Willing Flesh (30 page)

‘I’ll take the sofa.’

‘What will Sylvie think?’

Staffe looks at Rosa with unfettered bewilderment.

‘You have a good one there, Will. You keep hold of her.’

‘Don’t worry, I will.’

‘She looks to me like she can’t take much more messing about. You’ve been together before, why d’you split up last time?’

‘She was in therapy, and I suppose I didn’t fully understand.’

‘Therapy?’

‘Her mother left her and her dad, went to some hippy commune. She lives in France now.’

‘She’s over it, though?’

Staffe shakes his head. ‘She’s convinced she’s like her mother. Once, when we split up, she said she was from the same pod.’

‘And is she?’

‘She’s just like her dad, but he’s in bits the whole time. I suppose it’s her defence mechanism. She really can’t stand to end up like him, but she can’t say that to herself, can she?’

Rosa looks at Staffe as if she doesn’t know what to say. ‘Well I like her, and you’d be an idiot to lose her. If the phone rings, you take it – that’s all I’m saying.’

And with a trill of fate, the phone immediately rings. They each take an involuntary step back, looking at the phone, then at each other. Staffe sits on the bed, picks up, hears it is Pulford.

‘How did you know I was here?’

‘Two plus two.’ Pulford sounds agitated. ‘I take it you haven’t seen
The News
today.’

‘Let me guess. A piece on how Arabella Howerd has gone missing.’

‘Blears’ lawyers are demanding he is released. They’re saying she could be the third woman and this puts him in the clear.’

‘Is Josie getting it in the neck?’

‘Not as much as Rimmer.’

‘What are they going to do about it?’

‘The official line is that her disappearance has nothing to do with Danya and Stone, but Absolom’s article blows that out of the water. The girls all knew each other.’

Staffe thinks about the wider web that entangles Rosa with that triumvirate. ‘Read it to me.’ He leans back on the bed, closes his eyes. He can hear the surf outside.

Pulford says, ‘“City police have covered up key evidence in the case of the two murdered prostitutes, Elena Danya and Rebeccah Stone.”’

‘Jesus,’ says Staffe. ‘He’s not exactly holding back.’

‘“Arabella Howerd, the bad-girl daughter of top Catholic Leonard Howerd, was reported missing three days ago. Miss Howerd was a friend of both slayed prostitutes and is believed to have been one of the last to speak to each of the deceased. Graham Blears is being held for the murders even though Miss Howerd disappeared after his arrest. City Police were unavailable for comment and banking bigwig Howerd was also tight-lipped. Miss Howerd leaves a trail of drug-related misdemeanours and is believed to have a liking for London’s fleshpots. Prostitutes are outraged that the police might be covering up key evidence relating to the killings of Danya and Stone. Belinda Preistley, spokeswoman for Working Girls, is demanding that DCI Pennington reopen the case.”’

‘Is that it?’

‘There’s more on the inside pages, but mainly glamour shots and a few quotes from street girls – trying to whip up a Ripper storm.’

Staffe feels a white blast of clarity. But it goes, immediately, the way it came. ‘Have you got that data from T-Mobile for Arabella’s phone?’ he asks.

‘She hasn’t made a call or texted for four days. What are you doing up there? Do you want me to come up?’

‘I need you to get round to Bobo’s place and ask him about the immigrant workers up here, find out what you can about where they come from, how they’re treated. And ask Bobo why Elena was writing to Howerd and Tchancov.’

‘Was she?’

‘Oh yes.’

The phone goes quiet and Staffe can tell that Pulford isn’t exactly relishing the prospect of facing Bobo alone.

‘And chase up some companies for me. Bluecoat Holdings, Oakvale Developments and Pinfold Housing, and a Liechtenstein company called Laissez SA.’

‘What am I looking for?’

‘Anything with a Russian flavour.’

‘Tchancov?’

‘Keep an open mind, Pulford.’ Staffe hangs up and looks out. The moon is just on the wane. ‘It’s beautiful here,’ he says to Rosa. ‘You enjoy it. I’m going out for a few hours. Best have your dinner sent up. And treat yourself to a bottle of wine.’

‘I’m coming with you,’ says Rosa.

‘I’m afraid not.’

Rosa puts on her coat, a plaid jacket that Staffe had bought for Sylvie. ‘Do you want to try stopping me?’

*

The bells drill the prison air – all around, but for Graham Blears, it is muffled. His mouth is dry and his sinuses are full of dust. The weight of the mats on top of him makes it hard to breathe, but he waits, still as a cocked trigger, for the last of the doors to slam, the last of the keys to turn. The echoing of inmate curses and officer jibes drifts away, down the corridors and onto the fire road.

Tomorrow is full lock-down, a consequence of short-staffing over the festive season, and today the men are doubly boisterous – which aids Graham’s cause. He was counted off the wing and onto the gym; was then also counted off the gym, but had sneaked into the storeroom, had buried himself here, beneath all the kit. They won’t be able to count him back onto the wing, of course. They will check the missing number, and check again. They will try and fail to reconcile with all the other units and with the hospital, and the officers will be supremely pissed off but it will take them twenty minutes, maybe half an hour, before there is a full-scale search. By then, he will be done.

He reaches inside his sweat pants, into his boxers, and with finger and thumb he fishes down, from between his buttocks, the wrapped-up page of
Heat
magazine. Unwrapping, slowly, like pass-the-parcel gone horribly wrong, and nestling in a montage of up-skirt flesh and cleavage and big hair, is his homemade knife. He pushes the mats off him and clambers across the kit, presses open the door from the storeroom to the gymnasium.

All is calm, a rare thing in prison, he has soon realised. To be honest, this little slice of time he has served has not been as horrific as he expected. He could do more, no doubt about it – but he chooses not to. His time has come. It is something he need not bear, and after a life of lonesomeness and stifling misery, he knows a better place awaits; knows, too, that he will find a peace beyond whatever reckoning awaits him. He was not for this life. Useless will be well cared for, he is sure of that, and nobody will mourn him. No misery will ensue.

His breathing is tight and his fingers begin to tremble. He puts one foot in front of the other, walks towards the wall bars. A pale light intrudes through the narrow windows all around the top of the gymnasium and he regards his knife. Graham had dismantled his safety razors, pressing the blades into the plastic head of the toothbrush on the reverse of the bristles, an eighth of an inch apart – wide enough to cut an unstitchable wound. He had then burnt the bristles and the bottom of the plastic until the handle melted away.

Graham tucks the knife into the waistband of his boxers and reaches up for the bars, climbs slowly. He wishes there was a full moon, something of significance for a last night like this. As he gets higher, he takes shorter reaches. Just one bar at a time and when he looks down, he feels a rush. It warms his loins and he climbs faster, wanting it to be over. Just over. For ever.

Not quite at the top, he is happy to stop; satisfied that the height is sufficient – to finish him off. The basketball hoop is way down and the markings of the court are like a hopscotch pavement. He remembers listening, in his boxroom in Marigold Close, to children playing hopscotch. In the summer, Mother sent him to bed when it was still light. He wouldn’t sleep, though – not until the last voice faded from the street.

He turns his body round, tucking his heels into the gap between the bars and the wall and reaching down for the blade. He has to hold on with just one hand, leaning out, so high above the gymnasium floor. Graham feels sick. He takes the blade and, the way he had planned, puts it to his neck, feeling with his index knuckle for the jugular. His bowels go completely slack and he feels the warmth. Can smell himself.

This is no way to die.

He wants to close his eyes, but also wants to see the ground meet him. He has thought of nothing else, these last days.

He takes a deep breath, tugs with all his last might from his Adam’s apple to his ear. Strangely, he hears the long
phiss
of his flesh, the fine spray of his blood in his eye. It makes him blink and he realises he is holding on when he should be letting go. He looks across at his hand, gripping the bar, sees a wash of blood, vivid red, all across his sweats, and drops the makeshift knife. He hears its light rattle on the gym floor, then a key at the door.

Graham takes a hold of one hand with the other and pulls, feels the world alter on its axis and he loses his footing, hears a cry from below, sees the walls and floor and the corrugated panels of the ceiling tumble in on themselves. Something in his leg cracks and the pain is fierce, worse than the cut to his neck. He waits for the air to be fast all around him, for it to be over in no time at all. But instead of the ground meeting him, he hangs, upside down. He foot is trapped between the bars and the wall. He thrashes around, trying to free himself, but can’t and the white-hot, searing pain of what he has done to himself cuts him, long, incessant. The voices grow louder, more desperate, then subside. The life drains from him. Soon, the pain is too much. His eyes close and the last dim light turns black.

*

The darkness is thick, tight, holds her by the throat, it seems. She has a gag around her mouth and any sounds she can discern are muffled. Her senses are melded into one and she is dizzied from hunger.

For days, Arabella has seen only black, heard little, tasted nothing she can recognise. She thinks she might be swaddled in something like a sleeping bag. They certainly zipped all around her before they carried her, when she seemed to float from indoors to out. Then, after the vibrations of what could have been a car journey, she thought she could smell ozone.

Now, they have left her again. No more muffled noises, just the lull and return of an imperfect stillness. She remembers feeling this way asleep on the
Imogen
and though it is the last thing she needs, she is visited by memories of her mother and father and how they were once deeply in love. Nobody saw into the darkness of that love, once the doors were closed; only her, and Roddy.

She begins to cry and the tears are warm on her cheeks. She feels them soak into the fabric of whatever blinds and hoods her. She is afraid, for what might happen; at everything she has done and what she thinks she might know. What she would do, to be held tight; for a toke, or a line.

Twenty-five

Pulford twitches each time a car rounds the corner and drives towards the niche he has found for himself, opposite Bobo’s deck-access tenement.

Bobo’s flank of the block has only one stairwell, and Pulford can see all comers from here. A car roars past, picking up speed and squealing as it rounds a corner, going deeper into the warren and further from Bethnal Green’s main drag.

Pulford takes the deepest of breaths and rubs his hands, ready to go up, but wary of the response he might get. As he takes his first step, a long-base Mitsubishi pick-up glides to a silent halt outside the stairwell to Bobo’s place and the doors open and close quickly: pum-pum, pum-pum, like four silenced shots.

The four men are built like boulders and wear tracksuits. Two of them disappear into the stairwell and the others wait by the trucks, looking up and down the street.

Pulford waits for Bobo to let them in, for the door to open. A glow of light emerges from within. He winds down his window and holds his breath, trying to discern the sounds in the night. He thinks he hears a strangled human cry.

The two men on the street talk into their chests and Pulford is torn. Should he intervene, or call for back-up? He’s not officially here, though.