‘What can you tell us of Zoe’s condition?’ Alicia Flint asks the police doctor.
He scrutinises the printouts of the photographic images posted on the internet. ‘We need to go in.’
‘I should go in,’ says Staffe. ‘I know Absolom. I have the nurse’s best friend with me.’
‘You can’t endanger her.’
‘She is a nurse, too, and it will save her, not endanger her. She has signed a consent form and an indemnity.’
‘They’re not worth the paper.’ Alicia Flint scrutinises Staffe. There is a flicker of something in her eyes. It could be pity. ‘I can’t let you have her on your conscience.’
‘My conscience is the last thing to have on yours.’
‘And what about Zoe? I’m not going to do anything to endanger Zoe Bright.’
Almost every element is known. The principal doubt is Tommy Given. Staffe takes the examination paper from his jacket pocket, wrapped in a plastic evidence bag. He unfurls it as though it might be the map of a desert island. He taps the top of the front sheet.
‘And we know Crawford’s books matched Zoe’s,’ says Alicia Flint. ‘You’re going to tell me about herrings, now.’
Staffe pulls out a tub from his hip pocket. It too is in a clear evidence bag. ‘Rollmops, actually. You said I was going round the bend.’
‘If you go in there and something happens to Zoe or the others, that’s the end of your career.’
He nods. ‘I’m worried about Zoe. You saw the look on her face.’
‘She’s afraid.’
‘She’s supposed to look afraid. Crawford doesn’t know we have the two of them connected. She’s supposed to have been kidnapped. But that expression – it’s real. That’s why I have to go in. I will take Eve Delahunty with me. Nobody else.’
‘Don’t take her.’
‘It will save her, and it might save her best friend. How could I not take her?’
‘On your head,’ says Alicia Flint. She nods to one of her officers, who presents Staffe with a document. ‘To cover me, you understand.’
He signs it. ‘I wouldn’t have it any other way.’ His heart beats faster and his breath becomes shorter as he goes to collect Eve, fearing the worst now, not daring to hope.
*
‘Where is the nurse?’ says Bridget Lamb. ‘The smiley one with the golden hair.’
‘Natalie?’ The nurse lifts Baby Grace from her cot and hands her to her aunt. Bridget’s face comes to life the moment she touches her niece. Her eyes are soft, her gaze locked. ‘We’re so short today. I don’t know where she is. Sick, I guess.’
Grace blinks and looks around, but her glassy gaze eventually settles upon Bridget.
Malcolm stands alongside her and puts his arm around Bridget. She brings the baby higher, rests its head in the hollow between her jaw and shoulder. The baby is warm. She feels Malcolm kiss the top of her head. He tells her that he loves her. She always hoped she could love him back. Now, she knows that it is better to love than to be loved.
‘She will come to us,’ says Bridget.
‘She must,’ says Malcolm. ‘It’s what is right. God’s will.’
Still nestling Grace’s head in the crook of her neck, Bridget looks up at Malcolm. She sees him in a new light. ‘I feel like this is what my life has been for; the path we have been on. It has been the right path. Good has come of it, Mal. Hasn’t it?’
*
The instant Staffe eases shut the gate to the tower, its front door creaks open.
‘My God,’ says Lesley Crawford. She looks from Staffe to his companion. ‘There is no point coming here. We are innocent people. There have been no crimes committed here.’
He says, ‘This is Eve Delahunty, a friend of Natalie Stafford.’
‘What are you doing here? Do you have a warrant?’
‘You’re trespassing.’
‘I am here by invitation. I have the papers to prove it.’
‘I’ll come in while you show them to me.’
‘You can’t change anything. It is time.’
‘Time is the operative word, isn’t it, Lesley? I’ve seen your site. I suppose the plan is to make an announcement in the morning, to publicise the website then, just as the MPs are chomping on their kedgeree.’
‘How is Natalie?’ asks Eve. ‘I’m a nurse, too. I can help with Zoe’s baby.’
‘If anything happens to that baby, you’re ruined,’ says Staffe. ‘You’re ruined anyway.’
Lesley Crawford looks at Eve quizzically, biding her response. ‘That remains to be seen.’
Eve holds up the canister of oxygen she has brought. ‘This will help. We need to secure a healthy birth.’
Crawford nods. ‘Natalie can tell you herself.’
Staffe walks into the entrance of the tower. As he passes Crawford, he hisses, ‘If you don’t tell me the truth, I’ll go for Zoe Bright. Or should I say Flanagan? Anne-Marie Flanagan as she was when you were her tutor.’
Lesley Crawford’s mouth opens. In her eyes, he sees the briefest flicker of uncertainty.
The room on the second floor is wide and long, improbably lit all the way to its high ceilings and out to the night. The brightness casts shadows across everybody’s face, makes them like gargoyles. When he sees Staffe, Nick Absolom conjures the decency to look embarrassed, if not ashamed. Emily Bagshot is lost in her child, with whom she crouches, trying to distract. She is clearly confused by everything around her. On the floor, a baby lies in its Moses basket. Staffe goes onto one knee, says, ‘Grace’s brother.’
‘Samuel,’ says Natalie. Her eyes flit and she scratches her chin, rubs her eyes. She is calculating something and regards Eve only briefly.
‘I’m sorry, Nat,’ says Eve.
‘What are you talking about?’ Natalie looks across at Lesley Crawford, then Staffe. ‘I had no choice.’
‘They forced you?’ says Eve.
Beyond Natalie, Zoe Bright breathes dramatically, through a pursed mouth. Her knees are slightly raised. On a blanket beside her chair is a stack of brilliantly white towels.
‘We should get her to a hospital,’ says Staffe.
‘You can’t take her,’ says Crawford. ‘Not yet. We have a nurse. In fact, we have two nurses.’
‘You had a nurse in the tunnel,’ he says. ‘But it all went wrong, didn’t it, Natalie? What happened? Did you have Samuel taken to Tommy? And with Grace, you were disturbed. It was Asquith, the historian.’
‘I don’t understand,’ says Natalie, to Lesley Crawford. ‘Why did you bring him here?’
Zoe Bright sighs, loudly. Then she grunts.
Natalie says, to Staffe, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, or why you are even here. This is my job. It’s what I do.’
Lesley Crawford makes calculations of her own.
‘What’s happened to Tommy, Natalie?’ says Staffe.
‘Don’t say anything,’ says Crawford. ‘We’ll get you a lawyer. The best. We have a baby to deliver.’
‘A lawyer! I don’t want a lawyer. You never said anything about a lawyer.’
Staffe says, ‘When Emily Bagshot came to City Royal, three years ago, you told Lesley, didn’t you, Natalie? You started all this.’ He looks at Crawford. ‘How did you two meet?’
Crawford looks at Natalie, imploringly. ‘You’ll be fine. I’ll make sure you are fine.’
‘You’re going to prison, Natalie. Rest assured. All of you are.’ He looks at Emily, says, ‘Not quite.’
‘All of us?’ says Zoe Bright.
‘He means me, and Natalie,’ says Crawford.
‘What!’ says Natalie. ‘It’s all right for you – you want to be a martyr.’
‘What did you do to Tommy Given, Emily?’
‘Say nothing, Em,’ says Natalie.
‘I was with Giselle. She’s my girl, my little girl. We were making cakes.’
‘Tommy brought her to you?’
‘It was an accident,’ says Natalie. She begins to fidget in her pockets, stepping from foot to foot, but working her way towards the Moses basket.
‘No!’ shouts Staffe, but it is too late.
Natalie Stafford has the baby, Samuel, in her arms. She has a scalpel in her hand and a look of utter desperation in her eyes. ‘I can’t go to prison.’
Zoe Bright grunts again, louder. She pulls at her hair and squeals. ‘It’s coming. For God’s sake. It’s coming!’
‘Put down the knife, Natalie.’ Eve is standing in the doorway. ‘He’s a baby. We save babies.’
‘
I
saved this baby. She is betraying me.
You
are betraying me.’
‘Help me. Please, help me,’ groans Zoe.
Absolom takes a photo and Lesley Crawford goes across, snatches the camera. ‘When I say!’
Eve takes a step towards Natalie, but she moves the scalpel an inch closer. ‘No,’ says Eve.
Zoe Bright pleads, ‘Please. My baby is coming.’
Eve takes another step.
Natalie puts the scalpel to the blanket by Samuel’s neck, where it is pulled up to cover his head. Her bottom lip is quivering. ‘Let me out. Just let me out.’
‘We have to help the new baby, Nat.’ Eve reaches out.
Natalie says, ‘No. You have to help
me
.
Me
.’
‘Nobody helps us, Nat. Remember? Remember what we said, when we got the bus back? That night from Leeds. We said we have to help ourselves, look after ourselves.’ Eve takes another step towards Natalie and reaches out. She puts her hand on her friend’s hand, which holds the handle of the scalpel. The two friends regard each other, as if they are alone in this room. ‘Come on, Nat. I’ll help you. Let’s help the baby, together.’ They intertwine their fingers and Eve slowly pulls her hand away, holding the scalpel.
Staffe watches the two friends hug each other. When they are done, Eve leads Natalie to Zoe Bright.
He says to Crawford, ‘This is over, Lesley. Give me the camera.’
‘No. This is mine. A moment of history – how can you not allow this to be documented?’
‘Nothing will happen until after the vote, tomorrow.’ He looks at Absolom. ‘Nothing.’
They each look across at Zoe Bright, supported by Eve, who administers gas and air whilst Natalie is on her knees, between Zoe Bright’s glistening calves. Natalie says, ‘Push, Zoe. Come on, sweetheart, push!’ lost in these moments.
Staffe takes a hold of Crawford’s arm and pulls her into the kitchen. ‘This is the transcript you marked for Anne-Marie Flanagan.’ He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the rollmop tub in its evidence bag. ‘And this has your prints, and Zoe’s. We know she has been complicit in this and she will become as involved as we want her to be. So you play ball, you understand – for Zoe’s sake!’
‘There’s more at stake than that.’
He holds her by the shoulders and turns her to face into the room. He whispers, heavily, into her ear. ‘These people each have a life. A life has to be lived, not just given. There’s no point bringing them into the world and abandoning them. And that’s what you do, Lesley. You use people. You undermine yourself. You think you are God. You can’t make decisions for everyone.’
Natalie reaches out, towards Zoe. Eve helps the mother sit up, her hair matted and her face coated with sweat. She reaches out towards Natalie. Between them, with blood on her head and her mouth agape, is Zoe’s baby. It is a daughter. She tries to roar, but something is trapped inside her. She can’t breathe.
Zoe cries out, ‘What’s wrong? Is she dying? Have I killed her?’
Eve picks up the baby and feels her neck. She looks at Natalie, eyes wide and full of fear.
Natalie takes the baby from Eve and whispers into her ear, then she holds the baby high, the umbilical cord almost taut as she tilts the baby and pulls one hand away. ‘No!’ shouts Zoe. Natalie raises her free hand, flattens it and angles it to the shape of a karate chop and fast as a flash she brings it down, tilting the baby and tapping her back.
The baby roars.
‘You have to let people choose,’ says Staffe to Lesley Crawford. ‘And they will, tomorrow.’
‘When was the last time you slept?’ asks Josie.
‘Are they in there?’ says Staffe, peering through the reinforced glass panel of the small room. It is off the main ward, to keep germs at bay and contains two cots.
‘Can’t this wait, sir? They’re going nowhere,’ says Pulford.
Staffe runs his hands through his hair and blows out his cheeks. He summons images of his last meeting with Sean Degg, can’t escape the bad thoughts he had of him, the accusations levelled. All he did was love a woman too much.
He reaches for the door, pushes it, takes a step closer to what he has to do.
Bridget Lamb has Baby Samuel in her arms. The baby looks up at his aunt and, hearing somebody enter, turns his head. The infant’s faculties seem to have advanced in the day since Staffe last saw him, and Bridget looks different, too. Her husband sits opposite the two of them and doesn’t look up. He has Grace in his lap. Staffe thinks that Malcolm might know what is coming and he has another flash memory of the young Malcolm, miserable at school.
He pulls up a chair and sits alongside Bridget, who says, ‘You know, I can see Kerry in him. And something of myself in Grace.’ She rocks the baby now, but it is a disguise. Staffe can see that her hands are shaking.
‘And Sean?’
‘There’s nothing of him,’ says Malcolm Lamb.
‘We can’t say that,’ says Bridget. ‘But it’s not what I see.’
There is a window beyond the cots. They are three floors up and there is nothing between them and the ground. Outside, in the main ward, Pulford and Josie are waiting. There is a uniformed WPC there, also. At the main entrance, another two uniformed officers wait, and two more by the service entrance just in case.
‘If only Kerry could have seen. If she’d have known better,’ says Bridget. ‘She should have talked to me. I could have helped. This could have been arranged properly.’
‘Properly?’ says Staffe.
‘They will come to me, these babies,’ she says.
‘We have spoken to a solicitor, and she has consulted the authorities,’ says Malcolm. ‘Bridget is their aunt. She will be a wonderful mother to them now. It’s in her blood.’
Staffe and Malcolm exchange a look and Staffe’s heart sinks as he says, ‘I’d like a few words with Malcolm.’
‘Of course,’ she says, smiling at Samuel, her thumb lightly upon the baby’s cheek.
Staffe nods for Josie to come in. ‘Alone, the two of us,’ he says to Bridget.
Josie comes in and takes Grace from Malcolm.
‘Why?’ says Bridget, suddenly concerned.
Josie ushers Bridget towards the door, says, ‘They should get to know each other – brother and sister. We’ll have some tea.’
Staffe says, ‘I need to talk to Malcolm about when we were young. He was there with my sister …’
‘When your parents were killed. He told me. I’m sorry.’
‘I’m sorry, too,’ says Staffe, watching Bridget go, Samuel in arms, and Josie beside her, holding Grace.
When the two men are alone, Staffe takes out the wedding photo of Bridget. He can see now that it is probably no longer the happiest day of her life. ‘I went to see a young woman, out east a little. It’s where Sean was for the last days of his life. He went into a shop to buy something. Earlier, he had made a telephone call.’
‘I thought you wanted to talk about when we were young,’ says Malcolm.
Staffe looks at the photograph of Bridget, Malcolm beside her. She is beaming into camera and he is looking at her, a frightened smile creasing in his face, as if he can see that one day he might have to do anything for her.
‘Sean called a mobile number. And that mobile phone then made a call to your home.’
‘I don’t understand,’ says Malcolm.
‘You have a mobile phone, don’t you?’
Malcolm shakes his head.
‘You’d do anything for Bridget, wouldn’t you? You can’t give her children, though. But you could help her have Kerry’s.’
‘I’ll support her however I can.’
‘Sean ruined her.’
‘I don’t know what you’re driving at.’
‘That young woman in the shop who served Sean remembered him. She remembered who else was in the shop just afterwards. I have her statement here.’ He holds up the photograph. He puts a finger to it. ‘She remembers you going in.’ Staffe looks at Malcolm, says, ‘I remember that time at school, Malcolm. When the ambulance came.’
‘You were there. You could have stopped that bastard.’
‘You know how to inject. You have done it all your life. And you work with druggies, down at the exchange that the church helps with. You could get your hands on it.’
‘Hands on what?’
‘Sean called you on that mobile phone you say you haven’t got.’ Staffe pulls a phone from his pocket. The device is sheathed in an evidence bag and Malcolm’s eyes hood down. ‘You called Bridget from this mobile, Malcolm. There are some bastards out there who are paid by the government to get convictions. They look for accessories in crimes like this. They don’t like loose ends.’
‘I called to see how she was, that’s all. Bridget knows nothing. She knows nothing at all about this.’
‘If you’re saying you did it on your own, you’ll have to tell me how.’
‘How? How is easy, Will. If you love somebody – have you ever? If you love somebody and somebody hurts them … you get a hate. You get a hate as big as the love. That’s how it works and you can’t do anything else.’
‘You killed an innocent man.’
‘I brought peace to a beautiful woman, an innocent woman who had her inner being, her holiest element, taken away from her. She can be complete.’
‘I thought Sean was guilty, once. But I was wrong. You killed an innocent man, a father.’
‘You said you wanted to talk about when we were young.’
‘They killed my father, my mother, too.’
‘I know, and I’m sorry.’
‘And I don’t doubt they had their reasons.’
‘It’s not the same.’
‘It’s always the same, Malcolm. It has to be. It can’t be any other way. How could I bear it if they didn’t have a damned good reason?’
Malcolm leans heavily against the wall. He looks through the window in the door, watches Bridget and her family. ‘Can I be with them, a little longer?’
‘I’m afraid not.’ As he says it, Staffe feels a little less decent about himself.
*
The uniformed officers take Malcolm Lamb away. His wife is not with him as he is led away – at his insistence. Staffe cannot help speculating what his father might make of him and the things he has to do.
‘If only that was the end of it,’ says Josie. On their way out of City Royal, she hands Staffe a bound SOC printout of the forensics down at Emily Bagshot’s bungalow on the Cornish coast.
‘Where is Emily?’
‘She’s had the tests – to prove she’s Giselle’s mother – and now she’s with social services.’
‘They’ve released her from custody?’
‘We have a scalpel and a syringe found less than a mile from Emily’s bungalow – both taken from City Royal. Natalie Stafford has admitted to it. Her prints were on them.’
‘And what do the Crown say about Natalie?’
Josie shakes her head. ‘It’ll be murder, sir.’
‘And people talk about innocence,’ says Staffe. ‘What about her innocence?’
‘She’s as guilty as they come, sir. Conspiracy, abduction, concealment and destroying public records as well as murder.’
‘And finally, Emily will be with her daughter.’
‘And Rob Hutchison. They’re together. You should have seen them.’
‘The happy family. But …’
‘Sir?’
‘But for Natalie’s interventions.’
‘There’s something else, sir.’
Staffe watches Malcolm Lamb being manhandled into a police car on the hospital forecourt and he thinks about when the police came to see his sister Marie and how he wasn’t there when she was told her parents were murdered, but Malcolm and his father were. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s the bank draft fraud, sir,’ says Josie. ‘We can deal with it.’
‘No!’
An ambulance roars up the approach road and screeches to a halt in front of them. The siren stops and from within the vehicle, a scream cuts the city afternoon. They are asked to stand aside.
When the man is wheeled past, blood proliferates, from the chest of what some people would call a patient. To others, he is a victim. It could be a knife wound, or gunshot.
‘Tell me,’ says Staffe. ‘Did they catch anyone with the banker’s drafts?’
‘Nearly, with the first. They used it to try and buy a car out in Ilford. After that, they must have got word round the gang and it looks like they dropped the scam.’
‘Any prints on the cheque?’
‘No. But we’ve got a definite ID on the one who presented it. He’s got a record and it’s the eGang all right. But they’ve gone to ground.’
‘Have you checked Jasmine Cash’s flat?’
Josie nods.
‘How was she?’
Josie says, ‘We can do this, sir.’
Staffe watches the bloodied victim disappear between the automatic doors of the hospital. ‘Fine.’
‘What?’ says Josie, and she watches as Staffe walks away from City Royal, but in the opposite direction to Leadengate station.
*
Staffe is a little worse for wear. He tried to sleep and knocked back a couple of stiff nightcaps, but his brain couldn’t stop ticking and now he feels even worse, needs to do something. He had called Finbar and is waiting for him now. It is one of their haunts, of old.
He drinks from his bottle of Moretti and twists on his stool at the bar of the Boss Clef. The performer is singing ‘Lili Marlene’ and has a crimped bob of golden hair and blood-red lips, is wearing a basque and a tight black skirt, split all the way to her hip. It has a scarlet lining. The place is all dark, save a single shaft of light from above that picks out her sway of the song.
With her golden hair, the singer reminds him a little of Natalie. Poor Natalie, who has borne the brunt of the charges that the CPS have brought in the abductions of Kerry Degg and Emily Bagshot, the manslaughter of the former and the murder of Tommy Given. For her part, Lesley Crawford is copping conspiracy charges and, according to the CPS, who are talking to her brief, Jasper Renwick, she is probably facing as little as two years. She might even get the lot suspended.
Her attachment to the abductions was opportunistic, superficial and political. Renwick has sufficient argument to pin the abductions to dead Tommy Given and the stunt with Zoe Bright is political, also, and conducted with the absolute consent of Zoe, according to the wily Jasper. Because of Crawford’s testimony, Zoe Bright will probably be charged with conspiracy.
When Staffe had called Alicia Flint, she had said that Lesley Crawford was cold as ice. It had made her blood boil and when she visited Zoe, Anthony Bright had been there, holding the baby beside the hospital bed that Zoe was chained to. Alicia said, ‘If you looked at them quick, you might think they were a family. It shows how much we know.’
The applause for ‘Lili Marlene’ subsides and Staffe recognises the opening chords of ‘Shir Hatan’. The singer introduces the song over the piano prelude and he is sure he has heard these spoken words before. It is a homage to Dietrich and he is sure Kerry had done this also, back in the winter when she was Lori Dos Passos and he had chanced upon her – little knowing. He could swear she had.
The words drift into a verse of animals crying because they are hungry. The child cries, too, because he is lonely. Staffe closes his eyes, pictures Zoe Bright chained, her baby in the arms of Anthony Bright. He wonders if his love of Zoe is diminished now.
He looks around the audience as the chorus belts out in Hebrew. From the dark, some of the audience join in.
‘Penny for ’em.’ Finbar Hare draws up a stool alongside Staffe and orders up two more bottles of Moretti and large Laphroaigs.
‘I’m so sorry, Fin,’ says Staffe.
‘Don’t ever apologise to me, old boy.’ They clink. ‘You were only trying to help someone, so don’t beat yourself up about it. There’s others can do that.’
Staffe feels a smile spread across his face. It feels alien to him, seems as if he is a long way from himself.
Fin talks across the music and drinks quickly, playing
catch-up
, draining his malt and ordering another for himself – a ‘hollow legs’, as he calls it – and three songs further into the set, he begins to muse on how he would like his evening to pan out, unable to take his eyes off the singer. He raises a glass to her and she winks at him. Staffe doesn’t know how he does it, but when he turns to the bar to take a swig of his Moretti, he sees the barmaid undressing the foil from the neck of a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, and Fin miming the action of putting it on ice. When he catches Staffe watching him, he says, ‘That poor bastard Vernon Short, eh? You were involved in all that, weren’t you?’
Vernon’s bill had lost its vote by three bodies. He had stepped down, immediately, with a smile upon his lips and – the first time Staffe had seen this in him – a glint in his eyes. He looked like a different man. Nothing like his father. He had said he was done with Parliament and was going to see if vines would take on his small parcel of land in Puglia. When the interviewer had asked him about Lesley Crawford and was he involved with her political activities, he said, ‘Of course not. She’s a maverick and the laws of slander prevent me from being candid.’ The interviewer persisted and Vernon had said, ‘The beauty of stepping down is I don’t ever have to give fools like you the time of my day. I suggest you stuff yourself.’ He had thrown back his head and laughed, then walked away. As he went, you could hear the crew guffawing.
‘What’s happened to Dan Carlyle?’ Staffe asks.
‘We’re looking after him. He’s booked into the Hermitage for as long as it takes for all this to die down. Rehab’s the best bastard place in the world to hide.’
‘I’ll catch up with Golding, I promise, Fin.’
‘Don’t knock yourself out. We didn’t lose a penny and the chances are it might have saved Dan Carlyle’s marriage and career in the long run. You know he was hooked on heroin?’ Fin drains his third large Laphroaig and slams the glass on the counter. ‘Fucking heroin. For the love of God.’