by Adam Creed
She flicks off the operating lights and an electric hum disappears into the early morning in a strange reversal of nature. But you don’t get birdsong this time of year.
Janine sits in the corner, hands on her knees and back straight, drinking in the scene. Some colleagues are immune to the objects of their craft – the lives left in the wake. Janine takes counsel each month, for the loss of her subjects, and this beautiful woman with her frozen look has haunted her since she first shone a torch into her mouth and nose and elsewhere.
A knock at the opening door makes her flinch and she begins to stand, but when she sees it is Staffe, she slumps back down in her seat. He forces a smile but she can tell he is practically out on his feet. For the first few seconds, each time they meet, she can’t help remembering when they were together. It was a brief affair – if you could flatter it so – and it ended quickly, amicably. She considers him a friend; fears for him, sometimes.
‘You want some coffee?’ She asks.
‘I’ll make the coffee.’ He takes a jar of instant coffee and powdered milk from the cupboard beneath the high, barred window which is kerb-level. ‘Talk me through it.’
‘There was no sperm inside her, just a trace secretion of her own fluids in the gusset of her pants. The pants are Rigby and Peller.’ Staffe turns round, raises his eyebrows and they each decide not to share a private joke. ‘There is no bruising or laceration. The vagina had not been penetrated. The head and the blood on the carpet were juxtaposed. She didn’t move once she hit the ground.’
‘Not your typical sexual act,’ he says.
‘There were only six strands of fur fibre, and no carpet fibres in her nose, and none in the mouth or throat, and no trace of inhalation of the fibres from the pillowcase.’
‘She was unconscious when they finished her off – with the pillow,’ says Staffe. ‘No struggle?’
‘Look at her face; the expression.’
‘I have.’ The kettle boils.
‘No damage to the nose or cheeks, no bruising to the lips. The skin and blood on the radiator are a perfect match. She has a bruise to her lower neck which may have been caused by a knee during a suffocation but there’s a defined epicentre to the bruise. I think it was a rapid blow.’
‘And the fall against the radiator an accident?’
‘I don’t think “accident” covers anything that happened to this girl.’
‘The pillow could be part of a sexual design.’
Janine shakes her head, goes across to fix her coffee the way she likes it. Staffe has left it black, for her to finish. He remembered.
She glimpses the woman’s fur, hanging in the corner. It is a vintage natural oyster mink with a wing collar. The real thing. ‘Was that your girlfriend at the Thamesbank?’
‘We’d been away for the weekend.’
Janine wonders why people put themselves through that. Why not fast-forward to the heartache and tears and save yourself the pain. ‘Getting serious, hey Staffe?’
He smiles, thin-lipped. ‘What happened in that hotel room?’
‘Over to you, lover boy.’ Janine takes off her gloves and washes down. When she is done, she catches Staffe standing over the body, staring deep into the woman’s face.
‘It gets worse,’ she says.
‘How?’ he says, not looking away.
‘Some might say there’s another victim.’
‘What?’ He looks up.
Janine suddenly feels cold as he follows her look to a small table on the far side of the room. There, barely larger than a grape, is a dead foetus. ‘She was pregnant, Will.’
*
Darius is out, scoring coke and MDMA for the party. He’ll be out all night so Arabella has walked across to Becx’s place on a litre bottle of super-strong cider and her last line. Becx had some crack when she last saw her and with a bit of luck, they might be able to suck on the pipe before they go out. Her feet are rubbed raw in her sharp-toed, take-me boots and she is so cold that she can’t feel the metal against her finger when she presses the buzzer. Her nose is running and she stands back, hoping to see the curtains shift. They do, but it isn’t Becx. The lock whirrs anyway and she pushes the door open, makes her way up the stairs.
Mitch is leaning against the frame of the door. He’s wearing a porkpie hat and has tats on his neck and arms, piercings in his nose and eyebrows. He looks her up and down. He’s gorgeous and knows it and exactly the type Becx always gets snarled up with, but Arabella has his measure.
‘You want to …’
‘Fuck off,’ says Arabella, placing an open palm on his T-shirt chest. ‘I’ve got Darius.’
He looks her all the way down to her heels and sneers. ‘Looks like it.’
He goes into the flat and Arabella follows him in. The place is done up nice with soft lighting and ethnic knick-knacks. It is warm and a red glow comes off the electric fire pulled up to the sofa. Both bars are on.
Arra wouldn’t need much to get her and Darius a place like this. It is time to have that chat with her father. Time, too, to work on her music; for Darius to go back to his art.
‘Where’s the guitar?’ says Arabella, looking around the living room.
‘In our bedroom.’ Mitch smiles at her, pulling on a leather biker’s jacket. ‘I’m popping out.’
‘When’s Becx coming back?’
He pauses by the door, ‘No point having a rummage.’ He taps his pocket. ‘It’s all here. Stay out the bedroom, girl, I’m warning you.’ His smile goes off like power, cut. He suddenly looks capable of the terrible. ‘Slag,’ he says, closing the door.
Arabella heaves off her boots and flops onto the sofa. The sheet of heat from the electric fire hits her shins straight away, works its way down to her toes and up along her long, thin thighs. She closes her eyes, the mind slowing right down, memories drifting, to that sad house across town. She misses her mother, who was Imogen and beautiful; making the men smile but sometimes crying when she drank wine, which her father didn’t like. They would argue and her brother, Roddy, would run to his room, but Arabella would clutch on to Imogen’s skirts, sobbing, looking up at her father and wondering how she could love such a man. After, he would hold Arabella tight and they would cry together and she loved him again.
From the bedroom, music pipes through. It is house but with a Latin flavour and the swooning trumpet loop ushers her to a deeper rest. She dreams that she cannot hear the sound of her own name in her mother’s mouth.
The warmth of the fire seeps deeper into her flesh. She dreams, too, that she is standing at the gate, looking up, a small case in hand. Her father calls her a whore. ‘Nothing but a whore like your mother.’
When she falters from sleep, Arabella has been crying and the music from the bedroom seems to get louder but Arabella keeps her eyes closed. She thinks, ‘If I open my eyes, all the changes will begin to happen.’ She hopes that Becx will come. The music goes up another notch and this puzzles Arabella. Moments later, she feels a shadow scroll across her.
A tall figure looks down at her. He is tall and fair, with a straight nose – just like her – like Imogen, too. She scrunches her eyes tight shut and rolls away onto the floor.
She waits for him to come at her, but he doesn’t. He just stands there. ‘What the hell are you playing at, Bella?’
‘Roddy?’ She sits up, peers up at him. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ She scoots back on her bottom, away from him, her back against the sofa. Even though he is her brother, whom she bullied when she was young, now she is afraid. He is one of them and a different kettle of fish when their father is not around.
‘I can come see my big sis if I want.’
‘I don’t want. So fuck off.’
‘He wants to see you, Bella.’
‘Father? Is it me, or my friend he wants?’
‘You have to settle this nonsense.’
‘I’m not afraid of you.’
‘But you can be.’
Roddy seems altered toni
ght, wearing twisted jeans and a white T under a combat jacket. He’s put wax in his hair. ‘How did you get in here?’
‘He needs to know you won’t do anything stupid.’
She looks her brother up and down and wishes she could feel different, says, ‘Don’t tell him you know I’m here.’
‘Where’s Darry?’ says Roddy, trying hard to sound casual.
‘He’s providing for me.’
‘He’s using you, is what you mean.’
‘I use him.’
‘You really don’t know anything.’ Roddy turns his back, doesn’t give her so much as a glance, says, ‘You do the right thing, Bella.’
‘Have a heart, Roddy. Have a fucking heart.’
He closes the door and the electricity clunks down. The place goes instantly dark. The bars on the electric fire fade from red to pink to a low, diminishing amber. Like a fast-setting sun. The elements click as they cool and Arabella says, ‘God help me.’
Five
Staffe double-parks the Peugeot, puts the POLICE AWARE card on the dash and strides up to his flat, in a fine row of Georgian town houses in South Ken. The lightest dusting of snow has fallen during the night. Above, the dark sky seems set to yield more.
As soon as he puts the key to the door, he knows Pulford is in, but doesn’t expect anything like the scene that is laid out before him.
He tries to school himself not to react, but he can feel his pulse accelerate away from him. His breath is short. His fingers have wound into fists.
‘What in God’s name …’
‘Staffe! You said …’ Pulford stands up, knocks a pile of poker chips to the floor and one of his friends clumsily tries to catch them. There is a thick pall of spirits in the air and bad rock thuds from a boom box. They have been smoking and pizza boxes scatter the living-room floor. ‘… You said you were away for the whole weekend.’
‘You said you were knocking this on the head.’ Staffe steps towards his sergeant – only twenty-six, but with his stubble and unkempt hair and gravelly voice, seeming far older. He knows he must look as if he is going to lose it because Pulford’s mates drain their glasses. One of them picks up the deck of cards and another scoops the Jack Daniels.
‘See you, Dave.’
‘Thanks for the game, mate.’
‘Mate?’ shouts Staffe. ‘You’re no mates. You know he’s got a fucking problem. If you were mates you’d stay away, not come fleecing him!’ Staffe turns to Pulford, levels him with a stare, holds it, says slowly, ‘You prick.’
‘I’m sorry, Staffe.’
‘I take you in, and this is what you do?’
‘I was winning. I …’
Pulford is wide-eyed and bleary and Staffe sees the cluelessness that most of his colleagues choose to focus on in the young graduate recruit. He quickly loses the heart to tear a strip off him. ‘Did Chancellor call you?’
‘I’ve been working that trafficking case.’ Pulford takes a step back, shaking his head. ‘On surveillance for three nights straight.’
When Staffe offered Pulford a place to stay, somewhere safe to fight his gambling demons, there had been ground rules. ‘Get yourself cleaned up, and a bellyful of coffee. You’re on duty as of now.’
‘What’s happened?’
He looks his sergeant up and down, wants to feel sorry for him. Rimmer and the rest of the team should have been in touch with Pulford. The fact that they haven’t speaks volumes. Staffe stabs a finger into the chest of the young DS. ‘You are going to get some therapy.’
Pulford looks down, shamefaced. ‘What’s happened?’
Staffe looks out through the fog at the iced houses with their black railings and shuttered windows. ‘Why didn’t you answer my calls?’
‘Because you said, sir, that you were away with Sylvie and if you even tried to talk about work, I had your permission to shoot you.’
*
Josie Chancellor puts a tray of bagged evidence on her DI’s desk. ‘Janine’s just told me about the foetus.’
‘It was eight weeks.’ He rests his chin on the flat of his palm. ‘Markary? How do we play this?’
‘How old does it have to be – before you can run DNA on it – the baby I mean,’ says Josie.
‘It’s old enough. Have you got that data from the victim’s mobile phone?’
‘Aaah,’ says Josie. ‘DI Rimmer is applying for a warrant, he says …’
‘Jesus! How long will it take?’
‘The papers are with DCI Pennington,’ says Josie.
‘And where’s the phone?’
Josie opens her drawer, picks up a sealed plastic bag with the gold Nokia inside.
Staffe looks around the room and hisses to Josie, ‘You keep it with you. All the time. And I mean all the time. If anybody calls, you answer it, pretending to be her. You find out who’s calling and where they live.’
‘You’re sure, sir?’
‘And here.’ He tosses her a field recorder. ‘Record some interference off the radio and play it when you answer.’
‘What did she sound like?’
‘She’s foreign, is my guess. Break your English when you answer. Say as little as you can.’
Josie leaves and Staffe has the place to himself. Soon, he is lost in thoughts: this case isn’t about him or Rimmer, but the beautiful girl, lying butterflied for autopsy.
‘Staffe!’ DCI Pennington is standing in the doorway, immaculately suited, pencil thin. He says, through pursed lips, ‘Christ, man. Looks like you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘I was thinking, sir.’
‘Well think on this, Staffe. I’ve heard about you barging in on Taki Markary last night.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘You give this man absolutely no cause for complaint. You’re only just off the hook, remember.’
Staffe looks at the floor and swallows words. Pennington suckered him into the Jadus Golding conviction because the DCI extracted a ‘revised’ statement from a key witness, back in the summer. Staffe shouldn’t have covered up for his chief. But he did. ‘I remember everything about Golding.’
‘If you go after Markary, he’d better be the right man, and you’d better have the evidence. I suggest you reappraise. Think of him as living in a castle.’
‘A castle?’
‘Surrounded by a moat full of eggshells.’
‘I’ll have the evidence, sir.’ He thinks of the DNA Janine can summon from a being the size of a grape.
Pennington shoots him a warning look. ‘What exactly have you got on Markary?’
‘He called the victim.’
‘After she was killed.’
‘He’s withholding evidence.’
Pennington gives Staffe a withering look.
‘The victim was pregnant. There was a foetus.’
‘You’d better hear me, Staffe.’ Pennington turns on his heel, walks out, head high and back straight. ‘Loud and clear.’ He doesn’t shut the door behind him.
*
‘You sure we should be going to see Markary, sir?’ says Pulford, sitting alongside Staffe in the Peugeot, the list of names and numbers from the gold Nokia in his lap.
‘Keep reading the names, Sergeant.’
‘Mobile number. Name Crystal.’
‘No,’ says Staffe.
‘Landline, inner London. Name Bobo.’
‘Mark it.’ Staffe knows that, in time, all these numbers will be traced, but he’s picking the men who have called the dead woman in the past week, prioritising landlines – for speed. You find your killer in seventy-two hours. After that, the tide turns against.
‘Darius A’Court. Mobile number.’
‘Contract?’
‘I’ll check.’ Pulford carries on to the end of the list.
Staffe says, ‘Get Josie to come up with the addresses and full names.’
He parks up four doors down, opposite Markary’s place on Mount Street. It is midday, but the lights are on in the house. With such fog in Mayfair�
�s Georgian preserve, you wouldn’t blink if a horse and carriage drew up, if a gent in tails swanned out with a cane. You couldn’t call Markary a gent. Not in Staffe’s book, but he had clearly got into the right club. Somehow.
‘Here we are, sir,’ says Pulford, reading from his Blackberry.
Staffe is sad at the thought of bookies getting rich on Pulford’s misery and wonders what is so lacking in the young man’s life as to send him down that road. ‘Go on. Let’s have it.’
‘Bobo is a Boris Bogdanovich, lives in the Atlee, Bethnal Green.’
‘Russian? Find out how long he has been in the country.’
‘Darius A’Court is pay as you go, but one of the landlines is the Colonial Bankers’ Club.’
‘Is that it?’
‘The gold Nokia was bought in Dubai. It’s pay as you go and chipped. And there’s no correlation of the corpse with missing persons.’
‘Colonial Bankers. How pukka can you get?’ Staffe looks up at Markary’s apartment. He has had it five years, since he came over from Istanbul. He paid £1.5 million for it but that’s nothing compared to his house on the Bosporus and the nightclubs his wife still owns over there. She makes the Mayfair gang look nouveau riche. Some might think Markary a spiv, but his wife’s family has been lording it since the Ottoman empire came home to roost.
Staffe starts the engine – the wise thing. The next time he fronts up to Markary, he’ll have evidence. ‘Let’s visit this Bobo.’
Pulford’s Blackberry beeps with another message. ‘It’s Janine.’ He ruffles his hair and says, ‘The forensic archaeologist says your woman was East European – the cranium, the eyes. And the contents of her upper intestine.’