Willing Flesh

by Adam Creed

  ‘He’s in,’ says one of the builders, approaching. He has a cheery face, a fag in the corner of his mouth, and speaks his English with the long, squeezed vowels from beyond an Iron Curtain. ‘We keep our eye on the place.’

  ‘Squatters holding out on you?’

  ‘He’s a clever son a bitch.’

  ‘And your boys get their drugs from him?’

  ‘What you mean!’

  Staffe turns away, hands the builder a card. ‘If your boys buy a bit of stuff off him, just call me. I won’t do you for possession. You’ve got my word. And he’ll become the last of the squatters.’ Staffe winks at the builder who shakes Staffe by the hand.

  ‘My name Stanislav.’

  ‘Are you Polish, Stan?’

  He shakes his head. ‘But I have permit. Very clean permit.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ says Staffe, walking across to the skip, picking up half of a London brick. ‘Russian?’

  Stanislav shrugs.

  ‘What about the girl?’

  Stanislav says, ‘I not seen her for days.’

  Staffe weighs up number 72, gives himself a run-up, brings his arm back and launches the brick.

  The glass shatters.

  From inside, Darius shouts, ‘What the fuck!’ He looks down in anger, undiminished when he sees it is Staffe.

  *

  Darius sits in the room’s only armchair toking on a roll-up and swigging from a can of supermarket beer.

  ‘What the fuck am I going to do now? It’s freezing in here,’ he says in his posh, faux-Cockney drawl, nodding at the smashed window – the dark night beyond.

  ‘Call the council.’

  ‘Don’t take the piss.’

  ‘Where’s Arabella, Darius?’

  ‘I’m not her keeper.’

  ‘But you are, aren’t you?’

  ‘The fuck’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Roddy has been to see us – you know Roddy?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He reckons she’s been gone a couple of days. She must have been taken just after I visited you.’

  ‘What’s it to do with me?’ Darius seems suddenly lost. ‘I try to save her from herself. At least I try – like you said.’

  ‘Why do you play around with this life?’

  ‘What do you know about me? My dad hasn’t a pot to piss in. He lost it all when I was fifteen. We’re fucked.’ He tries to laugh. ‘I’m not what you think.’

  ‘And what do I think, Darius?’

  ‘I’m a poor little rich kid.’

  ‘Who thinks he’s a dealer. Maybe you’re not what you want to seem.’

  ‘I do my best for her,’ says Darius.’

  ‘You’re not doing much of a job.’

  ‘You’ve seen Arra,’ says Darius. ‘She can be so beautiful and gentle. We need to get out of this life. We were trying.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Getting clean. It’s hard.’

  ‘Resisting temptation is beyond you, though. You had your hand in the honey jar, didn’t you. With Elena.’ Staffe crouches, so his face is right up against young Darius A’Court.

  ‘You can’t intimidate me,’ says Darius. ‘You heard of Sir Ralph Waikman?’

  Staffe shoots out a hand and grabs the cigarette from his mouth. He puts his knee on A’Court’s chest and places the burning cigarette right up to his nostril. ‘You can call Waikman once I’m done.’ He puts the cigarette into A’Court’s nostril, careful not to let it touch. He holds it there for the count of three then withdraws it.

  ‘I don’t know where she is. I don’t fucking know. I haven’t seen her since you came here last.’

  Staffe puts the cigarette to the other nostril, gives it a count of four, and watches Darius’s eyes go wide as foglamps. They begin to water. He waits until it dawns on Darius that this is only going to get worse, then says, ‘You tell me everything about Arabella and the last time you saw her and what she did the last few weeks. Then I’ll get someone round here with a warrant and we’ll run you out to Mr Waikman’s house. He’s got a fine spread just up the road in Hampstead, you know. He’s a family friend of the Howerds. Wonder how keen they’ll be when I tell them what you said about Arabella?’

  ‘I haven’t said anything about her.’

  ‘Were you and Elena up to something together? Up to something in Suffolk, maybe. And Rebeccah, too?’ Staffe holds the cigarette up again, and Darius begins to squeal. As he does, his voice becomes gradually more refined.

  ‘Those girls were tight. Tight as.’

  ‘Would Elena have used Arabella?’

  ‘What!’ Darius laughs. ‘No way. Nobody uses Arra. Arabella’s in her own club, whether she likes it or not.’

  ‘Did she know Vassily Tchancov?’

  ‘She’d met him.’

  ‘And you, Darius?’

  ‘I know my limits, Inspector.’ He laughs again. ‘I’m not the prick you might think I am. Arra says she loves me.’ He shakes his head. ‘I think she does. What can I say? You can never be sure.’

  ‘Why did you have a thing with Elena? What exactly did Arabella think about that?’

  ‘That’s private.’

  ‘We can take this to the next stage, make it public, if that’s what it takes. Now, what do you think of Leonard Howerd, Darius?’

  ‘He’s all right. A step up from my old man, that’s for sure.’

  ‘What’s Arabella’s problem with him?’

  ‘Arra’s getting better.’

  ‘She’s missing. Hardly a parenting endorsement.’

  Leaving, Staffe thinks he might have been too hard on the boy. He waves at Stan and wonders how easy it might be for them to get their labour licences. How many of them are in this city? How cold that trail from where they hail.

  *

  An illegal pall of cigarette smoke hangs in the corridor and Newsland’s finest cokehead seems pleased as punch to see Staffe. It must be a slow evening for revelation. Well, that’s about to change.

  Absolom goes to the open window, drawing on a cigarette. It is freezing in the room and Absolom is wearing a donkey jacket. ‘To what the pleasure, Inspector?’

  ‘I’ve got you a front page.’

  ‘I bet you say that to all the boys.’

  ‘The Howerds. You know them?’

  ‘Bankers?’

  ‘That’s the one. This is about the daughter.’

  Absolom flicks his dimp and draws the sash window closed. He scoots his chair up to the desk, starts tapping away at his computer keyboard, engines searching.

  ‘The daughter’s a bad girl gone bad,’ says Staffe.

  Absolom squints at the screen. ‘Leonard is a serious dude. If he wasn’t a left-footer he’d have been a knight by now,’ he laughs.

  ‘He’s fancied for the sword in the New Year’s list, apparently.’

  ‘So what’s the lovely daughter done?’ He leans in to the screen. ‘She looks like Danya.’

  ‘Gone missing. She was hooked up with a small-time drug dealer. He’s not seen her for days. The brother came in to report her gone earlier today.’

  ‘Hardly front page,’ says Absolom, clattering the keyboard. ‘Mother, Imogen, hearsay suicide out in South America, but blamed on bandits. A troubled family that can’t enjoy life despite the riches the world chucks at them. A different world, they’d have been in the palace. Says here the dead mother’s uncle is a cardinal. More of a weekend supplement piece.’

  ‘Unless young Arabella was best mates with Rebeccah Stone. Unless her boyfriend was the dealer of choice for Elena Danya.’

  ‘Don’t shit me, Staffe!’

  ‘And now missing.’

  ‘You’re saying this girl could be the third whore? She’s no prostitute, surely.’

  ‘They are women before they’re prostitutes; human beings before that.’

  ‘But you’ve got your man.’

  ‘Listen, Absolom. I’ll say this once and then you’re on your own. You can go straight to Penning
ton for all I care. Arabella Howerd was the last person to speak to Elena Danya, by phone. And she was with Rebeccah Stone the night before Rebeccah was murdered.’

  ‘She’s been killed, you reckon?’

  Staffe spreads his arms wide, as if he might be appealing to a referee, or renouncing all his sins. ‘Get digging.’

  ‘You’ve got more, surely.’

  ‘The boyfriend gets off on being down and dirty just the same. Deals to the poor and famous but he doesn’t quite fit that new world he’s in. You’ll find him squatting up in West Hampstead. Seventy-two Jarndyce Road, if you’re quick.’

  ‘Are you on this case, or what?’

  ‘You leave me out of it.’ Staffe gives Absolom dead eye. ‘I can have you sacked, chucked out of the NUJ, and fined five grand for smoking in a place of work.’

  If Staffe was a betting man, he’d put his houses on a News lead on the Howerd disappearance, come the midday edition. Maybe he should tip Pulford a wink.

  *

  The inspector leaves the building with his collar turned up against the wind that whistles off the river. The two men are frozen to the bones of their toes. They have been waiting for half an hour and it has become difficult to form shapes with their mouths when talking. Lights glow through the stained windows of St Sepulchre and night warbles with the smooth choral sweep of ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’, being practised, late.

  ‘Here he comes,’ says the Younger, ruddy-faced and grimacing as he talks, scratching his tongue on his broken tooth, the stitches in the cut across his head pinching in the cold. ‘The bastard.’

  ‘I’ve got him,’ says the Elder. ‘You’d better tell them what might be coming their way.’

  ‘Do we know?’

  ‘He’s going through hoops we didn’t know were there.’ The Elder pats his young accomplice on the back, says, ‘And don’t get emotional. She turned on you because you let her.’

  ‘I don’t see why we can’t just fuck him up, proper.’

  ‘He’s police, and that’s a last resort. This isn’t Northern Ireland.’ The Elder scurries round the corner to his black London hackney carriage, flicks the switch to the orange light, just in case he drops doubly lucky, but the inspector has waved down another cab, so he throttles back and turns off his ‘For Hire’, follows at a safe distance. As he goes, he watches his younger apprentice talking into his phone, thinks of all he has taught the whippersnapper, since he had his life saved by the boy. But he knows that what they owe each other counts for nothing in this game.

  Twenty-three

  Staffe takes off his coat and brushes past Pulford towards the kitchen. The frozen smell of cold night comes off him. He looks all done in.

  Pulford says, ‘You heard about the Howerd girl? Her brother came into the station, says she’s missing.’

  ‘Bad girls like her go missing all the time. That’s not my problem.’

  ‘Josie’s in a bit of a stew about it all.’

  ‘And Rimmer?’

  ‘He says that her friends have been killed and she’s bound to want to get away from it all. But what about Rosa?’

  ‘What about Rosa?’ says Staffe. ‘Where is she, anyway? I was with her earlier. I told her to come straight here in a cab.’

  ‘If Blears didn’t do it, and the reason they want Rosa dead hasn’t gone away …’

  ‘Where is Rosa? And Sylvie.’

  ‘Gone out.’

  ‘They shouldn’t be out! What exactly did they say to you?’

  ‘Sylvie was reassuring her. She said she would come up with something to make it safer. I got the impression it was a private chat they wanted. You know.’

  Staffe goes to the bathroom. He sees that Sylvie’s toothbrush is still there, but the one they had given to Rosa is gone. He rushes to the bedroom, sees that some clothes have gone from Sylvie’s drawer – easy to spot because there’s only a skeleton supply here. He looks in her drawer, where favourite underwear remains. But soon, new fears wash up, to replace the old.

  *

  Rosa sleeps lightly. Her dreams are troubled. Her mouth is dry and she gets up, tiptoeing down the hallway for a glass of water from the bathroom. She can smell resin and wood shavings and wonders where this is coming from. She looks in the mirror and realises she didn’t wash off her make-up, and it slowly dawns on her what she surrendered that evening. She and Sylvie had drunk wine and talked of Staffe and she had let slip the circumstances surrounding that one lapse. Sylvie said it didn’t matter, that she had been in a relationship whilst away from Staffe. But, she had added with some poignancy, she had told him all about it.

  On the way back to her room, Rosa thinks she hears something at the door. She stands on the landing so she can hear and just about see. Holding her hand over her mouth, her pulse drums fast and loud in her ears.

  A key is in the door and a leg steps in. She can tell it is a man, by the size of him, the way he moves. He eases the door closed, and pads into the house, out of sight. She waits. And waits, then hears movement in the kitchen, as if he is going through drawers. She goes into her room and gets her phone, scrolls down through her numbers until she sees Staffe. She calls him and scurries as quietly as she can back to the top of the stairs.

  She listens, straining, praying to hear a ringtone. And she does. She sinks to the floor, clutching the newel post, wanting to weep with joy. She hears his voice, low and soft, whispering, ‘Rosa, Rosa?’

  ‘I’m upstairs.’

  ‘Are you OK? Is Sylvie OK?’

  ‘She’s asleep. I’ll come down.’ As she makes her way, she realises she is only wearing an oversized T-shirt and knickers. She’s not showing anything, but she tugs it down to her knees anyway and realizes it’s probably his.

  In the kitchen, he is putting down a knife, sitting into a chair at the table. He looks as if he is running on vapours.

  ‘Sylvie said it was best to come here, to tell no one. I was worried, Will. So worried they would come for me again.’

  He stands, wraps his arms around her, whispers into her ear, ‘You should have told me, at least told Pulford, where you were going.’

  ‘We thought it best not to. If you didn’t know, they couldn’t know.’ She leans back and he holds her by the arms. ‘You weren’t followed here, were you?’

  ‘Hopefully, he knows better than that,’ says Sylvie, standing by the door.

  Rosa takes a step away and his hands slide down her arms, to his sides. She sees him looking at the empty wine bottles, then at Sylvie; back to Rosa, then at the floor.

  Eventually, he looks at Sylvie and says, ‘You brought Rosa here, to protect her,’ contemplating the lengths you might go to in sheltering somebody. ‘Thank you.’

  *

  Staffe walks down the Castelnau with a real clip to his stride. It is just before dawn and he has slept for two, maybe three hours. He has the streets to himself, but cuts down to the river path before he reaches Hammersmith Bridge and walks to Putney. The Thames is swathed in a silver mist and the sky is clear, the moon full. Ducks glide by the bank, just the occasional light in the buildings opposite.

  He thinks about the Howerds’ proud family line, all the way back to the Reformation; the culmination of so many lives of endeavour, of doing the right thing, and suffering that forfeit, that chink in the line of descent five generations ago. How it might suit Howerd to have Arabella disappeared over some horizon, gone the way of her errant mother before shame strikes. But that will all backfire now, if Absolom does his worst – which is what the serpent journo does best.

  What will it take to bring young Roddy to preserve the family? All on his narrow shoulders. He checks his watch and slows down, not wanting to arrive too early. He wants Roddy all to himself this morning, so stops off for breakfast at a caff just off the Fulham Road.

  The place bustles with truckers who have made their city drops, and builders in high-vis and rigger boots. They belch and joke and rib each other. Some bury their heads in the Sun.

  An
old girl in a tabard brings his sausage sandwich and his mug of tea and one of the builders slaps her backside playfully with a rolled-up newspaper. He gets a clip round the ear, which sets everybody off, and Staffe laughs out loud. He likes its sound, the shape it makes of his face.

  The builders and drivers drift away and Staffe leaves his crusts and a healthy tip, returns the smile of the old girl who is clearing tables. Her husband wipes down the counter between slurps from a pint mug of tea and his happy glow flicks off like a light. Her too. You can hoodwink anyone in this city. They do it with global warming and credit crunches. If you wanted to disappear a black sheep, you might do it by disguising it as a serial killing of whores and junkies. How desperate would you have to be?

  Staffe works his way up towards the south side of Hyde Park. He cuts up Kensington Church Street and past the palace with its endless Princess tributes. Staffe says aloud, ‘Families!’ and crunches across the frost-crusted grass, the morning light coming pale, the traffic up on Bayswater roaring and grinding.

  And Bobo? Letting people think Elena was his lover when all along he was her brother. Why do that? And does it make him a Danya or her a Bogdanovich? Or neither of them either. And if he ever could trace Elena back, what family secrets might he uncover there? He remembers the savagery of Bobo’s grief. Grief, so close to shame.

  It is now nearly three days since Arabella went missing. He calls Pulford to get on to T-Mobile to see when Arabella Howerd last used her phone. As he talks, he stops, looks ahead to Hyde Park Corner and rubs his head. He does it with such ferocity that people stop and watch. They think he is one of the nutters. He has walked five miles and round and round in circles.

  *

  ‘My father is out,’ says Roddy Howerd. Even though he is a student, Roddy wears cavalry twills and a double-cuffed shirt. He wouldn’t look out of place in White’s, or the Lords.

  ‘It’s you I came to see.’

  ‘Me?’ says Roddy, as if everyone who calls comes for father.

  Staffe sidles into the wide hallway with its Victorian tiled floor and an extremely rare upholstered Georgian settle. Classical music, presumably Radio 3, is playing at the back of the house and Staffe takes a half flight down to a large kitchen where the scullery, pantry and parlour have all been knocked into one. A large George III breakfast table is at the centre. He can smell roasted coffee beans, says, ‘There’s nothing finer than the smell of fresh coffee.’ Through the French windows he admires the beautifully planted private rear garden.