Kill and Tell (5 page)

Earnest waiters glide through Les Ambassadeurs, heads erect like Deco silhouettes. ‘You remember the first time we came here?’ says Finbar Hare.

The bar is softly lit, and crystal glasses and bottles of Armagnac glisten like jewels. Beyond, through the dining room, a private garden deludes you into thinking you are not in London at all. ‘We were younger then.’

‘And wild.’

‘Some of us still are,’ says Staffe.

‘Quite an admission from the Inspector.’

‘I meant you. Now, about Fahd Jahmood?’

‘There’s a chap I know was sent into the Jahmoods to check out what the sons were up to. Young Fahd over there had fifty million in a checking account in Miami, not even getting interest. A two per cent return on that would bring in a million a year. Enough for most of us.’

Staffe watches Fahd and Attilio. Fahd talks to the wine waitress with his hand on her hip. Attilio fidgets, sipping wine then water and looking around constantly, not exactly at home here; Staffe wonders what would be enough for Attilio these days. What does it cost to be in his new club?

When the wine waitress has put the bottle back in its silver bucket and left them to it, Attilio leans across the table, grabs Fahd by the arm.

Fahd laughs, waving at Attilio dismissively as if he was a fly on his cuff.

Attilio stands, swings an amateur punch at Fahd, which glances off his handsome head, but is enough to have the Arab covering up like a boxer on the ropes.

A butler raises a white-gloved hand and through a door beyond the bar, a tall, athletic man in a suit emerges. He moves slowly, calmly. Staffe shifts in his chair and the leather squeaks. Attilio is standing over his Arab companion, his back arched and his arms outstretched, hands around Fahd Jahmood’s neck.

Fahd’s own protectors converge on Attilio, systematically laying hands on him, kicking him sharply behind the knees. They do it in tandem and Attilio falls like a caber, smashing his head on the table. The heavies get Attilio on his stomach, arms behind the back and fit him up in a pair of zip-tie cuffs, in the manner of secret police.

‘You lying bastard!’ shouts Attilio as the heavies carry him out. He writhes and kicks, and as they carry him past Staffe, Attilio looks up at him with pleading eyes. But his anger is spent; in its place, fear – as he recognises Staffe.

‘Where are you taking him?’ says Staffe.

The man in the suit says, ‘Steer clear,’ and when Staffe shows his warrant card, he swats it away.

Staffe follows them towards the room behind the bar but another man in a suit appears, blocking his path. ‘I’ll come back, with uniforms and warrants.’

The man in the suit looks down at Staffe, shakes his head slowly. ‘I don’t think so’ – and the door closes, onto its private world.

Josie looks up at the Attlee Estate, whose concrete is stained by the rain, as if it had been weeping from its windows. Some crosses of St George flap in the breeze alongside drying
salwar kameez
. Weed is in the air, and phug hip-hop. Somewhere, ‘Redemption Song’ breaks through.

A young teen in a black trackie comes towards the electric gate which buzzes open. He has the pall of crack about him.

‘Wait! I’m coming in,’ says Josie.

‘Fuck off!’ he says, trying to shut the door on her, but Josie is quick off the mark and pushes him back through the door into the estate and flashes her card.

He comes at her and Josie’s heart stutters, but she plants her feet wide apart and lowers her centre, watches his trainers. You can read the next move by watching their feet, and she kicks out at his knee. Not so hard that he would require an ambulance, but it fells him. She tries not to take any pleasure as his face turns grim.

He looks up at her from the ground, cussing. He is white as unbaked pastry but sounds Afro-Caribbean. She reaches out and pulls a handful of wraps from his pocket. He is a handsome boy with blue eyes and long, dark lashes.

Josie empties a wrap and crunches the small rock with her shoe. ‘What flat is Shawne Haddaway in?’

‘Give me my stuff.’

Josie empties another wrap onto the floor, grinds the rock to dust with her foot.

‘C thirty-four.’

‘Have you seen him today?’

He blinks his eyes slowly, to suggest ‘Yes’. Suddenly, he looks his age. Acts it, too, as the adrenaline must ebb and he holds his knee.

Josie bends down, feels the ligaments around the knee. ‘You’ll be OK, just make sure you rest up a day or so.’ She drops the remaining wraps onto his shallow chest, knowing that if she doesn’t return his narcotics, his future will darken, not brighten. ‘And stop using this stuff.’ She puts a hand to his cheek. ‘You’re a good lad. You can’t hide it from me.’

‘Suck me,’ he says.

She laughs, clocks his fake ID on the floor. ‘Shut up, Louis.’

‘How you know my name?’

She puts the toe of her foot on the corner of the ID.

‘Don’t mess with Haddaway, miss.’ He struggles to his feet, bends his leg, rubs his knee and picks up his ID. He stands in the doorway and watches Josie all the way into the lift, stays there as she gets in. As the doors close‚ he says‚ ‘Serious. Don’t go.’

The lift rattles and jolts, the storeys counting up slowly. The stench of humanity is thick and Josie puts a hand over her mouth and nose, takes in the smell of soap between her fingers, thinks about how officially there are only two e.gang members living on the Attlee. One is Brandon Latymer, invisible to the police since Jadus Golding was shot. The other is Shawne Haddaway and she is here to see if Shawne has a computer and if he does, to see what footprints he has left in the virtual world.

Josie gets out at Level Three and steps over the discarded box of a fifty-inch TV. From up here you can see the City glisten not so far away. Dogs bark and the mother-freaking hip-hop is louder. She works her way around the deck until she gets to the Cs.

A drawl of music leaks from inside number thirty-four and Josie peers through a gap in the curtains of the front room, can see nothing, so she knocks, lightly. Waits. She knocks again and takes out her ring of keys, checks the likely candidates and tries one. Along the deck, a young woman pushes a baby out of her flat. She must be fifteen, but looks younger, and as she passes Josie she curls her lip. The key turns and Josie opens the door, says softly, ‘Haddaway. Shawne Haddaway?’

No response.

She follows the low drone of music down the dark hall, chipboard for floor, and darkly stained in places. It could be blood. At the end of the hall, she pushes open the door and the sound of Marvin Gaye spreads joyously from a boombox on the window-ledge. ‘What’s Goin’ On.’ Between her and the music, a young man is flat on his back on a bare mattress. On the floor by his dangling hand, the rudiments of an afternoon on the crack pipe. She taps him on the shoulder and steps back, warrant card in hand. He doesn’t move.

Josie backs tenderly out of Haddaway’s bedroom, easing the door closed and looking anxiously over her shoulder. She checks the bathroom and goes into the open-plan living area, which has a rusting two-ring hob next to a sink piled high with pizza boxes and bottles of Courvoisier. On the floor is a brand-spanking AirBook with its screen up. She powers it up and immediately a screensaver of Rihanna appears. There is no end of choice for unsecured wireless connections and within seconds, Josie is scrolling through Shawne’s web history: an unglittering profile of music downloads, weaponry sites and porn.

In amongst them, Google Earth. When she hovers over the search predictors, only one item comes up. Right-clicking, her stomach turns over.

Josie and Pulford had a thing once. It was three years ago and unsatisfactory and they each laugh about it now, an unrequited petting frenzy and a wordless breakfast at a greasy spoon in Southgate, but she remembers quite vividly the few minutes Pulford spent talking about his mother. His mother who, when her only son moved to the Big Smoke, stayed put. Josie hadn’t known the place she stayed put and Pulford had to tell her it was near Newcastle.

Now, she reads ‘Whitley Bay’ and remembers.

Shawne Haddaway had summoned Google’s might down from the sky and trained a bead on 24 McIvor Street, Whitley Bay. Josie inserts her memory stick, saves, closes down and retires, but she hears a bang from the bedroom and she hears Shawne cursing. Her heart misses one and she makes for the door, but as she opens it, a familiar young man looks Josie in the eye.

It’s obvious that Louis Consadine doesn’t want to be there, but he has three mates with him. One of them has his hand down his trousers. Josie thinks he’s probably holding his heat and she says to Louis, ‘I know you. Remember? I know your name, so don’t do anything stupid.’ Her heart beats double-time and she looks at the youth with the hand down his trousers. He’s barely fifteen. ‘Louis, don’t do anything stupid.’

Louis forces a broad smile but his eyes seem dead. ‘Suck me,’ he says.

‘Suck him,’ says the one with the heat.

‘Grow up,’ says Josie, pushing past them, walking as slowly as she dare, back to the stairwell. She won’t chance the lift, and as soon as she is round the corner she bolts down the stairs, two at a time – chased by her own echo.

Maurice swelters in his coat. Its tweed collar snags the hairs on the nape of his neck and the band on the inside of his hat tacks to his forehead with sweat. The rain has gone but the evening air is still muggy.

He puts his hands on the iron bars of the gate to Palazzo Adriano – this wonderful mix of English and Dutch with its curved gables and stained glass. But something is definitely in the rarefied air. Perhaps he was naïve to have come. Tatiana often says he is naïve.

A car drives by and Maurice can tell from the sound of the engine that it is slowing, so he pulls down his hat, waits for it to pass, but the engine peters quickly to nothing. He wants to look over his shoulder but resists. The handbrake clicks and Maurice plunges his hands deep into his pockets, still damp from the rainstorm earlier. The car door opens and slams shut; then another. He holds his breath.

Footsteps get close and Maurice knows he shouldn’t have come – not so soon. He wishes everything could be the way it used to be. He prays for Carmelo’s soul.

‘Excuse me, sir.’

Without looking, Maurice knows the voice is police. He wants to be home, with his books and the Olivetti Lettera 35 that his father, Claudio, gave him. It was supposedly an heirloom, but he later discovered his father had won it in a game of cards.

‘Sir? Turn round please, sir.’

Maurice looks at the house, thinks what truths might lie within.

‘Sir!’ It is a different voice.

Maurice turns round.

Each of the policemen seems shocked to see how young he is. Maurice resents his youth. It bows his shoulders. It shortens his stride but it is the one thing he knows can mend itself. He will be old – soon, he hopes. And Tatiana says she will still love him. He wishes her young, for ever.

‘Why are you here?’

Maurice intuits that the least harm will ensue from his being totally co-operative‚ and by staying as close to the truth as he dares.

They pull into Leadengate and Maurice recalls that this is where they investigated Calvi. He wasn’t even born then, but Maurice is well schooled in all aspects of his rich heritage. It would be fair to say it is something of an obsession with him and has been ever since his father first balanced him on his knee, telling him tales.

Now, he feels momentarily afraid as he is checked in by a kindly immigrant called Jombaugh, who regards him as if he can’t possibly have done something terrible. Then a weary inspector with hair an inch too long and clothes a cut too casual takes him into a room. Maurice tells Inspector Wagstaffe where he lives and that he will talk through his lawyer and only his lawyer. His lawyer, a gentleman by the name of Goldman.

The unkempt inspector is given an envelope, says, ‘There’s no need to keep you here, Mister Greene. We can get our answers at your place.’

‘Isn’t that irregular?’

The inspector wafts the paper he has removed from the envelope. ‘We’re authorised to conduct a search, so I’d say it suits us all. Unless you’d rather not. It would be irregular, surely, if you preferred it here to the comfort of your home.’

‘I have nothing to hide,’ says Maurice. ‘Quite the reverse.’ He smiles and sees the inspector’s mouth turn down at the edges, as if some upperness of hand has been wrested.

Maurice’s flat is housed within a slim, early Victorian affair that looks onto London Fields. A gentle stroll would get you to Carmelo’s home in a quarter of an hour.

Staffe shows the young fogey a photograph taken outside Carmelo Trapani’s house on the day Carmelo disappeared. It has been lifted from the CCTV footage and is taken from above, slightly behind, and is grainy and blurred, the perspective warped. Maurice doesn’t bat a lash. He stares straight ahead, pale-eyed.

Martin Goldman says, ‘That’s not Maurice. Unless you can prove it, which you can’t, and as we have said, Maurice was in his house from eight o’clock in the morning on the day of Signor Trapani’s most regrettable disappearance until noon the following day.’

Staffe reappraises Maurice, a fine-featured, oddly handsome man. He sports an educated voice but every now and then a hint of Italian singsongs through. His fiancée came to live with him after a trip to Siberia two springs ago. Maurice fell in love with Tatiana the instant he saw her and in her broken English she verifies that Maurice was home for all the requisite hours. Tatiana’s crystal beauty takes the breath away.

It appears that Maurice has no job; hasn’t worked a day nor claimed any kind of benefit since he left York University with a first in English and Carmelo gave him this flat.

Staffe regards Maurice long and hard, and he just can’t imagine Maurice having what it takes to account for Carmelo Trapani. ‘Carmelo took good care of you?’

‘I fend for myself now, inspector, though I do concede this might be a mystery to you.’

The slant of the sun catches the dust in long bugles of light. There is something of the Havisham about it, and though the flat is furnished in perfect keeping with its age, this is clearly an abode of the young. Magazines, from
Grazia
to the
New Statesman,
litter the coffee table and there is the paraphernalia that goes with recreational drugs. Books are piled everywhere and Staffe spots a
Karenina
in Russian.

‘There are too many mysteries associated with Carmelo’s disappearance.’ Staffe thinks about a mystery closer to home: why Carmelo was so keen to speak with Pennington.

‘Maurice loves Carmelo very,’ says Tatiana. They look at each other with the utmost quizzical intensity, like two curious, incarcerated and besotted creatures of similar, but distinct, species. Staffe cannot fathom them at all.

‘What do you do for a living, Maurice?’

‘That would be a private matter. I can’t see how—’

‘I consider it germane to this investigation. As is Carmelo’s relationship with Attilio. He appears to treat you more like a son.’

‘He’s my uncle, that is all.’

‘This is a nice place,’ says Josie, browsing Maurice’s papers. ‘But it has overheads.’

Maurice hands Josie a bank statement, says, ‘Minimal.’ Two sheets cover the whole year, the balance diminishing infinitesimally from £28,000.16 at the end of January to £27,904.87 at the end of July. A tenner in cash here, a modest cheque there. ‘No direct debits,’ says Josie.

Maurice nods. ‘I’m old-fashioned. I like to go to the town hall, hand over the lucre for the privilege of having my rubbish removed; my safety secured by our fine police.’

‘You live well, it seems to me, without working.’

‘Maurice is a writer,’ says Tatiana.

Staffe looks at the bookshelves. ‘Not published, yet.’

‘Verse,’ says Tatiana. ‘And a play. Maurice has a gift for words.’

‘It nourishes us,’ says Maurice, smiling encouragement at his girlfriend.

‘And he has a beautiful voice. He is truly an artist.’

Staffe reaches down the side of a Regency framed couch and hefts a large stack of loose papers. ‘The play?’ he says, reading the title page:
A Russian Doll.

‘It will be performed soon,’ says Tatiana, pride writ large across her face.

‘As yet unfinished.’

‘Sing for us all, Maurice,’ says Tatiana.

Everybody looks at Maurice, awaiting his excuse, but without hesitation, he places a hand on his heart, sings a refrain from ‘Tears Dry on Their Own’. Staffe and Josie look at each other as the words soar and swoon. In the sepia, fading study of this Victorian room, surrounded by musty leather volumes of Byron and Brooke, Staffe thinks for a moment that anything is possible. Maurice’s voice shimmers to a close.

‘I love you, Maurice,’ says Tatiana, flopping down onto the threadbare divan settee and clapping her hands.

‘Very nice, Maurice, but I don’t think you’re signed with CBS or EMI, are you? So, you’re going to have to tell us where your money comes from,’ says Staffe.

‘If that is the law, it’s a strange one. I think I will not comply.’

‘Because you have something to hide.’

‘I have my privacy to maintain. That is all.’ He gazes at Tatiana and she leans all the way back on the divan, her little skirt ruching up in her lap, legs slightly apart.

Staffe spots two tulip-shaped shot glasses in a glass-fronted secretaire. He turns an evidence bag inside out, using it as a mitten to pick up the glasses, but the moment he lifts them, he realises they are no help to him. They leave two perfectly clear circles in the dust of the shelf, have clearly been there, unused, for several months, if not years. ‘Jacobo has some of these,’ says Staffe, riffing with what he thinks might be the truth. ‘They are from Murano. I think Carmelo must have given them to all his favourite people. Your Jacobo must be one of them.’

‘
My
Jacobo?’

‘Tell me about Jacobo, Maurice. He is missing, too. His wife is afraid.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Her spirit is broken, Maurice. She’s a lonely old lady. Have a heart.’

‘He has a heart,’ says Tatiana, standing. She wraps her arms around him and they kiss, long and deep, leaving Staffe and Josie to look at each other, nonplussed – there being no law against it. When she is done‚ Tatiana says‚ ‘A good heart.’

Rimmer takes a sip of his pint and asks the landlord of the Crooked Billet if Attilio frequents the place.

‘Lord Snooty? Nah.’

Attilio wasn’t at Ockingham Manor earlier, when Rimmer had finished taking the statements. Typically, Staffe doesn’t fancy Attilio for this. He never fancies the obvious, which gives Rimmer a position to adopt. ‘Will you join me?’

It is quiet, the pub, and the landlord says, ‘No harm, while we’re quiet. I’m Rodney.’ He thrusts his hand at Rimmer and they shake.

Rodney pretty much fills the whole of the space behind the bar and he rests his foot up on a keg of Old Rosie cider, pulls off a half for himself.

‘Powerful stuff,’ says Rimmer, recognising the drinker’s glint too well. ‘I know it of old.’ He mimes the tightening of a noose around a hanged man’s neck. They both laugh, and idly chitchat, but all the time, Rimmer is thinking about how Pennington said he wanted Rimmer’s intuition brought to bear. Pennington had tapped the side of his nose when he said ‘intuition’: ‘Like your old man, hey?’

He gets Rodney another half of Old Rosie
,
says, ‘Bloody awful business, though – at the Manor.’

‘You a journalist?’

Rimmer proudly pulls the lapel of his jacket to one side, revealing his warrant card.

‘The real deal,’ says Rodney, clearly impressed, and he refuses the money for the round. ‘You know, her last husband, Lord Dominic, was a real gentleman. And handsome? He could knock ’em for six. Mind you—’

‘Yes?’

‘I can’t say.’

‘You’d be amazed how the smallest detail can sometimes crack a case like this.’

Rodney looks around the pub and lowers his voice. ‘You’ll have heard they’re on their arse up at the Manor. It’s always family in these cases,’ says Rodney.

‘You know, Rodney, you really are one step ahead.’

Rodney’s proud face smiles and he finishes his Old Rosie. ‘A bottle of Bushmills says it’s the bloody son.’

‘You think so?’ Rimmer takes a swig of the pint. His mind shifts maybe five degrees and he feels less sad – as if a better outcome is becoming available. It’s a weakness, this fondness, it did for his father, and his father was a better man. ‘How did you know Bushmills is my weakness?’

‘You can see these things, in my game.’

Rimmer stretches a hand across the bar. ‘We’re on.’ It’s a bet he wants to lose.

A way down the line, as the night draws all the way in, Rimmer asks Rodney if they do rooms and the landlord’s smile rips his face in two. ‘Oh yes, my friend.’ And much later, long after the last local has been shoehorned out onto the hedgerowed lane, Rodney says, ‘I tricked you.’

‘What?’

‘With the bet. I’ve got an inside track, see.’ He raises a finger to his lips. ‘First rule, we don’t gossip, but that bastard, that Italian fucker—’ Rodney hiccups. ‘Six months ago, she left him. And a mate of mine’s an accountant . . .’

‘You mean Helena left Attilio Trapani?’

‘Yes! And my mate, he’s a right big-bollocks in the City and he deals with bankrupts and the big firms and he says to me, “Any day now, Rodney”. That’s what he says to me one night.’

‘He meant “any day” for the Trapanis?’

‘No. For the lady. For the dowager. Ha! She was going to lose the lot. The whole shebang. She bangs. Ha! My God, how she bangs, like a lav door in a gale, for all her airs and graces.’ Rodney pours them each another Bushmills.

‘But they’re still going strong from what I can see.’

‘Let’s just say she has a knack with the towelheads.’

‘The Arabs?’

‘There ain’t such a thing as a secret in the country, you know.’

Pennington finishes jotting and he sips from his Leadengate machine tea, which is cold and spiked with a whisky. It has been dark for hours and his computer beeps an email at him. It is from Rimmer’s mongroid phone saying he has made good progress and had to stay down there. He can tell from the upbeat mood of the message that Rimmer has had a drink. Pennington knows where that weakness comes from, knows too that Rimmer’s dad set an impossible standard – the best copper Pennington ever worked with and taken way before time.

He spins his chair, looks out on the City’s riches, glimmering in the east and capped by the Gherkin. He slowly rotates back for his tea and drinks the lot in one, looks at the three lines on his piece of paper.

  
PULFORD – INTERNAL INVESTIGATIONS ??

       
BUDGET CUTS – STAFFE vs RIMMER

       
CARMELO APPOINTMENT?

Pennington scrunches the paper into a ball and the problems become one.

Internal Investigations called earlier to say they are recommending the Crown is given its trial date for the case against DS Pulford in the murder of Jadus Golding.

In the scheme of things, whether he should make Rimmer or Wagstaffe redundant seems trivial, but it’s not. That’s how deep the shit just got.

He calls his wife, tells her he has to put in an all-nighter. Then he pours a whisky, this time without the tea and drinks it in one, dialling Cassandra’s number from memory. She says he can come round in an hour; she just has to get rid of someone first. So he pours another.