Suffer the Children Read Free Page B

God she’s such a creature of habit.
    Guy presses his face to the painted wood and for the first time in twenty-three hours, looking up from just above the level of the dance floor, he sees her. She’s wearing his favourite skirt and a cut-off, silky top that is new. He should be annoyed with her. It shows too much.
    Tanya’s legs are impossibly smooth and they have tanned to the colour of milky coffee. Her tummy has the tiniest pod of puppy fat, her hips haven’t quite spread wide yet. She pivots, hand pointing out at someone he can’t see in a gesture of ironic drama. Someone nudges her and her skirt swirls as she turns to see. He can see the finest down in the hollow of the small of her back.
    His breathing is deeper, shorter, he feels the knot in the pit of his stomach tighten. Weak in the legs, he falls back on his haunches, lies all the way back for a moment and lets the music wash over him. He can smell the wood of the bare boards. In the dark, he pictures her dancing, her friends drifting away, slowly, one by one, until she’s all on her own.
    *******
     
    It takes Staffe fifteen minutes to pack: two T-shirts and two long-sleeved shirts; two pairs of shorts and a pair of Dockers. He’ll travel in his jeans and an old linen jacket. Eight pairs of boxers and socks and Douglass’s History of ETA . And he’s done. He checks his phone, sees the missed call from his sister, Marie, and he tries her but there’s no response. He leaves a message to say he’s going away and he hopes Harry is fine. He deliberates, says, ‘And you, too.’
    Staffe first went to Bilbao twenty years ago, to identify what remained of his parents. His sister was off the rails and somewhere in the Far East so he was left to cope on his own. He made the arrangements to bring them back home. He gave up on university and as soon as his share of the proceeds of their estate came through, he bought a flat in South Ken, for cash. A year later, he took out a mortgage to buy another. Then the compensation came through. Funny, how you can measure the value of two people; put a price on what it might be worth to not have a full complement of parents.
    In the ensuing months and years, young Staffe drank too much and made friends too readily, took recreational drugs too much and too often. He got up later and later – and sometimes not at all. And he charmed the birds down from the trees the way he always could – a gift that deserted him for only the briefest period of his mourning. And the lovers became part of his mourning, so an analyst had once told him. Gradually, after he joined the Force, he dropped his vices, one by one.
    Three years ago, when he lost Jessop, his partner in the Force, Staffe went back to the Basque country to resume the process of finding whoever left that bomb in the seafront restaurant. Sylvie had left him, too, and he felt as if there was nothing but empty space all around him.
    He swore to build up the evidence piece by piece. He would gain a conviction and he would gift the killer justice rather than retribution. In his dreams, he asks the killer to seek forgiveness and, on his parents’ behalf, he grants it. In his darkest moments, he cannot see a way to do this.
    The renovated house smells of fresh plaster and varnished woodwork, new carpets, too. It is too big for him, far too much space. He calls Rosa but there is no response. He decides to go out anyway and makes his way upstairs for what has become a ritual. In the bathroom, he takes out his running gear from the Adidas bag and turns on the shower. The water jets down, hard on his scalp and shoulders; he takes the heat up a notch so it’s almost scalding him and he scrubs and scrubs with the soap. The smell of coal tar gets thicker and thicker, the steam gets more and more dense. This evening, he will run out to Kentish Town and through Islington into the City. Rosa lives in the Barbican. There is a chance, he thinks in more optimistic snatches, that she knows