Willing Flesh (3 page)

*

The SOC lights are brilliant and flood the beautiful woman’s naked body. She seems blue as ocean in this light, her edges harsh as rocks. Her curves are long and bold. A pendant of dried blood sullies the cream carpet to the right of her head. Staffe wants to be alone with her, but the room is full of Forensics, and Josie, and Rimmer.

He can’t take his eyes from the beautiful woman. She has a thin smile and, somehow, an inquisitiveness in her dead expression; a serene willingness, it seems. Staffe asks Janine, ‘Is this a sexual assault?’

Janine, the City Police pathologist, crouches down beside the body and points at the confluence of Elena’s buttocks and thighs with the tip of her tweezers. ‘I wouldn’t like to say, for sure, until I’ve done the autopsy, but I don’t think they penetrated.’

‘They left her naked,’ says Rimmer, punching away at his Blackberry. He is wearing a chalkstripe suit and his shoes are brilliantly shined. You would never guess from the look of him that he hasn’t got the stomach for this.

‘What was the sequence of events? Can you hazard a guess?’

‘I don’t think it was the blow to the head. There is skin on the corner of the radiator but no bruising. I need to check her mouth and throat, but she may well have been smothered.’

‘That bastard on the desk won’t tell us anything,’ says Rimmer. ‘He says the room hadn’t even been registered, says a Finnish banker had reserved the room for tonight but he hadn’t shown up.’

‘Don’t go upsetting the applecart,’ says Staffe.

‘The applecart?’

‘We don’t want them closing ranks. I want statements off all staff who were in the building between midday and seven.’ He turns to Josie Chancellor, his young DC who was working with Rimmer whilst Staffe was up in Oxford. ‘Set up booths in the main conference room. I need eight uniforms here and …’ He looks at Rimmer, ‘we’ll have absolute silence. Nobody talks.’ Staffe turns to Janine, ‘I need a time of death.’ He looks across at Josie. ‘Do we have an ID on her?’

‘There was only her case, sir. All that was in it was a couple of grammes of coke in a pill box.’

‘Good stuff?’

‘I’d say so,’ says Janine.

‘And the case? I need to know every shop from Stansted to Gatwick that stocks the make.’

‘We’re on to that, sir,’ says Josie.

He runs his fingers through his hair and sighs. ‘What about her clothes?’

‘They left her completely naked. Must have taken the clothes.’

‘Who found her?’

‘A maid,’ says Josie. ‘She’s Portuguese. Heard a phone ringing and ringing. She waited quarter of an hour.’

‘Where’s the phone?’

Josie holds up a tiny gold Nokia in a plastic bag. ‘It was in an inside pocket of the coat.’ Josie nods down at the fur, still under the naked woman.

‘Have you checked to see what number was ringing?’

‘Yes, sir. Someone called Markary.’

‘Markary?’ says Staffe.

‘You know him?’

‘A few years ago, if it’s the same one. Check him out, and we’ll need to see every byte of data in that phone.’ He walks out of the room, pausing at the door. ‘Call me when this room is empty, I’ll be downstairs.’

*

Sylvie is talking to one of the waiters in the Thamesbank dining room. It is the end of service and Staffe pauses at the entrance to the grand room, a modern classic of high-glaze paint and suede upholstery. The waiter is leaning forward, hands clasped behind him, back perfectly straight, but he is making Sylvie laugh.

As Staffe approaches, the waiter sidles away. Sylvie straightens her face and pats the seat next to her, says, ‘They’re doing us some lemon sole and a cheese board.’

Staffe shakes his napkin loose, places it in his lap and resets his cutlery. ‘You don’t have to be here.’

‘I understand, Will.’ She squeezes his knee. ‘Somebody died and this is what you do.’

He wants to say, ‘That’s not what you’ve always said,’ but he knows better. He leans forward, confides, ‘I think she was a prostitute.’

‘Did she suffer? I mean, badly.’

He shakes his head, pours them each some sparkling water. ‘I don’t think so, not especially.’ He sips from his glass, says, ‘I could get us a room. You’ve got all your things in the car. I could be done in an hour or so.’

‘You could come to mine.’

It is a bone of contention that Sylvie always comes to Staffe’s place. There was a time, and still sometimes is, when Staffe thinks this is something sinister. He has a key to her place now, which he has never used.

‘Will! I said you could come to mine.’

‘Fine.’

‘Look, I know you need your space. And so do I.’

‘I didn’t say anything about space.’

Sylvie leans back and clasps her hands together behind her head. She blows her cheeks out, looks him in the eye and laughs. ‘You’re hard work, Will Wagstaffe, fuck me if you’re not.’

‘I’m not,’ he says.

‘Maybe we should stay here.’ She leans down, pats her handbag. ‘I’ve got a good book.’

‘And I’ll bring some cocoa.’

*

Staffe turns off the SOC lights in Room 601 and the dead woman seems to move. He thinks she has pulled up her knees, ever so slightly; tucked her chin, nestling down. But it is a trick of the gloom.

Janine will return for the beautiful corpse soon, to butterfly her like a delicate spatchcock and glean from the blood and tissue of her and the liquids and substances in and on her, quite how she spent the last moments of her life. She will also determine when the woman died – that he can eliminate the innocent.

Staffe leans against the wall and slides down onto his haunches. He has her in his eyeline, her cold flesh between him and the river, which is like a silver ribbon in the moonlight. This is a room designed for love or seduction, with its floor-to-ceiling windows and its opulent furnishings. It is not a place for any Tom, Dick or Harry to come a-killing.

Outside, a boat moves slowly down river, its stern light dull in the estuary fret. He envies the skipper, making his way to sea; a whistling kettle down below and the sizzle of bacon at dawn’s first; the horizon getting no closer – all day long.

He closes the door behind him and locks it, hands the key to the uniformed constable in the corridor.

‘A long day, sir.’

‘It’ll be longer before we’re through.’ A new design is emerging for the night. All he has is the call from Markary and he takes the lift down, turns his thoughts to the man who was first to call this beautiful woman after she died.

Taki Markary crossed Staffe’s path some years ago when a gang of Chinamen were mass-burning DVDs in a building that was leased to a company which was owned by a company which was managed by a trust whose ultimate beneficiary was a charity run by Taki Markary’s wife, Sema. Markary emerged unscathed from that investigation, but during its course, Staffe became aware that the smooth Turk had made his money selling arms to Iraq in the 1990 war. That hadn’t quite tallied with what Staffe had seen. Markary hadn’t seemed cut out for such rough trading, seemed intent on a far finer life.

The traffic on Embankment is thin, tail lights like far-strung rubies. From the dash, his phone glows, emerald. It is Josie. ‘What have you got?’

‘Markary’s clean as a whistle. Still living in Mayfair. His wife’s got a couple of nightclubs in Istanbul. She’s old money.’

‘Kids?’

‘No.’

‘How old is she?’

‘Younger than him. Forty. He’s fifty, but he looks like a handsome fella. Like the one who plays cards, you know …’

‘It’s bridge. A bit more than a card game.’ Staffe cuts up through Whitehall, making his way towards the frosted halls of government. ‘You mean Omar Sharif.’

‘That’s all I’ve got, apart from a list of com panies. He’s got the Executive, off Berkeley Square.’

‘That’s practically a brothel.’

‘But he looks legit, sir. Sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry. It’s supposed to be a good thing when people comply with the law.’ Staffe hangs up, watches St James’s clubland discharge a final few, born to rule.

The cars in this part of God’s London – all Italian and German – are beginning to frost, sparkling in the soft orange street light, like candied fruits. Staffe parks his battered Peugeot on Mount Street, and looks up at the stucco building. His breath trails in the wintry air and he presses 3, waits for the response. Eventually a weary voice comes crystal clear in the silver speaker grille. Markary sounds more refined than Staffe recalls. The voice is soft; the easternness light on the edges of his vowels.

‘What do you want this time of night. Who is that?’

Staffe looks up at the video camera and smiles. ‘Just a word.’ He holds his warrant card up to the lens. ‘Inspector Wagstaffe, Leadengate CID.’

‘What?’

‘You phoned a girl. Something happened to her.’

‘Which girl?’

‘Let me in.’

‘You best be quick. Second floor.’ The latch whirrs. Staffe pushes the door and a light comes on automatically. Staffe sinks into the lush pile underfoot. There is a smell of the Orient and the common parts are adorned with gilded oil paintings. Pre-Raphaelite copies. The lift is silent. He can’t imagine that anyone living here would ever be brought down.

When he gets to Markary’s floor the door to the apartment is open and his host is on the telephone. ‘They’re here now. Yes. I’m not an idiot.’

‘Your solicitor, Mr Markary? Odd behaviour for someone who’s done nothing wrong.’ Staffe fixes him, firm, in the eyes. The years have been kind. His grey-flecked black hair is cut dapper and even at this hour it is slicked back in tight waves from a matinee hairline that juts to the temples. He is no more than half a stone overweight in his polo shirt and linen trousers. ‘You called her at two forty-seven.’

‘Called who?’

Staffe scrutinises a painting of a woman, seemingly seated in a crowd of people but looking lost. She has fine features but her face is dirty, the clothes grubby. ‘Is it true what they say about how you pay for all this?’

‘Who are “they”?’

‘It’s what we call received wisdom.’

‘We? Do you not consider me to be one of you, Inspector …?’

‘Wagstaffe. They call me Staffe.’

‘They say racism is rife in the Metropolitan Police Force.’

‘I’m not with the Met. I am City. And I’m no racist. But that doesn’t mean I have to give houseroom to foreign criminals. We have met before.’

‘I don’t recall.’ Markary goes to a walnut secretaire and pulls down the front, pours himself a large measure of spirit from a cut-glass decanter.

‘Life continues to be kind, I take it, since your Chinamen let you down.’

Markary moves towards Staffe. ‘You have an interesting karma. You are unfulfilled.’

‘You’re wrong.’

‘Your mask slips, Inspector. But you can never see that.’ He regards the painting of the woman, alongside Staffe.

‘Perhaps Sickert could have shown me.’

‘You know your art.’ Markary squints. ‘You can read her, just from this moment in time. He is a genius, to see into her this way, to commit her so.’

Staffe thinks of the beautiful, fair corpse, her face and the shape of her locked in time. ‘They killed her, Taki. I’m going to find out who and why. I’d have thought you’d want the same for your girl.’

‘How do you mean,
my
girl?’

‘Why do you call prostitutes, Taki? Is your wife here?’

‘What did she look like?’ he whispers.

‘I can only tell you how she looked in that last moment.’ Staffe takes the glass from him, sips. It is Armagnac, of the highest quality. He holds on to it and as he takes a step back, he says, ‘She looked as if she was about to enjoy what she did. She was pale as snow. Her hair had long curls and she was lying on an oyster fur.’