Willing Flesh (36 page)

Staffe stands up, nursing his ribs, turning his battered mind to what he can possibly do about Brendan Stone, but he realises he hasn’t got his jacket. He looks around the room, sees it on a chair by the pool of blood, a photograph jutting from the inside pocket.

He goes across, stoops beneath the cross, Tchancov above him, like religion gone horribly wrong. In this instance – as he plucks the image of the young child with the dark hair and the straight nose, and standing in the pool of Tchancov’s blood, cardinal red – he sees the light.

Pennington clicks his phone off, says, ‘You had that evidence linking Elena and Tchancov. That will stick, be the end of it. A just end, wouldn’t you say? So cut yourself this bit of slack, Will. It’s the right thing, trust me.’

‘The right thing for who?’

‘It’s from on high.’

Staffe takes a hold of the handle, opens the door. High-wattage scene lights blast a flat white light along the dark corridors in the Castle’s cellars. Officers in translucent, synthetic suits dust the doors and bag discarded belongings.

At the top of the stairs, the brute who had been on the door is being heaved onto a stretcher by three ambulancemen. Outside, the bitter cold has taken the day early. Staffe shivers, knows he should go to hospital but he has a grave decision to make. If he delays, these lives and deaths will be swept away for their own devices.

He watches Pennington climb into his car and beckons Josie across.

‘I’ll drive you to hospital,’ she says.

He shakes his head. Each word hurts and he speaks low, so close to her ear he can smell the conditioner of her hair.

*

‘What the hell have they done to you!’ Sylvie stands back, stabs her fingers into her hair, aghast. ‘I thought you wouldn’t be back. I had a feeling. By the look of things, I was nearly right. You should see a doctor.’

‘I can sort it out,’ he says, wincing as he talks.

‘Come with me.’ She leads him to the bathroom, dabs his broken face with lint dipped in iodine, saying nothing to comfort him when he grimaces.

‘My dad called. I told him about us.’

‘What did he say?’ mumbles Staffe.

‘He was pleased for me. I said we’d go over, on Christmas Day. We can do that, can’t we?’

Staffe stares into the mirror, sees the back of her, forces his mind to another place, beyond the pain. He will bring Brendan Stone to justice: this criminal who abandoned his daughter to her whore mother’s charge while he was in and out of every jail in London with his drink and his drugs, his violent robberies. Yet now he divines that he can screw up the law once and for all and play God with a knife.

Or, is the love of a father a mystical thing, as beautiful in measure as the horror of surviving your own children. And is the world a better place, for the passing of a rapist, a war criminal?

‘Are you listening to me?’ says Sylvie, tossing the bloodied and indigo swabs into the basin.

*

Unmarked pursuit vehicles are parked up at each of the three exits to the Atlee estate. Any con worth his salt wouldn’t touch this scene with the sharpened end of a bogbrush – and that goes for Brendan Stone.

Staffe slopes away from the invisibly sieged building and tries every shebeen and lock-in he knows from Bethnal Green to Bow and all the way back up to Hackney, but nobody – apparently – has seen Brendan Stone. It would seem everyone has heard about his good deed, but the monkeys in these parts don’t speak no evil.

He makes his way back into the City, down the back streets from Shoreditch. As he walks across Finsbury Circus, the City workers mill in small numbers and Staffe thinks he might be having a brainwave, but his matter is so fried, he can’t judge.

The City is unnaturally quiet. He stops a man in a suit and an open collar. The man has a jaunt to his step and a smile on his face. ‘What’s wrong?’ says Staffe.

‘Wrong? Nothing’s wrong.’

‘Where has everybody gone?’

The man scrutinises Staffe’s cuts and bruises, then laughs, patting Staffe on the shoulder. ‘Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve. They’ve all got better places to be. Except you and me.’

Beyond the man, the sun licks the Barbican Tower. It is like a sign, like a wand upon his matter.

Staffe says, ‘Merry Christmas,’ to the man’s back and as he does, he laments Brendan’s orphan granddaughter, left all alone in the world when her mother was murdered. He says the name of that daughter of slain Rebeccah, ‘Elena,’ and thinks about the opportunities she will never have; the slim chance she won’t go the way of her mother, and her mother’s mother.

*

‘You can’t just turn up here. Call first.’ Rosa looks at her wrist, even though she wears no watch.

He can smell stale Chinese food, and cigarettes. ‘I wanted to see if you’re all right.’

She blocks the doorway by leaning against the frame with an outstretched arm.

‘You want me to go?’

She nods.

This contravenes the nature of their relationship. They are frank, direct. He waits for a truth to betray itself in her eyes. She looks past him, dead still, waiting for him to go, but a cry emerges from within and he finally hears what he came for.

A baby cries.

A baby cries and Staffe hears the unadulterated, pure love of a father imploring the infant to be well. ‘Ssshh, Elena. It’s all right. It’s all right.’

‘He couldn’t leave her,’ says Rosa. ‘He has nobody to take her. You’ve seen Nicola, she couldn’t tend a baby, not on her own. Just let him be, Will. I beg you.’

‘No,’ says a voice from inside.

Rosa turns around. Behind her, Brendan Stone, grand daughter in arms, stands in a half-light.

In these moments, Staffe knows what must be done. He doesn’t despair at the thousand repercussions to the decisions he has to make today. In this moment, in the company of the whore and the murderer, he is filled with wonder at all the different love there is in this city.

Brendan raises the child to his face and he kisses her cheek. Elena gurgles, smiles at her granddad. As he hands her to Rosa, Elena reaches out for him with her tiny, pudgy hand.

Staffe takes a hold of Brendan by the soft flesh under his arm.

‘I’m sorry I hurt you,’ says Brendan, to Staffe, looking back at the infant child.

Rosa says, ‘You can’t take him away from her, Will.’

‘I can’t not,’ says Staffe.

Brendan says, ‘It’s the only place I can be.’ He looks up at Staffe. ‘Isn’t it.’

Staffe thinks of what consequences will flow, in the wake of Tchancov’s death. ‘You need to look out for yourself, Brendan,’ says Staffe, shuddering to think that a jailbird like Brendan regards prison as the safest place for a villain.

‘The damage was done a long time ago,’ says Brendan. ‘You know, I thought it was the right thing, truly I did. I believed it all.’

‘Believed what?’

‘That a wrong would be righted, that I’d find a kind of peace, at least some satisfaction.’ Brendan Stone looks at Staffe, pleadingly. ‘He did kill her, didn’t he? That Russian bastard.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘For the love of God,’ says Brendan, led away by Staffe, before the infant Elena sees her grandad fall completely to pieces.

All the way to Leadengate, Staffe thinks what it must be like, to be the father of a daughter, unable to protect. And for the mother of a son, also. He reconsiders what he knows of Imogen and Roddy; how little he knows of Darius and his mother.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve, babe, in the drunk tank. The Butcher’s Hook is half market workers, half coppers from the night shift. It’s barely lunchtime, but you’d think it was midnight. The pub has been hosting the craic since before dawn.

‘Is it true?’ says Josie. Her eyes are moist and heavy-lidded, half-moon and waning. ‘Christ, sir. You should get some stitches.’ She touches his nose and puts a finger on the corner of his mouth.

‘Is what true?’ says Staffe, nursing his pint. Josie could be asking him if it is true that there’s an almighty stink brewing since he brought Brendan Stone in yesterday.

‘About you and Sylvie getting married.’ They are partially obscured from the throng by a gaming machine. She takes a step closer, all Coco and ethanol. Her lips are plump and her make-up all wiped away.

‘How do you know?’

She looks over her shoulder towards Pulford who is necking with a WPC from Community Liaison. She turns back, places a hand on Staffe’s chest, the in of her thigh pressed to his knee. ‘A little birdie.’

Staffe puts his hands on Josie’s shoulders and she looks up at him, goes tippy-toed with her eyes closing and he kisses her, on the cheek, whispering in her ear, ‘Merry Christmas, Josie.’ He takes a step in and wraps his arms around her and they sway away with toothless Shane and when the song is done, Staffe says, ‘I’m through.’ He releases her and she totters a step back, holds the gaming machine.

‘Through?’ She scrunches her eyes at him.

‘You did a great job, Josie.’

‘You were right. We were
all
right – about Blears and Tchancov and …’ She looks puzzled.

‘I have to go,’ says Staffe.

‘Stay.’

Pulford comes across, holding two bottles of Beck’s between the fingers of one hand. ‘Dance with this young lady, would you, Sergeant?’

‘Bugger off,’ says Josie, pushing between them both, heading for the bar.

Over Pulford’s shoulder, he sees Jombaugh come in. He stays by the door, beckons Staffe.

He says to Pulford, ‘Be at Howerd’s house, first thing in the morning, like we said.’

Pulford gives him a resigned look.

Staffe pushes his way towards the door, past Josie, staring into her drink. In a crowd of people, she looks all alone.

‘You’ve got it?’ says Staffe, to Jombaugh.

‘There aren’t that many A’Courts. His charge sheets helped – he even got done at that school.’

‘Ampleforth?’

‘Expelled for insolence, apparently. He moved back home with his mother in 2003. She has the same address, still, but now it’s a flat. He’s shown a heap of different addresses ever since 2005.’ Jom hands Staffe an A4 envelope. ‘Are you going to tell me what you’re up to?’

‘I really appreciate this,’ says Staffe. ‘Merry Christmas, Jom. Give my love to Katherine.’

‘I could come with you.’

‘It’s Christmas, Jom. You have a good one.’

Outside, he takes shelter from the whistling cold in the high Victorian splendour of the meat market. Staffe leans against an iron pillar. It soars above him, all the way up to the intricately worked, many-gabled roof. He opens the envelope.

Cardinal Bernard Audley stares up at him, into the camera. The Pope smiles and Bernard does not. Bernard wears his crimson cassock which, according to the caption beneath, ‘recalls the heroism of the martyrs. It is a symbol of a love for Jesus and his church that knows no bounds.’

The article pre-dates poor Imogen’s South American death by three weeks and – as far as Staffe can calculate – she was already in that far-flung Christian continent.

Further down the account of the Consistory for the creation of Bernard, the Pope referred to Mark’s gospel, said, ‘… to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’

He returns the research to its envelope, looks at the archive of pictures the case has issued him: Ludmilla Shostavic, staring forlorn beside brother Bobo; Roddy Howerd with his arm draped around his sister’s suitor; the dark-haired child of the east with the straight nose; Uncle Bernard and his holiness.

*

Gary Mulplant looks Staffe dead in the eye as he saunters up to the detective inspector in the bar of the Thamesbank Hotel. He is in his civvies, carries a suit hanger over his shoulder, says, looking at Staffe’s face. ‘What happened to you?’