Willing Flesh (10 page)

The two men regard each other, say nothing.

‘Christ, it’s like, who’s the first to blink,’ says Josie.

Tchancov leans back in his chair and Markary wrings his hands, eventually says, ‘You here about the girl?’

‘Not my girl,’ says Tchancov.

‘Are you something to do with this, Tchancov?’

He shakes his head. ‘Why would I be?’

‘You should pray you’re not.’

‘That’s not so friendly, my friend.’

Markary stands up and as he advances, Tchancov uncrosses his legs and glances up into the camera, makes the faintest smile. Markary grabs him by the lapels and shouts, ‘I find out this is anything to do with you, you Russian prick, God help me.’ Tchancov spreads his arms wide, as if to advertise the fact that he is being sinned against. Markary obscures the Russian, appears to whisper something in his ear.

Then Markary doubles down, letting go of Tchancov and reaching for his nethers. A strangled curse emerges from the speaker and Tchancov stands, still holding Markary by the balls and whispering something back into the Turk’s ear, Markary’s Crombie unfurling to the ground.

The Russian walks to the door and pounds it twice. When Jombaugh opens it, Tchancov goes into a blindspot from the camera and says to the sergeant, ‘I think this was not wise. This man’, he jabs towards Markary, pausing for effect, ‘can identify his tart.’ He steps back out and looks up into camera. ‘You have no measure of me, Inspector.’

With Markary slumped back in his chair, gulping for air, Staffe steps quickly out of the observation room and hurries along the corridor, intercepts Tchancov as he reaches Jombaugh’s desk in reception.

‘I didn’t know you and Taki had an association.’

Tchancov narrows his Gulag eyes and brushes his suit smooth. ‘Be careful not to judge appearances.’

‘Where is Elena from?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Tchancov.

‘She worked for you when she first came over. With Bobo?’

‘Elena isn’t what you think. She isn’t what I think.’ He laughs.

‘And what do you think?’

‘I think she’s a very clever girl.’

Staffe says, ‘Her mother should be told. Don’t you think?’

‘Families can be strange. It is a shame.’

‘It’s a shame when families drive each other away, when people are forced out of their country.’

Tchancov frowns, but before he can reply, a door opens heavily down the corridor and a uniformed sergeant leads out Bobo Bogdanovich.

‘Surely, Bobo knows where Elena is from,’ says Staffe. ‘But for some reason, he won’t say. Why do you think that is,
Mister
Tchancov?’

‘Are you charging him?’

‘Would it be your business if we were?’ Staffe turns to Bobo, eyes bloodshot as beetroot.

The sergeant ushers Staffe and whispers, ‘Not a sausage.’

Staffe approaches Bobo, smells the pungent breath of sorrow from his mucous mouth, and whispers, ‘Elena’s mother should be told. This is just a case of being a decent human being.’

Bobo looks towards Tchancov and shakes his head, slow. You can practically hear his heart sigh.

Staffe snaps, ‘I will need to know where each of you was between four and six o’clock on the seventh of December. Sergeant, take the statements, get them typed up and hold them until they’re both signed.’

Tchancov reaches into his jacket and produces a receipt for lunch at the Fat Duck. It is timed at 5.15 p.m. ‘As you will know, Inspector, this is an hour from the City – minimum. I have three companions plus the staff. And we shared a
digestif
with the proprietor afterwards.’

Almost too good to be true, thinks Staffe, returning to the holding room, where Markary stares into infinity.

‘I really don’t know where to start, Taki. I had no idea you and Vassily were so intimate.’ He picks up Markary’s Crombie from the floor, dusts down the shoulders. He sees a hair on the lapel, holds it between the pads of forefinger and thumb. He drapes the coat across Markary’s lap and takes a piece of paper from his pocket. Folds it over and again, with Taki Markary’s hair trapped inside it.

Markary runs a finger along the perfect stitching of his coat, says, most deliberately, ‘I wouldn’t distract yourself by reading any significance into what you saw. Are you going to upset everybody Elena knew, rather than get down to the business of finding her killer?’

Staffe pulls up a chair, sits right up to Markary. ‘You set her up in that fancy pad of yours and, believe me, Markary, if you don’t tell me why you called Elena Danya on the seventh of December, I’ll drive straight round to your wife and ask her.’

‘You enter my home without a warrant and I’ll have you suspended.’

Staffe considers the nature of this threat. To be calmly told that you will be suspended from duty sends a chill to the bone. He wants to ask Markary who he knows so far up the police food chain. But he schools himself that it is better to say nothing. ‘You sent her to the Thamesbank, didn’t you?’ He leans forward. ‘She was leaving you, wasn’t she.’

‘You’re in the dark.’

‘I know about her plans.’

Markary’s eyes widen and he looks away, wrings his hands. ‘I had nothing to do with this terrible thing.’

‘You had everything to do with it, Taki. Your mask is slipping, sir.’

Markary laughs. ‘You’re an unusual man, Inspector. I hear you don’t need
this
work. You should opt for an easier life.’

‘She said she couldn’t do it any more. Do what, precisely?’

‘You tell me.’

‘Carry your baby? Sell herself? Or is there something we don’t know?’

‘Charge me, or release me, Inspector. You have nothing.’

Staffe shows Markary out, watches the Turk reinstate the Crombie to his shoulders; his back straight, his head tall.

Jombaugh shakes his head, says ‘Christ, that’s one nasty piece of work.’

‘Tchancov?’ says Staffe.

‘He was an officer in the first Chechen war, running things the
Russian way
. He actually said “the Russian way”, as if I’d respect him for it.’

‘You didn’t disillusion him?’

Jombaugh’s voice goes down a pitch, quieter too. He shifts forward in his seat and Staffe notices that his fists have clenched. ‘He didn’t tell me exactly what the scam was, but he was running something.’

‘Like what?’

‘Extorting wages from his soldiers. Maybe worse. You hear things that would make your blood freeze.’ Jombaugh squares right up to Staffe. ‘He could kill that Danya girl. Like treading on an ant.’

Staffe takes out the folded paper from his pocket, writes on it, ‘TM hair re Thamesbank’. ‘Get this to Janine, will you, Jom.’

Ten

The sun is low to the horizon and the morning mist lies above the fields, which are dusted with snow.

‘There’s something odd about this, sir,’ says Pulford, reading through the list of the contents of Elena Danya’s case. He reads it out, under his breath. ‘Jeans, lumber shirt, jumper, hat, a Jane Austen novel and a notebook. Underwear and a toothbrush. No make-up or hairdryer. No perfume or hair straighteners. You don’t think she was doing a runner, do you, sir?’

Staffe watches England go by. When you are in the city, it is easy to forget that this is all on your doorstep, just an hour or so away. He thinks about Markary and his buried emotions. Perhaps he truly loved the real Elena that she packed away for her trip to the sea.

The train slows and the tendrils of a Suffolk village come into view. Red-bricked Georgian and Victorian houses, a small grid of Edwardian semis laid out like a picnic blanket of tree-lined streets. A lodge with a steep sloping roof, and far away, tall silver birch trees poke at the endless, cream sky, cloudless all the way to the Baltic, it seems.

‘They’re building some stuff here, sir.’

Staffe looks out of the other window. A different scene altogether. As far as you can see, scaffolding and mini-towers of Portakabins. Blockwork skeletons of houses are scattered to the horizon. A twenty-metre advertising hoarding welcomes you to
Aldesworth Country Town. A New Model
Market Town for Modern Living
.

As they pull into the station, the old High Street is only two lines of buildings with a spire church and pastel-painted Tudor shops, an old court house and a half-timbered
Spar
mini market, all higgle-piggled together, then the fields start again, all the way to the sea.

‘This is us,’ says Staffe, standing. ‘Taxi or bus?’

‘What would she have done?’ says Pulford.

‘Taxi,’ says Staffe, pleased his sergeant sees the point of following Elena’s footprints to the sand.

All the way, the taxi driver chit-chats about the new model market town.
Gerald Holt
, says the signage on his dash. ‘We all thought, that’s going to be a shot in the arm for us, what with all the jobs it’ll create. Good for the youngsters learning a trade. But the place fills up with jam rolls doing all the labouring and now we find out they’re putting up a bloody Waitrose. Progress? I don’t know what to think.’

Pulford says, ‘Communities need to evolve slowly. It takes history.’

The taxi driver slows down, turns to look at Pulford and says, peering over his glasses, ‘You might be right, son. The Signet. That’s a lovely place. You been before?’

‘No. We’re meeting a friend,’ says Staffe. ‘His friend,’ says Staffe, jabbing a thumb in the direction of Pulford. ‘She’s called Elena. You might have given her a lift, some time. She’s beautiful. You’d remember her.’

‘A local girl?’

‘She’s Russian.’

‘Aaah. They’re pretty them Eastern girls, that’s for sure. I do give one of them a run every now and then. Lovely girl. She stays at the Signet, funny enough.’

‘Maybe it is Elena?’ says Pulford.

‘I hope not,’ says the cabbie.

‘Why’s that?’

The cabbie cocks his head, fixes Pulford in his rear view and weighs him up. ‘Not sure I should say.’

‘She with another fella?’ laughs Staffe.

Gerald Holt keeps quiet.

They pull up outside the Signet and Staffe nudges Pulford to get the bags. Once he is out of earshot, Staffe leans forward, proffers a twenty and holds on to it as Gerald Holt tries to take it from him. ‘He knows, about the older fella. It is an older fella, isn’t it. Foreign?’

The cabbie nods, says, ‘Bloody loaded he is. Always gives me thirty.’

Staffe takes another ten from his wallet, hands it to the driver. ‘Is she always with him? The fellow in the Crombie.’

‘Not lately. She’s up here once a month, maybe.’ Gerald rubs his chin. ‘Crombie. You’re right.’

‘And how long has she been coming here?’

‘You going to freshen him up?’

Staffe shakes his head. ‘It’s all been sorted. It’s not exactly what you’d think.’

‘Well over a year, to my knowledge. Not seen him for a while.’

‘Have you got a card?’

‘Sure,’ says the cabbie. ‘And ask for room fourteen. Trust me.’

*

They are checked in by an old boy in a waistoat and stiff, buttoned collar; black tie. He has got the heating turned up so high against the winter cold that he sweats with every movement and, despite Staffe’s protestations, he carries both their overnight bags up the stairs. They drop off at Pulford’s room first, then go to 14. Fourteen, the number of her apartment in Livery Buildings and – according to the old boy when he trousered a tenner – the finest room in the hotel. ‘You don’t get given it unless you ask. And you got to be in the know to ask.’ He put a finger to his lips when he had said it.