Suffer the Children (10 page)

They both wait for the neighbours to open and close their front door. A finger presses ‘record’ on the video and Montefiore watches the figure advance towards him, cloaked in white – the penitent’s hood showing only wild, black eyes and blood-red lips that make a smile as a hand grabs the rope. Montefiore feels himself shift and the wood grates against him, inside. He knows he can’t take much more. He feels his eyes go moist, sticky. He can’t see, just feels the thick liquid touching his cheeks. He tries to take a deep breath, prepare in some way but the pain is too much. He hears a grunt, then a swish and he jags down. He hears something tear, inside him. For a second his arms are slack and then as the tearing sound comes again, something in his head closes down.

The phone cuts into the night with a shrill tone.

‘Who is it?’ says Staffe, drowsy.

‘No time to sleep, Staffe. Not if you’re going to get to the bottom of this.’ It is a woman’s voice.

‘Who is this?’

‘48 Billingham Street, W8. We’ve got a fresh one for you.’

‘What?’

The phone clicks dead.

Staffe calls 1471, gets the mobile number that has called him, then he rings Leadengate, asks for the incident response sergeant and is pleased to hear it is Jombaugh.

‘I need backup down at 48 Billingham Street, Jom.’

‘Never heard of it.’

‘It’s W8.’

‘What are you doing, Staffe? That’s Met country.’ He’s known Jombaugh ever since he was first a DC under Jessop’s wing. Jombaugh used to be under that wing, too, but he got so he didn’t want any more of the streets. He cared more about his family. It all but broke his heart when Jessop was moved to the Met.

‘I got a personal call, at home, for Christ’s sake.’

‘You’re not at home,’ says Jombaugh. ‘This number you’ve phoned from. It’s not home.’

‘What?’ The penny drops. Whoever called him knows him too well. Who would know he was staying here tonight?

‘What did they say when they called?’

‘“We’ve got a fresh one for you.”’

‘That could mean anything.’

‘It was a woman, Jom. And I don’t think it is “anything”. I reckon it’s connected with the Limekiln.’

‘I have to call the Met, sir.’

‘The Met! Just give me two men.’

‘It’s what we have to do. I don’t like it any more than you.’

‘Well at least get me a warrant for entry and search. Send it down with Johnson.’

‘Will, you shouldn’t …’

But Staffe hangs up, figures he can get there before the Met do. He
has
to get there first.

There’s no time to shave or clean his teeth, he just gets into yesterday’s clothes. He is running out the door when a shiver shoots right the way down him. He takes a breath, goes into the kitchen for his three-inch, steel-handled Sabatier paring knife.

Staffe switchbacks on to and across the Cromwell Road. He keeps the Peugeot in second all the way and as he pulls off the North End Road, he reckons he will have fifteen, twenty
minutes
before Johnson gets there – and the Met. He ushers a chant to slow his racing blood, clear his muggy head. He presses his right foot to the floor, listens to the engine roar and wail, all the way to Billingham. When he gets there, he slows it right down, parks silently and eases the door shut, runs softly to the house.

The curtains in the front room are drawn shut. Seemingly, no lights on inside. It is an early Victorian semi, two storeys plus a mansard attic conversion. To the side is a high gate that leads to the garden and Staffe takes hold of the top of the gate, heaves himself up, cocks a leg, and just gets the sole of his shoe on top. He levers himself up and launches himself down to the other side. Round the back, and seeing the place is locked tight, Staffe weighs up the best method of forcing his own entry. Small-paned French windows show into a dark dining room and in the sash window to the kitchen a tiny neon bud of green flashes on and off from the oven.

He has to be quick.

His eyes dart, see a key on the inside of the door of the French windows. He rummages in the dustbin and finds a sheet of newspaper and an old jar of honey. He smears what is left of the honey on a small piece of the newspaper and presses it on the pane of glass closest to the key. He finds a rock and takes a deep breath, then punches the glass with the rock. Most of the glass sticks to the sticky newspaper. He listens for a reaction from inside, listens to hear if anybody has arrived out front. Nothing. He picks the glass from the frame, reaches gingerly in and turns the key.

As he opens the door, the house seems to gasp. Moving through to the patterned Victorian tiles of the hallway, he gets gooseflesh. Four doors lead off the hall and all are open, bar one. He checks that all the rooms are empty before standing by the one closed door. He puts a hand on the doorknob and presses his ear to the beeswaxed wooden panel.

He turns the knob slowly and pushes the door open inch by inch. He can hear a scratching noise from within and puts his head into the gap, looks into the dark room. There is a smell of human faeces and an odd contraption. An odd contraption with … a body? A body on a cross!

‘My God,’ he says to himself. ‘My God,’ and he feels weak. His hand lets go of the doorknob and the door is pulled away from him and there’s another louder, scratching noise and a rope snags, the body jagging down. A muffled groan merges with a sound from a butcher’s backroom.

Staffe looks up at the body, sees the eyes bulge above long streaks of dried blood down the face, the shape of upturned knife blades. He takes a step towards the suspended body, sees what has gone on. The man’s trousers are gathered around his feet. He looks away as soon as he sees the wood, where it has gone, and he runs to the front door. It isn’t bolted from the inside. On the street a police car pulls up, blue lights flashing but no siren. Two armed officers leap out of the back.

Staffe raises his arms, holds his warrant card aloft. ‘I’m police. I’m police! Call an ambulance. Quick, tell them to be quick, for God’s sake.’

Staffe sits in Montefiore’s study, awaiting authorisation to turn on the victim’s computer.

According to his bank statements, Guy Montefiore pulls in twelve grand a month from Sanders and Fitch, a Corporate Finance House of the old school variety. The statements reveal that he sends three
thousand
eight hundred every month to Helena Montefiore and three times a year he pays eleven thousand pounds to Benenden School. Blue blood runs through this family, but something far darker is weaved beneath its surface. Deep and dark.

Jombaugh telephones, saying Johnson is on his way to sort out the warrants, and to give Staffe the all-clear accessing Montefiore’s computer. Staffe hangs up and watches the
anti-virus
programs power up, then clicks his way into Guy Montefiore’s recent programs, the last websites visited. Two are enough. Much more than enough for Staffe. He tries to blink away what he has just seen – photographic images of young girls and grown men and far, far worse than what he has witnessed in the flesh this week. He tries to steel himself to bring to justice the person who violated and tortured Guy Montefiore. The images of the young girls scroll up on the back of Staffe’s closed eyes. Some hadn’t reached puberty.

Josie Chancellor stands in the doorway of Montefiore’s study. ‘These Met boys aren’t too keen having us around. I had a hell of a time getting in here.’

He swivels in Montefiore’s captain’s chair, to and fro,
turning
his back on the casement windows: the leafy green street outside; lime-hued light hazing through the trees. ‘What have you got?’

‘Pennington wants to see you, now – “Sooner if possible”, he said.’ She sits down opposite him on a low-slung leather chesterfield, crosses her legs and starts giving it to him. ‘The initial read on the gag has come in. It’s a different fabric to the Colquhoun murder.’

‘But the same method was applied.’

‘No. I’ve checked against the photos from the Limekiln and they’re different knots. They’re saying it’s a different MO. A different person.’

‘Or the same clever person.’ His mobile begins to vibrate and
Home
appears on the screen.

‘He’s just called me, Will. He’s just called and he’s got
himself
into trouble.’ Marie begins to cry.

‘Who?’

‘Paolo. I think I still love him, Will.’

‘What kind of trouble?’

‘Someone’s beaten him up.’

‘Shit!’

‘What?’

Suddenly, Staffe questions his judgement.

‘I told him to come round here. That’s all right, isn’t it, Will?’

‘I have to go, Marie. Let’s talk later.’

‘He’s on his way here. I knew you wouldn’t mind.’

Staffe spins the chair back and lets out a loud sigh.

‘What’s wrong?’ says Josie.

‘Nothing. Everything’s just bloody dandy,’ he says, clicking the mouse to Montefiore’s computer, un-minimising the young girls. They look lost, straight into the camera. The men don’t even look as if they are enjoying it. Staffe’s own problems
suddenly
fade and he begins to think what methods were employed to entice the girls. He reminds himself that this
computer
belongs to a victim. ‘Different fabric, different knot. One they killed, one they let live.’ He spins round to face Josie and sees Johnson has finally arrived, is standing next to her. ‘The method of entry is the same.’

‘We don’t know anything about the method of entry,’ says Johnson.

‘Exactly. The victims let the torturers in. Did they know them?’

‘Victims?’ says Johnson. ‘Have you heard what Montefiore has got up to in the past?’

‘And they called me at home. It has to be the same person. They called me to put the last nail in, to cut the last rope to send that thing right up him.’

‘He’s going to make it. The hospital rang the station,’ says Johnson. ‘They didn’t want him dead.’

‘When can we talk to him?’

‘Not for a while.’

‘I can’t believe the Met are saying it’s not the same person,’ says Staffe. ‘It’s just so they get the case.’

‘And we’re saying it’s a serial case so we can keep it?’

Staffe gives Johnson his dirtiest look, holds it until Johnson can’t stand it any more. He needs to talk to him about Paolo Di Venuto, but that will have to wait. Johnson looks away and Staffe stands, chest jutting out, ‘I’m saying it is a serial crime because I believe it to be the case. There is sufficient evidence and my experience directs me to believe it. If you or anybody from the Met has a problem with that, then we can have it out with DCI Pennington. Otherwise, I’d thank you to do your best to gather the evidence. Do you get me, Johnson?’

He nods.

‘Let’s go see Pennington. You can tell me what you know about Montefiore.’

Johnson drives Staffe up to Leadengate, his sleeves rolled up and the tendons of his thick white arms taut. ‘Oh, we got the trace on the phone that called you. It’s Montefiore’s mobile.’

‘Shit.’ There are a couple of specks of blood on Johnson’s shirt and a sheen of sweat all over him – face, neck, arms. Staffe blames himself for his sergeant’s state and twists in his seat to face him. ‘You weren’t exactly subtle last night, were you?’

‘That greaseball down in Peckham? Jesus, man, he had it coming.’

Staffe could tell Johnson that, thanks to his efforts, the greaseball is now living in his house. But he’s not one for dirty laundry in public. ‘You went a bit further than I wanted.’

‘He started it, sir.’

‘You didn’t let him know who you were?’

‘The prick thought a dealer or a loan shark had sent me.’

As they come out of the northern end of Hyde Park and shimmy along the one-ways round the back of Oxford Street, Staffe considers what his team has gleaned about Guy Montefiore: a history with the CPS – he was briefly
suspected
, three years ago, of assaulting a young girl called Sally Watkins.

Montefiore is as far along the social scale from Karl Colquhoun as you can get. So far apart, they’d almost meet the other side – which they have, in terms of the crimes alleged, the charges which the Crown never pressed. It seems they share common ground when it comes to the vengeances exacted upon them.

‘The charges never pressed,’ thinks Staffe. Two men, never brought to justice. Neither on the sex offenders register. ‘Tell me what you know about the wife.’

A vein in Johnson’s neck bulges. ‘According to the statement she gave our WPC, she left him three years ago. They’ve got a young girl of their own. Thomasina. She was eleven then. God knows if they told her what he’d done to the Watkins girl.’

‘How old was Sally Watkins when he did it?’

‘Twelve. Except we can’t say he did it, can we?’ Johnson is practically spitting his words. ‘Because the fucking CPS dropped it.’

‘How did it get reported?’

‘This is the weird thing,’ says Johnson. ‘Montefiore’s wife fingered him. The Watkins mother and father went round to see her and she called the Met.’

‘Jesus, we need to see her.’

‘Within a month his QC had got the CPS to drop the charges.’

As they turn on to Leadengate, Staffe sees a large van parked up outside the station, a uniformed constable about to give it a ticket. ‘For Christ’s sake, Johnson, tell that bloody Boy Scout not to book that van.’

‘Whose is it?’

‘Mine, for the day. Which reminds me, there’s something you can do to make up for last night.’

‘You should have waited,’ says Pennington. He sits erect behind his own desk. Nothing but a laptop, a notebook and a phone to clutter his world. ‘You knew Montefiore is in the Met’s jurisdiction.’

‘I was responding to an emergency.’

‘The door was rigged and you went storming in ham-fisted. How does that look?’

Staffe knows that with Pennington you can’t give an inch. ‘They called me at home.’

‘You could have walked into a trap.’

‘I called Jombaugh and requested backup. I had cause to believe it was an emergency – especially after Colquhoun.’

Pennington takes pause, leans back in his chair and does a majorette’s twirl with his pencil. ‘The Met beg to differ about the connection.’

‘For Christ’s sake, sir, the same people have to be involved with both.’

‘You know the implications for our resources. We’re not the Met.’

‘You’re worried about money, sir? Is this all a matter of budget?’ He looks at Pennington, sees a hard-nosed detective reduced to playing accountant – shuffling resources. Every year the targets go up, the pay budget comes down. Unless you can get your Force to work harder for less, crime’s going to have to crack itself.

‘Will,’ Pennington leans forward and as soon as he hears his Christian name, Staffe knows the DCI is about to test him, ‘there’s nothing to stop you keeping in touch with the Met on this one, if they run with it.’

‘I need to talk to Montefiore. I have to be the first to speak to him and I need access to his wife and daughter. And I have to talk to Sally Watkins.’ Staffe feels hot beneath the collar of his suede jacket. ‘For Christ’s sake, anyone can see these cases are practically identical. Meanwhile, we’ve got Leanne Colquhoun being held.’

‘She’s still a suspect. I’ve seen the statements and if Karl Colquhoun did go to Margate and touch up those poor kids, that’s a bloody good motive – no matter whether she loved him or not.’

‘How could she have got to Montefiore if she was in our custody?’

‘As we speak, these are two separate cases. I’m asking you to liaise with the Met, Will.’

‘Give me two weeks. Two weeks with full support.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘They called me at home. There’s something personal going on here.’

Pennington nods.

‘And …’ Staffe thinks about the ropes, numbered 1, 2, 3, 4. The last one to be cut was three. Could Montefiore be the third? That would mean Colquhoun was the second.

‘Staffe?’ says Pennington.

And if Colquhoun was the second … maybe they should be looking backwards for a pattern.

‘Staffe! If they are playing you along – and quite frankly, I think that sounds a bit fanciful – why give them what they want?’

‘I can’t find Karl Colquhoun’s killer unless I follow up on Montefiore. I’m sure of that.’

‘I’m worried about you, Will.’ He looks past Staffe to the door. Lowers his voice. ‘Sohan Kelly’s car was torched last night.’

‘You said you had taken care of him.’

Pennington looks at Staffe’s bandaged wrist, dirty from the morning’s exertions, with petals of blood seeping through the lint. ‘You should know better than to get involved.’

Staffe hears the van outside, tooting. He grimaces. ‘You lined Sohan Kelly up, sir. You asked me to take his statement. He had already changed his statement by the time I
interviewed
him.’ Instinctively, Staffe puts his hand on his heart, feels the folded, first statement through the suede. As he does, he sees the tear in his sleeve where the knife went into him yesterday.

Pennington makes a tight smile at Staffe and picks up the phone. He dials. ‘Geoff, I’ve got my DI here and we’d like to run with the Montefiore assault for a few days, if only to eliminate the case as a link to the Colquhoun murder.’ He nods, says ‘Hmm … hmm … but this is a critical time for us, too. We’ll copy all the evidence to you, send transcripts. I can assure you, Geoff, we’ll bend over backwards for you. Yes … yes, very funny.’ He makes a fake laugh – which must work. ‘Thanks, Geoff.’ He puts the phone down and logs the conversation in his notebook, leans back, and says to Staffe, ‘You’ve got a week and your liaison at the Met is Smethurst. You know Smethurst, don’t you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Just make sure you get something. This could cost me. And if it does, it will cost you too.’

‘Thanks, sir.’

‘I don’t want your thanks, Staffe.’ Pennington picks up a file, hands it to Staffe, readjusts his glasses to the end of his nose, and turns his attention to his laptop.

On the stairs down, Staffe opens the file and takes out the photograph of Karl Colquhoun’s Ku Klux killer and reads the Imaging Notes, squints at the remastered enlargement of the supposed killer’s face. According to Imaging, they have tried to extrapolate the width of the shoulders and hips, the hands, the shadows above the lips, but they cannot be sure whether it is a man or a woman.

Staffe sees Stanley Buchanan a flight below. He skips down to catch up and slaps Buchanan on the shoulder. ‘Now then, Stanley,’ he says. ‘Tell me why we should release your client and make it good. I think we’ve held her long enough.’

‘What the hell do you want, Staffe?’

‘Justice, Stanley. Same old, same old.’ He is about to
drip-feed
Buchanan the prompts to get Leanne released when Pulford comes in through reception.

‘Can I have a word, sir?’

‘I’m sorry, Stan. Wait here, will you?’

As they go outside, they get a blast of heat. Pulford says, ‘It’s Debra Bowker, sir. She did come back to England, according to Budjet Air. Except she travelled as Debra Colquhoun. So I checked with the Secretary of State and her old passport was sworn as lost. Sounds fishy, don’t you think?’

‘Clue up on the extradition procedures. Don’t do anything yet, just be ready if we need to get her over here. And check the BA flight times from Tenerife into Heathrow.’

Pulford nods, clearly pleased with himself. ‘Weird thing is, sir, she travelled alone. She left her kids in Tenerife. I’ve been looking at the case notes for her kids, Danielle and Kimberley.’

‘I’ve seen them.’

‘Both the girls said Karl Colquhoun touched their genitals “too much” when he bathed them. He gave them baths until they were seven and nine years old. Danielle Colquhoun told her mother what was happening when Colquhoun started bathing the younger one alone. Sound familiar?’

‘Just like Calvin and Lee-Angelique Colquhoun,’ says Staffe.

‘Except Debra Bowker went to the police.’

‘How long was she here, on her last visit?’

‘It was six weeks ago and she stayed for a week. So far, there’s no evidence that she met up with Karl Colquhoun. Leanne Colquhoun called Bowker a “fucking whore”, sir. There’s no love lost there.’