Kill and Tell Read Free Page A

and his guest smiles. It is such a familiar smile and the man comes towards him, reaching out. Carmelo brings the pistol from behind his back and tries to lift it. He tries to point it at his quarry but his hand is suddenly loose. The grappa really burns him now and he hears the pistol crash onto the marble and his legs give way. When his head smashes on the marble, he thinks he might blemish it.
    Carmelo brings his knees to his chest and he tries to make himself sick, but he can’t.
    From above, he looks like a question mark on his fine marble floor. Today, there is a thin vein of red, where Carmelo’s blood makes its slow course.
    *
    Staffe sits alone, just the creaking joints of Leadengate’s ghosts and the low whirr of a computer somewhere. It seems years since he watched the sun set beyond Holborn Viaduct, the last tendrils of tail-lights reddening the City gloam. The coral dusks of Andalucía seem far away as he turns away from the window and returns to his whiteboard, makes a few adjustments. Presses ‘Print’.
    In the fourteen days before Jadus Golding was shot dead by the very gun that discharged two bullets into Staffe’s own torso, DS David Pulford was sighted eight times on the Limekiln Estate, stalking Jadus’s lover, Jasmine Cash – the mother of Golding’s daughter, Millie. On each occasion, Pulford was off duty. On six occasions, within an hour of these sightings, sworn by affidavit, Pulford had called the mobile number they traced to the Attlee Estate, just a few hundred yards from the Limekiln.
    According to the council list on his desk, and cross-referencing the latest aggregation of charge sheets for the e.gang, there are indeed just two known gang members living on the Attlee Estate.
    Outside his office, the coffee machine begins to chunter. He takes the yellow highlighter pen and passes it along the names of the Limekiln’s e.gang residents, Brandon Latymer and Shawne Haddaway. He taps into his computer, entering the search data, and as he waits for the records of Messrs Latymer and Haddaway to print out, the coffee machine expectorates a second time. He spins slowly on his chair, feels his heart gladden as Josie appears in the doorway, holding two plastic cups of hot chocolate. He reaches into his drawer, pulls out the bottle of Havana Anejo rum.
    They each slurp, to make more room, and Staffe glugs a helping of rum into each of the cups. They shared the drink on his roof in Andalucía, watching the sun go down.  
    ‘Remember Spain?’ she says. ‘You said you’d take it easy.’
    He remembers Spain. He remembers that he was going to stay; remembers, too, how glad he was to see her walking across the square the day they dug up Astrid Cano. ‘Every day we don’t get closer to finding Jadus Golding’s killer, Pulford’s chances diminish. You know that. You can’t tell the case to take it easy. You can’t tell Golding’s killer to “take it easy”.’
    ‘You went to see him again today?’
    ‘Have you any idea what it is he’s not telling us?’
    ‘That’s why Pennington sent me to bring you back. Pulford wouldn’t say anything at all to us. What did he say to you?’
    ‘He told me he knows something. He said he couldn’t tell me.’
    ‘You mean he won’t.’
    ‘No.’ Staffe finishes his cocoa. It doesn’t taste the same without cicadas in the walnut tree, the heat of an African breeze coming up from the sea. ‘He can’t tell us.’
    ‘And what do you think it might be that he can’t tell us?’
    ‘I don’t know, but he’s afraid, Josie.’
    ‘Pulford’s not like that.’
    ‘That’s what I thought. So maybe we should assume he’s not afraid for himself.’ Staffe picks up the sheets for Haddaway and Latymer, places his hand on Josie’s elbow and steers her towards the door, turns off the light – and it is immediately apparent that the night has crept up, unannounced.

Three
    He blinks, bleary-eyed and bare-chested. ‘How long have you been here?’ Staffe