Suffer the Children (11 page)

Staffe smiles, says, ‘All the more reason to release them from their captivities, hey?’ He slaps his hands and goes back in to see Stanley Buchanan.

‘Thanks for doing this, lads,’ says Staffe, taking his favourite armchair from Pulford who is standing on the tailgate of the van. It is a nineteenth-century American spoonback and the last item to be loaded off.

‘You’ve got some fancy shit, if you don’t mind me saying.’ Johnson is sitting on the step at the front of the house in Queens Terrace. He looks tired and Staffe would love to be able to tell him to get himself home, but he knows the subtext. Johnson will be damned if he’ll let Pulford get ahead – in any respect.

Staffe hands the chair to Johnson and stands back, drags his forearm across his sodden forehead, and looks up at the
windows
of his flat. He thinks of Sylvie and immediately claps his hands, shakes the thought away, shouting up to Pulford, ‘Come on. Let’s get down to the Villiers estate.’

‘Sally Watkins?’ says Pulford.

Staffe goes across to Johnson, lowers his voice, ‘I need you at the station. I’ve got something I’d like you to do for me.’ He
ushers
Johnson towards the house. ‘Check back, see if any other similar crimes have taken place in the last two or three years.’

‘Similar crimes? We’d remember.’

‘Further afield. Check the Met, even Thames Valley.’

‘What are you saying, sir?’

‘Let’s just see if there’s anything in the past that might connect, that’s all.’

‘Are you taking this a bit personal, sir?’

‘Let’s just pretend I’m in charge, eh, Johnson? Just pretend that you’re here to do as you’re told.’

‘It’s just …’

‘Yes, I know! This would have been your case if I’d taken my leave. And it would probably be in the hands of the Met already. But it’s not, Johnson. It’s mine. Now here’ – he tosses the key to the van – ‘take the van back to the compound. And Johnson …?’

‘Sir?’

‘I want you to know I appreciate everything you do.’

Johnson forces a smile, far from heartfelt.

‘How many houses you got, sir?’ says Pulford as they park up outside the Kilburn lock-up.

‘What kind of a question is that to ask your boss?’ Staffe opens the lock-up door and pulls the dust sheet off his other car.

‘Jesus, sir!’ says Pulford.

‘You stay there and lock it straight up as soon as I pull out,’ says Staffe, tossing Pulford the keys to the lock-up. Staffe fires up his pride and joy, his Series 3 E-Type. He knows exactly what kind of cliché it is, knows most people will think he uses it – like most men who’ve rounded forty would use it – to help attract the ladies, help somehow turn back the years or stem a receding hairline. Not Staffe, though. He loves this car because his father did.

With the top down and driving down to the Villiers estate along the A24, it’s a breeze. Through Clapham South and Balham and Tooting, Staffe drives it without irony. When he sees the signs for the A3 and Guildford, he feels sad.

For the main part, the E-Type sat in his father’s garage but occasionally, on Sundays, his dad would take young Will out for a spin – up the A3 to Kingston Hill. He always thought it strange that his dad didn’t take his mother. She could look beautiful, with her headscarf and dark glasses. Like something from the movies. On the way back, they’d drive real slow through Richmond Deer Park. The closer they got to home, with the Thames like a silver ribbon running to Hampton Court, the less they spoke – as if they knew life was waiting for them.

As they draw on to Villiers Avenue, Pulford says, ‘Don’t you think the Peugeot would have been, I don’t know …’

‘More discreet? I don’t want to be discreet, Pulford. I want everyone on this estate to know we’re here. I want them
crawling
all over my baby. And when I’ve finished talking to Sally Watkins, I want you to have worked out who knows what about her mum and dad. That’s Tyrone and Linda and, as far as we can gather, the mother flew the nest a while ago.’

Staffe parks up at the bottom of the Bevin Tower, avoiding the broken glass. Pulford blows his cheeks out, says, ‘You not going to put the top up?’

Staffe laughs, tosses the keys. He checks the address in his notebook and swings his suede jacket over his shoulder, looks up at the towering wall of concrete and glass, the lowest of the low living in the sky.

Sally Watkins lives on the sixth floor but Staffe doesn’t bother with the lift. The way things are going, he won’t get a run today and he takes the stairs two at a time, pauses to get some breath on the fourth and looks down, sees a gaggle of people already gathering around the E-Type. He smiles to himself: just as he thought, it’s the dads that are coming to see, not the kids.

Tyrone Watkins lets him in and immediately Staffe can’t imagine him doing what was done to Montefiore, but he
dismisses
the facts that Tyrone Watkins is gnarled and
malnourished
; is unshaven and looks as though he hasn’t seen the light of day in months.

Tyrone runs a neat ship. There is nothing on the shelves. No books or CDs or DVDs. A cable TV guide is in the middle of the floor. It looks well-thumbed. Tyrone sits straight back down and rests a dead gaze on the gigantic plasma TV screen, watches somebody preparing a meal on a beach. Staffe can hear a TV elsewhere in the house, either that or a stereo.

‘Nice TV, Mr Watkins.’

‘You can get them bigger, now. When I got it, it was the biggest. Just about.’

‘When was that?’

Watkins doesn’t answer, he just looks a little bit more sad, and Staffe guesses he’s had the TV three years. An attempt to distract his daughter Sally from what Montefiore did to her. Allegedly.

‘Is Sally here?’ says Staffe.

Tyrone says, ‘She’s sleeping. She’s not seeing no one today. No one, you hear.’ He squints up at Staffe. ‘Who you say you were?’

‘Police, Mr Watkins.’

‘Aah. That’s right.’

‘I’m from City of London. Leadengate.’ Staffe wonders where to go next, contemplates telling Watkins about Montefiore but decides against it.

‘Where is your wife, Mr Watkins?’ Staffe sits opposite Tyrone and sinks back into a leatherette armchair. From here he can see into the open-plan kitchen area, separated from the living room by a breakfast bar. Staffe looks around the room, can’t see a dining table, guesses this is TV-dinner land. ‘She’s gone, right?’

‘Said she was going to get cigarettes. She loved a smoke. I remember the first time we met, my mum said when I come home: “You been smoking, Tyrone? You don’t smoke, Tyrone,” she said. And I didn’t. Never have. She could smell Linda’s smoke on me. My Sally smokes but I don’t mind. It reminds me.’ He looks lost, looks as though he has exhausted himself just by talking. ‘Plenty else for her to die of, this day and age.’

He looks up at Staffe with cloudy eyes. ‘You police, you say?’ He points the remote control at the TV and watches the giant image change to a house overlooking a foreign sea.

‘I’d like to find your wife, Mr Watkins.’

‘Said she was going for cigarettes.’ A middle-aged couple are being shown round a Croatian waterfront home.

Staffe waits for Tyrone’s eyes to lid down. As soon as his head lolls back against the chair’s high, winged back, Staffe makes his way quietly down the hallway, following the sound of R & B music.

He taps lightly on the door. It says: ‘Sally’s Room. Enter at Your Peril’. He taps again and presses the door open as softly as he can, pokes his head round.

It’s a small room. The translucent pink curtains are drawn and the light is soft. An orange glow comes through a scarf that’s draped over the shade of her bedside lamp.

Sally Watkins is sitting on her bed in a short denim skirt with her back against the wall and her long, coltish legs
dangling
halfway to the floor. She’s made up and wearing a
tight-buttoned
, cropped blouse that shows her flat, teenage tummy, makes the most of her cleavage. Her hair looks done. When she clocks Staffe with big, glazed eyes, she shifts her position, makes a smile, says, ‘Aah. Not seen you before.’

‘I’m with the police, Sally.’

‘I’ve not done nothing wrong.’

‘I’m looking for your mother.’

‘Bit late, aren’t you? She’s been gone three year.’ Sally Watkins laughs and sneers. It makes her pretty face look ugly for a moment.

Staffe wants her to cover her legs and stop sitting back on her bed like that, as if a grown man in her bedroom offers no threat. He looks around the room a second time: no posters or dolls or teddy bears.

‘Where do you think she is, Sally? Does she have family?’

‘I’m her family and she’s not here.’

‘Does she have a brother or a sister?’

‘Me uncle Barry lives up north somewhere. I don’t know.’

‘And what’s his second name?’

‘Wilkins. It’s like Watkins. Me dad used to joke it was too much the same, her name. I didn’t used to get it. But I do now. He was always jokin’, me dad. Always jokin’.’ She looks away, out of the window at the tower block next door. Staffe follows the gaze and when he looks back at her, she’s got a pillow over her legs.

‘I know what happened, Sally. I might be able to help, if you want.’

‘They let him get away with it. Said it was better for me if we did nowt. Well plenty happened, didn’t it?’

‘Do you go to school, Sally?’

‘You havin’ a laugh?’

‘Do you have a job?’

‘I get by,’ she says. She tries to sneer again but doesn’t quite have the heart.

‘Your dad … is he ill?’

‘He’s good for nothin’ without her. He doesn’t have a clue apart from how to use that fuckin’ remote.’

‘Does he ever leave the house?’

‘Never. I do all the shoppin’, pick up his social an’ that.’

‘Was he in the house the day before yesterday – in the evening, during the night?’

‘He’s got fuckin’ bedsores, man. Covered in ’em. Gross. Have a look if you don’t believe me. He’s only thirty-five. It’s disgustin’.’

‘I’d kill for a cup of tea,’ says Staffe. He sits on the small stool in front of her dressing table, covered in make-up and brushes; straighteners, curling tongs and a hairdryer.

A car horn sounds outside and Sally jumps off the bed, peers out of the window. She presses her face up against the glass and says, ‘Nice motor. Is it yours?’

‘The E-Type? Yes.’

‘I’ll make you a cup of tea. How you take it? You don’t look like a copper.’

‘I’m CID.’

‘CID? Fuckin’ ’ell.’

As soon as she’s gone, Staffe rifles the drawers. The first is all bras and knickers, way sexier than a fifteen-year-old should be wearing. Second drawer are T-shirts, pristinely ironed. Third drawer is tissues and condoms. A whole load of condoms, and lube.

The bottom drawer is a whole childhood in miniature: a doll and a teddy bear; sugar sachets and matchbooks and some souvenir pencils from Chessington World of Adventure, Thorpe Park, Brighton Pier. There’s a stack of photographs with an elastic band around, and a slim stack of letters still in their envelopes, all opened with a knife. The top postmark is six months ago. Middlesbrough.

Staffe is on his knees when the door creaks back open. He sees her milky white legs and his heart sinks.

‘If you’d asked, I’d of told you. You didn’t need to go
snooping
,’ says Sally Watkins, standing in the door. ‘The kettle’s boiling.’

‘Sorry,’ says Staffe. He looks up, wants forgiveness.

She makes a smile without the sneer and says, ‘I’m going to have a sandwich. You want one?’

‘I’d love one, Sally. I’ll come and give you a hand.’

She leads the way, saying as she goes, ‘Looking for me mum, eh?’

In the kitchen, there’s just two of everything: knives, forks, dessert spoons, teaspoons. He opens a wall cupboard and sees sad pairs of side plates, dinner plates, cereal bowls and mugs. All neatly stacked. The inside of the cupboard is spotless. A waft of bleach as he closes the door.

As Sally makes the tuna and mayonnaise sandwiches, he looks for a towel. In a drawer there is a pile of ironed tea towels and at the side of them is a photocopied A5 flyer that reads: 

VABBA. Staffe knows what they’re getting at – the need to move on, to reclaim your life after being sinned against. But he can’t see any amount of victim support working for Tyrone Watkins or Sally.

‘Here you are. Tuna Marie Rose.’ She hands him the
sandwich
. ‘I put a bit of tomato puree in with the mayo. It makes it go pink. It’s better with seafood, see. Me mum taught me to do it.’

‘Sally …?’

‘You want to look at them letters, don’t you?’

‘Would you mind?’

‘What you want my mum for? He done it again? That bastard done it again?’

‘He might have.’

‘I’ll get the address. You don’t have to read the letters, do you?’

Staffe wants to read the letters, realises they might hold clues as to what Linda Watkins has been doing. ‘Not if you don’t want,’ he says, ‘but they might help. It’ll be just me reads them. I promise.’

She looks at him and smiles, says, ‘I’ll get them.’ She takes a cigarette from a packet of a budget brand and lights it too deftly with a Zippo lighter she pulls from the back pocket of her little denim skirt.

Staffe takes a bite of his tuna Marie Rose sandwich and chews, swallows it down against his will. Far too sweet. It’s a kid’s snack. He tears off a piece of kitchen roll and wraps the rest of the sandwich, puts it in his jacket pocket, waits for her to come back.

He finishes his tea and goes to the door, calls out, ‘Sally, you OK?’

There’s no sound, just the whiff of burning, getting stronger. A thin scarf of smoke plumes up from under the bathroom door and the toilet flushes. Sally Watkins appears, Zippo in hand and wearing a sad face. She hands him a scrap of paper and says, ‘That’s her address. Least it was last I heard.’