John Harvey - Good Bait

‘And Tottenham? Hector Prince?’

‘Still waiting on Trident.’

Karen held a breath; released it slowly. ‘Okay, press on. We’ll talk again later.’

‘I don’t doubt.’

Karen switched on her computer. Time for a quick rattle through her emails before checking her in-tray, getting some shape into the day.

Tim Costello was back by mid-afternoon. First signs were the weapon used was a 9mm pistol, most likely a Glock. Pretty much the weapon of choice. Forensics would be checking the ammo against that used in Walthamstow and the chance it might have come from the same batch that had originated in Deptford, the pistol also.

‘Okay, Tim,’ Karen said. ‘Let me know how things develop.’

She’d seen the victim’s naked body in the morgue, the Walthamstow murder, skinny arms popped with needle marks, lesions on his skin. His face, parchment white, the face of a boy, a young man never growing old. Another victim, she thought, of the same lack of opportunity and education as Hector Prince. A different colour, but the same skewed culture.

For a moment, she closed her eyes, as if in prayer.

But praying, as she knew, no longer got it done.

Perhaps it never had.

The phone rang and she answered it. Listened, making brief notes as she did so. Dialled another number, internal, passed the information on, setting another line of inquiry in motion. It was what you did. Kept going through the procedures, fingers crossed, hoping sooner or later something would fall into your lap.

Much on your plate right now? All under control?

Karen shook her head. You did what was possible. Conscientiously. Avoiding error. And at the end of the day you went home. Never leaving it all quite behind.

As if you could.

Cape Cornwall was where Cordon sometimes went when he wanted to be alone and think; also to remember. And marvel. The extremity of the ocean that tipped out at that point against the rock. He zipped up his heavy jacket and started to climb; stood, finally, at the summit, facing out, oblivious to the wind, the cold.

He had come here first with his father, racing him to the top and then, breathless, pointing out beyond the lighthouse to the waves, the possibility of seals, pods of dolphins, basking sharks. His father focusing the binoculars, patient, waiting. The young Cordon anxious, eager to be up and moving, scrambling down the monument then round, faster and faster each time.

‘For God’s sake, sit still for a moment. Go on, it won’t hurt you, sit.’

And then from his father’s rucksack, the brown bread sandwiches, carefully cut; the Thermos flask. The book of birds; of grasses; of wild flowers: neatly annotated, ticked.

Cordon watched now as a little egret — see, he remembered — tugged something from between the pebbles back of the water’s edge and flew away. Were there moments, he wondered, when his son, off in Australia, looked up suddenly from whatever he was doing, startled by a memory of something they had done together, father and son, something they had shared?

He shook his head.

Argued, they’d done that. Little else.

Families, it was what they did. Fought, argued, walked out, walked away, tried to keep in touch and failed. Maxine Carlin had gone up to London to see her daughter, prompted by some unnecessary fear, and, not finding her, on her way home, unused to the busy thrust of the London Underground in the rush hour, had fallen under a train and been killed.

Clear as that.

The inquest, the inquiry had found nothing suspicious: accidental death. Her daughter had thrown black earth on to her coffin and walked away. You want to play the fucking policeman, don’t do it with me. We understood? We were understood.

People wanted help or they didn’t.

Friendship the same.

Love, even.

He kicked the toe of his shoe against the hardness of the rock, and, rising, set his back to the sea and took the slower, more winding path back down towards the old chapel that had long been converted to a cattle byre and now sat in partial disrepair. Away to the left, descending, he could see the tall chimney of the Kenidjack arsenic works, which in Victorian times had provided a compound that, when mixed with chalk and vinegar, women, anxious to lighten their complexion, had not only rubbed into their arms and faces but eaten.

He’d learned that from his father, of course, that and the fact that before antibiotics, another compound of arsenic had been used for curing syphilis. When it wasn’t being used as poison.

A bit of good and bad in everything.

What his father had believed.

He had just made it to where his car was parked when his mobile rang. Not a number he recognised.

‘Look, I’m not sure if I should be phoning you …’ Clifford Carlin’s voice was troubled, shaky. ‘I didn’t know what else to do.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘Letitia — she came here after the funeral …’

‘Tell me what’s happened.’

‘Nothing. Nothing, just … ever since she got here … she’s been, I don’t know, worried. Frightened, even.’

‘What of?’

‘That’s it, she won’t say. Not clearly, not exactly. But there have been these calls to the house. And people, she says, driving past, hanging round.’

‘You’ve seen them? These people?’

‘No, no, not really. But she’s not making it up, I’m certain. She’s scared. And if you know Letitia, you know she doesn’t scare easily.’

‘What about the police? If she’s in some kind of danger.’

‘She won’t. She said no. No police.’

‘You phoned me.’

‘Like I said, I didn’t know what else to do.’

A Land Rover backed into the space alongside him and Cordon moved away, down towards the stone wall that marked the car park off from the land that tumbled down towards the sea.

‘Are you still there?’ Carlin asked.

‘Yes, I’m here.’

‘The thing is, Letitia, I don’t even think it’s herself she’s most frightened for. It’s the boy.’

The line went dead, leaving Cordon staring out across limitless water.

What boy? he asked himself. What boy?

He was three years old. Rising four. He stood close to his mother, face fast against her hip, one hand clinging to the strands that were unravelling from the borrowed jumper she was wearing. Her father’s jumper. The boy’s grandfather. A lick of dark hair hung loose across his forehead; his brown eyes wide with uncertainty and fear.

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ Letitia’s greeting.

The child flinched at the anger in his mother’s voice and clung tighter, closer to tears.

Cordon said nothing.

Off to one side, Clifford Carlin shuffled his feet.

‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘You stupid interfering bastard.’ Pushing the boy away, she lunged at her father and raked her nails across his cheek.

‘Christ, Letitia!’

‘Stupid, stupid, stupid!’ As he turned from her, she pummelled his back with her fists.

‘Mum! No, Mum, no. Don’t. Don’t.’

The boy tried to pull her away and she flung out a hand and caught him in the face and for an instant he stopped dead, as if in shock, then screamed.

‘Oh, Jesus! Now see — see what you’ve done? The pair of you?’

There was blood at the corner of her son’s mouth, starting to trickle down his chin and on to his neck.

‘See what you’ve made me fucking do?’

‘Letitia, listen …’

‘Here, sweetheart, here. It’s all right.’ Pulling a tissue from her pocket, she dabbed it at the boy’s face. ‘It’s nothing, really. Just a little cut. There, look. It’s already stopped.’ Crouching, she hugged him to her. ‘I’m sorry. Mummy’s sorry.’