Kill and Tell (23 page)

Josie keeps half an eye on Rimmer who is busy on the phone, talking to Margate CID, who are questioning the man with the cockle van down there, showing him scanned photos of Louis Consadine and Leilah Frankland. Rimmer spins slowly in his seat, and she gets to work on the interviews at the LSE and down on the Limekiln.

When she is done, Josie calls HMP Pentonville and is told that DS David Pulford is being held in isolation, on a zero-contact regime, for his own safety. The prison is, belatedly, arranging for all known members of the e.gang to be relocated. As for the trial, an application to defer has been made by the Crown and it is expected that charges against Pulford will be dropped.

She leans back, exhausted, and asks Rimmer if he wants to go out for a coffee.

He’s not there.

She stands up, calls, ‘Boss?’ and asks around, receives only shrugs as to where DI Rimmer has gone. One of the WPCs says, ‘I heard him being super licky. Must have been onto a nob.’

‘Pennington?’ says Josie.

‘Maybe. My guess is higher.’

Josie scoots along the corridor and up the stairs, dialling Staffe’s number as she goes. When she gets to Pennington’s office, a uniformed minion sits on a chair in the corridor. ‘Is DI Rimmer in there?’ she asks.

‘Can’t say,’ says the young graduate, looking her up and down, adjusting the fall of his hair.

‘Just tell me, you prick.’

‘Potty mouth.’

Staffe answers and she whispers, ‘I think Rimmer’s in with Pennington, sir. And Beverley Strong.’

‘That can’t be good.’

‘It’s best if you don’t—’ but the line is dead and her phone beeps, like a flatline.

Staffe knocks and goes in, ignoring the pleas of both Josie and the pink-cheeked graduate sitting erect outside DCI Pennington’s office.

‘I’m sorry to interrupt, sir,’ says Staffe.

Pennington stares at the ground, seemingly defeated. He lets Beverley Strong speak on his behalf.

‘You are a little premature, but—’ She looks at Frank Rimmer, who smiles. ‘—we were nearly done.’

Rimmer and Strong seem thick as thieves, with Pennington somehow on the outside.

‘I was congratulating Frank on the Trapani case,’ says Beverley Strong. ‘Bringing in Abie Myers’ wife was terrific police work. Just terrific. Without her evidence, the Crown was loath to push ahead and convict Myers.’

Staffe recalls the conversations about budgets and cuts, glimpses a barren future. Long empty days.

‘Tracing it all the way back to Cable Street,’ says Strong. ‘Your father would be so proud.’

Staffe tries to work out how to tell her that he, not Rimmer, made the connection to Cable Street; how to say it without coming across like an arrogant prick, but just as he is about to speak, Rimmer says, ‘DI Wagstaffe’s liaison with the Sicilian authorities was key, ma’am.’

Beverley Strong beams at Rimmer. ‘It’s a wonderful story and so timely.’

Staffe realises he has to fight his corner, says, ‘And to think, you thought it was Attilio who abducted Carmelo.’

Beverley Strong looks disdainfully at Staffe, says, ‘It doesn’t completely distract from the events at Pentonville, but we shall see what we can do to mitigate.’

‘Tell him,’ says Pennington.

‘Tell me what?’ says Staffe.

‘You will have read about the cuts,’ says Beverley Strong. ‘You know how tight things are and we have to justify every single position. The bar is rising higher and higher and now more than ever—’

‘For pity’s sake!’ Pennington stands up and walks to his beloved window, looks out towards the Gherkin, with Docklands beyond, the estuary that the Thames cuts all the way to sea. Beverley Strong, Rimmer and Staffe all look at Pennington and he speaks softly, as if to himself, ‘Every dog has his day.’ He turns, looks at Staffe. ‘I’m sorry, Will.’

‘That’s all right, sir. I know you have no choice.’

Pennington shakes his head. ‘It’s me.’

‘What?’ says Staffe.

Beverley Strong says, ‘Congratulations are due. You have a new DCI.’ Beverley Strong extends her arm, like a magician’s assistant, but no frills, no curtsey. ‘Detective Chief Inspector Rimmer. Like old times.’

Staffe looks at Pennington, who seems dead behind the eyes. He shakes Rimmer by the hand, with his good one, the wrong one, then he goes to Pennington, wraps his stitched and plastered arms around him as best he can.

Pennington whispers in his ear, ‘You’d think after all these years, I’d know what a friend looks like, wouldn’t you?’ He grips Staffe hard and says, ‘Promise me, you’ll start making life easier for yourself, hey, Will?’

‘And easier for him?’ They both look at Rimmer, who doesn’t know what the hell they are saying. ‘No way.’

The two friends unclasp, and Staffe leaves the room without a backward glance, but thinking how he never thought of Pennington as a friend before. He left it too late.

Outside, Josie leans against the wall, next to the ruddy-cheeked minion, and Staffe remembers Pulford’s first days. He says, ‘If you’re done with your cradle-snatching, Chancellor, maybe you’d help an old man across the road. I could murder a pint.’

She says to the young copper, ‘Cradle? Now, there’s something for you to aspire to,’ and she hooks her arm through Staffe’s, says, ‘I guess you’ll tell me what happened in there in your own time.’

‘Maybe it’s a bad dream. Let’s see if a drink might break it.’

They walk down the back stairs and she says, ‘They haven’t got rid of you, have they, sir?’

‘Worse than that.’

As they get to the bottom of the stairs, she pauses, says, ‘This drink? Can it be us? You know, just “us”. Not the job.’

‘I’d like that.’ He steps towards her, places one hand on her shoulder, the other on the side of her face. He leans towards her and each closes their eyes, losing themselves in a long, passionate kiss.

They unclasp and smile at each other, glassy eyed. He opens the door into reception, lets Josie go through and he breathes in the scent of her. As she unhooks her arm from his, their fingers touch and trail and he dreams how this might pan out. Watching her go ahead, he enjoys the shape she makes, the waft of her hair, the smile that just seeing her brings to Jombaugh’s face. Then she turns, her eyes wide and something broken in the outline of her smile. Beside her, Sylvie.

‘I had to see you, Will,’ says Sylvie, flopping onto the sofa in his Queens Terrace living room. It seems strangely normal. ‘If I don’t see you, it’s not going to happen, is it?’

He knows every blade of her, and she him. Yet here he is, in the drawing room they shared together so often, tiptoeing around the matter in hand.

The sun is low, just clipping the roofs in Launceston Square. It washes in through the twelve-pane windows and makes her golden. Her hair is in a long bob and her skin is still perfect. Soon, she will be thirty-four. He is unsure he is quite ready for this.

He tidies up a pile of broadsheets. The flat is untidy, smells musty. He has barely been here other than to sleep since before he went to Spain.

‘Come here, Will.’ Sylvie pats the sofa beside her. ‘You
are
OK with this?’ she says, hooking her feet under her bottom as he sits. Her arm presses against the pot of his broken arm. ‘Put the papers down.’

He does a rough sum on how many times they have been here, and beyond. It was usually his place, not hers. A few hotels and cottages, but seldom hers. Either way, it’s a lot – laid out end to end. ‘You want a drink?’ he asks.

‘No!’

‘Aah, sorry. Stupid of me. Shall I put some music on?’

‘You could do with a massage. We could start there.’

He is strangely alarmed by her use of the word ‘start’, and now it occurs to him that this might not work straight off.

‘I’ve had tests, Will. My eggs are good.’

‘No pressure then,’ he laughs, tensing up.

She leans across, says, ‘You’re made of good stuff. He’s a lucky chap.’

‘He?’

‘Or she. Does it matter?’ Sylvie kneels up and twists him round, so he is facing away, looking out of the window. They face the same direction, looking up towards the square with its black, filigree balconies. Her fingers work on his buttons and she peels his shirt away, gets to work on his bare shoulders, getting her thumbs into the taut sinew of him. ‘You’re tight as a drum.’

He feels her breath on his back. She smells the way she ever smelled: of soap and citrus. She never did sweat, always tasted fresh; fine.

Sylvie places the palm of her left hand under his chin and works the knuckles of her right slowly up and down, along his spine, explaining that all humans zip from the skull to the bottom. A good spine is essential. He has a good spine, she says, making him tingle and he begins to loosen as her hands make wider and wider circles, and the gusts of her breath become more protracted, heavier. He feels himself unzipping, wishes he knew the rules.

Sylvie slides her hands up over his chest and she says, ‘Hmmm,’ turning him, her eyes closed and her mouth just a little open. ‘You got me, Will. You always got me.’

He kisses her and she hitches her skirt, takes his good hand and puts it on her. There is no underwear and she takes him in hand, guiding him.

‘I . . .’ he says.

‘Yes?’ Her eyes open and she looks afraid. Her eyes are big and he is transported all the way back to the first time he saw her this way – him opening his eyes in their first kiss. When he misses her most, this is what he sees.

‘I . . .’

‘What is it, Will?’ Her fingers press into his flesh, and he is on the very brink of her.

‘I don’t love you.’

She closes her eyes, opens them again slowly. ‘Me too.’ She smiles.

‘So, that’s all right?’

Adam Creed was born in Salford and read PPE at Balliol College, Oxford before working in the City. He abandoned his career to study writing at Sheffield Hallam University, following which he worked with writers in prison. He is now Head of Writing at Liverpool John Moores University and Project Leader of Free to Write.

Kill and Tell
is the fifth novel in the DI Staffe series, which also includes
Suffer the Children
,
Willing Flesh
,
Pain of Death
and
Death in the Sun
.

Follow him on Twitter @DamCreed and visit adamcreed.co.uk

In the DI Staffe series

Suffer the Children

Willing Flesh

Pain of Death

Death in the Sun