Suffer the Children (33 page)

‘Who is this?’ she says, sounding like a child who might have been caught off guard in an empty house.

Staffe hands the phone to Johnson, ‘It’s Rick. Have you started yet?’

‘I was just going to.’

‘Don’t, Sal. You can’t.’

‘But I have to. There’s a copper here, too. That woman.’

‘Get out, Sally. Go where I said. Remember?’

‘I’ve got everything sorted, Rick. I’ve got time. The police have been but they went to the wrong house, just like you said. I’m almost there.’

‘They’re here, Sally. They’ve got me.’

‘But what about Becky? What about everybody? You said …’

‘Careful what you say, Sal. People are listening.’

‘You said …’

‘I know. We’ve done what we could.’

‘What will I do, Rick? This isn’t what you said. I trusted you.’

Rick Johnson’s eyes glaze. Tears form quickly and fall heavy. ‘I’m sorry you trusted me. I’m so sorry.’

‘What shall I do?’ She sounds lost, alone.

‘Do what I said.
Exactly
what I said. And don’t touch the policewoman.’

‘Or Regis,’ says Staffe.

‘And leave Regis. Please, Sally.’

‘You’re dying, Rick.’ Sally starts to cry.

‘You be careful, Sal. Remember what we said.’

Staffe takes the phone from Johnson and steps away from him. ‘There had to be a better way, Rick.’

Johnson looks up at Staffe. ‘You don’t know the half of it. You might think you do, but you don’t.’

‘Where will she go, Rick?’ Staffe picks up the syringe again, looks at it quizzically, as if it could still administer some good.

‘That wasn’t part of the deal. No fucking way, Staffe. You can do what you like but I won’t tell you that. Sally comes to no harm. She’s done no harm.’

‘You’ve got to be joking.’

‘It was all me. All me and you can’t prove otherwise.’

‘She’s assaulted Regis and Josie.’

‘That’s assault. She had nothing to do with the others.’

Staffe looks at the screen, tries to see what is going on down at Gibbets Lane but the camera is on Regis. He can just make out Josie in the corner, and the back of Sally, crouching nearby. ‘What if she does it again?’

‘Does what again? And anyway, she’s among friends.’

‘What friends, Rick?’

Johnson’s eyes lid down and Staffe checks his pulse. It is slow. He calls Leadengate and tells them to get an ambulance here, double quick. ‘It’s one of our own. I’ve got a DS dying here. One of ours.’

Johnson looks up. He tries to smile but it collapses under its own weight. ‘I trust you, Staffe. I do.’ His eyes close and his great chest rises and falls in shallow, stolen breaths.

Staffe taps the laptop’s cursor pad and the screen comes to life. He watches the Gibbets Lane room. Josie is struggling to sit up on the floor beneath the window, her face is wrought with pain. Errol Regis is still laid out on the table. By his bare legs rest an axe and a saw. At his feet is the bucket of tar.

There is no sign of Sally Watkins.

Staffe watches Josie through the safety-glass panel of her private hospital room. She turns, catches his eye, and appears to reset her mood, smiling weakly and batting her eyes. But as Staffe opens the door, making a magician’s sweep with the flowers he had been holding behind his back, he can see that she has been damaged.

‘I’m out tomorrow. I said not to come.’

‘You look great,’ says Staffe.

‘Liar.’

‘When did I ever lie to you?’

‘How’s Errol?’

‘Just fine.’

Her smile fades and she looks down at the scrunched-up blankets. ‘He’s never been fine. He didn’t do it, you know. He never laid a finger on Martha Spears. He swore that to me and I believe him.’

‘You should concentrate on getting yourself right.’ Staffe worries that after her ordeal she might never be quite the same.

‘I promised him I would track down his wife. I said I would help. Have you had any joy?’

‘We’ve got our hands full looking for Sally Watkins.’

‘Do you have to, Staffe?’

‘She did this to you.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with me.’

‘She drugged you and beat you. She tied you up and
threatened
to kill you. You’re traumatised, for crying out loud.’

‘She’s a child.’

‘We’re not in the business of letting people get away, Josie.’ He thinks about what might have happened if he had brought Sally in for being under age and on the game.

‘How is Montefiore?’

‘He’s not regained consciousness. They don’t think he’ll make it.’

Josie looks as if she wants to say something, but decides against it. Her eyes are heavy. She sits forward and reaches behind her. Staffe rushes to her side and leans across, plumps the pillows. He hair needs doing and she has no kohl around her eyes but she smells fresh and cool. He puts a hand on her shoulder, feels her slide through him and back to the pillows. Her flesh is warm and soft.

‘Thanks,’ says Josie. She takes Staffe’s hand, holds it with both hers. ‘Helena came to see me. Montefiore’s wife. She asked me to do anything I could, to help Sally. She said if there was anything I knew about where she had gone, would I keep it to myself?’

‘You told me Sally said nothing to you.’

‘Is Helena Montefiore involved?’

Staffe hooks his leg around a chair by the uncoupled
intravenous
trolley and drags it towards the bed. He sits down without taking his hand away from Josie’s and looks deep into her eyes. ‘Sally has got more friends than she knows.’

‘But she said she was alone in the world. All alone.’

‘They were looking after her. When I thought they were all tied into it, they were just doing their best to stop her.’

‘You mean Debra Bowker and Greta Kashell?’

‘Not so much Greta, but Ross Denness, too.’

‘You got him wrong, then?’

‘One act of kindness does not an angel make.’

‘Is that why he was round at Sally’s that time you went?’

Staffe nods. On a cabinet by the window, he sees a Manila envelope, marked by a fountain-penned ‘S’. Josie catches his eye.

‘That’s not you. It’s a different “S”,’ she says.

‘Would that be Helena Montefiore’s handwriting?’

‘It is a personal letter, sir. And like I said, it’s not for you.’

‘You know, it’s a crime to protect a witness.’

‘How’s Johnson bearing up?’

‘Did you know he was so ill?’

Josie shakes her head. Her eyes film over and she takes her hands away from Staffe, draws her sleeve across her nose and puts her head right back, stares at the ceiling. ‘Some friends we were.’

‘But what kind of a friend was he to us?’ Staffe stands up, wondering quite what sort of friend Johnson is to Jessop. He shakes his head, puts his hand into his pocket, touches the letter that came yesterday. ‘Johnson is saying he killed Lotte Stensson, too. His statement is very convincing.’

‘And what about Nico Kashell?’ Josie’s eyes flutter. Her lids are heavy.

‘My guess is, he’s going to have to cope with a life on the outside.’

‘And Rick takes the rap for the lot.’

‘And then dies a natural death. It looks as though he’ll get to take the truth to his grave,’ says Staffe, looking out of the window. Planes make criss-crossed white powder trails above the London roofline. His heart bleeds for Sally, running away. Ever since Montefiore raped her, she has only really been able to function when she was running
at
her enemy, plotting revenge. What will she do now? He checks his watch, sees he is running late for the flight.

He puts on a smile and turns to Josie, but she is asleep. Her eyelids are dark grey, her lips pale and downturned like a sad clown. She doesn’t look anything like herself. He looks at the Manila envelope, marked ‘S’, and makes his way quietly round the bed, checking over his shoulder that nobody is looking through the safety-glass panel. He picks up the envelope and looks closely at the ‘S’. He turns it over, to see if there is any telltale sign – a crest or embossment, but all he gets is a waft of scent. He runs his thumb along the gummed flap and as he does, something outside in the corridor crashes to the floor, makes a metallic sound. His heart stops for a beat and Josie’s head lolls to one side. Her eyes don’t open but his mind is made up. Staffe places the envelope back on the bedside table and leaves the room, empty-handed, but somewhat the wiser.

Making his way down the stairwell at the back of the
hospital
, Staffe walks through vast slanting columns of light from the eastern sun. Way down in the car park, he picks out his E-Type and the waiting Debra Bowker. She leans against the bonnet and blows out plumes of sun-dusted cigarette smoke. She looks up, shielding her eyes. It seems impossible that she might see him from all that way but she waves an arm, slowly.

He will drive her to the airport, just as he promised, and he will try to prise from her the likely whereabouts of Sally Watkins. A part of him hopes she will not yield, but the bigger part thinks that he has no business in letting Sally off the hook.

As he reaches ground level, Staffe pauses to let a cortège of wheelchairs pass. They are led outside by a nurse who has her Embassy Regals at the ready. Amidst the absurdity of the smoking cripples, he thinks of Jessop and takes out the letter that arrived this morning.

Staffe still can’t quite make sense of it and nor will he, he
suspects
, until he sees Johnson, who is across town in St Thomas’s Hospital. Word is, he will die within hours rather than days, and Staffe knows that unless he goes soon, it is unlikely that he will get to speak to his sergeant ever again. The hospital said they will call if they consider Johnson strong enough, but they said not to hold his breath. That’s exactly what the young
doctor
said as he handed across Johnson’s confession: to
everything
, from Lotte Stensson right the way through to Errol Regis. The doctor had smiled, as if he knew the note was a granted wish, a thing of beauty.

‘Don’t take it all on your shoulders, Staffe,’ says Debra Bowker, twisting the sole of her kitten shoe on the cigarette dimp and pinching the corners of her mouth with finger and thumb. ‘There’s a whole legal system out there to make sure you don’t fuck up.’

He laughs and goes round her side.

‘It’s the V12,’ she says, looking the Jag up and down.

‘You’re into cars?’

‘Karl was. He’d have killed for one of these.’

Staffe puts the key to the door and lets her in. ‘I would have picked you up from the hotel.’

‘That young pup dropped me off.’

‘Pulford?’

She slides in and fixes her skirt as she wiggles to some kind of comfort. She pulls at the seat belt, but it doesn’t work.

Staffe leans across and his cheek brushes against her hair. It tickles him as he jiggles the webbing of the seat belt,
unsnagging
it. He leans away and their eyes clash as he clicks her in. ‘I’ve seen your testimony, you saying Johnson admitted to you about doing for Colquhoun and Montefiore?’

‘Don’t forget Stensson. He did for her, too.’

‘And how would you know this? What connects you and Johnson?’ He manoeuvres the car out of the car park, sets them on a course for Heathrow.

‘How do any of us know each other? It’s only through VABBA. As innocent as that,’ she says in a light tone but with a serious face. Her thin, pencilled eyebrows crease together.

‘VABBA? How can I be sure you’re not directly involved?’

‘If that’s a threat, it’s not a very good one. You know damn well where I’m coming from.’ She turns to face him, crosses her legs at the calf. She makes a downturned prayer of her hands and slides them between her thighs. She lifts up her chin. ‘I made a new life for my children after what my ex-husband did. It was what I had to do. They needed a new future, not me going over the past, getting myself sucked in. I have to believe that good is stronger than evil and good doesn’t get to be stronger than evil by killing people. I come from the same place as you, Will. There’s no place for revenge in my world. My children’s world.’ She stares straight ahead, all the way to infinity, as if she is tuning out of what she is saying, thinking ahead to something else. ‘You don’t have to believe me when I say I’m not involved. I know I’m not. You believe in the law. I believe in the power of good.’

‘So why confuse the two,’ says Staffe. ‘Help the law. Tell me where Sally is.’

‘Good things can come out of this. All I can do is look after my children.’

‘And Sally?’

‘Sally is a child.’

‘When did you last speak to Helena Montefiore?’

‘What makes you think I ever did?’

‘Or Ross Denness.’

‘You might think Ross is a thug.’ She looks into her lap. ‘And he might be. But he cares. He’s not everything you think.’

‘If I don’t catch up with Sally Watkins, she could do this again.’

‘She won’t.’

‘She was hooked on it, Debra. That’s why you got the call to come over – to try and help talk her out of it. Am I right?’

‘No. We tried to show her some love. That’s not a bad thing, and it’s certainly not a crime.’

‘Sally has been filled with hate for three years. Since Montefiore, it has governed her. That’s not going to change overnight.’

‘You can’t put her in prison, is all I know. You can’t.’

‘So it’s all right to take the law into your own hands?’

‘She won’t do it again.’

‘You know you have to tell me where she is.’

‘I don’t have to do anything.’ The words catch in her throat.

He looks across, sees that her lip is quivering. ‘Did you know that Errol Regis never touched Martha Spears? He did three years because of people lying to the law and he nearly died because of Johnson and Sally. Sally needs help, Debra.’

‘I can’t play God like this.’

‘It’s just the law. It’s the closest we have to good over bad.’

‘You’ve no right …’ Debra Bowker presses her belt release. and says, ‘I’ve had enough.’ The belt is stuck.

‘I said I’d take you. I’ll stop with the questions.’

‘I don’t believe you can.’ Debra dabs at the corners of her eyes with the cuff of her blouse. Two smears of black make dark gashes on the white silk.

‘She’s still in London, isn’t she?’

‘I’m not saying,’ says Debra, sniffing.

‘She’s with Helena Montefiore.’

‘Let me out!’

When Debra Bowker gets out of the car, she busies herself adjusting her skirt and the sleeves of her blouse. Then she does her hair. Staffe pulls away but has to stop at a red light. He checks Debra in the wing mirror and watches her shoulders shake, dark tears streaming down her cheeks.

As he drives away from her, Staffe is smothered by feelings of regret. All through this case, he has been amazed by the kindnesses and atrocities that people are capable of bestowing and inflicting on each other. He thinks, now, that he knows how this is going to pan out. But as he drives his father’s car towards that end, he fears the worst – for the victims and for himself.

Officially, Staffe is still suspended from the investigation and, although he made the connection to Johnson, Smethurst and Pennington are still fuming that he kept the cards so close to his chest. But what else could he do? What can he do now, to make sure he is doing the right thing: by the victims. For justice.

The cats are pretty much all out of the bags and the endgame is being played out in public – with more than one eye on the politics. This is Nick Absolom’s domain. After everything that has happened in this case, why not go into the den, offer his head up to the mouth and see what happens?

‘I can’t believe Kashell is still insisting he killed Lotte Stensson,’ says Nick Absolom, running his long fingers through his hair and sucking on a cigarette in his seat by the open window on the sixth-floor offices of the
News
in Ravencourt House.

A part of Staffe feels compelled to respect a part of Absolom – his devil-may-care.

‘What angle are you taking?’ asks Staffe.

‘I think you know. But that’s not to say I believe your DS Johnson did all this on his lonesome.’ Absolom flicks his cigarette out of the window, not caring how it falls to earth.

‘Sometimes you’ve got to follow the party line, hey, Nick?’

Absolom lights another cigarette and swivels on his chair to face Staffe. ‘We’re not so different, you and me. We get our hands dirty, but it’s nothing like the grime at the top. Same in news, same in law, same in politics. It’s a mad, mad food chain, hey, Will?’ He laughs, but cuts it dead and leans forward, fixes a look you could hook a fish with. ‘You and me both know it’s all shit. I can’t follow the line any more than you can and it’s killing me like it’s killing you. We believe it’ll be different when we get to the top.’ He leans back. ‘But will it?’ He looks at his cigarette, inhales deep, blows the smoke into the room. ‘You can’t help yourself, can you, Will? Even though you’re
suspended
from the case, you’re going after Sally Watkins, aren’t you? And you know where Jessop is.’