Kill and Tell by Adam Creed

Staffe had invested an hour, discovered that Myers made his first bob or two running a razor gang down in Brighton, enforcing his illegal gambling books. Only later did he move into property, housing immigrants in slum dwellings in good areas and waiting for values to drop before buying more. He changed the complexion of parts of Notting Hill, for example, and waited for the area he dragged down to rise again. And Abie has always liked the nags. As the years progressed, he built quite a string. Even now, he still has horses in training.
    The twenty million from Carmelo isn’t to be sniffed at, of course, but it won’t change Abie’s life. So why on God’s earth did Carmelo Trapani snub his own son to heap yet more millions on Abie?
    A Bentley pulls up outside Abie’s house on Stepney Green and a slender, athletic man in a shiny grey suit gets out, leans against the car. He has a suedehead and cheekbones like hammer-heads. Staffe perceives a look of the ex-army about him: the straight back and the loose, relaxed hands – ready.
    Staffe clocks the registration plate and makes a call as Josie appears, parking up on the other side of a large skip.
    Rimmer picks up, and after he’s taken the Bentley’s details, he says, ‘I’ve just finished talking to Northcotes, and Carmelo Trapani saw them four times in the last month. He was even in the day before he disappeared, and that’s when Cable Portfolios was fully endowed with its trusts. He was switching his money all over the place, right up until he disappeared. So Attilio would have still thought he was in for the lion’s share.’
    ‘Is Cable Portfolios an off-the-shelf company?’
    ‘No. There’s a Certificate of Incorporation of Change of Name,’ says Rimmer, sounding pleased with himself.
    ‘How did you get on at the funeral directors?’ says Staffe, thinking about the name Cable Portfolios.
    ‘Carmelo gave them ten thousand pounds last week and told them exactly what he wanted. They said he was jovial.’
    ‘They said “jovial”?’
    ‘Jovial.’
    An elderly man emerges from the slender house, walking with a stick and pausing on the step to his front door. The suedehead rushes to help but the elderly man shrugs him away. The old man is scrawny but has bright eyes. His face is wrinkled, like a St Bernard. Wisps of grey hair float beneath the band of his fedora.
    ‘Where are you? What are you up to, Staffe?’
    Staffe hangs up, watches Abie Myers get into the back of his veteran car. His face isn’t that of a man who has just become twenty million richer. His eyebrows pinch and he talks constantly, spitting venom. He buckles up and they move off, slowly. Staffe steps to the kerb and Josie picks him up, saying, ‘We follow the Bentley?’
    ‘Wherever it goes, and for however long it takes to get there.’
    ‘Pulford called. I was going to see him later.’
    ‘Is he going to disclose to us? Maybe we should go now.’
    ‘There was an incident, but I’m trying to get us a visit.’ She puts her hand on Staffe’s knee, smiles across. ‘He’s going to be all right.’
    ‘Do you think he’s cracking up?’ says Staffe.
    ‘I called North Yorkshire Police. They’re doing a knock on his mother’s street, saying there’s been a cable TV scam; just to keep an eye. They were really good about it.’
    ‘We should lean on those young pricks on the Attlee Estate. If we can prove who exactly is putting pressure on Pulford, that will get us closer to the evidence for who really killed Jadus.’
    ‘You don’t think there’s any chance it was Pulford, do you, sir?’
    ‘No way!’ As he says this, Staffe’s words fail him a little. But this is what he must believe.
    ‘If we put pressure on those boys in the Attlee, word will get back to Pentonville. You saw what happened in the visitor centre, and if anything happens to Pulford’s mother . . . Christ, sir, I’m not sure I could live with myself. And imagine what Pennington would do! We can’t move