Kill and Tell (2 page)

The knock at the door makes Carmelo’s withering heart judder. He has expected it but now it is come, he fears he might not be able to prevail. Just one final effort and he will be saved. One more day. Half a day, even.

From the shape of the man’s head and shoulders in the frosted pane to the large front door, he thinks it might not be quite who he was expecting. And he silently berates himself for not being prepared.

As he opens the door, he sees that he is right, but he opens the door nonetheless. It is too late and the future is too uncertain, the end far too nigh, to do anything else. The time is come and Carmelo is utterly fearful of all the things he has to do. He turns away from his visitor and out of habit, calls for Jacobo to make drinks. ‘Jacobo!’ he calls with a trembling voice that cracks. But perhaps Jacobo isn’t here. Carmelo had a nap after he telephoned Goldman and isn’t sure how long ago that was. He clears his throat and shouts again, this time at the top of his voice. ‘Jacobo! Come!’

Carmelo waits, listens, hears nothing and shuffles slowly across the marble floor in his carpet slippers, taking pause to look up at the ceiling. He commissioned it sixty years ago – and now, in this instant, it brings him rare pleasure. It is good to bring beauty into the world.

He listens for Jacobo coming, but the old house clicks with a frail silence. Jacobo is not coming, and he feels the breath of his visitor on his neck. Carmelo steps to one side and shows him into the drawing room.

Carmelo wishes he had cleaned his gun. He hasn’t used it in God knows how long. It is an ugly gun – a Beretta 34 – and it pulls heavy. He wonders if his finger will be up to it. He can see in his visitor’s eyes that he is intent, but Carmelo can’t allow himself to be taken yet. He has unfinished business of the very highest order. If only that damned policeman could have seen him today – now everything is in place. Just one more day is all Carmelo requires to prepare for eternity.

He offers his visitor a seat on the sofa by the french window that gives onto the formal, Italianate garden at the rear, and pulls the cord by the fireplace.

‘Perhaps you gave him the afternoon off,’ he says, smiling eagerly. ‘Too generous for your own good,’ he laughs. ‘Or maybe you forgot yourself.’

‘You know where the drinks are kept.’

The visitor looks at the cocktail cabinet. ‘The one they stripped from Mussolini’s palace in Firenze. How did you lay your hands on it, again? I’m sure you told me once, but I forgot.’

‘I never told you that. Did I?’ Carmelo is angry but he musters a smile. ‘Help yourself to some grappa while I’m gone. I’ll just be a minute or so.’

‘It’s not my cup of tea.’

‘It’s all I have. It’s how I lived so long.’

‘Then maybe I should try a little.’

Carmelo turns and excuses himself, muttering, ‘Where the hell is Jacobo?’‚ wondering if it is his afternoon off. Is it Wednesday? Maybe he took advantage – after all these years serving his master.

He takes the lift to his bedroom, a ridiculously large, baroque room which he made by knocking down a wall before the place was listed. It’s out of keeping with the house, which is gothic, but the grand proportions lift his heart. It reminds him of his uncle’s house in Palermo. Carmelo moves a little faster now he is on his own. It will pay to be one step ahead.

The dressing table is all the way across in the bay window, looking over the garden. The nearest neighbour is way beyond large trees that have always been here. He remembers ruminating, when he came into his first large pool of money, whether to venture to Hampstead, but he found this place – the real thing and right in the heart of his world. The branches of the old oaks and the whole of the newer cypresses sway gently. He opens the drawer, picks up the pistol from alongside his tortoiseshell brushes. It is heavy in his hands and he places it on the dressing table’s polished walnut.

Looking at it, he calls the chief inspector again, but this time he gets the answerphone and a series of options. ‘Damn you,’ he says. If only he could have moved the money earlier; faster. He looks at the gun again, prays it won’t come to this, but if it does his aim will be true enough to buy another day. After all these years, it comes to just one day.

Carmelo picks up the gun with his left hand because the middle finger of his right is absent. He thinks how much more Saint Peter might hold him to account, had life gone another way. He pushes out the release catch and pulls the magazine, discharging the bullets from their clip. He replaces the empty magazine and pulls on the trigger. The hammer clunks heavy in the lonely house. As he returns the bullets, he thanks God for the Italian marble that constitutes his floors. There will be blood, but Jacobo can mop up. Together, they will wipe clean this smear of new history.

His blood courses a little faster and to stiffen his ardour, he reaffirms that these days on earth are just a part of our scheme: a mere section for the body, before the soul.

When he sees the chief inspector, Carmelo will confess. He will confess his ancient crime. Nobody can silence him, not all these years on.

Carmelo walks quite briskly to the lift. The blood is really shifting now, across the fibres that line his arteries. The gun is heavy in one hand as Carmelo presses the
G
button in the lift with the index finger of his other, but steps quickly backwards out of the lift as the doors close on the empty chamber. Instead, he takes the broad, oak staircase, peeking to see if his visitor is waiting down below for the lift. But as Carmelo descends, coming level with the chandelier‚ he sees the whole of the hallway sprawl out below, empty. The door to the drawing room is still closed.

He opens the door slowly, the gun behind his back and his finger on the trigger. The man is standing by the french windows. He half-turns, sips from his grappa, saying, ‘I poured you one.’

Carmelo tightens the grip of his right hand on the pistol, wishes his house was not so grand, its rooms not so large. He doubts if he could even hit the french windows with his shot, let alone the man standing in front of them, so he walks to the cocktail cabinet – just five yards or so from the target. He reaches out with his left, picks up the grappa. Carmelo holds it with his thumb and three fingers, wants to be one pace closer, to make sure. He will try to hit him in the shoulder, then the leg.

He raises the glass, suddenly wanting a taste of the aquavit, its effect; the spirit burns his lips. It stings his mouth. It makes his eyes water. It burns his throat and his guest smiles. It is such a familiar smile and the man comes towards him, reaching out. Carmelo brings the pistol from behind his back and tries to lift it. He tries to point it at his quarry but his hand is suddenly loose. The grappa really burns him now and he hears the pistol crash onto the marble and his legs give way. When his head smashes on the marble, he thinks he might blemish it.

Carmelo brings his knees to his chest and he tries to make himself sick, but he can’t.

From above, he looks like a question mark on his fine marble floor. Today, there is a thin vein of red, where Carmelo’s blood makes its slow course.

Staffe sits alone, just the creaking joints of Leadengate’s ghosts and the low whirr of a computer somewhere. It seems years since he watched the sun set beyond Holborn Viaduct, the last tendrils of tail-lights reddening the City gloam. The coral dusks of Andalucía seem far away as he turns away from the window and returns to his whiteboard, makes a few adjustments. Presses ‘Print’.

In the fourteen days before Jadus Golding was shot dead by the very gun that discharged two bullets into Staffe’s own torso, DS David Pulford was sighted eight times on the Limekiln Estate, stalking Jadus’s lover, Jasmine Cash – the mother of Golding’s daughter, Millie. On each occasion, Pulford was off duty. On six occasions, within an hour of these sightings, sworn by affidavit, Pulford had called the mobile number they traced to the Attlee Estate, just a few hundred yards from the Limekiln.

According to the council list on his desk, and cross-referencing the latest aggregation of charge sheets for the e.gang, there are indeed just two known gang members living on the Attlee Estate.

Outside his office, the coffee machine begins to chunter. He takes the yellow highlighter pen and passes it along the names of the Limekiln’s e.gang residents, Brandon Latymer and Shawne Haddaway. He taps into his computer, entering the search data, and as he waits for the records of Messrs Latymer and Haddaway to print out, the coffee machine expectorates a second time. He spins slowly on his chair, feels his heart gladden as Josie appears in the doorway, holding two plastic cups of hot chocolate. He reaches into his drawer, pulls out the bottle of Havana Anejo rum.

They each slurp, to make more room, and Staffe glugs a helping of rum into each of the cups. They shared the drink on his roof in Andalucía, watching the sun go down.  

‘Remember Spain?’ she says. ‘You said you’d take it easy.’

He remembers Spain. He remembers that he was going to stay; remembers, too, how glad he was to see her walking across the square the day they dug up Astrid Cano. ‘Every day we don’t get closer to finding Jadus Golding’s killer, Pulford’s chances diminish. You know that. You can’t tell the case to take it easy. You can’t tell Golding’s killer to “take it easy”.’

‘You went to see him again today?’

‘Have you any idea what it is he’s not telling us?’

‘That’s why Pennington sent me to bring you back. Pulford wouldn’t say anything
at all
to us. What did he say to you?’

‘He told me he knows something. He said he couldn’t tell me.’

‘You mean he won’t.’

‘No.’ Staffe finishes his cocoa. It doesn’t taste the same without cicadas in the walnut tree, the heat of an African breeze coming up from the sea. ‘He
can’t
tell us.’

‘And what do you think it might be that he can’t tell us?’

‘I don’t know, but he’s afraid, Josie.’

‘Pulford’s not like that.’

‘That’s what I thought. So maybe we should assume he’s not afraid for himself.’ Staffe picks up the sheets for Haddaway and Latymer, places his hand on Josie’s elbow and steers her towards the door, turns off the light – and it is immediately apparent that the night has crept up, unannounced.

He blinks, bleary-eyed and bare-chested. ‘How long have you been here?’ Staffe rubs his face hard. ‘Did I hear the phone?’

‘It was me,’ she says. Josie can’t take her eyes off Staffe’s two scars, one between the left pectoral and the crease of his armpit; the other below the heart in the soft flesh above the waistband of his boxer shorts. The scars are bright pink, the rest of him still darkly tanned.

‘Why are you here?’ He squints at the clock. It says it is nine-twenty.

‘I was phoning you for ages. Too much cocoa, maybe. Or too much Havana Club. Since when did you sleep twelve hours a night?’ Josie’s eyes are plump, from lack of sleep. ‘I told Pennington to let you be, but he insisted I come round. I have a key, remember? I watered your plants while you were in Spain.’

‘What does Pennington want?’

‘I told him you were supposed to be taking it easy, sir.’ She bites her lip and for a long moment they exchange a look.

‘Never mind.’ He pulls on a blue checked shirt, frayed at the collar. ‘So what the hell is it?’

‘Someone called Carmelo. He said it’d ring a bell with you.’

‘Carmelo?’ Staffe’s eyes open wide and he steps into his trousers – a scrunched-up pair of Dockers. ‘Carmelo Trapani?’

‘That’s the one.’

Staffe rubs his face again, this time the way you would T-cut a car. ‘He must be getting on by now. What’s happened?’

‘We’re not sure. A neighbour called to say his gates were open and a couple of uniforms went round, found the garage open and blood on his floor, but no sign of anyone. Apparently, he’s worth millions. How do you know him?’

‘I don’t. Not really, but Jessop had a bit of an obsession. It goes back to Calvi.’

‘God’s banker?’ says Josie. ‘Hanged from Blackfriars Bridge?’

‘Yes, but Carmelo was clean as a whistle. You ask me, he’s a good man. A kind man.’ Staffe drifts away. Since he came back from Spain, he finds it difficult to maintain his concentration. He remembers that Carmelo Trapani was once kind to his friend Rosa. Carmelo had taken one of his associates to one side when he had wanted to stake a claim on her. Rosa, on the game and vulnerable to such affairs of the heart.

‘Pennington is worried, sir. He says this could flare up in our faces.’

‘We should be focusing on Pulford, not missing persons. We’ve got to find who killed Jadus Golding.’

‘We have no choice,’ says Josie.

Attilio Trapani cuts a fine figure. He is wearing a splendidly tailored shooting jacket and perfectly sculpted tweed breeches with a moleskin waistcoat to boot. He seems the archetype of an English country gentleman. But something is amiss. His nose is Roman and his skin the colour of walnut husks. His hair is waxed: combed back and blue-black. He is roasting his bespoke Latin backside in front of a seven-foot medieval fireplace of dressed stone in the hall of Ockingham Manor.

He stands at the centre of a coterie of large-jawed English playboys and an Arab gentleman in his thobe, lounging in club chairs in a shooting den. The heads of kills adorn the room, as does a sixty-inch plasma screen fed by the Racing Channel.

As Staffe and Josie are shown in by a straight-backed butler, the coterie breaks into a guffawing outburst of laughter. This, Staffe assumes, cannot be the man whose beloved father has just disappeared, leaving a trail of blood. This, Carmelo’s only son, seemingly preoccupied with a shooting party.

When the laughter subsides, Attilio says, ‘Ahaa. My visitors. You must excuse me a moment or two, gentlemen.’

To which the gathering solemnly nods, heads bowed, as if they might suspect something. Attilio leads Staffe and Josie through an ante-room into the original, Jacobean part of the manor. In a dark library, the curtains are half-drawn and a beautiful woman sits on a settle beneath a mullioned window. She is forty-something and dressed in low-waisted jeans and a tailored designer lumberjack blouse. Her mouth is grimly pursed and she has a handkerchief scrunched in a tight fist. Closer inspection shows that her dark eyes are red, her mascara in distress. Attilio says, ‘My wife, Helena,’ and he erupts into grief.

‘My God, Tilio!’ Helena stands quickly and rushes to him, loses herself in his big arms as his vast shoulders shake. Slowly, the two of them subside to their knees. Helena calls, ‘Help me! Please!’

Staffe and Josie rush towards them, reaching down under Attilio’s dead weight, trying to lift him off Helena. He has passed out but they manage to roll him onto his side.

Helena unbuttons her husband’s waistcoat and shirt, explaining to Staffe that she had wanted to cancel the shoot, but Attilio insisted it go ahead because these men are important connections and his father – God bless his soul – would turn in his . . .

Staffe puts a hand on her shoulder. ‘It’s OK, there’s nothing to say that he is dead.’

‘. . . he’d have turned in his grave. That’s what Attilio said. He had tears in his eyes when he said it. These bloody Trapanis. They’re impossible!’

‘Where were you when you heard?’

‘I was having breakfast when the Beauvoir gardener rang and told us Carmelo was gone. Poor Attilio, he was out on the shoot.’

Helena looks Staffe hard in the eye. Her features are pale and brittle. In her eyes she is hard and cold. She says, ‘Carmelo was the gentlest soul, the loveliest man.’

Staffe’s BlackBerry beeps. ‘I’m sure he still is. And perhaps he wouldn’t have wanted you to disappoint your connections.’ He glances at the message and Attilio begins to stir, sitting up, leaning forward and taking great mouthfuls of air. ‘But maybe not everyone thought Carmelo a lovely man.’

Helena watches her husband, a look of disappointment in her eyes, as if regarding a less favoured son.

‘We know your father had property interests,’ says Staffe. ‘But do you mind me asking, were you involved in the family business, Mister Trapani?’

Attilio says, ‘No. We breed. And train.’

‘He’s brilliant,’ says Helena, a brightness returning to her eyes. Her chin rises a couple of notches as she says it. ‘The training is quite new, but it’s all we’ve ever wanted. It’s how we met – through our horses.’

‘But you must help run your father’s portfolio,’ says Staffe. ‘I understand you’re his only son. His only child.’

‘Never touched it.’

‘You will,’ says Staffe. ‘If your father really is gone.’

‘We will have to do this later. I must get back to my guests. They will be leaving soon.’

Standing, Helena says, ‘You can wait, if you must. And in response to your insinuations, we were shooting all day and had a dinner until the early hours. There are eight in the shooting party and we have five staff. You can talk to the staff, of course – that will be alibi enough.’

‘Alibi?’ murmurs Attilio, quite incredulous. ‘You can’t talk to the guests. Not here; not now.’ He walks unsteadily to a large, intricately carved Jacobean chest and sits heavily on its lid, begins to whimper, his shoulders shaking. Helena stands over him, says, ‘What on earth is the matter with you, man?’

An hour later, when Staffe and Josie have taken preliminary statements from all the staff at Ockingham Manor – ascertaining that Attilio and Helena had indeed been entertaining all day and night, until one-thirty in the morning – they are shown out of the house to the rear courtyard and stables. The beaters stand in an open barn at the far end of the garage block, hanging the day’s kill. Attilio is in the latter stages of bidding his guests farewell. The English load their guns into the boots of Range Rovers. When they are all gone, just the Saudi gentleman remains. He hangs his head in sympathy as Attilio confides a little of his stiff-lipped suffering.

Staffe and Josie look on, not wanting to interrupt an intensely private moment. Helena comes round from the front, joins Attilio and the Saudi, who has dark, glinting eyes and a sculpted jaw.

As they wait, Staffe considers how London seems a whole world away from here. But in light traffic and with your foot down, you could make it from here to Beauvoir Place in just over an hour.

The Saudi gentleman raises a hand and a modest Land Rover trucks across the gravel, pulls alongside the three of them. He shakes Attilio’s hand, kisses Helena: striking, sultry Helena. Staffe says to Josie, ‘She’s not exactly what you expect of a dowager.’

‘A dowager?’

‘A wife who survives her husband – if he’s a duke.’

‘Ahaa. I’ve checked up on our Helena and she’d only been married to the last husband for five years. He was a mere lord, actually. Died in a riding accident.’

‘When was that?’

‘It was since the hunting ban. There was a bit of a cover-up over the circumstances, they reckon – an illegal hunt, you know.’ Josie refers to her notes. ‘Three years ago.’

‘Well, Attilio didn’t hang about. I wonder if he and the lovely Helena knew each other already?’

‘I suppose that’s just found its way into my inbox. But you know how well connected Lady Helena is. She’s well above the common business of kidnapping and murder.’

‘No, she’s not,’ says Staffe. ‘She’s a distant cousin of the heir to the throne. Perfectly equipped!’

They both stifle their laughter, caught watching by the Saudi as he drives off. It seems there is something different in his eyes now. Guilt, perhaps, and he looks quickly away.

Josie says, ‘But she was cast out years ago. Not quite cut out for royal life.’

As soon as the Land Rover disappears, Attilio’s face turns to thunder and Helena jabs a finger into his chest, begins to berate him. After a minute or so, she storms off around the front of the house, and Attilio is left looking at the gravel beneath his feet. He looks afraid and out of place. But mostly afraid.