Suffer the Children (8 page)

His shins are splinting and the sweat comes thick and fast, prickling his scalp, shallowing in the small of his back. It has been three years since his last cigarette but Staffe feels a nicotine craving in his lungs, burning deep, so he straightens himself from his haunches, falls into a painful jog. He says ‘per-severe, per-severe’ over and again, feeling too old for this.

In the sumptuous pastel interior of a classical Georgian
building
in Mayfair, Guy Montefiore declines the kind offer of another glass of champagne and attempts a swift exit from the offices of Synge and Co.

On his way out of the building, Guy sees old man Synge coming in off the street and he looks around the foyer for a corner to occupy, any refuge from an awkward conversation, but the old man has seen him. He waves out of politeness and sticks on an unconvincing smile as Synge comes in off the street.

‘Hello there, Guy. So nice to see you.’

‘Likewise, Patrick. Likewise.’ Guy extends a hand, feels the force of the old man’s powerful grasp.

‘Everything fine?’ says Patrick Synge with the tilted head of a confidant.

‘
Everything
,’ says Guy, summoning a stoic smile. Despite the pleasantries, their relationship is governed by contracts like Bibles, fees the size of operating theatres.

‘Fine. Just fine. No more nonsense, hey?’

‘Not a bit of it. Sorry, Patrick …’ Guy hasn’t actually stopped moving, ‘… I’m already late.’

‘Don’t let them work you too hard,’ calls the old man as Guy slots into the revolving door.

Guy Montefiore makes his way through the arch by the Grapes and into Shepherd’s Market. He veers right, away from the raucous apron of suited drinkers that spills into the small square.

He is completely unaware of a man twenty paces behind.

When he very first spied Montefiore, the man had expected a thin, balding, greasy fellow with a grey pallor and stained suits. What he got was younger, smarter, taller, broader – someone you might see getting out of a Merc in the tennis club car park, giving you a firm handshake.

He watches Montefiore hail a cab and climb in and the man lets him go. He knows where Montefiore will be headed and he takes his time getting his own cab. He isn’t here to follow Montefiore – he knows him just about well enough, he thinks – but to test how close he can get.

‘Whereabouts?’ says the cabbie.

‘South Ken, for starters. Go through the park.’

They make their way through the fag end of the rush-hour traffic and he sits right back, watches Hyde Park Corner and the top of Park Lane scroll by. This is the city he loves, yet it allows a man like Montefiore, and people just like him, to do the things he did and hold down a plum job.

Staffe can’t get his breath, feels as if the life is being pushed out of him. He gulps at the air and braces himself for another onslaught, counts down, slowly from ten, then turns off the tap. The shower stops and he leans against the glass bricks. They were Sylvie’s idea, but now they need repointing. The Queens Terrace flat needs some care. As the water drips to nothing and his head still pounds, he thinks he can hear
someone
calling out. He steps out naked and opens the door, drips across the bedroom floor as he calls, ‘Who’s there? Who’s there!’ He has goosebumps and hears it again. It can’t be. Not after three years.

‘Sylvie!’

He runs into the hallway, not sure where the voice is coming from. He slows himself down, breathes deep, and goes into the kitchen. Nobody is there but he can still hear something. There is water deep in his ears.

Going into the lounge, he realises what a fool he has been. The voice is coming from a radio alarm. Not his, the old
tenant’s
. Why would they wish to be awakened at dusk? And because it is getting darker outside, he can see himself naked in the tall, twelve-paned Georgian windows. He kneels down so he can just see his head and chest. He feels foolish but doesn’t want to move. A memory wraps its arms around him. He is happy and sad.

‘It’s like living in a bloody goldfish bowl!’ Sylvie had shouted.

‘I’ve nothing to fear from the world,’ Staffe had said.

She hated it when he refused to draw the curtains. ‘And that’s the trouble, Will.’ She crosses her arms underneath her breasts. ‘That’s the bloody trouble.’

They have been arguing all weekend and he is tired of it all. He is dehydrated but wants more to drink. He thinks she might have sneaked upstairs for a line but won’t say anything because he knows he is in the wrong, regardless.

She says, ‘You’ve nothing to fear from the world. It can’t touch you.’ She takes a step closer, breathes in deep. ‘You’ve been with
him
. I can smell it on you.’

‘It’s my job for Christ’s sake.’

‘Draw the bloody curtains, Will.’

He looks at the floor, follows the pattern in the parquet.

‘And tomorrow you’ll be off on the wild goose chase, I
suppose
. That’s our time. You promised.’

‘They’re my parents. Jesus! If I can’t …’

‘They’ve been dead fifteen years.’

‘Nineteen.’

‘I’m only twenty-six, Will. I was seven when they died. I’m too young to be playing second fiddle to old men and ghosts.’

‘I’m too old for you.’

‘Oh no. You’re not having that. You’re just too bloody …’ She is picking up her coat from the club chair by the window. She looks out of the window. ‘People can see us, Will. All I wanted was for you to draw the curtains and take me out for the day tomorrow. You know what day it is?’

He knows. They had been together three years.

The phone rings and she stops in her tracks. ‘Don’t answer it, Will.’

‘It’s Jessop,’ he says.

‘You don’t say.’

‘He needs me.’

‘He’ll understand.’

‘They’re trying to get rid of him.’

‘I want us to be together, Will. I really do.’

The phone stops ringing.

‘I’m trying to be loyal. A friend. How can loyalty be a bad thing?’

She walks to the door, says, ‘You’re not being loyal, you’re choosing, Will. You’re choosing to be with them rather than me.’

Staffe watches her go, wants to follow, but the phone goes. She closes the door and he picks up.

‘The bastards have done it, Staffe. They’re sending me to the Met.’ It sounds for all the world as though Jessop has been
crying
. The hardest man he knows.

‘Can I call you back?’ The front door slams.

‘I can’t go there. This place is my life. My fucking life! And they know it, Staffe. They want shut of me.’

Staffe watches Sylvie step off the pavement. She takes a stride out in front of a taxi and puts her hands on her hips to stop it. If you saw her, you’d stop too.

‘Let’s go for a drink, Staffe. I need to talk to someone.’

‘What about Delores?’

‘She’s not here.’

Sylvie gets into the cab. She doesn’t look back.

‘You know this’ll be good for you, don’t you, Staffe? They’ll make you up to DI. You’d better come see if the shoes fit.’

‘I’ll see you in the Scotsman’s Pack.’

Above the rooftops, the sky is streaked a salmon colour. Opposite, a taxi is parked up. Its ‘for hire’ light is switched off. It must be on a pickup.

Staffe’s mobile rings and he stands up, looks for it. Staffe can see himself naked in the window. He walks slowly out of the room, follows the tone and answers.

‘You’re not here,’ says Marie. ‘I said I’d cook.’

‘I might not be back for a couple of nights.’

‘You’re pissed off with me already?’

Staffe can hear a crack in his sister’s voice, suspects she has probably been drinking. ‘There’s a place I’ve got to take care of.’

‘Part of your little empire.’

‘I’ll call you in the morning. It’ll be nice for you and Harry to have some peace and quiet.’

‘You said “take care of”, Will. You take care of people, not buildings.’

The phone light fades and Staffe calls Johnson to say not to bother with the visit to Peckham but his wife answers.

‘Hi, Becky. Is Rick there?’

‘He’s out,’ she says, sounding annoyed.

Staffe wants to tell her to keep an eye out for her man, that he’s under pressure and not to think he doesn’t love her, but he makes an excuse and hangs up before he somehow puts his foot in it.

He goes back into the lounge, watches the taxi parked
opposite
. It has been waiting a long time. He looks down at the picture of Karl Colquhoun on the Cobb writing table that the murdered man had, through some twisted rope-burn of fate, repaired. The monochrome body is spattered with the dark grey of blood. To the right, the mad eyes of his killer. As he looks into the eyes, Staffe feels watched. His naked flesh pinches and goosebumps spread all the way up his arms, across his chest. He picks up the photo and switches the light off, peering out into the dark. Opposite, the taxi’s lights turn on and it moves off. Staffe can’t see if anyone had got in.

The Crown and Mitre suits the man’s purpose perfectly. It’s a young pub, half Anzac, half Jack the Lad and the Gents is between the two bars so he can come into one bar, have a drink, then go to the toilet and leave through the other bar looking sufficiently different. Now he wears a thin
wind-cheater
and a baseball cap taken out of the small day bag. He has a feeling about tonight.

Montefiore sits in the window of the Chat Noir, a
down-at-heel
French café run by an old couple from Lisbon. The girl, Tanya, is still just outside, standing with a group of other girls, all wearing the same type of short flared skirts. Some of them have pudgy legs, some have spindly pins like yearling fillies. The girls are watching the skater boys – dressed head to toe in baggy Ts and hoodies and low-slung wide denim jeans with fat
trainers
– take runs at the low rail outside the Sainsbury’s. It’s where the pavement is widest but still pedestrians have to step into the gutter to avoid them. If they complain, they are told to ‘fuck off’. The old folk think if they don’t, they’ll get happy-slapped.

Tanya cringes as one of the boys skates off, balancing on one leg on his board, crouching as he goes alongside an old woman who has stepped down into the road to go past them. The boy is on the edge of the pavement so the old woman can’t step back up off the road. A bus goes past, hoots its horn and makes the woman jump. The boy laughs.

The man’s blood comes up a notch and he can feel his hands begin to tremble so he pops two 50 mill propranolol, to bring him back down.

This has to be precise, controlled and unemotional. He puffs out his cheeks, tries to shake off imaginings of Montefiore
getting
the girl on her own; the things he would do to her; the sounds she would make. Her life would be tattered and so too the lives of her brother and sister, her mother and father who – in the absence of a properly punished perpetrator – would be left by the state to do nothing but blame themselves. For the rest of their lives.

The gang of girls and boys finish their peacocking for the night. The groups separate from each other and part with
shouted
obscenities and giggles; V signs and the finger – inarticulate expressions of pubescent desire.

He walks past the Chat Noir, clocking the dark, moving shadow of Montefiore in the window, and follows the group of girls. They begin to splinter. Tanya and one other girl cross the road and huddle together, sharing a mobile phone. They link arms and slow right down. As he passes them, the man can see Tanya is texting. They giggle.

His head is light and he walks on, hands fidgeting. So long has he waited. No end of thwarted nights waiting on this
monster
Montefiore. And all the time, the man wishing the loathing – this need – would go away. And now, this could be the night.

Montefiore should be passing them now and the man crosses the road, not daring to look back in case he gives himself away. By the time he has weaved his way through the traffic, stopping outside an estate agent’s and chancing a look, he can see the girls have doubled back towards the Chat Noir and are taking a turn off the High Street.

They are going the wrong way.

No sign of Montefiore. Nowhere.

Staffe sits cross-legged on the floor with the laptop balanced on his knees and clicks into his emails. As usual, he opens all but the most obvious junk in case it’s Sylvie. She doesn’t have her own account, but uses those of friends. She last emailed him six months ago to see how he was getting on. He didn’t reply.

Eventually, he is left with two: one from Janine and one from Pepe Muñoz.

Staffe fires back a reply telling her to get someone to check stockists of the photo paper and cross reference it to the PC World on the same estate as Marvitz Builders Merchants – where Karl Colquhoun worked; where Denness still works.

As for Pepe Muñoz, Babelfish reveals the news to be better.

Staffe emails back to say ‘yes’, he does want to meet the Extbatteria brothers but can it wait? He presses ‘send’ and puts the laptop on the floor, lies back on the restored wooden boards and tunes into the passages of air entering and leaving his lungs, feeding his heart. He feels light, watching the colours and shapes on the back of his eyelids and paints the anticipated moment of his coming together with Santi Extbatteria, the fifty-two-year-old man who thought the world would be a better place if he blew up twenty-three diners in a seafront restaurant.