John Harvey - Good Bait

‘You mean, aside from sweetheart and darling and how he loves me more than life itself?’

‘Aside from that.’

‘If he doesn’t see my ugly whore’s face within twenty-four hours, me and Danny, he’s going to send someone to come and get us.’

‘He won’t come himself?’

‘Too much like begging. Losing face. He’ll send someone. Possibly the twins.’ She grimaced. ‘Give those two bastards an excuse and they’ll slit your throat and laugh about it. Whole world’s a bloody video game where they’re concerned.’

‘You said you’d seen someone already. A car.’

‘Maybe. I’m not sure. Could have been nothing. Imagination. I don’t know. Then again, it could be someone local, someone Anton knows, repaying a favour. Brighton, maybe. He’s got contacts down there. I know. Could be that. Making sure I was still here, hadn’t done a runner, me and the kid. Letting him know.’

He looked at her, the set of her mouth. ‘You’re not going back, are you? You’ve made up your mind.’

‘No.’ Smoke drifted upwards as she lit another cigarette. ‘No, I don’t think so. Not to that.’

‘Whoever it is he sends, you think they’re going to take that laying down?’

‘About the only way they will.’

‘They’ll use force?’

‘What else?’

‘Then we should tell the police, local. They’ll have a patrol car drive by, maybe station someone outside.’

She shook her head. ‘How long for? And even if they did, the minute Anton thinks I’ve done some kind of deal with the police, that’s it. He’ll get to me, no matter what.’

She lit another cigarette. ‘I’ve been around him too long, know too much. He wouldn’t want to take that kind of a risk.’

Know what? Cordon wondered. Too much of what?

‘What could he do?’ he said.

‘Kill me. Have me killed. Take Danny. And you wouldn’t be able to stop him. Even if you tried.’

Cordon started to speak, but she laid a finger across his lips.

‘Listen, it was good of you to come. Daft, but …’ She shook her head. ‘You’re not a bad bloke, for a copper, specially. But this … this isn’t dealing with druggies in the bus station down by the harbour; out looking for someone lost on the moors or hauling bodies back out of the surf. This is something else, Cordon. Another world. Let it go.’

Afternoon turned evening. The temperature dropped, reminding them it was winter still. Clifford Carlin went into town for fish and chips and brought them back wrapped in pages from the local paper.

St Leonards man narrowly escapes being first in Britain to die of snake bite since 1975 .

Petula Clark president of Hastings Music Festival .

Carlin hadn’t known she was still alive.

He decanted the food on to plates, offered salt, vinegar, tomato sauce. Buttered bread. Poured mugs of tea. Even lukewarm, the chips retained some bite, the cod flakey inside its batter and pearly white. Danny ate with his fingers, despite his mother’s attempts to get him to use a fork.

Before they’d finished eating, Carlin went over to the record player and slipped a nearby album from its sleeve. Jazzy piano, smooth voice, banks of strings.

‘Christ,’ Letitia said, ‘can’t we get through just one meal without you making us listen to that old junk?’

‘Charlie Rich,’ Carlin said, unrepentant. ‘The original Silver Fox.’

‘You don’t fuckin’ say.’

‘Mum,’ Danny piped up, ‘you said a naughty word.’

‘Just shut it and eat your chips.’

Cordon excused himself, went out into the garden to make his call. Kiley’s voice, when he answered, was slightly breathless, as if he’d been hurrying up several flights of stairs.

‘Jack,’ Cordon said, ‘I need a favour.’

‘Not going to turf me out of my bed again, are you?’

‘No, not that.’

‘Where are you now, anyway? Back down in Cornwall?’

‘Hastings.’

‘I thought that was over.’

‘Yes, well …’

‘Okay, out with it. What do you want?’

‘These famous connections of yours. You don’t know anyone in — I’m not sure what it’d be — Serious and Organised Crime, maybe? Someone involved in keeping tabs on criminals from Eastern Europe operating over here.’

Kiley gave it a moment’s thought. ‘I might have, why?’

‘I need someone to check a name for me.’

‘That’s all?’

‘For now.’

‘Let’s have it, then.’

‘Kosach. Anton Oleksander Kosach.’

‘Say it again slowly.’

Cordon did. Kiley wrote it down.

‘Russian?’ Kiley asked.

‘Ukrainian.’

‘Okay, leave it with me. I’ll get back to you soon as I can.’

‘I owe you one, Jack.’

‘A pint or two when I see you.’

‘Done.’

Cordon heard the click of a lighter and saw Letitia in the doorway, watching.

‘Girlfriend?’

‘Work.’

‘This time of night?’

‘Just checking in. Making sure the neighbourhood’s being properly policed in my absence.’

‘And is it?’

‘Even the seagulls behaving themselves.’

Letitia nodded and went back inside.

Cordon decided on a walk around the block, a couple of blocks; before he knew it, almost, he was down at the sea road, the shore. Fishermen here and there on the shingle: standing, some of them, feet firmly planted, legs splayed; others seated on small canvas chairs, two or three lines each. One of them whistling quietly to himself. The wink and blur of cigarettes.

He tugged the collar of his jacket up against the wind, felt the round hardness of pebbles beneath his feet. Anton and Letitia. Letitia and Anton. He’d known couples where the woman had left and taken the children with her; just threatening to leave, sometimes that was enough. Some men threw up their arms and said good riddance, some cried; some, a few, arranged to meet on neutral territory, talked it all through, who and how to share, who to pay. And then there were others. Men for whom leaving was a direct assault, a challenge to their power, what they saw as their rights, their self-esteem.

Leave me, they said, and I’ll take the kids, strap them in the car and drive us all off the cliff edge into the sea. Leave me and I’ll kill myself, I swear it. Let you live with that on your conscience the rest of your lousy life.

One man he knew, a trawler owner out of Newlyn, when his wife left him, painted her name in letters a metre high on walls up and down the town, the name and the word WHORE in brightest red alongside. And when she came back six months later, penitent, ashamed, begging forgiveness, he beat her within an inch of her life and threw her out again.

He’ll kill me, Letitia had said. Have me killed.

Cordon could see the lights from the amusement arcades along the front, the distorted sounds of Chicory Tip from the early seventies. ‘Son of My Father’.

Time to be heading back.

Danny was long in bed, fast off; Carlin had disappeared up to his room. Letitia was sitting, curled up, at one end of the settee, a bottle of wine on the small table close by, a glass in her hand. The television was switched on, the sound low, some programme about old England by the look of things, church spires, market halls, baptismal fonts, an earnest young man gesturing enthusiastically as he mugged for the camera.

‘Thought you’d sodded off,’ Letitia said. ‘Done a runner.’

‘Sorry to disappoint.’

‘Here,’ she slid the bottle towards him. ‘Get yourself a glass, have a drink.’

He did as he was told.

She tucked her feet up tighter beneath her. ‘Have a seat.’

‘You watching this?’ Cordon asked, pointing at the set.