Willing Flesh (25 page)

‘It’s full of shit.’

‘Did she ever stay over?’

‘When she was fed up of that prick.’

‘Mitch? When was the last time?’

‘Couple weeks ago. She’d come now and again to get her post, see the baby. Always used this as home.’ She regards Staffe with suspicion, weighing something up.

He reaches into his pocket, pulls out forty Bensons and puts them on the table. ‘I’d like to take a look round her room. Do you mind?’

Nicola Stone opens a packet straight off, sparking up.

As he passes the main bedroom, Staffe glimpses Brendan Stone sitting on the edge of the bed. The room is thick with smoke and Brendan has a child in his lap, rocking to and fro. His gaze is so lost he doesn’t see Staffe, who slips into the small bedroom at the end of the short corridor.

Pictures of boy bands and soccer players collage an entire wall. There is no linen on the bed and one single wardrobe without a door. Through the window, you can see across the bin bays to the cranes of the City.

A banana carton under her bed is full of summer clothes. Staffe replaces it, careful not to disturb anything. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, he pulls a box from the bottom of the wardrobe. It is full of papers: lottery tickets with the numbers all ticked and crossed in a sparkly gold ink. They are clamped together with a bulldog clip.

Beneath the tickets is a thick wad of bank statements, wrapped in pink ribbon and in perfect sequence. Rebeccah lived her life with nothing to spare. Her living and spending would have been principally cash, but this numerical sketch of her life reveals she did
£
20 a month on her Oyster card. A further
£
20 a month went to AfrikaChild, which makes Staffe want to weep. She received
£
170 a month from the DWP,
£
95 for child benefit, and made irregular, small withdrawals from ATMs around central London. Except …

Staffe hears raised voices from the living room. It sounds as if all hell has broken loose. The child is wailing.

… Except, three weeks ago, Rebeccah took out
£
40 from a machine in Saltburgh. The day before, she paid
£
23 to Eastern Rail. Staffe scans either side, thinking she might have made a payment to a hotel, but there is nothing. He quickly reties the ribbon, retaining the one bank statement and making sure the room is just as it was.

Brendan Stone is in the living room and nods at Staffe as he comes into the room. He points at an empty chair and Staffe sits down. ‘You find what you came for?’

Rosa has the baby in her arms. Staffe guesses it is maybe eighteen months old.

‘I don’t know what I came for,’ says Staffe.

Nicola Stone gets up, leaves the room with a grunt.

‘She blames herself, and there’s a fuck of a lot to blame herself for, but that don’t change fuck all as far as I’m concerned.’ Brendan picks up the two packs of Bensons and tosses them back at Staffe. ‘I won’t tell you what’s gone on in this place, all the time Becka was a girl. The shit she’s seen and had to get her head round. I’m ashamed for letting it happen and for not being around enough. My life’s a fuck-up, I don’t mind telling you.’

Brendan leans forward and rolls a cigarette. It is like watching a magician. With his left hand, he picks a small clod of Drum and with his right, he unfurls a paper. He brings the two together and in three slow turns of the wrist, the fag is licked and lit. He leans back, exhaling, says, ‘There’s not a fucking thing in this shit world that I wouldn’t do to catch the cunt that done for my Becka. And I’d like to think you’d have the fucking grace to let me know who he is. Let me get to him an hour before you boys in blue.’ Brendan’s jaw is set and there is life in his eyes where only a few minutes ago there was none. ‘If I help you.’

‘How might you help me, Mr Stone?’

‘You giving me your word?’

‘I can’t do that. And anyway, you’ll know we have got the man who murdered Rebeccah.’

‘You think that, what the fuck you doing here? Go on, then. Fuck off!’

‘You know something?’

‘You make me that promise.’

Staffe locks his eyes on Brendan Stone. ‘This thing that you know, it’s about Rebeccah going up to Suffolk, isn’t it? And her friend Arabella Howerd.’

Brendan’s eyes flicker and he looks away from Staffe. Staffe wants to make the promise, but he plants his hands on his knees, stands up. ‘I’m sorry you can’t help me, Brendan. Truly, I am. But I’ll find him, and if I don’t, or if I do but I can’t put him away because of something you know but won’t tell me – well, that’s something that you’ll have to get your head round, isn’t it.’

‘I’m her father, for fuck’s sake!’ Brendan Stone stands, faces up to Staffe.

It appears, to Staffe, that the world can’t hurt Brendan Stone any more. So what chance would he have, should he take a step closer? Staffe’s heart beats fast and his surging blood makes his fingers prickle. He forms a fist, says, ‘You’ve left it a bit late to be the doting father, Brendan. You can’t use me to make that kind of fucked-up peace with her.’

Stone stares him out, the veins in his temples pulsing thick, fast. He puts his hand up to his mouth, takes a hold of his roll-up and it is all Staffe can do not to flinch. Stone exhales, says, ‘If my only peace is fucked up, that’ll do. That’d be a fucking blessing.’

Rosa hands the baby back to its grandfather, saying, ‘What’s her name? She looks just like Rebeccah.’

Brendan smiles kindly on Rosa, says, ‘Elena. You knew she had a baby daughter?’

‘She never told me her name.’

Twenty-two

Roddy Howerd has been frozen to the spot for twenty minutes outside Leadengate Station, running through his lines, visualising the innards of this dark, gothic home of the Peelers, formerly an inn.

Now, going up to the front desk, seeing the large, happy-go-lucky sergeant smiling at him, he rehearses a final time, waits, says, ‘I want to report a missing body.’

‘Body?’ says Jombaugh, looking up at the tall, immaculately dressed young man. He couldn’t be anything but the real thing – born to rule. Of his type, he seems nervous, but he speaks with great clarity.

‘It is my sister. The family is most distressed.’

‘You said body, sir. Not person.’

‘A slip of the tongue.’ Roddy looks down. This is exactly what they had agreed upon. Precisely. Word perfect. Roddy knows his father thinks he falls short, but this is where he is at home. This could be a stage, and in this crucible, Roddy finds a small pocket of time in which to contemplate that this might be the one thing his mother passed down to him. ‘Since Arabella was taken, the family has feared the worst.’

‘Taken?’

‘Oh yes. We are quite sure she has been taken.’

‘And her name?’

‘Arabella Howerd.’ Roddy gives the address, an outline of her last known movements, says, ‘I don’t know how to say this,’ looking away, as if ashamed. ‘Arabella has always had a wild streak and she is by no means an angel. She used to take drugs, occasionally, I believe. And I should perhaps say, simply to save you time and trouble, and so you can fully understand why we are so agitated, that she was a friend of those two poor girls who were murdered recently. A friend, I must add. Not an associate or colleague or anything like that.’

Jombaugh stops writing and looks at the young man, so clearly distressed about his sister’s disappearance.
Howerd
. That name rings a bell. ‘Howerd?’ he says. ‘Is that with an “e”?’

‘Precisely. You may have heard of my father.’

Jombaugh nods towards the door to Roddy Howerd’s left, says, ‘Would you like some tea?’

‘Black. No sugar.’

Once the young man has closed the door behind him, Jombaugh puts his head in his hands, thinking as fast as he can. He curses Staffe but calls him anyway, recounting what Roddy Howerd had said.

‘He said his sister had been “taken”. He referred to her as a “body”. I’m about to tell Rimmer, of course. And Pennington.’

‘Thanks for the wink, Jom. I appreciate it. How did the young Howerd seem, Jom?’

‘Very concerned about his sister, but composed, I’d say.’

‘How does he know she was taken and hasn’t just got wasted somewhere?’

‘They’re worried because she was a friend of the two murdered girls.’

‘The ones Graham Blears killed,’ says Staffe, ending the call, looking up at the steel-and-glass, shameless opulence of the home of Devere Chance, Finbar Hare’s firm.

Staffe shows his card and the receptionist responds with disproportionate respect. Perhaps they think he is here on matters fraud. Had they known that it was simply a matter of common murder, he might be given shorter shrift, rather than a personal escort.

‘Twice in a week, hey Staffe? To what the honour?’ says Finbar.

Staffe splays his hands and raises his shoulders. ‘You said you’d ask around, about that development up in Suffolk.’

‘Howerd again? Poor bastard, to have your teeth clamped on his arse cheek,’ laughs Finbar, opening the door to an oval glass shell of a meeting room with precipitous views all the way down into the jungled atrium. Rooms that look inward.

Staffe looks up through the atrium’s glass roof to the milky sky above. ‘Have you got anything for me?’

‘It’s being built on Howerd’s family land, that’s for sure. He’s got plenty left, mind you – enough for a bungalow or two – and half a dozen golf courses.’

‘Mary Tudor’s corner of England, I’d guess.’

Fin shakes his head. ‘Almost. But not quite. Howerd’s line ran out a couple hundred years back and they had to get a husband to take the wife’s name. But the Duke insisted they change the “a” to an “e”.’

‘An “L” of a difference.’

Finbar laughs. ‘But Lenny’s marriage to Imogen Audley got them right back in the tree.’

‘Audley? As in the cardinal?’ says Staffe.

‘You got it, my son. Cardinal Bernard Audley, sending up smoke in Rome.’

‘Shame Roddy’s the other way inclined.’

‘Best hope Arabella comes out of this phase, then,’ says Finbar.

‘And who’s developing this almost royal land?’

‘Difficult to say. There are three Jersey companies involved, run by a firm of project managers based in Mayfair. But the ultimate shareholdings of the development companies are nominees in Liechtenstein. It’s not unusual. Loopholes in the tax regime.’

‘Do you have the details?’

Finbar goes into his desk, hands Staffe a piece of paper.
Bluecoat Holdings, Oakvale Developments
and
Pinfold Housing
. All three companies have listed as their hundred-per-cent shareholders a firm based in Liechtenstein called Laissez SA.

‘Who is doing the building work itself?’

‘Not one of the major housebuilders,’ says Finbar, sitting down. ‘Which is quite unusual. The project managers have appointed subcontractors directly.’

‘Why do that?’

‘To keep the contractor’s profit for themselves. But it’s a big risk because most of the subbies will be itinerant workers. If the build fucks up, you’ve no one to sue. They disappear,’ he clicks his fingers. ‘Like that.’

‘Poles?’

‘Probably.’

‘And who is this project management firm?’

‘Again, this is unusual. Not one of the big outfits. I’ve never heard of these boys and nor have our analysts.’

‘Eggs in one basket,’ muses Staffe, looking back at the list that Finbar had given to him. ‘Is this the project manager? Mount Street Management.’

‘Only incorporated eighteen months ago. They’ve got a couple of decent people on the notepaper.’