John Harvey - Good Bait

‘Be a sight worse, else.’

He gave it a moment, watching her eyes. ‘Security comes round every couple of hours. Two men usually, sometimes one.’

‘This morning?’

‘Just the one.’

‘Handy.’

‘Nothing noted in the log. Call out now for him to come back in.’

Karen looked up at the CCTV cameras attached to several of the buildings; another, mounted on a high stand, slowly revolving, centrally placed.

‘Funny thing,’ Ramsden said, following her gaze. ‘System went down, two thirty, thereabouts. This whole area. Malfunction. Didn’t get up and running till close on four.’

‘Coincidence?’

‘What’s that? An explanation waiting to happen? Don’t you soddin’ believe it.’

‘What then?’

‘Bloke in charge went off conveniently sick. A while before they could get someone else in to cover. Couple of uniforms, local, went round to his address. Nobody home. We’re still looking.’

‘Whoever worked them over,’ Karen said. ‘All that was done somewhere else. That’s what we’re assuming?’

Not really a question that demanded answering. Anything else, there would have been far more blood than there was: ceiling, walls, floor. And even there, that close to the airport, too great a risk of noise. Slow screams of a dying man. Three dying men. She realised she didn’t know exactly how they had died.

‘Two of them,’ Ramsden said when asked, ‘a bullet to the back of the head. Small calibre by the look of it, close range. After they’d been worked on, my guess, not before. Biggest of the three, apart from what’s been done to his face and hands, no obvious cause.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe his heart just gave out.’

‘No way yet of knowing who they are?’

‘Not as yet. Once the computer guys get to work on the faces we’ll have a better idea what they looked like before all this. Run ’em through the system after that. See what pops.’

Nodding acknowledgement, Karen stepped away, slowly turned and looked up into the sky. A late plane, taking off, its lights curving gradually upwards into the night sky. Wherever it was heading, she wished she were on board, bound for wherever. Anywhere. Anywhere but here.

‘Croissant?’

‘What?’ Letitia’s voice was harsh, bruised by sleep.

‘Croissant? It’s a sort of curved doughy thing, a bit like-’

‘I know what a fucking croissant is.’

‘Good. Here. Have one.’ Cordon sat on the side of the bed, paper bag in his lap.

Letitia shook her head and, shuffling into a sitting position, pulled the pillows up against the headboard and leaned back. The sheet slipped as she twisted round, leaving one breast exposed. Outside, rain was falling lightly; you could hear it faintly against the shutters.

‘Where’ve you been anyway?’ she asked.

He held up the bag. ‘To get these.’

‘I didn’t hear the car.’

‘I walked.’

‘In this?’

He shrugged. ‘Live in Cornwall, remember? You get used to it.’

His hair had been darkened by the rain; shoes and waterproof jacket he’d taken off and left just inside the door. His idea had been to give himself time to think, think — what was the expression? outside the box? — but all he could see was the same set of imponderables, the same set of walls.

They’d taken the ferry from Portsmouth to St. Malo. Letitia’s father had driven them to the port and then continued on his way towards Bristol, old friends he hadn’t seen in far too long a time. The bookshop was locked up. A sign: Closed Till Further Notice . After what had happened, there would be people coming round, he didn’t doubt; more friends of Anton’s, asking questions, none too fussy about how they got their answers. One more consequence of Cordon’s actions.

‘Who in God’s name d’you think you are?’ Clifford Carlin had asked. ‘Shane? Sorting out the bad guys? Setting things to rights?’ Jack Schaefer. Alan Ladd in buckskins. One of Carlin’s favourites. Cordon’s, too.

‘Something like that,’ Cordon had answered. He was taller than Ladd, he knew that for a fact.

‘Great!’ Letitia had said when he told her what had happened at the caravan site. ‘You’re going to get us all fucking killed, you know that, don’t you?’

It was a risk, a possibility. Simply, he hadn’t seen what else he could do. He’d said as much to Jack Kiley when he called him later, explaining the situation, asking if there were any ways in which Kiley thought he could help.

‘What?’ Kiley had replied. ‘A couple of nights’ bed and board and suddenly I’m your guardian angel? Picking up the pieces?’

‘Sorry, Jack. Bit out of my depth.’

Kiley gave it some thought. ‘Letitia and the kid, they’ve got passports?’

‘I think so.’

Uncertain where they might go after the funeral, what they might do, Letitia had taken that precaution, at least.

‘What you’ve got to do,’ Kiley said. ‘Buy a little time.’

After arriving in France, they’d taken a bus into Dinard, as Kiley had instructed, just a little way west along the coast. A fading old seaside town, mostly closed down for the winter. Grand hotels on the seafront boarded up, shuttered across. Only the one cafe open on the promenade, where Letitia sat and smoked and read whatever paperbacks she’d bought on the ferry, while Cordon and young Dan played desultory games of football on the beach.

‘Be patient,’ Kiley had told them. ‘Sit tight. I’ll get back to you soon as I can.’

For some reason, there was a statue of Alfred Hitchcock peering out across the water, surrounded by stone birds. A casino under redecoration. They found a little place across from the art gallery that sold good pizzas and sat there for hours, sheltering from the wind, listening to the same music playing over and over.

Kiley phoned again on the third day. One of Jane’s friends at the school had a holiday place in Brittany, a village just a couple of hours’ drive from where they were. Not even a village, a hamlet. Four dwellings and only one of them occupied year round, an old man and his dog. They could stay there, till Easter if necessary. Sort out what they were going to do.

‘Might need your help there, too, Jack,’ Cordon said.

‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

Cordon hired a car and drove it as far as Lamballe where he changed it for another. If anyone was going to be on their trail, he wanted to make it as difficult for them as possible. At the Carrefour in Guingamp they loaded up with supplies; the nearest village, some three or four miles from where they would be staying, had a boulangerie and nothing else.

‘For Christ’s sake!’ Letitia exclaimed.

‘What?’

‘That bloody croissant. You’re getting crumbs all over the bed.’

‘Didn’t realise you were so fussy.’

‘Yeah, well …’

They heard the toilet flush and then Danny’s voice telling them it was raining. A moment later he appeared in the doorway, tousle haired, sleepy eyed, dinosaur pyjamas.

‘I’ll get the coffee on,’ Cordon said.

‘You do that.’

She lifted the covers and the boy slid in beside her, Letitia turning to slide an arm comfortably around him, kiss him on the forehead — ‘Why don’t you just snuggle down?’

Feeling a stranger, Cordon left the room.

It was a converted farmhouse, low and long, a longere , thick stone walls that had stood for more than a century. Brown shutters, red paint around the window frames starting to blister and fade. A garden front and back, gravel, lawn and shrubs. A few stunted apple trees. Other trees, taller, shielded the house from the road. Scots pine? Cordon wondered. Breton pine, perhaps? Was there such a thing? His father would have … he stopped the thought on hold.