Kill and Tell, page 23
Leilah lifts her right leg and drapes it over his left. Brandon drives an automatic. It comes in handy every now and again. ‘Can I do a little something for you now, Bran?’
‘This something is for Curtis, really. I have a bad feeling about Curtis, if you don’t do this thing.’
‘Curtis? He’s all right, right?’
‘For the moment. But they’ve got Louis in Pentonville.’
‘You got something more for me first, Bran?’
‘Sure. We need to get you up and runnin’. You want me to do that?’ He runs his hand, flexes his fingers.
Leilah gives him the biggest smile and lifts her top.
‘Then you’re going to jail, to see Louis.’
‘Louis? What’s he to me?’
‘That’s the point. He needs to do a right thing. I need you to give him a thing and tell him what’s what.’
‘He can fuck himself. I got pulled in ’cos a him.’
‘He’s going to fuck himself, Lay.’ Brandon reaches into his pocket, pulls out a pill and puts it in her mouth. He holds onto it. ‘Half, says Doctor Bran,’ he laughs and she bites his fingers so he has to let go of the pill. She swallows it and sucks on Brandon’s fingers.
The valium takes her down some more – not enough to sleep any time soon, but she feels soft and she drops her arm from across her breasts. Her smile spreads and becomes soft, lazy.
Driving along Spitalfields, with all the shops open and the people cramming the pavements and the Jeep’s tints keeping out the afternoon sun, Brandon checks his watch, goes with the flow.
Thirty-seven
Leilah feels a million dollars, turning the heads of the other WAGs as she passes through Pentonville’s visitor centre. The guard on reception pokes his tongue into his cheek when he sees her, looking her up and down.
Back in his rig, and when they were done, Brandon had given Leilah a hundred quid of Topshop vouchers and dropped her with Simone to cut her hair and do her nails, at Cutz. Had he given Leilah cash, she would have blown it on booze and crack, of course.
Every now and again, Leilah catches a whiff of herself and it gladdens her all the way through – until she realises what she is here to do. That makes her sad, but she reminds herself what Brandon said, and what she knew for herself, too: Louis has brought this on himself, he really has. He’s a casualty of war and everyone in the game knows that score. In fact, when she thinks too much about it, like she’s doing now, she’s really annoyed with Louis. Like Brandon says, Curtis will be a prince of the City some day soon and they will all benefit, but Louis could’ve ruined it for everyone – if it wasn’t for Leilah being a true soldier. This way, only Louis suffers. That’s how it works.
She feels pure, uncut, and she stops at the airlock doors, waits for the woman in front to go through. In the glass, Leilah sees a faint image of herself. It is how she could have been under a different sign and how she will be from now on. Sometimes, she doesn’t quite follow what Brandon says, and Curtis, too. But she knows she likes the way she looks now. This is her new life.
Leilah puts her hand in her top, like she’s doing her tits, but lifting the fat capsule and popping it under her tongue. Everyone knows Louis couldn’t do his bird. He’s too soft. It’s best this way.
The door slides open and the woman officer pats Leilah down. Leilah thinks the officer might be copping a feel, that’s how good she looks today, but she knows there can’t be any kick-offs so she doesn’t even tell the woman to go fuck herself, just touches the fat capsule with the tip of her tongue and keeps schtum.
The coating of the capsule is getting tacky. Brandon said it’d be good for ten minutes, but it doesn’t seem that way and she looks for Louis, wanting it done. He’s over against the wall and there’s an officer right by him so she sucks in her tummy and works on her roll, which is easy in these new heels.
Louis looks right past her, though. He seems out of it already. His eyes are slow, like he’s on something already. Taz, maybe – poor fucker. ‘Lou!’ she says, just a metre away and talking funny because of the capsule. Shit! What if she swallows it?
‘What?’ He looks at her tits. They’re gathered up nice and plumped with fillets. He looks up at her face. ‘Lay?’ he says. His mouth drops open and he stares a while. ‘You changed.’
Out the corner of her eye, she can see the perv officer eyeing her up. ‘You like?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘You should.’ She sits down and leans across. ‘I miss the taste a you, Lou.’
‘You’re talking funny, Lay. Why you talking that way?’
She leans across further, getting the capsule in the curl of her tongue. His face is big now and his pores are all clogged with muck. His eyes are all pupil. She puts her hand on the back of his neck.
‘We can’t touch.’
‘I want you, Lou.’ Leilah glances at the officer and she smiles at her, watching. She raises her eyebrows, almost encouraging it, and Leilah reaches under the table, puts her hand on Louis’s crotch. He’s wearing thin cotton jogging bottoms and he’s half-way hard already. She whispers, kissing him, putting her tongue into his mouth. ‘Swallow.’ She says it like she has a speech impediment, but the pill is gone from her mouth now and she pulls away, watches him moving his tongue around his mouth. She knows him, can tell he’s thinking twice. ‘You’re all hard, Lou. I wanna kiss you again. Wanna kiss you hard, man. It’ll make you better.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’ll stop the hurt.’
‘You don’t sound like you, Lay.’
‘I’m being the best I can. For you. I came for you, Lou. Swallow, so I can kiss you proper.’
He puts his lips tight together so the blood goes from them and he closes his eyes. The lump in his throat goes up and then down. ‘Done?’ she says.
He nods.
‘You trusted me?’
‘’Course,’ he says, coming forward, for his kiss.
‘Oh, Lou.’ And she feels a lump in her own throat. Silly cow, she thinks, kissing him hard, but like he’s someone else now.
Thirty-eight
Louis looks around, doesn’t know where he is. It’s like a living room, but with too many books; DVDs and newspapers, too. He was in jail and he doesn’t remember getting out. He tries to stand up, but his legs aren’t working and his head feels too heavy for the muscles in his neck. His eyes close again but someone says his name and he blinks and the man he sees is kind of familiar. The man touches him and it feels funny but that’s because the man is wearing gloves, the thin rubber gloves that doctors wear.
‘Come on, Lou, stand up. Stand up, man.’
‘Who are you?’
The man is big and strong and Louis can feel himself standing up. He tries to push the man away, but his arms are too heavy, and now there is something touching his neck, something tight around his neck. The man is making big circles in the air, wrapping this thing around his neck and Louis tries to ask him who he is and what he is doing, but he can’t get his mouth to move. He can’t summon the air to send the words out. He tries to breathe through his nose, but it’s too tight and now his throat hurts. His Adam’s apple is being crushed and he feels as though his head will burst. His face is tight and the blood is pressing up at the surface of his skin. He blinks his eyes and they feel as though they are bulging and now they are wide open he can’t close them again. It hurts behind his eyes and in his temples. The man’s nose is snotty and he says something but Louis can’t hear the words, but he can feel the draught of the air that carries the words, can smell foul meat in the man’s breath. Louis realises that the man is crying, like a baby. He tries to ask the man to help him, but the words turn to dust somewhere between his chest and his head, and then he feels himself fall and the pain in his throat is white hot.
It’s dark now, and silent, apart from a distant sound of water, slowly rising within him. Soon, even this recedes, and Louis makes a final attempt to gasp in some air, but he feels his jaw lock, and then there is nothing.
*
The door to the house of the man formerly known as Jacobo Sartori opens. For a few long moments, nobody emerges. Staffe slides down in his car seat, keenly watching the house and looking in the wing mirrors and up ahead. The street is empty and Jacobo emerges, fair haired and frail with his turned-up nose sniffing for trouble. Of the triumvirate of survivors, he is the best on his feet and looks nothing like his age. Staffe has a glance at the photograph of the real, brutish Jacobo and mutters, ‘Hello, Maurizio,’ watching Maurizio Verdetti walk down the path. When Maurizio gets to the gate, he turns, waves up to the house and his grandson Maurice emerges, pushing a wheelchair.
Carmelo is all wrapped up, but as Maurice eases him down the step, his head lolls forward. He is unconscious, and Maurizio scuttles back up the path and tends his friend and cousin and saviour.
Together, Maurizio and Maurice push Carmelo down the path, and seeing them this way, side by side, Staffe can’t believe that he didn’t identify the likeness of grandfather and grandson earlier. The fair complexion, the small, turned-up nose, their angular, narrow-shouldered frames.
When they get to the car and begin laying Carmelo down on the back seat, Staffe sees his moment for intervention so he gently closes the car door behind him and crosses the street. Maurizio is the first to see him and he looks afraid. When Staffe gets within five yards, he says, ‘Hello, Maurizio.’
‘Jacobo,’ says Maurizio.
‘Let’s not pretend,’ says Staffe.
Maurice looks up, says, ‘You should go inside, nonno. I’ll deal with the inspector.’
‘I’ll call an ambulance,’ says Staffe.
‘There’s no time,’ says Maurice. ‘We’ll follow you.’
‘No way,’ says Staffe.
‘We need to get him there now. He’s dying.’
‘Isn’t that what you want? When Carmelo dies, his secret dies.’
‘I don’t care about his secret,’ says Maurice.
‘Even if it means your grandfather will be exposed as a fraud.’
Maurice gets in the car. ‘You follow me. I’m taking him to City Royal. They know him there.’
‘How can I trust you?’
‘He’s dying, inspector. All he wants is to survive long enough to give you his confession. After all these years, it’s what we all want.’
In the back, Carmelo’s eyes flicker open and he seems to be trying to say something. His eyes plead and he tries to talk, a thick thread of blood trickling out of the corner of his mouth.
Maurice Greene starts up the engine and Staffe runs back to his car, follows Maurice’s black VW down the steep road, London laid out like a blanket below.
Maurice drives fast, overtaking and undertaking and going through ambers. Staffe goes through on the reds and stays within one car or two, all the way down the Holloway Road. As they approach Highbury, Staffe’s phone rings and he ignores it because Maurice seems to be taking it up a notch, driving on the wrong side of the road to get past a line of buses.
The phone goes again as Maurice goes through a red light and Staffe downshifts, sees both calls are from Jombaugh. Horns blare and he misses a drop-topped TR7 by less than a foot, swerving towards the oncoming traffic and just about making it back, two cars behind Maurice again and almost on the New North Road.
He clicks callback and talks hands-free, asking Jombaugh what he wants. Staffe can tell from the way Jombaugh pauses before answering that it’s not good news. ‘Come on, Jom. What is it?’
‘Louis Consadine is dead, Will.’
‘What!’
‘Suicide.’
A white van pulls out and a bus comes the other way as the middle of the road disappears to nothing.
‘Shit!’ shouts Staffe, braking as hard as he can, the pads squealing and his back end flicks out as the ABS judders and he’s in a skid, pressing the horn hard as he can, still sliding, slowing, coming to a halt just inches from the bus.
On the pavement, a young mother with a pram shakes a fist at him.
‘You OK, Will?’ says Jombaugh.
He’s got nowhere to go and he can just see the black VW turning left up Essex Road, going east, not south towards City Royal.
Staffe gives Jombaugh the registration of Maurice Greene’s VW and tries to get his head around just how Louis Consadine’s suicide will affect Pulford’s situation. As he drives slowly on, he begins to feel dreadfully sad, that Louis thought he had no other way. And he also realises that he must find Carmelo Trapani, hear his confession for the murder of David Myers before he dies.
He knows that Maurice won’t go to his flat or to Carmelo’s house. He has an idea that they could use the room in the Kings Hotel in Brighton. Maurizio had the room key, after all; or, if the plan is to nurse Carmelo to his death so he cannot confess, Maurice might be in cahoots with Abie Myers. Certainly, there is a mutuality of interest there now, especially if Maurice is acting to ensure the liberty of his grandfather.
Staffe calls Jombaugh and asks him to contact Brighton CID, and to also check Abie Myers’ two houses.
An ambulance tears past him, on its way to Pentonville prison, and Staffe pulls in, a hundred yards shy of the jail. He imagines what despair Louis Consadine must have felt, how lost his soul might be now, and that makes him think of Vanya Livorski and her faith and Carmelo’s preoccupation with Saint Peter.
He gets out of the car, and looks up to the heavens, realising what he must do.
*
Maurice Greene pulls the blanket up to his uncle’s chin. Carmelo sleeps again now, but he had recovered consciousness once since they came here and Maurice gave him some morphine. He told him that he wouldn’t be confessing to the police and that those old crimes would remain unsolved, there being no evidence without his statement.
At this, the old man had wailed and begged.
Maurice had said he was going to get a priest and did he know this diocese.
Carmelo had pleaded with his nephew to bring him his own priest. As he pleaded, he spat blood and Maurice’s heart relented.
Maurice looks back a final time before he leaves, to speak to Father Penetti.
*
Staffe waits for Vanya Livorski to return with the information. He has baby Gustav on his knee and the young boy runs his pudgy hand across Staffe’s stubble, chortling to himself with bubbles of saliva popping in his mouth. The infant throws back his head and claps his hands together, so funny is this ticklishness on the man’s face.
‘He likes you,’ says Vanya, coming back in. She kneels in front of her alabaster crucifix and figurine and lights another candle.
Staffe offers Gustav to her.
‘In a moment. You hold him while we pray. Come on, join me. We shall pray for Carmelo’s soul and then you can have your precious information.’
When they are done, Vanya takes baby Gustav from Staffe, in exchange for a piece of paper. He says, ‘This is the only way I can think of to save him. It’s the only way I can find him and if I don’t, as I have told you before, he will die alone. They will let him die.’
He reads the name ‘Father Penetti’ and the address.
Vanya says, ‘Are you a father, inspector?’
‘No,’ he says.
‘You should be. You would make a good one and you are full of love, I can see that. You shouldn’t try to cover it up. Love is no use if you are alone. You must love God, of course, but he wants more for us than that.’
Staffe kisses Gustav on the top of his head and leaves, checking the address, knowing he doesn’t have a moment to waste if he is to catch Father Penetti before he is called away.
*
Staffe watches the priest press the bell of the grand house in Canonbury – a three-storey affair at the end of a lane by the new river walk. Maurice Greene lets him in and Staffe calls for back-up, tells Jombaugh it is urgent and not to let Rimmer get wind of it.
Earlier, he had raced around to the church of Our Lady Bernadette in De Beauvoir just in time to see Father Penetti leave the chaplaincy, clearly in a hurry. Penetti had walked briskly up Northchurch Road and across Essex Road. He had paused briefly on the new river walk to make a call from his mobile and after that had prayed, crossing himself, before walking slowly up to the house.
From here, it seems you might be able to leave the house from the rear and when he looks at the map on his phone, Staffe sees the garden leads back round towards Essex Road. The fences are prohibitively high and he hopes the back-up will arrive in time.
*
In the dark room on the top floor, Father Penetti chastises Maurice Greene for not taking his uncle to hospital. He kneels beside Carmelo and traces the cross with his thumb on Carmelo’s forehead. Carmelo blinks and Maurice takes two steps backwards.
‘Are you police?’ says Carmelo, his voice brittle and thin.
‘It is Father Penetti,’ says the priest. ‘And I am here to pave your way to Saint Peter. Like we talked about, figlio.’
‘Can’t you bring the police?’ says Carmelo.
‘Forget it, uncle,’ says Maurice.
‘You should take him to a hospital.’
‘And you should administer what God pays you to do,’ says Maurice. ‘Know your place, father, and save my uncle’s soul.’
‘He can’t,’ says Carmelo. ‘I must confess to the police. Have pity, Father.’ Carmelo musters what life he can. He knows he can’t take any more morphine. He’s no fool.
‘My hands are tied, figlio,’ says Father Penetti.
‘But mine aren’t,’ comes a voice from the dim entrance.
Maurice turns, sees Staffe and walks quickly towards him, pulling a flick knife from his waistband. The steel fizzes as the blade releases and Staffe stands to one side.
In the hall, two uniformed officers in body armour flex into defensive positions.
‘Please!’ says Father Penetti.
‘Thank God,’ says Carmelo, his voice cracking. He raises his arm, limply, and beckons Staffe to him.
Maurice takes a step towards his uncle.
