary has been signed in during the past year. The first time he was introduced by a Leonard Howerd and the second time by Lord Audley. Last week, true to his alibi, he was signed in again by Leonard Howerd, only an hour or so before Elena Danya and her unborn child were killed just a quarter of a mile away.

Staffe hands back the visitors’ book, apologising for being so uncouth. He actually uses the word ‘uncouth’. ‘Is Mr Howerd in today, Mr Dickinson?’

‘I’m afraid not, sir.’

‘Never mind. I’ll catch up with him.’ He treats himself to a smile as he goes out into a thickening mist. The streetlights are a soupy orange. He will treat himself to a couple of pints of ale in the Jampot before travelling home, to meet Sylvie. Tomorrow, he will lift the crust of this case. Good and proper; bib and tucker.

*

Rimmer sucks in the cold night, breathes out long trails of hot air and transfers his weight from one foot to the other, looking behind. He has three unmarked cars as back-up and suddenly wonders if he is underequipped. His heart beats fast as he holds his arm aloft, waving the cars in to the forest clearing. He says, to Josie, ‘Let’s see what we can catch.’

‘As long as we don’t catch what they’ve got,’ says Josie as they follow the cars into the Kennel.

The uniformed officers tap on the windows and step back from the six parked cars. Curses spill into the forest as doors are opened. They soon turn to pleas as many states of dress are hurriedly repaired. The officers herd the doggers into a line and Rimmer is amazed to see that he would be one of the younger participants. He steps forward and something like a frisson judders through his body as he directs his first question to the first exhibit: male and approximately fifty, wearing a suit and saying, rubbing his hands on the sides of his thighs, ‘I have a wife; she can’t find out. Anything but that. My wife, she can’t find out …’

‘Your name and address. Answer the questions and you will be free to go.’

The line of people falls quiet and these doggers, who only minutes ago were thrusting and groping and moaning with animal intimacy, have fallen coy. The smell of sex, over-ripe, curdles with fear. It is too heady a mix for Rimmer, who doesn’t know quite how to treat these people.

He takes out his notebook and, in turn, asks each person to verify who they are and whether they have ever seen the people in the three photographs: Elena Danya, Rebeccah Stone and Graham Blears. The inquiries are deliberately undertaken here in the field, where it is cold. Josie holds the torch, capturing their reactions in high relief.

Twenty minutes after they started, Rimmer and Josie swap. She squares up to a woman in her early fifties who gives the name of Margaret Shinwell. This is verified by her driving licence. She came alone and she is married, has been for twenty-eight years. She is crying, and Josie assures her everything will be fine, but does she really know what risks she is taking by coming here? The woman nods, vociferous, and Josie shows her the photographs in quick succession: Elena, Blears and Rebeccah, in that order.

‘Do you recognise any of these people?’ says Josie.

‘I never seen him.’

Josie shoots Rimmer a quick glance, says, ‘Say that again.’

‘I never seen him.’

‘There are three pictures here, Mrs Shinwell. Two of them are of women. Why say you haven’t seen
him
?’

As Margaret Shinwell struggles to find an answer, Josie notices she has stopped crying.

‘You know him, don’t you?’ says Josie, holding the photograph of Graham Blears right up to her face.

The woman is trembling now, shaking her head, saying, ‘No, no, no.’

‘Don’t you!’ shouts Josie.

‘Your husband won’t find out,’ says Rimmer.

Margaret Shinwell looks at Rimmer as if he is the doctor most likely to tell her what she has is benign.

‘I promise,’ says Rimmer, putting a hand on her shoulder.

‘He’ll bloody well find out if you don’t tell us,’ says Josie. ‘We can drive you home right now and take your full statement there.’

‘I seen him a couple times, is all.’

‘How many times? And when?’

‘I can’t remember,’ says Margaret, looking anxiously at Rimmer.

‘It was two nights ago, wasn’t it,’ says Rimmer.

Margaret nods, says, ‘What has he done?’

‘We can’t say he has done anything for sure. But these two girls,’ says Josie, stabbing the photographs of Elena and Rebeccah with her finger, and lowering her voice to a poisonous hiss, ‘these poor girls are dead. And one of them died here. Now, I don’t care how you get your kicks, but you will tell me everything you know about this man.’

Talking to the ground, Margaret tells Josie how she took Graham Blears into her mouth while being gratified by another man. This, within two hours of the latest possible time of death for Rebeccah Stone.

Although Rimmer is her immediate superior, Josie wants to put Staffe in the picture. She’s still fuming that he had been to see Blears the previous night without telling her but she has kept Staffe’s visit to herself, a part of her aware that he might know best and fearful that if she is wrong there might be more to come.

Margaret Shinwell is put into a squad car, for Leadengate. As the last of the doggers drives away, one of the uniformed officers comes across, tapping a rolled-up
News
against his thigh. He holds it up. ‘Last edition,’ he says. ‘Squad driver picked it up, said you should see it.’

By torch, Rimmer and Josie read, together.

‘Are these photographs taken from the morgue or the scenes?’

‘They’ve been clever, cropping like that.’

The two photographs of the murdered girls show only the ghostly pale faces of Elena and Rebeccah, down to the chest plate. Their eyes are closed, like Rossetti lovers being sent off to watery graves.

‘I see this is Absolom,’ she says, tapping the front page. ‘A nasty piece of work. Shouldn’t we tell the press about Blears now?’

Rimmer looks weary, but he reaches out to her and pats her on the shoulder, says, ‘You did a bloody marvellous job tonight, but I’ve a horrible feeling Pennington will take the case away from us. He’s never liked me.’

*

Sylvie’s hair is wet and she is wearing one of his shirts.

‘Where’s Pulford?’ says Staffe.

‘Out.’ She leads him into the Queen’s Terrace lounge by his lapels, pushing him onto the sofa, sitting on his lap. Suddenly, she looks just the same as their first night, when he was tempted into a club so trendy that he didn’t know a single person who had even heard of it.

Her fringe hangs down in wet thongs and her eyes are clean as a whistle – like a country girl. Not like that first night when, back at one of his flats up in Maida Vale, she had pulled out of a long, deep embrace and smacked his hand away, saying, ‘Manners! I had you down for a gentleman.’ She had smoothed down her tiny dress and knelt at his Cobb coffee table, tipping out the powdery contents of an intricately carved teak pillbox. ‘You having a line?’

Staffe had shrugged.

She said, ‘You’ll treat me right. I can tell you know not to hurt a girl.’ He later learned that Sylvie had discovered, earlier that week, her mother was pregnant by her French boyfriend – the latest in a constant line. She would never meet that sister.

Now, Staffe pulls her towards him. He kisses her and she opens her mouth. He holds her away, looks into her eyes and says, ‘Remember our first meal?’

‘I remember the drive home.’

‘I spent a fortune on you.’

‘And I …’ She stands up, unbuttoning the shirt and letting it slide to the floor. ‘Was worth every penny. You said so.’

‘I love you,’ he says, glancing towards the door.

‘How much?’

‘Every inch of you.’

Sylvie raises a leg and plants her foot on the sofa. ‘You haven’t even noticed what I’m wearing.’

Staffe looks her up and down, smiling. She twinkles her left hand and his eyes go wide and bright. The Urals ring catches the light and he gasps. ‘You’re saying yes?’

She pushes him back, kissing him, saying, ‘You’ll treat me right, won’t you, Will? Not hurt me.’

*

Pennington strides into the incident room, dressed in black tie from his interrupted dinner at the Salters’ Hall. He was mad as hell on the telephone, but by the time he arrives, he is calm.

The four of them sit around a table: Rimmer with his notes in front of him; Josie twirling a pencil like a majorette, her adrenalin surging, still; Pennington, composed as an undertaker; and Tara Fleet, who has come straight from the gym, her hair and make-up immaculate and low-riding velour tracksuit seemingly fresh from its wrapping.

Tara reads the transcript of the interview with Margaret Shinwell. ‘Of course what I say can only steer you. It will be dismissed in court as speculation,’ says Tara. ‘You can call me or somebody else as an expert witness, and as far as I can see, this is textbook stuff. His behaviour, as far as we know it – the prison interviews and the computer drives, then the snuff magazine and the underwear – and now
this
, all represent a repressed but irrepressible need to impose, born from a ritualised programme of sexual passivity and social exclusion.

‘In the Kennel, Blears makes do with being fellated whilst another man brings the woman to orgasm, but he has his payback. Leaving Danya naked, the repetitive stabbings of Stone. These look like two different murders, by two different people, but they are both precisely the types of behaviour you could rationalise to a type such as Graham Blears. Especially when one led to the other.’

‘Then the need to be seen – by coming to us,’ says Rimmer.

‘Exactly.’ Tara Fleet tosses the transcript down and looks at Pennington, pleased with her analysis.

‘Recognition. A temporary, but essential inversion of the exclusion.’

‘A type?’ says Josie.

Tara looks at her as if the young DC is holding her fork and knife the wrong way round.

‘He’s our man, then?’ says Pennington.

‘It’s totally plausible.’

Pennington picks up the copy of
The News.

‘We’ve got Absolom downstairs, sir,’ says Rimmer. ‘We think maybe we should tell him we’ve got Blears.’

‘Of course you should. But be careful. We win this prosecution in court, not on the front page. Give Absolom as little as it takes to turn his story round.’

‘Will you see him, sir?’ says Rimmer.

‘Naturally,’ says Pennington, as if something lovely has just dropped in his lap. ‘I can’t wait to wipe the smile off that little scrote’s face.’

Seventeen

Staffe has barely slept, and as the wagons on the Brompton Road begin to rumble, he makes a cafetière of coffee, lets it brew and returns to his books.
Who’s Who
lies open at H and he re-reads the entry for Howerd, Leonard Patrick Mark. Born 1955, educated at Ampleforth and St John’s College, Oxford. Howerd married Imogen, nee Audley. He has two children, Roderick and Arabella, and is Deputy Chairman and Head of Corporate Finance at Laing’s Bank. He is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, the Royal Horticultural Society and the Royal Yacht Club. His wife died in 2005. Blood doesn’t get much bluer than this, yet what interests Staffe most is the unknown, stark relief to the published history: his daughter, domiciled in the telememories of two dead whores.