Pain of Death Read Free Page A

by the side door.
    ‘Aah. Ross Denness. You’ve still got your paw on his tail?’
    Staffe takes a step towards the bar and everyone looks up. The side door slams shut. Sean Degg clocks Staffe, who takes the warrant from his pocket and waves it at Degg. ‘Thought you were desperate to get to the hospital, Sean? Finish your drink and take me to your place.’
    ‘You’re harassing me.’
    ‘I’m protecting the public, and that involves going through your home. If your wife doesn’t recover, it’ll be murder, according to our legal department. Whoever took her down there left her to die and we won’t be settling for anything less. There’s a baby’s life here, too.’
    ‘I haven’t seen her for three months.’
    ‘Eighty-eight days, by my reckoning.’ Staffe puts his hand heavily upon Sean Degg’s shoulder and Kerry’s husband tenses up, blinking. Staffe knows everybody in the pub has him down as a copper, so he leans right up against Degg, whispers in his ear, ‘I’ll see you back at yours in ten minutes. Get the kettle on, eh?’ And he pushes a folded twenty-pound note into Sean Degg’s shirt pocket – for everyone to see.
    *
    Denness is in the driver’s seat of his Audi A4, dragging on a Benson’s and listening to some high-revving dance music.
    ‘Nice motor, Ross. Things must be rosy for you just now,’ says Staffe, sliding into the passenger seat, turning down the music.
    Denness turns the music back up, says, ‘That’s my business. We had an understanding.’
    ‘I’ll be the judge of that. What can you tell me about our friend Sean?’
    ‘He’s a fucking loser, man. He loves that slag and if you ask me, he wouldn’t harm a hair. But he did say something.’
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘Are we even?’
    ‘I guess so – if it puts him on the hook.’
    ‘What if it gets him off the hook?’
    ‘Let’s have it, Ross.’
    Denness powers up the engine and toys with the accelerator. The throaty surges of power clash with the dance beats. ‘He was desperate for her to have that baby. Reckoned it was his. You know the other two aren’t.’
    ‘How’d he know it was his?’
    ‘She beat him up. Proper mashed him. Used a wheel-nut spanner on him when she found out she was knocked up. Said it was his fault. She must have given herself a coupla months off from sleeping around, or stuck to giving head, or …’
    ‘All right, all right. I get the picture.’
    ‘Muppet reckoned the social would let them keep this one on account it was botha theirs. He’s in pieces, man. I kinda feel sorry for him, you know. And he loves her. You’d better believe that. Sad fucker.’
    *
    Sean’s house on Flower and Dean is a modern, urban-infill house from the eighties. Inside, Kerry Degg is everywhere: framed and posed, black and white portfolio photographs, colour shots of her on stage with jet-black hair and showing silk and flesh.
    Staffe walks across to the laminated kitchen pier and lifts his mug of tea, delves into Sean’s shirt pocket for the twenty-pound note.
    ‘They all think I’m in your pay now,’ says Sean.
    ‘You’re going to have to tell the truth, then. Don’t want both sides of the law holding it against you.’ Staffe picks up one of the many framed photographs of Kerry. She pouts into camera with her face tilted up and a hand gripping her head; one foot up on a piano stool, showing her legs off. She wears a tight-bodiced, slit dress. The look is unmistakably burlesque.
    ‘Kerry’s a singer.’
    Staffe looks around the flat. Its interior contradicts the building it is in, and its locale. Hippy scarves hang from light fittings and theatre prints and record sleeves adorn the walls. Patchouli is ingrained and all the LPs are alphabetised, from Oleta Adams to Frank Zappa. An eclectic mix of blues and soul, jazz and vaudeville. In the kitchen, an optic rack holds Pastis, Tanqueray and Havana Club. Over the years, Staffe has been in many houses and flats, bedsits and squats. None quite like