Kill and Tell (18 page)

Commissioner Beverley Strong is a tiny woman but even so, Staffe, Pennington and Josie visibly clench in her presence, each sitting forward in their seats. She hands out a document. ‘It’s code black,’ she says, leaning back. ‘Take a minute to digest.’

The report makes grim reading: outlining the latest intelligence regarding the simmering unrest surrounding the murder of Jadus Golding.

‘Of course, we could be in there like that’ – Beverley Strong clicks her fingers – ‘if I gave the nod, but we are already distrusted in our community, even though we are straining every sinew to save it from itself. This is the status quo. We run to stand still, so you will understand my loathing of surprise. Especially surprises from within.’ She gives Pennington a long, withering look and puckers her mouth.

Pennington addresses Staffe and Josie, says, ‘I can’t tell you how grave this matter has become and I want you to know, before I even get started, that neither of you will go within a country mile of Jasmine Cash or Brandon Latymer. If you see them in Tescos, I expect you to drop your bastard baskets and run for the door.’

Beverley Strong says, ‘Part of the problem is you have allowed yourself to become so inextricably entwined with DS Pulford’s fate.’

Pennington sips from his glass of water. ‘Perhaps I was too optimistic, in thinking we could get to the bottom of this.’

Staffe and Pennington exchange a long look in which they each acknowledge that it was Pennington who brought Staffe back from Spain to help clear Pulford. Within the taut silence, Staffe nods and his chief inspector closes his eyes, slowly, respecting the fact that he is not going to be dropped in it by his subordinate.

Josie says, ‘We can’t sell DS Pulford down the river, sir.’

‘If I may warn you, DC Chancellor,’ says the commissioner. ‘Your interventions so far have hardly helped Sergeant Pulford. We now have a murder weapon which the Crown will prove to have been in your possession.’

‘I can explain, ma’am.’

‘I hope you can, but the fact is, there is not a centimetre for error here. Do you understand? Not a twitch from either of you.’

Pennington says, almost mechanically, ‘We fully accept your version, Chancellor, that Louis Consadine entrapped you. But Consadine cannot be found and we have to accept he won’t be found. In fact, it might be better if he isn’t found. You know what’s saving your bacon, Chancellor?’ says Pennington.

‘No, sir.’

‘The fact that Louis Consadine has done a runner. That will help Pulford when he cuts his deal.’ He leans back, says, ‘Unofficially, of course, we know you were trying your damnedest to help a colleague, and that is what’s stopping me from suspending you.’

‘I had to make a snap decision, sir. I saw Brandon Latymer with Jasmine Cash – Golding’s partner.’

‘Ex-partner, according to my intelligence,’ says the commissioner, exhaling loudly, and leaning forward. ‘You need to take your medicine, young lady. Do you understand?’

‘It’s Pulford’s medicine that Chancellor is worried about, ma’am,’ says Staffe. ‘We encourage loyalty, don’t we?’

The commissioner says, ‘There is a greater good here, detective inspector. Somebody has to tend to that.’

Staffe seethes. His heart beats time and a half and he tries to swallow his words away, but he can’t. ‘It wouldn’t do to have another Summer ’11, ma’am.’

‘Indeed.’

‘Jadus Golding might be a black man and a dead man, but he is not a martyr,’ says Staffe.

‘Out!’ says Pennington.

Staffe stands, says to the commissioner, ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, if I’d known the truth was to be buried here, this morning, I would have stayed away.’

‘Watch your tongue, Wagstaffe!’ says Pennington.

‘Oh, I’m watching my tongue, sir, and I’m sure you’re watching it‚ too.’

The two men glare at each other.

‘Sit down, Wagstaffe,’ says the commissioner, setting her beady look on Staffe. ‘You
will
hear your chief inspector out.’

Pennington says, ‘We know there’s going to be activity on the streets as soon as the trial starts. It will be precipitated by a group of anarchists, then sustained by the local gangs. We have to control this. We all know the full cost of Summer ’11 as you call it.’

Commissioner Strong says, ‘We won’t be having any more nights where smoke fills our skies.’

Pennington continues, ‘If this does get out of hand, DS Pulford’s cause will be irreparably damaged.’

‘You make it sound as though he is a pawn,’ says Josie.

‘This
is
chess, Chancellor. And we will win with our minds,’ says Beverley Strong.

‘But Pulford needs evidence,’ says Staffe.

‘The evidence is all in,’ says Pennington. ‘Your association with that investigation is absolutely over.’

‘Have faith in the long game, inspector,’ says Strong.

‘It’s not a game, for me, though I appreciate there is a bigger picture.’ There’s too much blood flowing to his head now and the words trip out. ‘You go along Holborn, through the Inns of Court, up Fleet Street – past all the bloody lawyers and the journalists – you get to the biggest trough of them all. Bloody Parliament. Well, I haven’t got my snout in that trough. My job remains the same. My
calling
remains the same.’

He breathes deep and Pennington glares at him. Commissioner Strong swivels on her seat, left and right in small arcs. She lets the silence gather. Eventually, the commissioner says, ‘I have been following the Carmelo Trapani case, inspector. It’s the sort of thing I would have loved to get my teeth into when I was a DI.’

‘The son just blew his ear half away, ma’am,’ says Josie. ‘We were there until late last night, and we got a new lead.’

‘You have a suspect?’

‘We have more than one,’ says Staffe. ‘But DI Rimmer made an arrest.’

‘The son,’ says Pennington. ‘You need to overcome your doubts and get a conviction here.’

Beverley Strong says, ‘Don’t let us stop you.’ She stands, drawing the meeting to its end.

‘I prefer not to jump the gun, in the pursuit of truth,’ says Staffe.

As he leaves, he sees how upset Josie is, and once the door is closed and they make their way down the back stairs, he turns, holds her, whispering into her hair that everything is going to be all right. They stand there, by the window that looks down on Cloth Fair, until a footfall approaches. He says, ‘I have to call on Curtis Consadine.’

‘You can’t go down that road.’

‘No.
You
can’t go down that road.’

The footfall comes close, passing them. She stands on tiptoes, whispers, ‘Don’t put yourself at risk,’ and she kisses him on the cheek; longer than a friend.

Staffe jumps on the bus that would take him home. It carries him along, twelve feet above the madness on High Holborn and heading for Piccadilly, then Knightsbridge and Gloucester Road beyond, but as soon as he sees the ornate towers and spires of Lincoln’s Inn, he hops off the bus and strolls across the green, which is pale black in the night. He looks up at Curtis Consadine’s student digs. If Staffe had travelled this far in the other direction, east not west, he would be on the Limekiln by now. But far more than one world and half an hour separates the two Consadine brothers.

He shows his warrant card to the GA in an office in the lobby of Curtis’s residence, and is told that Curtis Consadine and his girlfriend left the building a while ago. He tells the GA that he has to have a look around Curtis’s room and the GA shrugs, watching football on the tiny TV on a shelf in his office. Staffe can smell skunk on the man and he thinks it must be the perfect job for someone. The GA reaches across his desk and pulls a key from a hook. He breathes heavily from the effort and hands the key to Staffe.

On the stairs, he passes a happy gang of boys and girls glowing with the carefree glaze of pre-drinks. This is a country mile from the land of guns.

The official version of the gun that killed Jadus, with Josie’s and Pulford’s prints on, is that it was found wedged in a hawthorn bush on the towpath about fifty yards from the cycle caff. A dog-walker handed it in to the nick in Dalston, said his setter had found it in the bush. ‘That’s shit, and you know it,’ Staffe had said to Pennington. ‘The e.gang planted it.’

He knows every inch of that towpath was scoured – from Kingsland Road to Shepherdess Walk. If Pulford shot Jadus Golding, there is no way that gun could have ended up being put in the hands of the CPS.

Staffe lets himself into Curtis’s room.

He can’t turn the place over or even be seen to be going through Curtis’s things because he shouldn’t even be here, so he has a surface rummage, sees that Curtis has the latest iPad and an old phone with no battery on his desk. Staffe makes himself comfortable in the only chair and reaches for the iPad, which opens to Curtis’s Facebook.

With one eye on the door, Staffe navigates as best he can through the collage of Curtis’s social network. This isn’t what he came here to do. He wants an actual conversation. There seems nothing untoward and absolutely no sign of contact from Louis in recent messages. He browses Curtis’s photos, reel after reel of drunken youths leering into camera, most often in bars and clubs. Some of them have names against the images.

Curtis has 1‚746 photos in his gallery. Staffe isn’t sure he has taken this many photos in his life. He scrolls though quickly, looking for anything different, and finds some photos of Curtis and the Japanese girl from the other day, Mako. There are some pictures of the two of them at a seaside. It looks like Whitstable. Another has them outside an old house, which Staffe thinks is Dickens’s home. And there’s one of them with Louis outside the Naval College at Greenwich.

Louis looks different, as if made for this better world, not the life he was given. He isn’t wearing his baseball cap and he isn’t trying to look hard. He is laughing and Mako and Curtis have their arms around him. Staffe rubs his eyes and he feels tired. Can you be made for one world and given a life that takes place in another? And who took the photograph?

He moves quickly onto the next picture and the next, where Mako is making horns with her fingers over Louis’s head. In the next, they are more formal, just Louis and Curtis and Mako standing up straight, not smiling so much, with another girl, thinner and paper white. She looks vacant and, according to the tagging, she is Leilah F. Staffe recognises the name from the statements that were taken. Leilah Frankland gave Louis his alibi. He goes faster through the photos and after a few dozen he gets what he wants: an interior.

Curtis and Louis are in a nasty flat with no furniture and pizza boxes and their eyes are gone. Louis has his baseball cap on and there is no Mako. It’s a different day. Different clothes. But through the window, Staffe can see they are way above the Isle of Dogs. He knows exactly where this must have been taken, so he calls Jom and as he waits, his tiredness percolates through the muscles in his legs, up through his sides and shoulders. He gives Jombaugh the name ‘Frankland’ and the place: Balfron Tower.

It has been forbidden, but he must take Curtis there with him.

Jombaugh hangs up and the tiredness washes back down his body and up again, in slow waves, tugging the last pockets of energy down and down into the undertow.

Staffe’s sleep fractures and though he tries to fight it, feeling so hopelessly tired and with his muscles turned to sap, the sound of the key in the door won’t go away.

He hasn’t a clue where he is. It could be the guest room in his flat, but the window is too small.

‘What the fuck?’ says a male. He is young and impossibly lithe. His hair is lustrous and pre-Raphaelite.

‘It’s him, the policeman,’ says a female, passing her hand through the arm of the young male, taking refuge behind him.

Staffe blinks, sits up in the chair, says, ‘Hello, Curtis. The GA let me in.’ He takes out his phone, reads a new text from Jom. It determines his next move.

‘You’re not allowed to be anywhere near me.’

Staffe wonders how Curtis would know that. ‘I’m here to make sure everything works out for Louis.’

‘Louis is going to be fine. I’m looking after him.’

‘You have a plan, don’t you?’ Curtis has two towers of reading material under the window – one stack of books on econometrics, probability and the history of stock markets, and another stack of published accounts of Footsie and Dow companies. ‘You seem to be ahead of the syllabus,’ says Staffe. ‘Part of your plan?’

‘You didn’t tell me you have a plan, Curt,’ says Mako.

‘We spoke to your tutors. They say they’ve never seen the like in a freshman.’

Curtis puts an arm around Mako but she shrugs him away. He says, ‘You’d better go.’

Jombaugh’s text tells Staffe that they have been down to the Balfron Tower and removed Leilah Frankland from her sister’s flat. They left Louis there, as per Staffe’s instructions, and he is OK, medically, but he is out of it on a downer. There is an officer on the door. Staffe calls Jombaugh, says‚ ‘Make sure they detain the girl.’

‘Detain which girl?’ says Curtis.

‘I’ll be right down to see Louis.’

‘What’s happened!’ says Curtis.

‘Rimmer’s snooping, Will,’ says Jombaugh.

‘Make sure it’s Josie who questions the girl.’

‘You should concern yourself with Rimmer.’

‘I want to see Louis,’ says Curtis.

‘Thanks, Jom,’ says Staffe, hanging up. He turns to Curtis, says, ‘Come on then. That’s what I came for. See, we all want the same thing.’

Josie sits opposite scrawny Leilah Frankland whose hair is greasy and flat to her head. She smells of sweat and smoke but she has big, pretty eyes.

She introduces Leilah to the duty solicitor and tells her she can call her own brief if she wants.

Leilah holds herself by her own bony shoulders and says, ‘Fuckin’ get on with it, I ain’t done nothin’.’ She scratches her neck. ‘I just need to speak to Curtis.’

‘Consadine?’

She nods.

‘You mean Louis?’

‘No, I don’t. I need a drink, man. I need some Coke. Full fat. I need some fuckin’ sugar.’

The duty solicitor tells Josie that Leilah must be allowed fluids.

‘Absolutely. We’re doing this one by the book. No wriggling off the hook, Leilah.’

‘I’m not on no fuckin’ hook. I just need a little something.’

‘That stuff will kill you and we have to protect you, so as long as you’re in our care, you won’t be poisoning your body.’ Josie reaches out and touches her hand. ‘You know what I’m saying?’

Leilah looks up. ‘You bitch. You can’t keep me in here and not let me have anything.’

‘You don’t get better without a little suffering. They’re very good up in Holloway.’

‘I told you, I ain’t fuckin’ done nothing.’

‘We found plenty, Leilah. It’s not just possession this time. And there were weapons on the premises.’

‘They can’t put me away,’ says Leilah to her solicitor.

The solicitor refers to her file, says softly, ‘I’m afraid you have eight months unspent on your suspended sentence. We need to remember that. I’ll try for bail, don’t you worry.’

‘Bail!’

‘You’re here to stay, Leilah, unless you do yourself a favour,’ says Josie.

‘I want to see Curtis!’

‘You mean Louis.’

She looks confused, rubs her temples with the fat pads of her wrists. ‘This is fucked up.’

‘That alibi you gave us for Louis was fucked up, wasn’t it, Leilah?’

‘Alibi?’

‘You said he was with you when Jadus Golding was shot.’

‘Curtis? Curtis was with me for sure. We was . . . we was . . .’

‘Not Louis?’

‘It was Curtis.’

‘You weren’t with Louis Consadine?’

Leilah shakes her head and her eyebrows pinch. ‘We was drinkin’ brandy at the seaside, I swear to God that’s what we done. All day. All the time when Jadus was shot. I swear.’

‘You weren’t with Louis Consadine?’

She shakes her head.

Into the tape, Josie says, ‘Leilah Frankland shakes her head. Will you swear to that, Leilah?’

‘Will you let me go?’

‘We should discuss this, Leilah,’ says the duty solicitor.

‘We will take into account Miss Frankland’s co-operation,’ says Josie. ‘Full account, I promise you.’

‘That’s on tape, Leilah,’ says the duty solicitor.

‘I was with Curtis.’

Josie leans forward, presses the intercom and asks for a WPC to be brought in to take Leilah’s new statement about the Jadus Golding shooting and to chase up that Coke and to get some Haribo.

She crosses paths with the WPC on her way out, says, ‘She’s going to erase Louis Consadine’s alibi for the Golding murder. Make sure it stands up. Make sure he hasn’t got a bastard leg to stand on.’

Josie stops by the tall window on the back stairwell, watches dawn coming up slow over Saint Paul’s. She recalls the first time she ever met Louis, how she liked him straight off. She could see he was a good boy; so young. They sure can fit a lot of shit into fifteen years these days.

She makes the call, says, ‘It’s good news, Staffe. The best.’

‘She’s changed her statement?’

‘Not everyone’s going to see this as a good thing. They’ll be looking at how you’ve gone about this.’

‘Was she with Louis when Golding was shot?’

‘Swears blind she was with the brother.’

‘Curtis?’ says Staffe.

Curtis hears his own name, looks as if the hand of something bad has come down hard as hell on his narrow shoulders.

They are outside the Balfron Tower where Leilah Frankland’s sister has a flat. Leilah’s sister is doing a little stretch in Holloway, was only too pleased to let Leilah have a key – in exchange for a little something.

Staffe says, ‘Leilah Frankland was with you on the day of Jadus Golding’s murder.’

‘She’s a fuck-up, that girl,’ says Curtis.

Staffe hangs up, pushing open the broken main door to the block of flats, listening to Curtis dragging his feet behind. He wishes he didn’t have to do this.

Frank Rimmer put a call into Staffe but got no response. He could have tried harder, but he knows what Staffe will be up to, out of his sense of loyalty. A shame he knows nothing about chain of command. If Pulford had stuck to what he learned at Hendon, they wouldn’t be in that boat.

Had Staffe picked up, Frank would have told him where he was, he really would. But he didn’t have to, so he waits for the nurse to bring Esther Myers, and reruns all the conversations he has had with Pennington in the last two weeks. He can read the signals. Cuts are being made and if it comes down to him or Staffe, he has to do what he can to get ahead. If he can just get the last bit of evidence against Attilio, that could make all the difference.

And he credits Staffe with the flair he can show. His idea – that the abduction of Carmelo Trapani has its roots in the past – is totally plausible now, especially with what he knows of Abie Myers’ brother David, which completes Frank’s theory as to how Attilio stacks up in that Russian doll.

The television blares its morning nonsense to three residents of the Nazareth House nursing home who stare blankly through the open french windows and onto the lawns where the early sun is drying the dew. Thin wafers of vapour rise from the ground – like truth coming up from beneath, muses Frank.

‘This is Esther,’ says the nurse as a woman in a wheelchair pushes her joystick and whizzes across the carpet, stopping abruptly just inches from the shiny toes of his perfectly polished shoes. ‘Not inside, Esther!’

‘Oh, go to hell,’ says Esther. She is wearing a turquoise turban. Jade birds of paradise flutter in the print of her dress from the breeze through the french windows. She gives Rimmer the once over. ‘You police?’

‘Detective Inspector Frank Rimmer. A pleasure.’

‘You look like police and you’ve never done me any good. No how.’

‘Calm down, Esther,’ says the nurse, leaving.

‘I’m damn sure Abie doesn’t know you’re here. He’d stop you in your tracks and that’s no mistake.’ Esther looks away, across the lawn. She seems to doubt what she has just said. ‘I don’t mean that, of course. You have to be careful with what I say. I’m crazy, you know.’

‘Tell me about Abie, Esther. You’ve been here a long time, haven’t you? Does he know where you are?’

‘I won’t tell you a darned thing, so you can go to hell.’

‘You don’t mean that,’ says Frank, taking a seat, looking her in the eyes and watching them flit: to the TV and back out across the lawn.

‘Don’t I? Some days I’m not sure what I mean.’

‘You know Carmelo is missing, don’t you?’

‘Do I?’

‘We’re trying to find him and Abie has helped all he can, but we seem to have strayed off track.’

‘Strayed off track?’

‘Looking into Carmelo’s past, that’s all. Those days at the races and the trips abroad, and the Battle of Cable Street.’ Frank smiles. ‘You remember those days, with Abie and Carmelo, and David.’

‘There’s no David.’

‘Abie’s big brother. It was just before you and Abie got married, wasn’t it?’

Esther is flustered. ‘I don’t know a David.’

‘He was ever such a handsome fellow,’ says Rimmer, sensing a sadness in Esther. ‘Cut down with all his life ahead. They butchered him good and proper.’

‘Be quiet!’ Esther looks out to the lawn and keeps her eyes on the grass.

‘You were fond of David?’

‘Was I?’ Esther Myers leans forward in her chair, peering into Rimmer’s eyes with all the unbridled curiosity of the mad. ‘I
am
crazy.’

‘You know what they did to David Myers.’ Rimmer leans forward and whispers into Esther’s ear, smelling lily of the valley. His mother used to wear it. His father bought it for her every Christmas and if she missed a day, he asked why. ‘You know. And I know you know.’

‘You’re mad, too, you fool. Don’t you know that?’

‘I know David Myers was cut to ribbons on Brighton racecourse and they never caught the man. They never really tried because it was one villain against another and everyone assumed it was Charles Sabini but they couldn’t prove it. And the same day, Maurizio Verdetti copped it on Cable Street whilst the city raged at itself.’

‘You got a turn of phrase, mister.’

‘It’s an amazing story, Esther. And it’s got you at its centre. It’s your story, Esther.’

‘Maybe it’s you should be in here.’

‘For my own good?’

‘Your own good?’

‘Like you. Was that the deal?’ Rimmer stands up. ‘Come on, Esther, let’s take a look at your room.’

‘No!’

Rimmer leaves the room, hears Esther Myers whirring up behind him and she clatters into the backs of his legs. He falls and the nurse comes rushing up, but Frank says, ‘It’s all right.’ He stands, putting his hands on the arms of Esther’s vehicle, and unhitches the leads from the battery to the motor.

Esther has a suite of rooms overlooking the lawns with a widescreen TV and a beautiful, walnut writing desk upon which sits an electronic typewriter with a ream of paper beside it. On the bookcase, two entire shelves are taken up by the novels of Esther Samuels. Rimmer counts thirty-eight volumes.

Esther appears in the doorway, pushed by the nurse.

Rimmer says, ‘I see you have stayed with the same publisher. Loyalty counts for a lot.’

‘I just like Esther Samuels. We share a name.’

‘You’ve had a rich life, hey, Esther?’ Frank taps his temple with his index finger. ‘But all up here.’ He goes to the coffee table, leafs through the copies of the
Spectator
and the
New Statesman
, all the broadsheets from the weekend. ‘I suppose a writer can travel anywhere, any time. Maurice Greene is a writer, so they say.’

‘I don’t know any Maurice Greene.’

‘He’s missing, too. He would have been born whilst you were in here. Didn’t Abie ever tell you about Maurice? You’d get along like a house on fire, I’m sure.’

Esther looks sad. She says, ‘That’s a cliché. I wouldn’t get along with anybody like a cliché.’

‘Perhaps you knew his father. Claudio.’

‘I don’t know any Claudios. I don’t care for the Italians.’

‘And I’m sure you knew his grandfather, Maurizio. Maurizio Verdetti. Like I said, he died the same day as David Myers. We need to know what happened that day, Esther. I won’t rest until you tell me, but I know you want to. How can you live with a secret like that? And when you tell me, I’ll make sure you are safe. Safe and free.’

‘Free?’

‘You know what they did to David Myers, don’t you, Esther?’

She pushes herself to the window and she stands, leans on her armchair and she sits herself down, looking at her small segment of world. Frank can understand that even if you can only see a little of the physical world, you can travel through other people’s words and through your own memories and imagination. In Esther’s case, that’s a well-ploughed field. ‘A well-ploughed field.’ Is that a cliché?

‘It’s time to leave, Esther,’ he says.

‘He was the love of my life, you know.’

‘David Myers? It’s time to tell the world what happened, isn’t it? He deserves his story to be told.’