Willing Flesh (23 page)

‘She’s a friend.’

‘Strange kind of friend. I catch you calling her in the middle of the night and then next thing you’re off on some rescue mission.’

*

Outside the Metropole, Staffe tells the cabbie it’ll be a while before they know where they’re going but to put his meter on and turn off the intercom.

Sliding the window shut, he says to Rosa, ‘I can’t help you if you don’t tell me everything.’

‘I keep telling you, I’m not hiding anything, Will. Why would I?’ Her mascara has run and her bare shoulders tremble. She has refused his jacket, insists she is ‘boiling up’, but she is ice cold to the touch.

‘Tell me again what he said to you.’ He scoots right up to her.

‘He said, “You know the people you know.” He said, “It’s no good for us and it’s no good for you.” He asked me to tell him everything I knew about them. “The other two,” he called them.’

‘And what did you tell him? What do you know?’ She tenses up and he can feel it.

‘I don’t know anything!’ Rosa’s eyes are wide and red. ‘He asked about the one who stuck it up her.’

‘Oh, Jesus,’ says Staffe. ‘He knows she was pregnant.’ He slides open the glass screen, tells the cabbie to take them to West Smithfield, to the City police morgue.

‘I’m not going there,’ says Rosa, leaning away.

‘You want to get out?’

‘Why are you being like this, Will? You’re supposed to be my friend.’

Staffe pulls her close, watches the city lights over her shoulder, thinking who might have known Elena was pregnant.

Twenty

‘I’m not going in,’ says Rosa. Staffe has sent the taxi away and they are round the back of the Royal London, on Rook’s Way, outside the City police morgue. From behind, the grand Victorian pile looms, brooding and sinister; like Bedlam.

Through the meshed safety glass, Staffe sees the outline of Janine coming towards them.

‘What’s to be gained?’ says Rosa.

‘You could pay your respects.’

Rosa clutches her own torso with wraparound arms. Her eyes are wild now, and dark. The tears have run dry, the fear is all played out.

‘It might jog your memory,’ he says.

‘Where can I go, Will?’

‘You will come to mine,’ says Staffe.

‘If I play ball?’

‘Regardless.’ He takes her hand and leads her past Janine. Curiously, it is warmer in the morgue than outside – until they get to a metal door. All their clicking shoes come to a halt and Janine lets them in with a coded punch of the entry pad.

Inside, the light is harsh, but the perimeter of the room is black as night. Staffe shows Rosa a seat at the edge of the room and hands her a blanket. She wraps it around her and watches as Staffe follows Janine into the far dark. Slowly, into the brilliant light, they each wheel a trollied bench. Staffe has Elena and Janine Rebeccah.

Rosa tries to look only at their hair and their faces. But her eyes trail down to the cross-stitched scars of their autopsied bodies and she grabs her mouth. The dead girls are the colour of the moon.

‘You know what I’m going to say,’ says Staffe.

‘This could have been me.’

‘It could be somebody else, too. If there’s anybody else who knows what you know, Rosa.’

Rosa shakes her head. ‘I don’t know what I know.’ She walks to the dead girls and reaches out, laying her palms flat on the faces of the two girls. Rosa closes her eyes, stays like that for a minute, then two. Five.

Eventually, she lifts her hands, opens her eyes, and she turns to Staffe. ‘Whatever I know, once I’ve told you, that’s it. That’s all I can do. I don’t have any more cards to play.’

‘You have to tell me.’

Janine turns off the operating lights and leaves Staffe and Rosa in the soft light from the washroom at the back of the morgue theatre. Staffe raises a hand to bid her farewell then turns to Rosa, taking her hands in his. ‘You must believe that anything you tell me won’t harm you. I won’t allow it.’

‘For Elena and Rebeccah and me … It’s us against the world – it has to be. You let so much in, you give so much of yourself …’ Rosa talks into her lap, running her thumb along Staffe’s knuckles. ‘… You have to keep something for yourself, for each other. We trust each other.’

‘That has to change now,’ says Staffe.

Rosa sighs, choosing her words, with the greatest of care. ‘Elena started behaving differently, the last couple of months or so. She kept saying I should find a way out. I always thought she was happy in the game. It was a while before I understood.’ Rosa looks at Staffe, shakes her head and looks back into her lap.

‘Understood?’

‘That she was getting out.’

‘They didn’t kill her because she was getting out, surely? She was having a baby. Markary’s baby, for Christ’s sake.’

‘I don’t think it was anything to do with the baby. No, Elena knew something.’

‘Did Rebeccah know it, too?’

‘Becx had her own plans. They wouldn’t have worked out if Tchancov had got wind of them. She has a little girl, you know. Her mother looks after her.’

‘Her mother!’

‘Her mother loves her, Will. As best she can.’

‘Maybe she and Elena have been blackmailing Markary.’

Rosa shakes her head and Staffe can’t tell whether she is still holding back.

‘Did Bobo know it wasn’t his baby?’

‘
His
baby!’ Rosa looks up at Staffe.

‘Jealous lovers lose their minds.’

‘You don’t know? That was all an act. Elena was Bobo’s sister.’

‘What!’

‘He followed her over here. That’s how he got his job with Tchancov. He’s nothing to do with any of this.’

Staffe lets go of her hands and sighs. ‘There’s nothing more?’

Rosa says nothing.

‘What is it?’ he says.

‘Becx was complaining that she wasn’t in the club.’

‘Not pregnant?’

‘No, not that. Elena would talk with Arabella. They had secrets.’

‘Arabella Howerd,’ says Staffe, as much to himself as Rosa.

‘Elena had a thing for Darius.’

‘Arabella’s boyfriend?’ says Staffe. ‘It seems like everybody had a piece of Elena.’

‘Elena had a piece of everybody, is how it was. But if you ask me, it was the real thing for Elena.’

‘With Darius? More than Markary?’

‘She’s a young woman, Will. And they all seem to go for Darius. I don’t get it myself, but he’s got something, that boy.’

They get back into the cab, and as they go into the dark night – towards Jombaugh, who will tend her until Staffe is all done – Rosa whispers into his chest that the man who lured her knows she has a ‘policeman friend’. ‘You have to let it all lie, Will.’

*

Staffe has impressed on Rosa that he will return to the station for her in an hour or so and that she will stay with him. Now, in the dead of the London night, Jarndyce Road slumbers, tranquil. The skips and builders’ vans are bathed in mist like a natural part of a timeless landscape.

It is clear that only one floor of the house is occupied and Staffe lobs up a handful of gravel, smattering the main window. There is no response, so he lobs up another. And another, until a light comes on and an angry young man opens a window, shouts, ‘Fuck off!’ holding a breeze block. Fair to say, he is used to trouble.

‘A’Court!’ calls Staffe.

‘I said fuck off!’

‘Police. Watch your language and let me in.’ As he waits, Staffe sees that despite the commotion, the street sleeps on. It would appear that most of the houses are either under, or awaiting, redevelopment.

‘What do you want?’ says Darius A’Court, opening the front door, seemingly coming down from something.

Staffe pushes past him and up the stairs, following the sweet smell of weed. ‘Is Arra in?’

‘Leave her alone.’

‘It’s a bit late for that.’ When Staffe gets to the top of the stairs, he stops dead.

Arabella’s long, thick blonde hair is tangled and her skin is dry, but with her long, fine features and her powder-blue eyes, the young Howerd looks as if she is Elena Danya, back to life. ‘I’m here about Elena,’ says Staffe.

‘Is it a mistake? Is she all right?’ Arabella speaks slowly and her words drift into each other, like snow on the wind.

Staffe shakes his head.

‘Say nothing,’ says Darius. He puts an arm round Arabella. It makes her smile.

‘You were in her phone. And Rebeccah’s.’

‘They’re my friends.’

Staffe makes his way into the living room. The walls are bare and a hippy throw hangs at the window. The scent of weed is thick and it smells as if they might have rustled some soup. It is damp, cold as outdoors. ‘You don’t need to live like this.’

‘I look after her,’ says Darius.

Staffe turns on Darius, stands nose to nose. He can see what women might find in him. His eyes are dark and glassy. He has a faraway, lost look. Staffe whispers, ‘I bet you do.’

‘What’s happening?’ says Arabella, sitting on the edge of a threadbare sofa, wrapping a blanket around her. For an instant, as she looks up at Staffe, he can see all her deep beauty. Fleetingly, she appears to be strong, capable. She is beautiful, but soon, she is lost again, reaching her hand out for Darius.

‘What happened to you, Arabella?’ says Staffe.

She smiles, dazed.

‘Don’t you fit, with all that history, that old England?’

Arabella’s eyes cloud over and Darius sits beside her, hugs her to him.

‘Did Elena like the old England?’

Arra looks sidelong at Darius. ‘Lots of people like Elena.’

‘Who was the father, Arra?’ says Staffe. ‘You knew she was pregnant.’

Arabella shrugs Darius away. He looks hurt – as if this is the tip of an argument they have had many times. She puts her hands to her face.

Staffe says, ‘Darius? Any clues about the father?’ He turns to Arra, says, ‘I bet the baby would have looked like you. You and Elena are very alike.’

‘It was a baby girl?’

‘But you and Rebeccah are different, aren’t you. Elena knew something, didn’t she, Arra? Tell me. I want to know what she knew.’

‘They
are
dead, right?’ says Arabella, as if history might be rewritten.

Staffe wonders when she last had something to hope for – in her rich and landed, God-blessed existence.

‘I guess you miss your mother, don’t you, Bella.’

‘She called me Bella.’ The way she says ‘Bella’, her name sounds like something fine.

‘I’d like to take you to your father. I think he should see you.’

Arabella looks up at Staffe and she has tears in her eyes. Her hands, knotted together, shake. ‘You want to use me. But I’m no good to you.’

‘You have to tell me what Elena knew.’

Arabella looks away, lets her body slump into Darius’s arms. She looks Staffe straight in the eyes and as her lids shut down, she murmurs, ‘He loves me. He’s the only one.’

Darius smiles, as if he has something to be proud of, as if that is a rare thing.

*

It is clear to Sylvie that Staffe is desperately trying not to wake her. He slinks into the Queen’s Terrace flat and takes the woman straight to the lounge.

From the bedroom, Sylvie hears Pulford say, ‘Who’s the girl?’

Staffe ignores the question and Sylvie draws her gown over her shoulders, breathes in, long and slow, and holds the air in her lungs. She will not make a scene, but she will get to the bottom of what is going on.