John Harvey - Good Bait

‘Yes.’ A quick glance across at her mum. ‘He was nice. Not like … not like most other boys. Not grabbing you all the time.’

‘Didn’t fancy you much, then, did he?’ her mother said with a sneer.

‘He respected me.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘He loved me.’

‘Jesus Christ!’

‘He was going to marry me.’

‘Over my dead body he was.’ Fay Martin reached for the gin.

‘You didn’t know. You didn’t care. I wore this ring he give me on a chain round my neck and you didn’t even notice.’

‘Your father would have skinned the pair of you alive.’

‘He wouldn’t have had the chance, would he?’

‘He warned you to keep away from him, you know he did.’

‘We was gonna run away.’

‘Run away? Where to? Back to Kosova or wherever he bloody comes from?’

‘Moldova. It was Moldova.’

‘Should have stayed there, shouldn’t he?Then the poor little sod might still be alive.’

Sasha bit her lip and clenched her fists, determined not to cry.

Off in another room, a clock struck six times.

‘Sasha,’ Karen said, ‘I have to ask you. The night that Petru was killed. Your friend Lesley texted you, Petru wanted you to contact him, he was worried, waiting to meet you.’

‘Yes.’ The word like a slow release of breath.

‘But you didn’t?’

A shake of the head.

‘You didn’t text? Call? Anything?’

‘No.’

‘Why was that?’

‘I was frightened.’

‘What of?’

She pushed her feet back and forth along the floor. ‘My dad.’

Sasha tugged at a thread that had worked its way loose from a rip in her jeans.

‘He found out, didn’t he?That I was seeing him again. Petru. He’d told me before, he didn’t want me seeing him, not talking to him or nothing.’

‘Why was that?’

‘I dunno. Just never liked him, right from the first.’

‘He’d met him, then?’

‘Just the once, that’s all. I brought him to meet my mum. I thought she’d like him, and my dad he was here. I didn’t know. I thought he was, I dunno, off somewhere. Wouldn’t’ve brought him otherwise. Soon as he saw Petru he started in on him — what was he doing here, how was he living, where all his money was coming from? — stuff like that. Not that Petru ever had any money, not really.

‘Then when he was leaving, my dad said he didn’t want him round here again. Not ever. Didn’t want me to have anything to do with him. When Petru started to stand up for himself, for us, talk back, I thought my dad was going to hit him. Petru, he wasn’t frightened, but he’s a big man, my dad, he’d’ve hurt him, I know he would. Hurt him bad. That’s what he’s like.’

She snapped the thread free.

‘After he’d gone, he told me I wasn’t to have nothing to do with him again. Said he’d stop me using the computer, Facebook an’ that, take away my mobile phone.’

‘So that’s when you started using Lesley as a go-between?’

‘Yeah. She didn’t mind. Liked it, really.’

‘And this particular evening, the one we’re talking about, that was how you’d arranged to meet him?’

‘Yes.’

‘But Hampstead — why Hampstead? Not exactly round the corner.’

‘That’s why, yeah? No way we’re going to bump into anyone we knew. Anyone who knew me and might tell my dad.’

‘This would have been late, though. It would have been dark.’

‘That was okay. I didn’t care.’

‘How about getting home?’

A quick glance away. ‘I wasn’t. I told my mum I was staying at Lesley’s. A sleepover.’

‘Little liar,’ Fay Martin said quietly.

‘There was this place, stayed open all night. Burgers and stuff. That’s where we’d go, just sit, you know, and talk. What was going to happen, what we were going to do.’

‘Do?’

‘Once we were married.’

‘Holy Jesus!’ Fay Martin rolled her eyes up towards the heavens.

‘Sasha,’ Tim Costello leaned forward, ‘you said your dad found out you were going to see Petru that evening — how did that happen?’

‘Mum was out and he was here. They’d …’ She looked towards her mother, then away. ‘I think they’d had a row. Mum’d stormed out.’

‘I walked,’ Fay Martin said, flatly.

‘Anyway, he was here and he asked me, you know, where was I going and I said, like, Lesley’s, and soon as I said it I could tell he didn’t believe me. Made me call her. Didn’t stand up to him more’n a couple of minutes, did she? Told him. After that it all come out. Everything. How I’d been going behind his back. Where we was goin’ to meet that evening, everything. I thought he was gonna go crazy, but he never. He’d warned me, that’s what he said. Warned both of us. Told me to go to my room and locked me in. He’d already took my phone. That’s an end to it, he said. Then I heard him leavin’.’

Tears were rolling slowly down Sasha’s cheeks.

‘You know where he went?’

A shake of the head, shoulders down.

‘Sasha?’

‘No.’

An ambulance went past along the main road, siren wailing.

‘You wouldn’t know, I suppose, Mrs Martin, where your husband went to after he’d locked Sasha in her room?’

‘Wasn’t here when I got back, I know that.’

‘And this was when?’

‘Eleven, eleven thirty.’

‘And you wouldn’t have any idea where he might have been?’

‘The pub, I dare say. Where he usually went off to when he was in one of his moods. And when he wasn’t.’

‘Any pub in particular?’

‘Four Hands, most likely. Down Lewisham. Landlord has a lock-in most nights.’

‘And that’s where you think he was?’

‘Good a guess as any. Gone three in the morning time he got home, anyway. Hammered didn’t come into it.’

‘Mr Martin,’ Karen said, ‘you’re expecting him home this evening?’

‘Not ’less he’s changed his plans.’

‘Which are?’

‘Over in Tallinn, isn’t he?’

‘Estonia?’

‘Last time I looked.’

‘Stag do?’ Costello suggested.

‘Business.’

‘So when are you expecting him?’ Karen asked.

‘Couple of days, maybe three.’

‘Only we’ll need to talk to him.’

‘What for?’

‘Hear his version of Sasha’s story. Confirm his whereabouts, the night Petru Andronic died.’

‘You don’t think he had anything to do with that? Terry? You must be jokin’.’

‘Normal procedure, Mrs Martin, that’s all.’

‘He’ll not like it.’

‘I’m afraid that’s too bad.’ Karen placed one of her cards on the table. ‘Ask him to contact this number as soon as he returns. We’ll need to see you as well, Sasha. Make a statement, what you’ve just told us.’

‘Do I have to?’

‘I think so. Best to get it all clear once and for all. Perhaps you could bring her in, Mrs Martin? Tomorrow around ten thirty?’

Fay Martin’s glare followed them all the way to the door.

Outside, the air bit cold and Karen shivered. Tim Costello pulled his coat collar up against his neck.

‘“He’d’ve hurt him, I know he would,” is that what she said?’

Karen nodded. ‘“Hurt him bad.”’

‘And then what was it? Before he went out? “That’s an end to it.”’

‘That’s what she said.’

‘Out of the mouths …’

‘I know.’ Karen glanced back at the house, silhouette at one of the upstairs windows, Fay Martin looking down. ‘You fancy a drink,’ she said, ‘before we head back?’

‘The Four Hands?’

‘Why not?’

Over the sea the sky loomed unnaturally dark. Midday, near as made no difference. A near complete absence of light. Cordon walked back down the hill, air heavy like a coat about his shoulders. Indoors, he set coffee on the stove to heat, picked a CD from the small pile on the floor and set it in place. Selected track three, early January, 1945: way, way before he was born.