Good Bait

by John Harvey

  Cordon waited until the front door had opened and closed.

  The gate squeaked a little at his touch.

  No bell, he knocked.

  Carlin opened up with a flourish, prepared to repel some unwanted vendor of overpriced homeware or charity beggar lobbying on behalf of a home for blind donkeys.

  The sight of Cordon knocked him back, but not for long.

  ‘Decided to catch a later train?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘It’s not about the book? Changed your mind? Because if it is, we open again tomorrow at ten. Fifty per cent of the cover price if you return it within six days. Twenty-five thereafter.’

  ‘It’s not the book.’

  Carlin nodded, gave a little tug at his wisp of beard. ‘She’s not here, you know.’

  ‘So you say.’

  Carlin held his gaze, then stepped back inside, leaving the door wide open. Cordon followed him, clicking it closed at his back.

  There were posters from various rock concerts framed on the walls; photographs of singers and musicians Cordon mostly failed to recognise. In a gilt frame above the empty fireplace was a self-portrait of Peter Blake holding a copy of Elvis Monthly. Not the original.

  Books were everywhere: in piles on the floor, haphazard on the table, wedged along the window ledges, seated on chairs. A collection of poems by Frank O’Hara, the cover a mass of sharply angled reds and blues; Beats, Bohemians and Intellectuals by Jim Burns. A ginger cat with a large head and a bushy tail sniffed at Cordon disinterestedly and padded away.

  ‘Tea or coffee?’

  ‘Either. Whichever’s easiest.’

  It turned out to be tea. Wagon Wheels in the kind of wooden biscuit barrel he remembered from his gran’s sideboard.

  ‘Didn’t know you could get these any more,’ Cordon said, helping himself.

  ‘Relaunched in 2002. Any smaller, mind, they’d bloody disappear.’

  It was true: two bites and gone.

  ‘You can search the place if you like,’ Carlin said. ‘For Letitia. If you don’t believe me.’

  Cordon said nothing; waited. Drank some tea.

  ‘After her mum and I split up,’ Carlin said eventually, ‘I didn’t really see her for years. Oh, at first I tried, you know, going back down — I was in Bristol then, working in this music shop, guitars mostly. But Maxine was out of her head half the time and there were always other blokes around. We were still married, officially anyway, not that it mattered to her, not one bloody scrap. Then, when she had the first of the boys, and moved in with his dad, some druggy living in a squat in Penzance, things turned nasty and I kept away. Wasn’t as if Rose — that’s what she was then, Rose — wasn’t as if she paid much heed if I was around or not. Least, that was how it seemed.’

  He looked at Cordon for some sign of understanding. Men together, something of the kind.

  ‘Didn’t see her for years after that. Not from when she was four or five up till she was near thirteen. I was in Brighton, then. My first little shop. Down the Lanes.’

  He lifted his cup, but didn’t drink.

  ‘Run away from home, hadn’t she? Got my address from some card or other, birthday, something of the sort. Stayed for a couple of days till I put her on the bus back home. Turned up regular after that — not often, but regular. Every eighteen month or so, couple of years. Whenever things got too rough at home, out of hand. Whenever she reckoned as how she couldn’t cope. Letitia, by now. Using God knows what. Track marks on her arms. Did what I could to talk her out of it, but it weren’t no good. Small miracle she saw twenty-one, but she did.’

  He drank his tea then; sat back and crossed his legs at the ankles, searching Cordon’s face. ‘What kind of a friend exactly? You never said.’

  ‘We crossed paths a few times.’

  What was he going to say? She used to walk my dog?

  ‘Line of duty?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘This, though, not official?’

  ‘Not official.’

  ‘Personal, then?’

  ‘Her mum …’

  ‘Maxine.’

  ‘Maxine asked me, see if I could find her. After she never showed here. She was worried.’

  ‘About Letitia?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not before time.’

  Cordon spread his hands, palms up.

  ‘And now that you’ve not found her?’

  ‘The card. The Lakes. Seems as if she’s probably okay.’

  ‘I didn’t fake it, you know.’

  ‘The old postcard trick.’

  ‘Here, I’ll show you. Take a look at the postmark.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Still you came round here.’

  ‘Mistrustful bastards, police. Case of having to be. Goes with the job.’

  Carlin gestured towards the door. ‘Sure you don’t want to look around? In case I’ve got her stashed away upstairs after all?’

  ‘It’s okay.’ Cordon set down his cup, got to his feet. ‘Curiosity satisfied. But if you do hear from her, you will let me know? Ask her to call me, at least.’

  ‘Okay, no problem.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll see you at the funeral?’

  ‘Maxine’s?’

  ‘There’ll be an inquest, of course. Bound to be. But the way everything’s pointing, accidental death, straightforward enough. Shouldn’t be long before the body’s released for burial.’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Carlin said. ‘Maxine and I, we said our goodbyes a long time back.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Cordon moved towards the door. ‘Thanks for the tea.’

  On the walk back into town he ran over what Carlin had told him, what he’d learned. The date Wagon Wheels were reintroduced aside, maybe not a great deal. He’d pass on the details of Maxine’s funeral to Carlin just in case, time and place. They might even find their way on to Letitia, now they were sort of back in touch.

  The next London train was due in thirty minutes and he bought a newspaper to while away the time. More troops promised for Afghanistan. Failing bank to pay New Year bonuses in excess of fifteen million after all. Four-year study shows that children of families with only one parent living at home are less likely to go on to university. How many hours, how many thousands, Cordon wondered, did it take for them to come up with that?

  He found a window seat on the train without difficulty, leaned back and opened his book but failed to read more than a few lines. No fault of the author’s. Letitia happily working at a hotel in the Lake District, welcoming guests, supervising, perhaps, the change of bedlinen, the servicing of rooms, arranging taxis to the station, excursions to Beatrix Potter’s house or William Wordsworth’s grave — what was wrong with that picture?

  22

  Paul. Paul Milescu. Were it not for Google, Karen would never have known that Paul was the fourth most popular male name in all of Moldova. How had Clare Milescu put it, harking back to the time she spent in the country working for the UN? A directive urging them to engage with members of the government, one she’d taken all too literally. Paul Milescu had been something important in the Ministry of Justice and, despite being married, he had become popular with her, too.

  Now they were separated, going their different ways. Clare still fighting the good fight, following her conscience, working with refugees, while Paul, once in London, had used the connections he’d built up and gone into business. Nothing wrong with that. Except now it seemed he’d tried using those connections to bring pressure to bear on Karen’s investigation; pressure enough to get a detective chief superintendent out trawling the streets of north London at night like something out of Len Deighton or John le Carre.

  Explicable enough, in a way; commendable, even — a father’s natural instincts, offering protection to his son, wanting to keep him from trouble. Or was it more? A pre-emptive move to keep the police at arm’s length from himself, his family, his business?

  What was his business?

 
Here Google didn’t really help. Import/export, that and not a great deal more. Importing and exporting what? No details, certainly. Maybe, like Terry Martin, it was sportswear, women’s clothing. And possibly Martin was right, Karen thought, it was all we did in this country any more, import stuff made cheaply elsewhere now that we made hardly anything ourselves — and what we did seemed to be owned by someone else. The Americans, despite their fading economy, had controlling shares in everything from chocolate to Liverpool Football Club; the Russians had a football club of their own and half the expensive properties in London, while just about everything else was being snapped up by the Chinese.

  She looked again at the paucity of information on the screen.

  A PO box address, phone number, fax, email. Perhaps she should simply pick up the phone, dial the number, ask him outright?

  Hey, Paul …

  Then again, perhaps not.

  She had a friend, Tom Brewer, in the Intelligence Unit of Economic and Specialist Crime — sort of a friend, they’d met on a Home Office course a few years before, shared a few drinks, he’d asked her out, she’d said yes and then said no — she’d give him a bell. No favours to call in, just a hint of what might have been. Brewer newly married she’d heard, two stepsons and a semi-detached in Child’s Hill.

  She left a message, didn’t have to wait too long for him to respond.

  ‘Karen, long time no see.’

  ‘A small favour, Tom, that’s all.’

  He rang back in a couple of hours. ‘Milescu, everything pretty much above board as far as I can see. Connections with a couple of firms exporting bauxite and aluminium; partners in Russia and Romania. Some export trade seems to be tied up somehow with Italy; exactly how isn’t too clear. Then there’s a quite profitable import business in chemicals linked to the Ukraine.’

  ‘Nothing chancy?’

  ‘Not that you could lay a finger on. Ever since the country joined the World Bank in ’92, trade has blossomed — from a very low base admittedly — and Milescu’s just ridden the wave along with it. The fact that he’s clearly got connections close to the heart of government probably hasn’t done him any harm. Contracts put out to tender, he’s going to be near the head of the queue more often than not.’

  ‘But nothing illegal?’

  Brewer laughed. ‘Down to your definition of illegal. But in a way that might be of interest to us, officially, I’d say no, pass.’

  ‘Thanks, Tom.’

  ‘Maybe we could meet up for a drink some time? It’s been a while.’

  ‘Sure, I’d like that. You could bring your wedding photos for me to have a look at.’

  He laughed and called her something not very nice.

  The next time her mobile went it was Carla, who’d texted her twice already: Ronny Jordan at the Jazz Cafe, she had to be there.

  ‘Carla, I can’t.’

  ‘Come on, girl. That guitar. “After Hours”. That sound. Sex on six strings.’

  ‘You know what? I’d love to, but-’

  ‘But nothing. No excuses, come on, I’ll see you there. Ten thirty, eleven, that’s when it kicks off. Okay?’

  ‘I don’t know, Carla, I’ll see. Maybe. But no promises, right?’

  Ten thirty, eleven: by then, most nights Karen reckoned to be tucked up in bed with a glass of red and a good book.

  She glanced at her own reflection in the darkening window. She didn’t believe she’d just told herself that, but she had. Girl, as Carla would say, you’re getting old. Old before your time. She should make the effort to get down there after all: race home, get changed into something suitably funky and cab it to Camden.

  Ronny Jordan: ‘The Jackal’; ‘A Brighter Day’.

  Tempting as it was, she knew she’d do no such thing.

  Carla was standing in line, the crowd thickening around her; stop-start of traffic at the lights, exhaust fumes dispersing pale grey into the night air. If the temperature dropped much more it would be freezing hard by the time they emerged the far side of midnight.

  She hunched up the collar of her padded coat and shuffled a few short paces forward, even though they were not really moving, the queue simply becoming more compressed. Someone’s elbow poked into her back and she turned, the man’s face an apologetic leer.

  ‘Sorry, darlin’.’

  Sorry, darlin’, who spoke like that any more? Outside of EastEnders, that is? The East End itself, mostly Bangladeshi now as far as she could tell, other than a few smart young Metropolitans busily rebranding it with artists’ studios and architect-designed apartments.

  ‘Seen him before, have you? Ronny? Fuckin’ brilliant.’

  His nose pushed, like a chisel, down from the centre of his face, his teeth, when he smiled, were large and yellow — horse’s teeth.

  With a quick, dismissive shake of the head, Carla edged forward. This guy was actually hitting on her. Unbelievable!

  Unable to move farther, she squeezed herself towards the wall.

  As well she did.

  In retrospect, she heard the car approaching fast, faster than was safe; the sudden braking, shouts and screams from those positioned near the kerb, and then the shot. A single gunshot. Loud. Close. No backfire. Little doubt what it was.

  Someone cannoned against her from behind and, as she turned, stumbling, something splashed, warm, stickily wet, across her face, and the man with the chisel face was suddenly in her arms. Close up, hissing through yellow teeth, before, heavy, he fell away, and Carla, stooping, aware — amidst the shouting, the panic — of three more shots, one echoing into another and then the squeal of brakes, a car door slamming, the engine accelerating fast away.

  There was a long moment in which nobody seemed to speak or move, and the dead man — she supposed he was dead — lay at her feet, one arm stretched out, fingers bent back by the wall, as if trying to tunnel to safety.

  The side of his head no longer seemed to be there.

  Carla shook. Shuddered. Jumped when a hand gently touched her arm.

  ‘You’re hurt,’ the young woman said, pointing. ‘Your face. It’s bleeding.’

  Carla blinked the blood away from her eyes and brought her fingers gingerly to her cheek. She could hear the sirens, police and ambulance, drawing closer. Knew she should use her mobile, contact Karen: as soon as she stopped shaking, she would.

  23

  By the time Karen arrived the street was cordoned off from below the crossroads north to the junction with Arlington Road. Uniformed officers, yellow tape, police vehicles in abundance.

  The lights over the Jazz Cafe still stood out brightly, but the blue shades had been pulled down low across the windows and the interior was dark. People stood around in twos and threes outside the immediate cordon, stunned, too stunned to go home; talking in an abstracted, desultory way, some of them, to officers with notebooks at the ready. Ronny Jordan had departed long since, the short journey from dressing room to limo, from limo to his hotel.

  Karen knew the senior officer on the scene, a detective inspector from Albany Street who’d been pulling a late shift when he’d taken the call. Blue-black raincoat, thinning hair, heavily lidded eyes; hands in pockets, his voice gravelly from too many cigarettes, too little rest.

  ‘It’s a bastard,’ the DI said.

  Two dead, one at the scene, a single bullet to the head; the other, gunned down as he ran, had been shot three times, twice in the chest, once in the neck. He had bled out in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. DOA.

  ‘A real bastard.’

  Karen agreed.

  She found Carla sitting in a huddle of clothes in the entrance to the Odeon cinema opposite, leaning back against the wall. One of the attendants had fetched her a cup of sweet tea and tissues to wipe the blood from her face. It still clung here and there to her skin, tendrils of her hair.

  The moment Karen approached, she burst into tears.

  Karen squeezed her shoulders, gripped both hands hard.

  ‘I told you, di
dn’t I?’ Carla said, forcing out a smile. ‘I told you you’d be missing something.’

  Karen squatted down beside her. ‘You okay?’

  ‘What’s it look like?’

  ‘You weren’t hit?’

  ‘Just frightened out my fucking wits.’

  ‘And you didn’t see …?’

  ‘I didn’t see anything. Just this guy, the one, you know …’

  Carla clenched her eyes closed and he was still falling towards her, only slowly now, slowly as if through water, and she was reaching out to catch him, because, automatically, it’s what you do, and, just for a moment, he was there in her arms, safe, then gone.

  ‘Just the guy who got shot,’ she said, recovering. ‘Nothing else. Not the … the shooter. Is that what you call him? The shooter? Too many of those cop shows, you learn the language, the lingo.’

  ‘The gunman, maybe,’ Karen said. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Either way, I didn’t see him. Not really. Just someone ducking away, back towards the car.’

  Karen nodded. Knew she didn’t need to ask Carla about the car itself, there’d be descriptions of that by the dozen, too many, too many of them conflicting. The gunman, the same. The man behind the wheel. Too many witnesses as against too few.

  ‘I’ll organise a driver,’ Karen said. ‘Get you home. Sometime tomorrow, you’ll need to come in, make a statement.’

  ‘No. Let me wait here for you. I don’t think I can face going home on my own.’

  ‘Here, then.’ Karen reached into her bag and took out her keys. ‘Take these. Go back to my place, wait for me there. I’ll have someone run you over. Get out of those clothes, shower, get some sleep. I’ll get back as soon as I can.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Sure. There’s a spare set of keys at the office, I’ll pick them up on the way.’

  Karen bent quickly and kissed the top of her head.

  ‘See you later.’

  It was close to four in the morning by the time Karen finally got back to her flat, later than she’d intended. Carla was curled up in her bed, wearing an old pair of borrowed pyjamas and snoring lightly. Karen tiptoed back out of the bedroom and into the kitchen. Hot chocolate. Toast and jam. The initial work at the scene complete, the local DI had been only too pleased to pass the investigation along to Karen and her team — Homicide, that’s you, after all. More aggravation than he needed. On the settee, Karen made the mistake of closing her eyes and was asleep within moments.