Pain of Death (8 page)
‘The smallest detail could help us find Zoe. And if we don’t find her …’
Staffe says, ‘The woman in London died. They abducted her and held her for weeks, living with rats and having to shit where she lay. If Zoe was here and she heard you pontificating about “violations”, what would she say?’
‘And what if it’s not like that? What I say would be for nothing.’
‘What you say!’
‘Inspector,’ says Flint, standing, silently beseeching him not to undo her good work.
Petal looks self-righteous, says, ‘All you need is jackboots and a black shirt.’
‘What!’ shouts Staffe. He feels his blood surge, something in his mind floods. He hates this cheap allusion. He breathes deep, takes a step away and measures his anger by the look on Alicia Flint’s face. ‘OK,’ he says. ‘I could spend all day explaining why you’re more of a fascist than I am. But let’s not bother, hey? Let’s talk about your mother, Petal. I hear she is using again. And if she’s using she’ll be paying for it somehow – a little scam? A bit of shoplifting? Maybe benefit fraud. Good old victimless crimes in your book, I suppose, comrade?’
Petal has regained her composure. ‘Go fuck yourself.’
‘Who was Zoe with? Where did she hang out?’ says Alicia.
‘You don’t fool me,’ says Petal.
Alicia Flint looks up, at the roof, across to the stairs. She stands up. ‘This place is a danger to the public. I’ll give you till five o’clock tomorrow to come up with something, otherwise you’re closed down.’
Outside, Staffe says, ‘You don’t mess about.’
Alicia Flint gets into the car and revs it up, says, ‘But that’s all I am doing. I can’t touch her mother or the premises – not unless I want to be on the front page of the
Echo
and have everyone in the city knowing what we’re up to. Like you said, it’s a big village – and all the neighbours are nosy. And I don’t need you fucking my interviews up.’
She looks over her shoulder, sees a line of traffic and curses. As she turns back, she catches Staffe looking at her. There is a car’s-length gap in the stream of traffic and Alicia Flint cuts in, gets the horn and a finger from the car behind. She gives it back and turns to look the driver behind in the eye. He backs off.
It is with immeasurable regret that I have to consider the withdrawal of the private member’s bill proposing the reduction in the legal limit for the termination of pregnancies. I remain committed to the cause of maintaining the highest standards of care for pregnant mothers and their unborn children but am concerned for the integrity of this legislative solution in the light of what can only be described as a media circus and indeed the spate of criminal activity which has appended itself to the bill.
I have been in the House for nearly twenty years and cannot stand by and watch the integrity of Parliament being compromised in this way. I have every confidence in the ability of the government to continue to represent the interests of mothers and this issue will continue to be addressed through the consultative and legislative process, unhindered by those who seek to undermine our country’s revered democratic standing.
Staffe watches the television. Vernon Short folds up the piece of paper, placing it in the inside pocket of his
double-breasted
jacket. He smiles into camera, Big Ben beyond, and is strobe-lit by dozens of flashing cameras. The journalists call out questions but Vernon simply raises his hand and smiles some more, as if he is associated with a great success.
Alicia Flint smells of camomile and her hair falls in thick, wet thongs. She wears a short-topped, low-trousered velour track suit and her midriff is tanned and taut. She bounces Ethan on her lap, across the room from Staffe. Ethan is naked, his legs are strong. She says, ‘I wonder what they have promised that sanctimonious scrotum.’
‘He’ll be tucked into some obscure ministry in the next reshuffle,’ says Staffe.
‘These are people’s lives they’re fooling around with. Big decisions. At least it will bring Lesley Crawford from out of her cover. That Breath of Life lot will have to respond.’
‘I’m worried about Zoe. Christ, what will they do to that poor girl if there’s nothing to be gained?’
Alicia puts Ethan in his baby walker and spins him round. He chortles, pushes himself up with his legs and claps his hands. She reaches into her briefcase, pulls out a stack of papers and lays them on the coffee table in front of the sofa. ‘I can do this on my own.’
Staffe wants to ask about Ethan’s father, how he came to abandon them – or otherwise. ‘It’ll be quicker, the two of us.’ He takes the Zoe stack of papers and they go through them independently: copies of all the interviews and the data for Zoe and Kerry and their parents and loved ones. Alicia Flint takes the Kerry Degg pile.
‘How shall we play Anthony Bright?’ asks Staffe. ‘We can disclose to him that we know about Zoe’s termination now.’
‘And the fact that we know he went with her to the clinic. But you’ll need a gentler touch than you showed with Petal Broome.’
‘He’s lied to us and we need to know why.’
‘Do you really think he had anything to do with Zoe going missing?’
Staffe reads through the notes which draw the profile of Zoe Bright’s professional and domestic rituals. It seems she moved within a small circle. Her colleagues at the university’s resource centre said she was quiet, committed, kept herself to herself. Her university email history revealed nothing untoward and her only indulgences were a penchant for second-hand book sites and literary blogs.
Staffe flicks back through his notes, goes through the inventory of the house, looks at two items: a collection of cartons for potted shrimps and ice-cream tubs. She used the former for earrings, the latter for her necklaces – bursting with bright gems. Each from a place called Parkgate.
‘Where’s Parkgate?’ he calls through to Alicia Flint.
‘Across the water. It’s worth a daytrip before you head back. When
are
you going back to London?’
*
‘You look dead on your feet,’ says Pulford, pushing through the crowd, holding the drinks out to Josie. ‘I got you a vodka Red Bull.’
‘So I won’t be able to sleep. Cheers.’
‘There’s a band on in the back. Fancy it?’
‘We’re here to see whether Cello Delaney shows, and who with.’ Josie has her hair frizzed and is wearing a beret, no eye make-up but blood-red lipstick – enough to wipe her off Cello Delaney’s radar.
‘I’m not sure about the new look.’
‘Oh, David. I’m so sorry. There was I hoping it would make you swoon. I so want you to adore me.’
This had been Pulford’s night off until Josie persuaded him away and he’s already had a couple of drinks. ‘But I do. You know that. We have history. Remember?’
‘Pulford! That was years ago and we both agreed it was a mistake.’
‘Maybe I like mistakes.’
Josie turns her back on him, looks around the room. She can’t see Cello Delaney, and it’s already gone nine. A rhythm section starts up in the back room and she says, ‘Let’s try the band. Cello might be in there.’
Pulford reaches for his warrant card and Josie takes a hold of his hand, says, ‘You may as well have come in a helmet if you show that.’
He pays them in and leads her around the back room as the sax pipes up, playing the opening bars of ‘Night in Tunisia’. He holds onto her hand and leans down, talks into her ear. ‘I’ll be your cover. The things I do for the love of the law.’ And he puts his arm over her shoulder.
‘Don’t push it.’
‘Don’t blow my cover,’ he laughs, drinking from his bottle of Moretti and watching the band on the stage, picturing Cello Delaney from the publicity shots Josie had shown him on the way over.
He gets a nudge in the ribs and Josie reaches up with a hand, whispers into his ear, ‘Bingo. Just by the stage, with the old fella. On the right.’
‘Where? Aaah.’
‘Let’s wander round, see if I can get them in a picture on my phone.’
Pulford slides his arm from her shoulder, begins to back away, towards the door, taking Josie’s hand and bringing her with him as the sax player finishes his chorus and takes the applause, moves away to the side of the stage where he picks up his drink and raises it to Cello Delaney. Except, it’s not Cello so much as the older fella the sax player is toasting. ‘There’s no need for a photograph,’ says Pulford.
‘I don’t trust my memory. I can do it. It’ll look like I’m taking one of the band.’
‘I know him.’
The older fella is right by the stage now, chinking his drink with the saxophonist and saying something that makes Cello and the horn player both laugh. Tonight, she seems less out of it, and whilst the two men smile and nod their heads to the piano player’s eight-bar solo, the smile fades quickly. She looks as if she’d rather be somewhere else.
Pulford says, into Josie’s ear, ‘He’s Tommy Given. I came across him during my stint at the Met.’
‘Rings a bell,’ says Josie, on tiptoes. She likes Pulford’s aftershave and it brings the better part of a memory back on a breeze. ‘Why should I know him?’
‘Because he’s a bad bastard.’
Staffe takes a sharp intake, flicks a look across to Alicia Flint as he begins to glean what he can from Anthony Bright. Her hair is scraped back, clipped up meticulously into a plaited bun. Her cheeks glow and her eyes are bright. She sits erect, wearing a tailored, chocolate-brown suit. The police station is two miles from her home, a million miles from Ethan bouncing on her knee.
For some reason, he feels nervous. ‘Anthony, it is time we were honest with each other. So I’ll start.’
Anthony Bright’s expression changes. Since they came in, he had sat with his head high and his back straight, hands clasped loosely. Now, he stiffens, looks across to his solicitor – then back to Staffe.
‘I have deceived you, Anthony. I chose not to tell you that I have spoken to Zoe’s parents, and I didn’t tell you I have been to see Petal Broome. Soon, I will know as much about Zoe as anyone – save you.’
‘Save me?’
‘So you have to realise that you can’t spend the next days and weeks trying to guess what we know – or should I say, what we might not know. Every day, we get a little closer.’
‘You’ll find Zoe, then.’
‘And what took her away. Does that make you nervous, Anthony?’
‘Why should it?’
‘You said Zoe visited her parents every week. She didn’t. Is that a lie, or do you simply not know your wife?’
‘I know her all right.’
‘You shouldn’t feel ashamed.’
‘Ashamed? Why would I be ashamed?’
Staffe smiles at him, reaches out with a hand and clasps his arm, says, ‘You’ve had your chance. Coming clean would have helped us all.’ He stands and Alicia Flint takes his seat. Staffe leans against the wall, arms across his chest.
Anthony’s brow puckers, as if he is trying to solve a riddle.
‘How were things between you and Zoe, you know …’ says Alicia.
‘Normal.’
‘Really?’
‘She’s having a baby, for fuck’s sake.’
‘She is a curious, educated woman. Different from you.’
‘Things were fine. Just fine.’
‘People are complex. Zoe went away and came back. She even changed her name, didn’t she?’
Staffe intervenes, ‘But you didn’t tell us that, either.’
Alicia Flint ignores Staffe, says, ‘She was mixed up. Caught between two worlds. She didn’t really know what she wanted, did she?’
‘She wanted to be with me. We got married.’
‘She wasn’t the same when she came back from university, was she?’
‘I was the first – I know that. And she’s the only woman I can love.’ He looks down, at his shoes, then up at Alicia Flint. ‘You probably think I’m a sad fuck, but you don’t know how lucky I am. I trust you.’
‘And if we don’t find her – at least nobody else will ever have her,’ says Staffe.
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘She was going to get rid of the baby, wasn’t she, Anthony?’ says Alicia Flint.
‘You went with her,’ says Staffe.
‘No.’
‘You lied to us. Now, tell us the truth!’
‘Inspector,’ says Alicia Flint.
‘Tell me!’
‘You don’t get it, do you?’ says Anthony. He bites his lip, as if in pain. He leans forward, arms crossed, holding his knees beneath the desk.
‘Forget your pride.’
‘I have tried to love other women – like when Zoe went away. And I probably don’t understand her. But I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you on my life and her life and the baby’s life, there’s nothing I can’t forgive. Nothing. And that makes me hate myself, sometimes.’ He leans back now and he is scratching, jabbing at his wrist. He grimaces. Anthony Bright leans further back and the whites of his eyes roll up and he topples from his chair and his solicitor gets down on her knees, screams, ‘Get someone. Get someone!’
Staffe rushes across, bends to pull up Anthony Bright but Anthony’s eyes have gone. He has passed out and as Staffe reaches for him, he sees Anthony has four short lengths of pencil in his hand, broken to the size of cigarette butts and taped together – sharp as nails.
Blood begins to pool on the floor, seams of red ribboning from his wrist.
He has Anthony in his arms and looks up at Alicia Flint. For the briefest moment, before she calls for help, she looks daggers at Staffe – as if this was his fault.
*
By the look of her, Cello Delaney had stayed the distance last night with Tommy Given and maybe the band. Her hair is all over the place and her face is puffy and grey. She smells of drink and a recent cigarette.
‘What the fuck?’ she says, peering at Josie and Pulford. ‘Who’s the boy?’
‘This is DS Pulford,’ says Josie. ‘He wants to know a little more about the company you keep.’
‘You can let us in, Cello,’ says Pulford. ‘I’ll make you a coffee.’
‘I don’t have to let you in.’
‘And we don’t have to talk to you. I guess we could go round to see Tommy Given, ask him what it is that he gets from a friendship with Cello Delaney, best mates with murdered Kerry Degg.’
‘I can see who I like.’
‘If that’s what you want.’
She steps back, runs both hands through her hair and rubs her temples with the balls of her hands. ‘You followed me?’
‘We’ve got better things to do, Cello. It’s a question of reliable sources.’
She trudges away, down the hallway.
Today, Fleetwood Mac are sultry in her kitchen. ‘Stevie Nicks,’ says Josie. ‘Perfect for hangovers.’
‘I like rumours,’ says Pulford. ‘It’s sometimes a way to skin a rabbit.’
‘Tommy’s a friend, is all.’
‘In the music business?’
‘Kind of.’
‘And a friend of Kerry’s, too, I bet.’
‘They know each other. Kerry knew a lot of people and so does Tommy. This isn’t such a big city, you know.’
‘We were talking about Kerry and her men the last time I was here,’ says Josie.
‘Do you know who Tommy is?’ Cello sneers.
‘We can do you a favour,’ says Josie. ‘We can get you out of this mire you’ve talked your way into.’
‘I’m in no mire.’
‘Without you, there’s no way we would have linked Tommy Given to Kerry. I suppose if he asked, we’d tell him that you led us to him.’
Cello Delaney sits down heavily in a chair at a small table in the corner of her kitchen. She lights up a cigarette and says ‘Fuck,’ as Pulford makes them all a cup of coffee.
Eventually, Cello says, ‘How can I trust you?’
‘How can you not?’ says Josie.
‘I don’t know anything. Not really.’
‘Give us what you’ve got and you’re safe.’
‘Safe?’
‘Just like Sean. You’re the one who said Sean was being looked after. It’s Tommy who makes him safe, right?’
She nods, appraising the tip of her cigarette.
‘And what about Kerry? What did Tommy Given do for her?’
‘Got her that residency, is all I know.’
‘At Rendezvous? Why would he do that?’
Cello shrugs. She takes her coffee from Pulford and lobs her cigarette into the sink; sparks up another.
*
Staffe walks away from Anthony Bright’s dream home. From what Alicia Flint has told him, it was always Anthony’s dream, to have a home like this. The garden suburb is where a certain sort of aspiring couple would want to be. He notices the apple blossom is out. It’s too soon. There could still be a frost and then there will be no fruit.
He thinks about the row he had with Alicia Flint after Anthony’s assault on himself. Whether it was a cry for help or a flight from interrogation, Alicia Flint had blamed Staffe for pushing Anthony too far, but they both know Anthony had come to the interview with his pencil device. He had come prepared.
The street is tree-lined and no two houses in this interwar garden suburb are alike. Birds shrill and retired folk and housewives potter and stoop in their gardens, readying for the summer.
He looks at his map and turns left and right and left and right again, crossing the green and weaving a way to the outer skin of the unreality of the estate until he can see the clock tower that stands proudly at the head of Wavertree High Street, leading to the city proper. Now, he sees what he wants – his first CCTV camera. Gone are the curtain twitchers, here are the mechanical eyes. He refers to the master sketch of the security web that Alicia Flint’s DC had given him and he ticks off each camera from here all the way to the railway station. Whenever and wherever possible, Zoe Bright took the train rather than the bus – as borne out by the contents of her bin and by her husband.
When he gets to the station, Staffe sees that by changing once and travelling under the Mersey, then getting a bus, he can get to Parkgate in just over an hour. He buys his ticket and calls into Flint’s DC with the co-ordinates of the coded CCTV positions. He gives the date and time frame of Zoe Bright’s disappearance.
He can’t help feeling that the real key to this case is that unholy pair Vernon Short and Lesley Crawford. Or must he simply dig so deep into Kerry Degg and Zoe Bright’s pasts that the truth will emerge – like drilled oil?
The unwelcome truth, he knows, is that sometimes you have to engage as deeply as you can on each and every front of enquiry – until a theory becomes untenable. For now, much as he is beginning to miss his own city, he gets the train, changes, and then a bus.
*
Zoe might have been seen on the streets here in Parkgate. She might have been with somebody that day. He takes out the cartons Zoe chose to cling onto: the potted shrimp and
ice-cream
tubs, somehow harking back to a previous age. A childhood in which she was never fully indulged?
His phone goes and it is an unknown number.
‘Sorry, chief. They only keep the video data for three days,’ says the DC.
‘Shit,’ says Staffe.
‘You know how many CCTV cameras we have? And someone’s got to watch the stuff.’
‘Someone watches it all?’
‘They fast-forward it. Up to twenty-four times. That’s an hour to cover a day. We’ve got sixty cameras. Do the maths.’
‘And is anything kept?’
‘Too right. Just the juice, though.’
‘And that day – between midday and four in the afternoon – the three cameras I told you about?’
‘They’re all on Greavo’s watch. I can’t tell if he saved anything or not. You can ask him. He’s in tomorrow.’
‘Get hold of him.’
‘He’s on leave.’
‘Get hold of him and give him my number.’ Staffe hangs up, looks across at the Welsh hills. There should be sea between here and them; instead, a silted estuary with marshes and sandbanks. A different country, altogether.
Parkgate’s promenade is flanked on one side by a fine terrace of mid-nineteenth-century houses and on the other by wrought iron. But beyond the railings, where there should be a beach and a sea, there is only grass. The sea is gone. The pub is called the Ship and there is an old-fashioned fish and chip restaurant, a café that would have been a Lyons or Forte in its day, an ice-cream parlour and a shrimp-and-cockle shack. But no sea. Gulls are above and salt is in the air. And no sound of surf, nor the rattle of shingle beneath the tide.
The trippers have come nonetheless and they cluster against the dry breeze, stabbing their cockle and whelk tubs with thin blades of wood; they lick at ice-cream, and Staffe follows the trail, goes into the shrimp shack, checking the livery on the empty tub he purloined from Zoe’s house. This is the place.
He shows the youth behind the counter his warrant card and the queue disperses. The boy tells Staffe, ‘I fuckin’ done nowt. You lost me them customers.’
Staffe holds the photograph of Zoe up and sees the youth instantly clam up, tight as a live shell. ‘I think she used to come here, maybe every couple of weeks, so if you don’t tell me when you last saw her, I’ll bring you in – all the way across the water and then you’ll have no fucking customers for the whole day. Maybe longer.’
‘I haven’t seen her,’ says the youth.
Staffe shuts the door, turns the sign around to show ‘Closed’ to the outside. He picks a tub of potted shrimps from the counter and leaves a fiver, sits on a low, three-legged stool and stabs the buttered flesh. It melts in his mouth, tastes of a near shore. He lets the shrimp go its own way and spears another and another, savouring each and every one. Traces of mace enrich the flesh. He takes out a tenner and takes two more pots. ‘You don’t know what you’ve got here,’ he says to the youth.
‘But I don’t like ’em.’
‘Sick of the sight?’ Staffe looks up at him. ‘I’m only trying to help her.’
‘She’s in trouble?’
‘You could help save her.’
‘She never says much,’ says the youth.
‘She come with a friend?’
The youth shakes his head. He has dry skin that flakes around his eyebrows and on his forehead and chin. ‘I only seen her on her own. She looks sad.’
‘She’d come on a certain day?’
‘Sunday mornings, most often.’
‘But not last Sunday?’
He shakes his head again.
‘And not with her husband?’
‘She got a husband?’
‘Why wouldn’t she?’ says Staffe.
‘He must like rollmops, then. The husband.’
‘Why d’you say that?’
‘She always took rollmops, wrapped. She’d have the shrimp for herself. Like you. But she said she can’t abide rollmops. That’s what she said.’
‘Give me a couple of rollmops,’ says Staffe, thinking it might brighten Anthony’s day – for an instant.
Staffe’s phone goes and he stands, leans on the counter and the youth takes a step back, as if he might catch something. Outside, a line of five people has formed, waiting for the shop to reopen.
‘They come from miles around,’ says the youth.
‘Inspector Wagstaffe? It’s Sergeant Greaves. I’m on leave, I …’
‘Second of April. Between one and four o’clock. I’m looking for a woman on cameras WH 3, 4 and 5. Hang on a second …’ Staffe takes his herrings and the shrimp and leaves the money, winks at the youth as he turns the sign back round on his way out. ‘… The woman is Zoe Bright. You’ll have heard of her, I’m sure.’
‘I know her all right. At least I do now.’ The phone goes quiet, fills up with background chatter, as if Greaves is outside a pub, and Staffe can tell he is smoking, breathing heavily. ‘What’s wrong, Greaves?’