Willing Flesh (20 page)

‘Lucky for Taki we seem to have the man who killed his unborn …?’

‘Daughter. Josie came to pick up the reports. They’re within a whisker of a confession, she said.’

‘It wouldn’t surprise me one bit,’ says Staffe. ‘He might be a pervert, but he strikes me as an honourable man.’

‘Blears?’ says Janine.

‘I’ll let Markary know,’ says Staffe, hanging up and getting into the lift.

All the way up to the trading floor, London spreads wider and wider, like a magical city in a pop-up book. The snow-white fields of Essex and Herts and the Chiltern Hills crumple beneath the clear sky. As he rises, Staffe sees that Markary, with his impeccably bred wife and his power-mongering friends and associates, would be better served if the bastard daughter to his whore mistress was prevented from entering this world.

Finbar Hare meets him at the lift. Staffe’s friend of twenty years, with whom he played rugby and drank furiously, has changed further in the year or so since they last hooked up: his stomach hangs over a belt that won’t stay and his hair has thinned; his face is puffy and pale. Staffe tries desperately not to say, ‘Bloody hell, man. What’s happened to you?’ But Finbar slaps his belly and laughs, motions for Staffe to go into his office. He says, in a slow and soft-earth voice that always made women swoon and men unable to dislike him, ‘Couldn’t this have waited a couple of hours? We might have had a drink. Or are you still off it?’

Staffe shrugs. ‘Off and on.’

‘You should come round to the house. Flick would love to see you.’ Staffe must express surprise because Finbar says, ‘Oh yes. We’re back together. Again. Miracles happen. But this isn’t a social call.’

‘Leonard Howerd, Fin. He works for …’

‘Laing’s. I know. Christ, what’s the poor bastard done to have you delving into his life. He’s a chosen one, you know, Staffe. Tread softly, my man.’

‘I can be subtle, you know.’

‘Ah, so some things do change.’ He looks at his watch and makes a grumpy face. ‘A quick snifter?’

‘Don’t let me stop you.’

‘You know, word is that old Leonard might be up for the nod in the New Year’s list.’

‘What’s he done to deserve that?’

‘As if we’d ever find out.’ Finbar laughs, pouring himself a nip of whisky and holding the bottle up to Staffe, who shakes his head, wishes he could find time to meet his friends more. ‘Arise Sir Leonard. For services to the world of money and your third-world yomping and all that dead game you litter East Anglia with. And God, of course.’

Staffe says, ‘He’s related to
those
Howards?’

‘All the way back to Mary bloody Tudor – except Leonard’s lot let it slip – out of line. But his wife got them back on track.’

‘She’s an Audley.’

‘And deader than a dodo. Poor Lenny. I only met him a couple of times. We hosted him at Twickers once and had him over for a directors’ lunch.’ Finbar leads the most irreverently charmed life. He got capped for England, just the once, and that disastrous debut is possibly the only bad luck he ever suffered. In fact, it made people like him the more, and smoothed his way into what he does now. ‘Talk about establishment. You know his second cousin thrice removed – or whatever – has organised three state funerals and two coronations. Earl Marshal malarkey. Still, when his wife popped it – a few years ago, it knocked him for six. Loved her to bits, apparently.’

‘What about the children?’

‘Bloody disaster, is what I heard. Son’s a gay boy and the daughter’s a junkie. End of the line!’ Fin laughs.

Staffe looks at his watch.

‘Flying visit?’ says Finbar. ‘Honestly,’ he walks around his desk, punches Staffe in the shoulder. ‘Give us a ring and come round for dinner. You got a girl?’

‘Sylvie.’

‘Christ, man.’ Finbar clicks his fingers and whistles. ‘Still batting above your average, then? Bollocks! If you’re still with Sylvie, you’ve got to come round.’

‘We will,’ says Staffe, opening the door.

‘What’s he done, then, our friend Sir Leonard?’

‘I’m not sure he’s done anything at all.’ He smiles at Finbar and shrugs, sorry that his profession is now standing between them. ‘Did he … did he like his ladies? Ladies of the night.’

‘Don’t they all? Dirty bastards,’ says Finbar, ‘judging by the time we showed him at Twickers. But you know that.’

‘What?’

‘The higher they are, the lower they get.’

‘Anything dodgy?’

Finbar shrugs. This time it is his profession that stands between them, all Jermyn Street and Royal Enclosured.

*

Graham Blears, grey, drawn and haunted, is led into the interview room by two prison officers who don’t give a toss whether he is a twoccer or a serial killer. One of them takes a copy of
The News
from his back pocket, unaware that his con is the man fallaciously described as Vlad the Ripper. Later today, Absolom will U-turn and the front page will feature Blears.

His solicitor whispers in his ear and Blears nods, somehow resigned, but summoning the strength to ask of Josie the wellbeing of his dog, Useless.

‘She’s just fine, Graham. Once we have put this to bed I’ll find a proper home for her. I promise, she’ll be loved.’

‘You remember what we agreed?’ says the solicitor.

Blears nods and says to Josie, as if Rimmer was not even in the room, ‘I know what I have to do.’ Through a high window, he sees the brick tenement wing of the jail, running away, like the façade of a Victorian mill.

‘Why don’t you start at the beginning?’

He shakes his head. ‘You have your evidence, so I’m told. And I have been an evil man. I must make my peace.’

‘It’s important, Graham, that you tell me if there are any other girls. We’ve spoken to Margaret and she has told us what you like.’

‘Margaret?’

‘Your friend from the Forest.’

‘She knows me?’ A smile suggests itself.

‘Did you harm any other girls?’

Blears shakes his head and his solicitor produces a sheet of typewritten paper from his briefcase, says, ‘This is what we agreed. I have to know, before we sign and witness this, that nothing has changed.’

‘The tariff is a matter for the judge, as you know, but we have the CPS on side,’ says Rimmer. ‘Our expert witness has already documented what she thinks. Grafton would be appropriate.’

At this, the solicitor nods, approvingly. Grafton is the most progressive high-security prison in the country. What the Tory tabloids would describe as a holiday camp.

‘I don’t care where I go,’ says Blears, no qualms about serving his time. Grafton would claim to give Graham Blears his best shot at making a fully functioning and safe contribution to society, some time down the line. But Graham is unconcerned. He takes the pen from his solicitor.

‘Did you know the girls were friends?’ asks Josie.

‘Of course they are. They’re all just the same.’

‘
How
did you know?’

Blears smiles, as if he has something to be proud of, as if he is governed by a higher deity. He holds the pen as if it were something holy and turns his attention to the document. As he reads it, his face briefly changes.

*

Sylvie has a plate on her tummy, littered with parkin crumbs. Staffe had made it for Bonfire Night and she had said it wasn’t ‘the kind of thing to blow my hair back’. It makes him smile now, seeing her in her low jeans and short smock top, with the parkin all eaten up.

Pulford evidently doesn’t know quite how to take her. He is sitting up with one leg draped over the other, hands clasped in his lap. His hair is unwaxed and floppy.

Staffe asks Pulford what he has done with his day.

‘I was pulled back onto the trafficking case. They had a whole boatload coming in to work on a shopping mall out in Essex. The licences traced to somewhere in Mile End, but the place was shut up when we got there. Not a whiff.’

‘Seems like we both missed out on the murder cases,’ says Staffe.

‘Josie says they got an ID on Blears from some middle-aged woman; says she gave him a – you know,’ he looks towards Sylvie, then at the floor.

‘A blow job?’ says Sylvie.

‘A couple of hours after he did for Rebeccah Stone. Bloody pervert. I can’t get my head round it.’

‘Is Josie the pretty one?’ says Sylvie.

Both men nod and mumble, ‘Yes. I suppose so. Kind of.’ As if it hadn’t occurred to them.

‘Rimmer and Josie reckon Blears wants to confess. They’re talking to the Crown.’

‘Tidy,’ says Staffe.

‘You know, sir, sometimes cases can come together. Surely. You told me that crimes have to be caught hot. And for Blears it was just too much of a burden, that realisation – of what he had done.’

‘I’m glad we got our man,’ says Staffe.

‘I’m off to bed,’ says Sylvie, holding a cup of cocoa. ‘Don’t be too long.’ She bends down, kisses Staffe, and as she does it, she takes a hold of his flesh and pinches him just above the nipple. It smarts. When she has gone, he rubs it, looks down, sees that his shirt is smudged with leaked mascara – exactly where his fiancé had pinched him. ‘Oh shit,’ he says, aloud.

‘What?’ says Pulford.

‘How are you getting on with Rimmer?’

‘He seems to have taken a shine to Josie. It’s like he’s skipped over me.’

‘You want me to have a word with Rimmer about the case?’

‘Let Josie have her day in the sun. As long as we’ve got the bastard, that’s the main thing, hey, sir,’ he says, checking the time on his watch, leaving.

Staffe takes off his shirt, stained with black tears, and puts it in the linen basket, walks quietly on padding feet to his bathroom. He showers vigorously, taking it as hot as he can bear – then a notch higher for the count of twenty, then immediately onto full cold full blast for as long as it takes him to count down from sixty. He walks naked and wet to the bedroom. As he eases the door shut, Sylvie stirs.

He tries to slide into bed without waking her but she backs into him and takes hold of his hand. She says, soft, ‘You showered.’

‘It’s been a long day.’

‘I don’t know you. Do I, Will? Not really.’

*

As soon as Staffe is certain that Sylvie is asleep, he eases his way out of bed and creeps down the corridor, walking on his toes until he gets to the lounge. He takes his phone from his jacket pocket and seeks out Rosa, checking his watch and deciding this cannot wait until morning. He thinks of her in the Metropole Hotel with a stranger; thinks of the two dead girls’ numbers she still keeps in her phone. He looks into the night as he calls her. Flecks of snow are falling, slowly in the radial haze of the streetlights.

‘Were you awake?’ he says. ‘Sorry. But you got back OK? I worry about you. You have to be extra careful, Rosa. Promise me you’ll be careful. OK. Goodnight. I’ll be in touch soon. Me too.’

He clicks off the phone and turns to put the handset back in his jacket pocket. As he does, he sees her.

Sylvie says, ‘Who is Rosa, Will?’

Eighteen

Staffe draws back his hand, rattles the lion’s-head brass knocker to the four-storey town house in Mayfair. He thinks he should perhaps have been more respectful to Leonard Howerd at the bank. But then he thinks of Elena Danya and Rebeccah Stone. Bugger that. He knocks the brass lion head again, knowing Howerd will have left to go to his bank.

A young man answers: tall and frail, handsome and boyish. He is dressed as if his mother may have laid his clothes out for him, except his mother was taken by Peruvian bandits five years ago. This is Roddy Howerd, a freshman scholar at St John’s, Oxford. Latest in the line.

‘Is Arabella in?’ says Staffe, looking Roddy in the eye, holding it until the boy looks away.