Kill and Tell (3 page)

Staffe can remember when Beauvoir Place was a down-at-heel East End square, but now it’s the home to investment bankers and media hounds – just a hop, skip and a tango lunge to Hoxton’s fleshpots and artisan bakeries.

He parks up on the far side of the square, walks slowly round, taking in the gothic splendour, and pauses outside Carmelo’s house. The major part of him wants to hotfoot across to the Attlee Estate and chase down Latymer and Haddaway – to find the gun that killed Jadus Golding; the very same weapon that Jadus had used on him; the evidence that might free Pulford. But Pennington is insistent he finds Carmelo Trapani. He looks up at Carmelo’s place, thinks surely a ransom note will appear soon; or a body.

Walking up the path through the open, large electronic gates, Staffe is gratified to see the house seems in perfect keeping with the intentions of its architect with its Dutch gables, but when he looks carefully, Staffe spies the occasional Italianate detailing on the window masonry which would be more at home on the shores of Lake Como. By and large, though, it seems Carmelo Trapani was a man of both wealth and taste. Was? He still might be.

Staffe has read up all Carmelo’s files, smiling to himself at one point when he saw Jessop’s signature at the bottom of an interview in the wake of the Calvi hanging. There was no link between Calvi and Carmelo, but Staffe had enjoyed seeing the infantile scrawl of Jessop in those margins. Guilty Jessop, his first ever boss. On the run now, unlike innocent Pulford.

Carmelo stayed in Stepney throughout the war, one step ahead of the interners, and perhaps left alone because of his disability – or not. Later, he acquired a significant property empire in west London, renting out rooms to immigrants from Empire.

When Staffe reaches the front door, he sees a humble sign, carved crudely in wood and hanging unceremoniously on two lengths of chain. It says ‘Palazzo Adriano’. He takes the sign between thumb and finger, lets it swing. It is out of keeping.

SOCOs are hard at it in the hallway. The frescoed ceiling depicts Jesus rising up to heaven: Mary waiting with cherubim and angels – all rendered in a sickly palette borrowed from sweetshops. The ceiling is bordered with renditions of Italian hills.

Stepping into the drawing room, Staffe feels a glow in his belly, like the first open fire of winter. He sniffs. ‘Disinfectant.’ He sniffs again, deeper. ‘Did you get that?’ he says to the SOCO crouching by the french window, dusting away with a tiny brush.

DI Frank Rimmer sidles up to Staffe, light on his feet. He is a slight man, immaculately suited and with the weight of the world pressing down on his brow. He says, ‘We got it. The place has been wiped clean, Staffe.’

‘But they left the blood. Why clean the place and leave the blood?’ Both men look at the dried trail of blood on the marble floor.

Rimmer is the same rank as Staffe and in his father’s footsteps, but struggling to fill them; it strikes Staffe as odd that Pennington wants the two of them on this case.

‘Is there a housekeeper? Does the disinfectant match the ones in the house, or is it foreign?’

‘We haven’t tracked the housekeeper down yet.’

‘Well, get her! We need to know when she last cleaned the place and when she last saw Carmelo.’ Staffe turns his back on Rimmer, approaches the SOCO. ‘Is the disinfectant evenly distributed?’

‘It seems to be everywhere. We can’t tell if there is a greater concentration, but there is—’ He stands up, takes three paces and crouches again, just six feet from the cocktail cabinet. ‘—if you look closely, some slight degradation to the surface of the marble around the blood.’

‘So they cleaned around the blood.’ Staffe opens the cocktail cabinet. Inside, a row of four delicate, tulip-shaped shot glasses. He picks one up, inspects and replaces it. The glass is Murano, the dust is north London and he sees two circular feints in the light film of dust. ‘There would have been two more glasses. Like this.’ He holds up a glass.

‘Not here, sir.’

‘Any sign of broken glass?’

‘No.’

‘Dishwasher?’

‘Empty, sir.’

The first whiff of a ghost. And on the shelf below the glasses, a row of four Nardini bottles of grappa. One has its seal broken and is empty down to just below the neck. Maybe a couple of measures. He tells the SOCO to have the contents tested and goes across to the french windows.

The garden is perfectly manicured. ‘There’ll be a gardener. Find the gardener, and the bloody housekeeper.’

Rimmer leaves, saying nothing, and passes Josie on the way in, carrying a pile of papers. She wears disposable gloves and asks the SOCO if she can use the table. He nods and she sets out the papers in a line. ‘Carmelo employed three staff, sir. A cleaner and a gardener. He’s the one who phoned in.’

Staffe looks at an oil painting on the chimney breast. It has a beguiling, coral light, depicts down-at-heel folk fishing off a promenade. In the background, an exotic city. ‘Go on.’

‘And someone called Jacobo Sartori who gets paid the most. Four grand a month.’

‘That’s too much for a housekeeper; too much for any domestic servant, surely. Get hold of him.’

‘He’s not at home. His wife, Appolina, says he often stayed here – especially weekends. She’s worried, sir. In pieces, actually.’

‘Then you can chalk up Jacobo Sartori and put him down as a suspect.’

‘Alongside the son,’ says Rimmer. ‘I’ve spoken to the neighbours. Apparently, Carmelo and the son don’t get on.’

‘It wasn’t the son,’ says Staffe, catching himself unawares and not sure why he feels so strongly.

Appolina Sartori is spaghetti thin and wears a cream trouser suit with a green tabard over it. She has a fine head of grey hair scraped into a bun and moves warily. Her voice is tender and breaks at the end of each short sentence.

Staffe sits opposite Appolina on an expensive and newly re-upholstered Georgian settee. He places his hands on his knees in deference to her years and to her anxiety. ‘You have heard about Signor Trapani?’

Appolina puts her hands together, in prayer. She closes her eyes and nods her head slowly. ‘Attilio told me what happened. They are beasts.’

‘Who are beasts?’

‘Whoever did it.’

The way Appolina said, ‘They are beasts’ implies particular beasts. ‘Who do you think did it?’

‘I barely saw Carmelo. It was Jacobo who spent the time.’

‘Jacobo will be very upset,’ says Staffe.

‘All his life he devoted.’

‘And have you heard from Jacobo since?’

‘No.’ She shakes her head solemnly. ‘He went there to prepare dinner. Carmelo adored Jacobo’s
puttanesca
. He took his suitcase with him.’

‘Would he normally take a suitcase to work?’

‘He has a room there. Carmelo kept asking Jacobo to go to Beauvoir Place. To live.’

‘You have a beautiful home here.’ Staffe looks around the sitting room of the double-fronted Victorian villa. They are in Cranley Gardens, briefly famous for Dennis Nilsen having killed three of his many just up the road at number twenty-three. Staffe resists the urge to ask Appolina if she was one of the neighbours who reported the smell to the police, or found body parts in her plumbing.

‘It is
our
home. Our life. Not Carmelo’s.’ Her eyes glisten and they each look at the photographs on top of her cocktail cabinet, which has cabriole legs – just like the one in Carmelo’s drawing room. The photographs chronicle Jacobo’s life, from young man in a baggy suit and fedora to an old man in baggy suit and fedora. He cuts a slight figure with soft eyes and a bobble on the end of his nose. Staffe picks up an early photo of Jacobo with an ice-cream, a sandstone cliff towering behind him. ‘He is a handsome man.’

‘It was taken in Cefalù.’

‘In Sicily?’

She nods, smiles briefly but it goes out, like a snuffed candle. ‘That was a long time ago but every year I love him more. When you get close, when there is less time to come, life is more precious. Some people say life is less when you are old, but it is more. So we must be together, you see. I can’t bear it – for Jacobo to leave me alone.’ She fixes her sights on Staffe, imploring. ‘You
will
find him?’

‘Of course. We need to ask to him about Carmelo.’ He picks up a photograph of Jacobo beside a bandstand with a pier and seams of pebble beach and milky sea in the background. He recognises it as Brighton. ‘Can I take this? I will get a copy made and return the original.’

‘If it helps,’ says Appolina, resigned.

Staffe knows Jacobo is Carmelo’s housekeeper. He knows Jacobo gets four thousand a month from Carmelo’s account, and he knows this is clearly too much. He knows, also, that Jacobo and Appolina’s house, were it to be sold tomorrow, would fetch well over a million. In crime, as in life, everything has to add up.

And he remembers what Jessop said – dear, deluded Jessop. ‘Follow the money, William. Follow the money and you’ll find the shit.’

He hates himself for saying it, but he asks Appolina nonetheless: ‘If Jacobo had to run, where would he run?’

A tear from each eye runs down her cheeks. Staffe goes to her, wrapping her in his big arms – careful not to crush the frail thing. Feeling the soft skin of her forehead cold against his neck and looking over her head, Staffe sees a little of Appolina on display. On shelves, there is Dante and Vasari’s
Lives of the Artists
, as well as Danielle Steel and Esther Samuels. And there are opera scores, too. On the sideboard, a copy of today’s
La Stampa
. ‘Jacobo knows something, doesn’t he? You must tell me, if you want us to save him.’

‘Save?’ she whispers, hardly daring to utter.

‘We must save him. What does he know?’

‘There was—’

‘Tell me,’ implores Staffe.

‘Nothing. I’m being silly.’

‘Tell me. His life could be in your hands,
signora
Sartori.’

Appolina shivers, as if she dislikes her own name. ‘It’s nothing.’

He un-holds Appolina, leans away and tries to fathom what it is that can keep a person – an intelligent, strong woman such as Appolina –
so
betrothed to a man so humble in aspiration. ‘You must tell me this thing that burdens you.’

‘I bear no burden. My life has been a gift.’

‘Where would he go? You must tell me.’

‘He was always with Carmelo, or here.’

Staffe thinks:
That’s what he told you
.

‘We always planned to live by the sea. One day, we will, is what I always thought, but now the one day is here, and maybe it is gone. How did we get to be so old, and still tied to Carmelo?’ Appolina doesn’t look at Staffe when she says this. She is addressing somebody not here.

‘You’re from Sicily, too?’

Appolina shakes her head. ‘I am a Roman. My mother warned me. Perhaps she was right.’

‘You met Jacobo over here? In England?’

She smiles. ‘Carmelo introduced us. I was one of his seamstresses on the Mile End Road. They were hard times. So hard, to survive then.’

Pulford’s eyes are dark and he seems a little bloated in the face. There is something less alive about him.

Staffe hands him the book he requested, and the photocopied article by a chap called Hutchison. He had skimmed through and it looked interesting. He wishes he had more time to dwell on the wider world; the world gone by and all its stories.

‘You’ve got two minutes, that’s all. You want to see him, you should book a visit like everyone else.’ The PO looks at Pulford as if he is everyday scum. ‘He’s no special case.’

‘He is,’ says Staffe.

‘No, I’m not!’ says Pulford. He seems afraid.

Staffe watches the PO retreat to his position by the alarm bell. ‘Is that Crawshaw?’

Pulford looks at the article and his frown softens, becoming a smile as he turns the pages.

‘You’re enjoying your studies?’

‘It makes sense of what we do, sir.’

Staffe watches Pulford open a clear, plastic file. In the file is a printout of Google Earth, with the http: strapline at the top – clearly taken from the Internet. Pulford slides in the article. As he does, Staffe tries to see the subject of the Google Earth printout, but the Hutchison article covers it up.

Pulford holds up the book, wiggles it and says, ‘You know, there’s nothing new in any of what we do. Crime is repeating itself, the way it always did. It used to be Caribbeans and Italians, and even the Jewish communities, who formed alliances. Now, it’s Turks and Serbs, and the old Soviet nations who come here to ply their trades. We’ve always been a melting pot, here in London.’

‘A land of opportunity,’ says Staffe and they both laugh.

Crawshaw shoots a disapproving look and talks into his radio. Within a minute, a new PO appears in the visitor centre, to pat Pulford down and take him back to twenty-three-hour lockdown and the virtual world of learning; his only escape.

When Pulford is gone, Staffe says to Crawshaw, ‘They’re not allowed the Internet in here?’

‘No fuckin’ way. Information is our enemy. It’s a fuckin’ killer,’ he laughs.

At the gate, Staffe is processed back onto what Pulford is already calling ‘Road’. His mobile phone is returned and he thinks about how he should cherish every drop from every day. He makes himself call her.

On the Pentonville Road, he finds Sylvie in his menu and he listens to her voice apologising that she isn’t around but inviting him to leave a message. She enthuses that she will call back as soon as possible. But she could be talking to anybody, so he rings off without leaving a message, walking as fast as he can down the Caledonian Road to Clerkenwell and then Leadengate, happy to feel the earth under his feet.

Staffe writes his jottings up into lists on a piece of A3. He tries to find some order amongst his own thoughts as Leadengate’s old arteries crackle.

The door creaks open and Jombaugh comes in, carrying a plate and two pieces of the baked cheesecake his wife makes. ‘What’s all this?’ he says, looking at Staffe’s lists. He peers over his pince-nez glasses. ‘Aah.’ Jombaugh doesn’t have a face for spectacles. His face is big and pitted and his hair is like steel wool. His uniform always looks a size too small for him. ‘You’re following the money. Bound to end up in shit,’ he laughs.

‘Carmelo Trapani’s house is worth three, maybe four million. No mortgage. He’s a director of dozens of companies in the UK and from the look of things, dozens more in Monaco and Guernsey, including some new trusts set up in the last week.’

‘Shuffling the pack?’

‘I’m waiting for his lawyer to call me, but he’s got to be worth at least ten million, probably more, and even his butler lives in a big old gaff in Muswell Hill.’

‘And it’s all going to the one son.’

‘You’d think so,’ says Staffe, picking up the phone, dialling Carmelo Trapani’s solicitor.

Martin Goldman answers immediately and in a meek voice explains he is not in a position to discuss Carmelo Trapani’s last will and testament. He pauses. ‘In fact, it may be nothing at all to do with us.’

‘But you are Carmelo’s lawyer, are you not?’

‘I asked Carmelo on several occasions if there was anything he wanted to tend, in that regard, and he was quite cagey. That may be more than I should divulge.’

‘Surely you can offer an estimate of Mister Trapani’s wealth?’

‘It is only an estimate, but it wouldn’t be less than twenty million. I am not his accountant.’

‘But you are supposed to represent his best interests. If anything happens to Carmelo, and it transpires that you had information that could have helped us, or if you knew something that might have prevented us from going down a blind alley—’

‘I know!’ Goldman is breathing heavily now. ‘But I have said all I can say.’

‘I can tell you know something. Don’t take me for a fool, Mister Goldman.’

The phone lapses to silence again.

‘Would you describe his recent behaviour as unusual in any way?’

‘He brought me a letter last week and said if anything untoward happened, I was to open it.’

‘And what does it say?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Wouldn’t you say that Carmelo’s disappearance from the face of the earth is untoward? Now, Mister Goldman, will you please open that letter and tell me what is in it.’

‘There are conditions.’

‘What conditions?’

‘I’ll call you back.’

The phone clicks dead.

Jombaugh blows out his cheeks. ‘What about the son? Does he need the money?’

Staffe jabs his finger at the sheet of jottings. ‘Attilio Trapani, a bloodstock agent and horse breeder, but there’s barely a mention of him in Tattersalls’ sales.’

‘He could be acting as agent.’

‘Attilio has no registered companies in the UK, even though he’s supposed to be a racehorse trainer, and apart from a one-bedder in Ladbroke Grove, he’s got no other property in the UK. There doesn’t seem to be any regular payment from Carmelo to Attilio.’

‘But he’s got a fancy wife by all accounts.’

‘Helena Ballantyne owns Ockingham Manor. It’s worth a few million, but she’s got a mortgage of two million against it and that must be racking up at six thousand a month. Plus, she’s got a million-quid flat in Ebury Street with a half-million mortgage taken out only three years ago.’

‘I know she’s posh, but is she minted?’

‘Her social activity is pretty extravagant: Chinawhites, Gstaad, Taormina.’ Staffe puts a ring around ‘Taormina’ and draws a line across to his Attilio list.

‘Taormina?’ says Josie, coming in and smiling to herself. Staffe thinks she must have seen her new bloke, Conor. She holds out a cardboard cup of designer coffee between Staffe and Jombaugh, and says, ‘You’ll have to fight over it.’

Staffe says, ‘Taormina?’

‘It’s a fancy resort in Sicily. Brad and Madonna like it, so they say.’

‘I know what it is. In fact, it’s where Attilio and Helena Ballantyne first met.’

‘Dominic Ballantyne was still in the saddle at the time.’ Josie reaches down into her bag, pulls out a copy of
Hello!
magazine and tosses it across to Staffe.

In the back pages of social round-up, Attilio Trapani is pictured between Helena and Dominic Ballantyne, his large, bronze arms draped over the English couple’s shoulders at a charity gala. Eighteen months later, Dominic Ballantyne would snap his neck in two, falling sixteen hands from a horse on his own Ockingham estate.

‘Did you look into Dominic Ballantyne’s death?’

‘I was hoping to get some sleep tonight – for a change!’ Josie’s eyes are heavy.

Jombaugh’s bleeper goes off and he gets out of his chair, pretending to be an old man. As he leaves he takes the coffee and beckons Staffe across, whispers, ‘Go easy on her, Will. So she’s got a boyfriend . . . You should be pleased for her.’ He winks, slaps Staffe on the shoulder and raises his cup, as if he were toasting. ‘Very tasty.’

Staffe says to Josie, ‘Just do it as quick as you can.’

Josie pulls out a stapled stack of photocopied paper from her shoulder bag. ‘Ta-dah! See, I don’t have to sleep. There wasn’t an inquiry and the police were satisfied there was nothing untoward. Disappointed?’

‘That’s not the right word.’

‘Well, I do have
something
else for you.’ Josie goes into her bag a third time, hands him a copy of
Horse and Hound
with a photograph of Attilio Trapani above a strapline that says, ‘Amateur breeder Attilio Trapani plans to expand.’ The article mentions the tremendous support he received from Helena Ballantyne, the widow of Attilio’s great friend Dominic Ballantyne. ‘Trapani acquired for the Ballantynes the very horse from which Dominic fell to his death.’

‘Blimey,’ says Staffe. ‘This was just a month after Ballantyne died.’ He drags his fingers through his hair and smiles at Josie, wants to say how proud he is.

‘What?’ she says, tilting her head. ‘What is it?’ The soft flesh between her eyebrows crinkles.

‘This Conor. He’s a lucky bloke. I hope he’s treating you—’

The door creaks open and Staffe and Josie both look round, surprised to see Pennington. Instinctively, they both look up at the clock.

‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this Carmelo business,’ says Pennington.

‘Chancellor has been hard at it, sir. We’re building the links to Attilio Trapani.’

‘And what about Pulford?’

‘He’s not telling me any more than he told you.’

‘Christ! I’m sorry about this Trapani thing.’ Pennington never apologises.

The DCI sits down heavily in a chair by the window. His eyes are dark and heavy in his jaundiced face. With a gaunt gaze, he looks out across the rooftops, down Cloth Fair to the meat market, and sighs, ‘Internal Investigations aren’t pulling up any trees. What a bloody mess. I hoped he would open up to you.’

‘I have a lead. I can’t say it’s anything yet, sir, but there’s some e.gang members on the Attlee.’

‘We know that, for God’s sake.’

‘And there’s a Google Earth search.’

‘A what?’

‘In prison, they’re not supposed—’

‘Don’t step on any toes – especially Internal Investigations.’

‘Great. Go where the angels are frightened of treading, but make sure you don’t ruffle Professional Standards’ feathers.’

‘Keep your head below the bastard parapet, is all. I’m not sure how long we’ve got before the CPS really push for a trial date.’

‘It can’t go to trial!’

‘It will – if we don’t get some evidence soon. Make sure you work closely with Rimmer on the Trapani case, but make it look as though it’s taking all your time. Now, Rimmer tells me Trapani drove a Daimler. It was a jalopy, but his pride and joy. And it’s gone.’

‘We’ll track it on the cameras, sir,’ says Josie.

Pennington nods to her, suggesting that she does it straightaway, and elsewhere. When she is gone he hisses under his breath, ‘You know what I’m saying, Will?’

‘Cut myself in two and hide one half.’

‘And take it easy with the e.gang. I don’t want us accused.’

‘Accused?’

‘You know what the press are like. Pulford is charged with shooting a black man. It could kick off at any time.’ Pennington taps
The News.
‘Keep the wolves from our door, Staffe. Be sure you do, but bloody well find what Pulford is afraid of. Now, do you have any of that rum you keep stashed away?’

Staffe pours them each a cup and Pennington necks his in one, holds out his cup for more. Staffe says, ‘There’s something else, isn’t there, sir?’

Pennington nods. ‘Keep it to yourself.’

‘Absolutely.’

Pennington sighs. ‘He wanted me to meet him. He called me.’

‘Who?’

‘Trapani. The day before he disappeared. I was up to here.’ Pennington puts a hand above his head.

‘And you didn’t tell anyone?’

‘I have now, but it looks bad. Christ, we’ve got to get to the bottom of this, Will. You wouldn’t believe what shit’s going off at the moment.’ Pennington looks at him hard. ‘Watch yourself, Will, is all I can say.’

Staffe watches him leave and tries to work out how the hell Pulford had got hold of a Google Earth printout in prison. Soon, his thoughts turn to Jessop, another colleague who ended up on the wrong side of the law – and now Pennington’s behaving oddly.

The phone rings and it is Finbar Hare saying he has asked around about Carmelo Trapani and does Staffe want to meet up? It is music to Staffe’s ears – the chance to listen to the voice of a different kind of reason.

The George and Vulture was Jessop’s favourite place, with its dark panelling and linen and silver; its calves’ liver and chops and decrepit waiters.

‘I asked around about Carmelo,’ says Finbar, talking low and smearing his potted shrimp onto his toast. Staffe and Finbar didn’t find each other until relatively late in life, but looking at Finbar Hare now, Staffe muses upon how alike they are; and so very different. Finbar has clearly had a couple of sharpeners already and seems not to have a care in the world, even though he is responsible for two billion pounds of shareholder funds.

‘What have you come up with?’

‘How come he’s on your radar? He’s an old fella. Can’t you let him die in peace?’

‘Too late for that. I’ve got his corporate profile.’ Staffe hands a printout across.

The waiter brings a large turbot to the table, begins to carve, and Fin says, ‘He also had his finger in an investment trust a few years ago. We’ve just poached one of the top banking analysts in Europe from Hispania. Carmelo was in with a fellow called Abie Myers, but he ditched the stock a month or so ago.’

‘You’ll keep this to yourself, Fin.’

Finbar puts a finger to his lips, whispers, ‘You’re in the club, Will. You’re an honorary member. We both keep schtum, right?’ He begins to set about his turbot, says, ‘Now, tell me about that beautiful girl of yours.’

‘I haven’t got one.’

‘Sylvie, you fool. You don’t let fish like her through the net, my man. I’ve told you before, you should—’

‘Leave it, Fin. Please.’ Staffe picks at his fish, listens to the low rumble of secret deals, the chink of silver on china. His thoughts drift.

‘Will?’

He looks up, sees Finbar looking at him quizzically.

‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘You don’t look it.’

‘I’ve been getting tired, just lately.’

‘Christ, man, you need to loosen up. Here.’ He reaches across with the bottle and Staffe shakes his head, wonders what life would have been like spent in a suit and on expenses – had he not chosen the Force.

Fin smiles, raises his glass, as if he hasn’t a care in the world. But Staffe knows that isn’t the case.