Kill and Tell (11 page)

Staffe rises before six. He is in a tiny guest room in the eaves of the Crooked Billet and the rising sun slants in through the Velux window. He has a quick wash, climbs quickly into his clothes and sneaks down the stairs, hearing Rimmer snore through the walls of the neighbouring room. Rodney’s dog yaps twice, but Staffe lets himself out into the yard, gets Gavin the Lad’s bike and pedals down Tippets Lane to the Ockingham gallops. Attilio and his small staff make silhouettes on the folded outlines of the gentle Surrey hills.

Attilio directs affairs and Staffe waits for the last piece of work to be done. Judging from the way the last horse’s work is watched intently by everyone, this must be Gemstone – the jewel in Attilio’s string and owned by Abie Myers. Slowly, the string is taken back to the yard. The morning has become brilliant.

‘I’ve told you and your damned colleague everything I know,’ barks Attilio as he hacks past Staffe. The horse’s sweat is sweet and deep. Staffe freewheels through the dew in Attilio’s wake and Attilio pulls up, looking down on Staffe. ‘What do you want?’

‘I can see you’re upset, but I just wanted to say—’ Staffe waits as Attilio’s hack rears up. Attilio calms the horse expertly and the string gets further away ‘You can’t escape what you don’t say; what you don’t do. I only realised after my father died, all the things he did for me. The duty he paid. He was a different man to what he wanted to be, and I never thanked him for being a father. The best he could be.’

Attilio dismounts. ‘Don’t try to trick me.’

‘I left too much unsaid. When my father was suddenly not there any more, I was angry with myself.’

‘I haven’t even said goodbye to him,’ says Attilio. He leans with his back to a large yew tree. ‘There are things about my father I will never know. Carmelo is the last of the line. His story will disappear with him.’

‘And then you will be last of the line.’

Attilio shakes his head. ‘I was never going to be that. You were there, at the reading of the will. Unacknowledged, that’s what I am.’

‘He changed his will very close to the end. You could challenge it.’

‘Oh no, I couldn’t do that. You have to let an old man go the way he wants to go. There is something called honour. This is a matter of doing the right thing. You won’t find me digging it all over.’

‘Digging it all over?’ Staffe thinks this a strange phrase.

‘Digging. That’s what you do.’

‘I’m digging into Jacobo but not getting anywhere. I have to consider the possibility that he was involved in your father’s abduction.’

‘As another victim, you mean?’

‘Or otherwise.’

‘Jacobo is fiercely loyal to my father – in a way I have never understood.’ Attilio watches his string come round a last time and head back to the training yard, led by Helena now. She looks daggers at them. ‘He was always around, when my father was not. Jacobo and Appolina were like a mother and father to me.’

‘Why might Abie Myers think Jacobo is responsible for what happened to your father?’

‘I can’t believe he would say such a thing, and I won’t speculate.’ Attilio continues to watch Helena.       

‘You’re reliant on Abie now. Is that what your father wanted?’

‘How am I reliant upon Abie Myers?’

‘I know about Blackfriars Holdings and the deal with the estate. Abie’s saved your bacon. And Helena’s.’

‘That was a good deal for everybody. Now, if you’re finished—’

‘What about Maurice? Your father obviously took quite a shine to him.’

‘It would be easy for me to point a finger.’

‘He has a foot in Abie’s camp, too. I saw them at the races just the other day.’

‘You can’t drag me down that road. I will try to do the honourable thing; for the family and its name. I am under no illusion, I have to fight for my life.’

‘Fight for your business, and your marriage, you mean?’

‘My marriage has nothing to do with this, you hear.’ Attilio remounts his hack. ‘Nothing whatsoever.’

‘How does Helena feel about selling out to new money?’

‘We still have the house.’

‘For how long?’ says Staffe, watching Attilio kick his hack’s quarters, and the steed accelerates away, hooves heavy in the ancient Surrey turf. Time was, Henry the Eighth came a-hunting in these parts.

The mist rises from the meadow between them and the manor, its Jacobean chimney stacks rising like something from a fairy tale.

This is the best time of day. The sun catches the dew on the football pitches and the fields are covered in vapour. The air is still and the shadow from the chapel’s ugly spire is cast long and fine. The curses and threats are still between sheets.

Pulford rises at five-thirty each morning. He likes an hour to study and think. In this hour, he could be anywhere. Every other time in jail, even when he closes his eyes, there’s nowhere else he might be.

He will run out of material if he doesn’t slow down, so he rations this final article, chews long on the ideas and facts, digesting what Hutchison is saying about the Afghan and the Albanian gangs and how it was ever thus in the East End, when Jews and Italians, Turks and Jamaicans would join hands across all their oceans, in the name of organised crime.

All the time, in the back of his mind, the danger his mother is in taunts Pulford. It turns his stomach and fogs his thoughts. For hours every day he curls on the thin mattress and feels himself slowly churn. He should tell Staffe, but if the e.gang get word the police know, the danger she is in will escalate. He can’t help imagining how she must have reacted to the killing of Simba. She bought the dog fourteen years ago as a puppy when Pulford had first left home to take up his scholarship at that school. Look at him now.

He reverts to a potted biography he is compiling of Charles Sabini, and he sifts through the footnotes, reading about Sabini’s Brighton years when he passed under the name of Fred Handley – setting new standards for viciousness in the businesses of extortion and illegal gambling. He marks the text and makes an entry in his bibliography, then refers back to his notes from the article Staffe had brought in: ‘Colour-blind Crooks’.

Someone is outside his door. In prison, your instinct for the abnormal is hypersensitive, so Pulford rapidly finishes his sentence, noting: ‘The ethnic diversity, the social inclusiveness of crime in London today simply mirrors the halcyon period of pre-war gangland London.’ He writes ‘Melting Pot’ just as the knock comes on the door. A thought occurs to him and he writes ‘Carmelo? Age. Sabini.’

The knock is louder and accompanied by Mister Crawshaw’s sneering welcome to the new day. He quickly puts his pile of papers away and watches the door open, sees Levi Salmon, large as a bear and smiling, stepping into his cell. Levi carries a tray. The door closes behind him and from outside, a key turns; the bolt shoots.

Levi Salmon has a gold tooth and shoulders wider than an armchair. ‘You ought to keep your nut down, Pulford. And your mouth shut. So when your mom comes—’

‘What!’

‘My peeps in the north say she knows all about you now. Knows you’re coming to trial. We keep an eye on her. We keep an eye just like the police up there. Who you think told the police up there to keep an eye on your mummy? Your uncle Ray? He’s been tending her close. Tending
all
her needs, is what my soldiers tell me. How’s that sound?’

‘You bastard!’ Pulford swings for Beef but the big man sways back, fast as a middleweight. Pulford lunges again, but Beef brings the tray up, catching Pulford on the chin. He yelps with pain, has bitten into his tongue, not all the way through but enough for the blood to sluice, and Pulford stops, tries to talk but it hurts too much.

Beef lets the tray fall to the floor, and as it clatters, Pulford sees what magic Beef might perform. In his right hand, he holds a paring knife, and he backs Pulford up to the wall. He puts the tip of the knife to Pulford’s Adam’s apple. ‘Open your mouth.’

Pulford opens his mouth, closing his eyes.

‘That’s nasty, man. But anyone can see, they’s teeth marks done that, you clumsy motherfucker.’ Beef whistles and the bolt shoots. Crawshaw steps in, tosses the morning edition of
The News
onto his bed, folded open to a picture of hooded youths in Hackney. In the bottom right corner, a small, inset portrait of Jadus Golding.

The train picks out a high-hat rhythm as it chunters along the track. Staffe remembers the first time he made this trip, with his father and his sister‚ Marie, speeding through cuttings and along bridges over meandering rivers.

He flicks through a sample he lifted from Leon Goldman’s vast memoir, looking for something on Brighton. The memoir jumps back and forth in time and the sections are arranged thematically, on the subjects of Heritage, Beginnings, Commerce, Heart, Hedon, Homeland and a final, incomplete collection of notes on Legacy. Martin Goldman hasn’t compiled an index yet and Staffe has only brought the parts in which he saw mention of Carmelo on the quick flick-through – mainly from ‘Hedon’. Goldman writes:

We would attend Brighton for racehorses and Hove for greyhounds, rendezvousing the evening prior to laying final plans for the sojourn. The British Queen was our favoured establishment and the gathered throng would imbibe whisky and soda, save Carmelo, whose penchant was for pep with a shot of rum, in deference to his delicate stomach. In all our years as client and advisor, I was never aware of Carmelo visiting a doctor with his supposed ailment and I suspect he had an aversion to whisky. Grappa was his tipple of choice, but this wasn’t available in the British Queen, where gin was considered exotica.

It was ever the case that the plans for the south coast trips would accommodate an evening in which Carmelo went unaccompanied. We all had our suspicions what this might involve. Carmelo’s libido was certainly quite enviable for a man like myself, contentedly married and not endowed with the most
handsome of faces. I envied Carmelo neither his wealth nor the power it wielded, but the regard he was afforded by the most beautiful, sought after and mischievous women, sometimes made me a little green.

We would always travel by train, reserving an entire firs
t-
class carriage. If Abie Myers was with us . . .

Staffe rereads this section, makes a pencil mark in the margin and folds down the top corner of the page.

. . . If Abie Myers was with us, we would smoke cigars. This began in the days before Castro, when Abie would return from his voyages, renewing investments in Cuba, with the tallest tales of the Cuban women and the music, and, of course, a box of Cohibas. In summer, we would gravitate towards the Regency and partake of oysters and lobster, before retiring to the casino. There would be the same complexion of people in the casino as at the course and the gambling would escalate. The winners from the course had money to reinvest. The losers had losses to recoup. In such circumstances, something has to yield, and invariably a confrontation would ensue. On one occasion . . .

Staffe rubs his temples. Goldman’s archaic style is hard to bear but he conjures images of what it must have been like when Carmelo was in his pomp and first met Abie Myers.

He takes out the photograph of Jacobo Sartori and reverts to the text, seeking mention of Jacobo, but there is none. Even the most turgid memoir doesn’t dwell on a manservant.

Staffe determines to visit the Regency and have the lobster, a taste Abie Myers perhaps acquired in Cuba, and Staffe thinks back to the journey he made around Carmelo’s house in Beauvoir Place and the oil painting of the fishermen on the promenade. He knows what is depicted now. It is the Malecon in Havana, with the sea crashing high against the sea wall and the vintage American cars cruising by. Carmelo must have visited Cuba in the fifties, which puts him in a new league. He went with Abie Myers, which puts them in the same boat, from an early time, and he remembers what Emma Thyssen-Wills had said to him, about the Trapani history and too many given days.

Inspector Wagstaffe has a good face, just as Appolina described, though his appearance is somewhat dishevelled. He has a face of burden, as his father used to say. Jacobo saw his father for the last time waving him off from the port at Trapani for a brave new start. He was a different person then.

Four days later, when he passed through customs at Tilbury, Jacobo was taken to one side by a policeman with a lop-sided face and informed that his father was dead. He asked the policeman if it was an execution and the man said he didn’t know. Walking to the East End that day, he knew there was no way back. He had to become a man and put his past behind him.

Every now and again the inspector stops to regard his surroundings with a long gaze. Once they are on the seafront, it becomes clear that Wagstaffe is heading for the Regency where on any other given lunchtime it is where Jacobo might be found, in the window seat with his whitebait and a glass of Sangiovese. Better a bird in the trees than a duck, sitting. Clearly, the inspector’s instincts are good.

It might serve Jacobo well to walk in there now, introduce himself and put himself utterly at the police’s disposal. But he shan’t do that whilst there is still a chance things might come his way.

The inspector takes a tucked-away seat, from where he can see everything in the place. He orders lobster which he eats expertly, and at leisure. As he slowly chews, he reads from a pile of loose papers on the table.

When the waiter clears the table, the inspector engages him in conversation, shows him something that he takes from his inside pocket – presumably a photograph of Jacobo. He wonders if it is the one of him by the bandstand. The inspector would have asked Appolina where Jacobo is likely to be and she will have told him nothing. Always, she has known nothing, and he hopes that is sufficient to assure her safety. Looking briefly away, he sees the bandstand.

After a little more than an hour, the inspector pays and in the doorway, leaving, he receives a call.

Jacobo knows that if the inspector knew to come to the Regency,
then he will probably find his way to the dog track, and later to the Rendezvous. But if they knew the inspector was coming, they would know that by watching the inspector they may find him. Jacobo is easing that process, so he walks into the Lanes, winding and narrow where you can easily lose yourself.

He knows he can catch up with the inspector later, by conforming to old habits, old places: the Lord Nelson, Hove dogs, the Burlington tea rooms, or even the Rendezvous. Lost now in the Lanes, Jacobo wonders how Maurice is faring. He looks in an old jewellery shop, Fraenkel and Son. Old man Fraenkel was their fence, those years ago. He looks and he sees himself amongst the pearls and stones, half-sees and half-imagines a pale outline of Maurice’s grandfather and old times. Poor Maurice.

Josie traces her finger along the mapped landmarks on the enlarged street map of the East End. She has charted all the points Brandon Latymer made on Pulford’s unauthorised tracker and, sitting in Hoxton Square, she waits, poised to follow his Cherokee Jeep. He’s behind his routine so she calls Staffe, listens to him wax about Brighton. It’s a lovely day, apparently. She says, ‘Well, I’m hoping it just got a little lovelier.’ Brandon’s Jeep enters the square, passing the White Cube. ‘Brandon’s head just poked above the parapet.’ She can’t see beyond the smoked windows but it is definitely him. Her blood pumps and she moves in behind him as they process out of the square, driving east. ‘I think I know where he’s going, sir.’

‘Where?’

‘The Limekiln.’

‘Wait for me to get back.’

‘I’ll set up – in the flat we sorted,’ she says. ‘You know where I’ll be.’ She hangs up, calls into Leadengate and as soon as she sees Brandon’s brake lights glow on the approach to the Limekiln, she veers away, parks underground down at Old Street and changes into her velour track suit. She makes a ponytail and pulls it through her Lakers
cap, checks herself out in the mirror and calls the caretaker of the Limekiln Estate for the keys to the empty flat.

She walks back to the Limekiln with her iBuds in. Once inside the empty flat opposite Jasmine Cash’s place, one floor up, Josie puts up the net curtains and seats herself at the window, prepared for a long haul.

The dogs come out, led towards the traps by their handlers. There is one in particular that appeals to Staffe, but he is distracted by the sound of Martin Goldman in his ear.

People often lie when they talk to police. Most often, it is down to a fear of authority – not lying to conceal a guilt, rather to tell you what they think you want to know. Goldman is plain lying, though. ‘My father is asleep, I can’t disturb him. He’s a frail man.’

Staffe says, ‘It would really help the investigation if you could send me an electronic version of your father’s memoir.’

‘You’re lucky to have the script at all. It’s a personal document and cannot be relied upon, of course.’

‘I’m enjoying it, but there is no timeline, and there are over a thousand pages. It’s impossible to follow.’

‘It’s a first draft.’

‘I think it could be published, you know,’ says Staffe. ‘These histories are important.’

‘I will ask him when he wakes, but I think he might regret giving you the memoir in the first place.’ Martin hangs up.

The dogs are being loaded into the traps now. His father took him to Wimbledon dogs where they would meet ‘Uncle John’. Once, Uncle John had a beautiful woman with him, in a short skirt and with big hair. She was called Cynthia and fussed over young Will. His father said, ‘Will’s going to pick you a winner. Which one, Will?’ His father’s breath was sweet with drink.

Staffe knew from previous trips with his father and Uncle John to choose the dog led by the prettiest girl and he pointed to a girl he thought looked like Olivia Newton-John. Will loved Olivia Newton-John with all his young heart and his father and uncle guffawed and piled on the dog with big old fivers.

The dog won and everybody gave Will all their change. The beautiful woman kissed him and went ‘hmm’ as she did it, saying, ‘You’re going to break some hearts.’ When they got home, his father said, ‘Jangle for your mum,’ and they all laughed. Will went to bed thinking that one day he would be just like Uncle John and he wonders, now, why that didn’t come to pass.

The starting bell rings for the race he came for. According to the
Racing Post
, the Trap Two dog, Dowager Dawn, should go off at 6-1. Now, it is 5-2. It is trained just up the road and owned by Greene, M. Though ‘Greene’ is by no means the uncommonest of names, Staffe reckons the ‘M’ is for Maurice. He works his way down to the rails as Dowager Dawn hardens even further, to 2-1. He puts fifty quid on and takes his ticket, says to the bookie, ‘Is Maurice here?’

The bookie takes someone else’s money and nods up to the restaurant above them. ‘He loves this fuckin’ dog. He’s on big style.’

Staffe doesn’t look up, but works his way through the throng of people huddling around the bookie stands. The air is thick with the smell of frying hot dogs and cigarette smoke.

The crowd soon thins to nothing in the old, rickety, iron-roofed stand, where the lights aren’t even on. In the grandstand, the restaurant is brilliantly lit with its Tote girls and office outings. Beyond, the track has an ellipse of high lights, like badly strung pearls.

Staffe takes out his binoculars and pans up to the boxes. In the third along just one person stands at the front, his binoculars trained on Staffe. The two sets of lenses couple and Maurice Greene raises his arm, smiles broadly.

The gun goes off and the dogs power past, clattering the earth with dull paradiddles, tilting at an impossible camber and in an instant it is over. The dogs turn on the rabbit and a handler throws them a tatty rib of beef. The winner is fussed, put on a lead, and led away – by the prettiest handler of them all. Staffe looks at his ticket, which says ‘Trap Five’. He looks up at Maurice Greene, who is glum.

Staffe picks up his winnings, courtesy of Trap Five, and as he hands across the twenty twenty-pound notes, the bookie smiles, from which Staffe gleans that had Maurice’s Dowager Dawn come in, he would have taken a bit of a pasting. ‘Have you seen Jacobo?’ asks Staffe.

The bookie reaches past Staffe, pays out the man behind him, flashing a suspicious look and shaking his head without looking him in the eye. He shouts, ‘Move along the bus if you’re paid out,’ and busies himself in his leather Gladstone bag of loose notes.

Staffe turns and wafts the wad in the air, in the direction of the boxes, not looking up, but knowing he is seen.

Josie takes a swig from her last can of Red Bull and readjusts the cushions on the dining chair she has set up by the window of the flat. It is dark now and the concrete decks of the Limekiln are lit here and there. Some windows glow behind drawn curtains and a compendium of urban music booms around the estate. On the decks, they hang out, in young, unsupervised huddles.

A man in a hood swaggers up from the stairwell, and Josie leans forward, the net curtain rough on her forehead, between her and the window. The man walks as if he has a limp, but with a defined rhythm. She can’t be sure, but from CCTV footage she has seen, he has the hallmarks of Brandon Latymer. Sure enough, he doesn’t break his stride until he knocks on the door to Jasmine Cash’s flat. Within moments, Jasmine appears and he goes in. Josie sees them kiss – longer than friends.

As soon as the door closes on them, she calls Staffe. When he answers, she can hear he is in a crowd. ‘Are you still at the dog track?’

‘I’m just leaving. There’s one more thing I have to do.’

‘Brandon Latymer is on the Limekiln, sir.’

‘Don’t go near him. Wait for me.’

‘But you’re in Brighton and he’s here now.’

‘‘‘Here?”’

‘Brandon Latymer has called on Jasmine Cash. They kissed. He’s in there now.’

‘My God.’

‘We need to take advantage of this, sir, but we don’t want uniforms up here.’

‘I’ll come up as soon as I can and if he’s staying the night, we can deal with it in the morning. If he’s not staying the night, I can’t get there anyway. Just promise me you’ll stay put.’

‘I could call Rimmer.’

‘No! You mustn’t call Rimmer. Promise me that.’

‘Why?’

The phone goes quiet, then Staffe says, ‘He’s somewhere else tonight. Remember, we don’t know exactly what Pulford was talking to Latymer about, and we haven’t written up the new evidence from Pulford’s flat yet. Just keep me posted, and stay put.’

She watches Staffe’s name fizzle to nothing on her screen and finishes the Red Bull, refixing her attention on the door to Jasmine Cash’s flat, but as Josie scans the Limekiln’s concrete deck, she sees a tall, skinny, familiar youth with a skulking gait and badly bruised face. Louis Consadine pauses at Jasmine’s door, gives it a couple of knocks and the door opens. Louis moves quickly inside.

Josie quickly puts on her Lakers cap and pulls her ponytail through. She folds down the waistband of her trackie bottoms and goes out. Weed hangs in the air and the estate is busier now than when she got here in the afternoon. As she works her way to the stairwell, she has to pass a group of girls. One of them pushes a thin-framed pushchair. They look her up and down with suspicion – as if she represents competition. One of them says something in a deep city patois and Josie readjusts her iBuds, which aren’t receiving, and goes down the dark, empty stairwell, the way Louis came up.

She waits there, every sound amplified; every second feeling like a minute. She tries to look as if she is waiting for a dealer. A drunken man comes past, reeking of all-day pub. A woman in a Morrisons blouse with hooded, sad eyes struggles by and Louis comes out of Jasmine’s place. He knocks into the woman with the sad eyes and helps pick up her shopping, saying he is sorry but he does it one-handed. All the time, his other hand stuck down his grey trainer bottoms.

When he is done, he looks up, sees Josie and walks towards her, tuning his walk into a swagger and looking at her breasts, quickly at her face, then away. He doesn’t recognise her, so Josie says, ‘I said I’d come see you, Louis.’

He double-takes, looks her up and down again and keeps the one hand down his trousers, stiffens his slouch into a hard-man’s pose. ‘And now you here.’ He talks to the flesh between the waistbands of her top and bottoms, still doesn’t recognise her, so she takes a step closer, watches him flinch, then correct himself, and now he looks her in the face. He squints. ‘Miss?’

‘That’s right,’ says Josie. ‘I’ve got a place here, now.’

He looks her up and down again. ‘You live
here
.’

‘That’s right.’

Louis checks behind, concerned he might be caught with her.

‘We should go there, Louis, if we’re going to talk.’

‘I don’t want to talk.’

‘It’s best for you that we talk in my place and not out here. We don’t want Brandon and Jasmine to hear.’

‘Fuck!’

‘And you need to tell me about your brother, Curtis.’

‘The fuck?’

‘Come on, Louis. I don’t look like police tonight, do I? Nobody needs to know, just when we walk past those girls on my deck, just look like we’re – you know.’

‘Fuck, man,’ says Louis, his hand moving inside his bottoms. And his expression changes, as if a penny is dropping. ‘All right.’

They walk back past the group of girls and Josie puts an extra few degrees of shunt to the roll of her hips. At her empty place, she removes her cap, welcomes Louis into her world, but as he comes in, brushing past her, he seems to have discovered a proper swagger. He seems different, in control, and she realises he succumbed too easily.