John Harvey - Good Bait

So far, he’d admitted little or nothing. Possession of a small amount of a Class A drug for personal use only. Taking and driving away.

And the handgun found in the boot of his car?

Not his.

Not your gun?

Not my car.

Ba-boom!

Stolen, like he’d said, from the free parking area close to the Forum a couple of nights before. As for the unlicensed weapon tucked under the spare, together with a box of shells, no idea they were there. Nicking a motor, you didn’t exactly hang around to search the boot now, did you? A grin, switched off as easily as it had been switched on. Just shows, can’t trust nobody nowadays.

Cullen leaned back even farther; peered at Costello through lowered lids as he came into the room and one of the other officers left. Costello identifying himself for the tape.

‘The pistol, you say you’d no idea it was in the car?’

Cullen looked up in the direction of the camera and yawned. ‘We got to go through all this again?’

‘Before you went off and met your mates, you didn’t tuck it away under the spare yourself?’

‘No.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Jesus, how many more times-’

‘Then how come one of your prints is on the gun …?’

‘What?’

‘Up against the trigger housing, underside of the barrel.’

‘Bollocks!’

‘Okay, it’s a partial, but enough there to bring it up on the database. Ridges, bifurcations, whorls — amazing what they can do with AFIS nowadays. But you’re a bright boy, you probably know all that kind of stuff, right?’ Not over-egging it, just enough to spread a little confusion, plant a sliver of doubt in Cullen’s mind.

Cullen staring at him and Costello holding that gaze and, without too much hostility, passing it back, beginnings of a smile around the eyes, willing him to believe the lie.

‘Of course,’ Costello said, ‘your brief will tell you a partial print on its own may not be enough to convince a jury, might not even stand up in court, but if I had as much as a partial print of mine on a weapon that had been used in at least one near-fatal shooting, I wouldn’t like to take that risk. Would you?’

‘What shooting?’

‘Woodford, not so many nights back. Unlawful wounding, grievous bodily harm, could be attempted murder, depends which way the CPS want to go. Kid doesn’t pull through, likely turn out to be the real thing. Go down for that and by the time you get out you’ll be lining up for your Freedom Pass and your old age pension both.’

‘Bollocks,’ Cullen said again, but without conviction.

He reached for the plastic glass of water that had sat, up to then, untouched on the table getting warm, and as he did so, Costello reached out also and, for the briefest of moments, covered Cullen’s hand with his own.

‘Your gun, Brendan, fair enough, face the consequences. Not your gun, my advice, say now before you’re in too deep.’

As Costello moved his hand away, Cullen lifted the glass. The water in his mouth was brackish, stale.

‘Liam’s,’ he said quietly.

‘Sorry?’

‘It was Liam’s, the gun. Liam Jarvis. A favour, like.’ He looked away.

Costello did his best not to smile. ‘Why don’t you tell me how that favour worked?’

Karen listened carefully, tapping the tabletop lightly with the end of her pen. Cullen’s story: Jarvis had told him to get rid of the gun, instead of which, Cullen had clung on to it, thinking to lie about it being clean and sell it on — that the reason he’d had it with him that evening, but the prospective buyer had cried off. After which the smack took over and his sense of purpose became a little vague.

‘Last time we went looking for Jarvis,’ Karen said, ‘he proved hard to find.’

‘So eager to get into our good books,’ Costello said, ‘Cullen might’ve given us a hand there, too. Reckons there’s little Jarvis likes better than a few frames of snooker of an afternoon.’

‘Anywhere special?’

‘Snooker hall, Old Kent Road. Not far from the Thomas a Becket.’

Her aunt used to love watching it on TV, Karen remembered, snooker; hour after hour from the Crucible, the movement of the colours, deep green of the baize.

‘You’ll need back-up,’ she said. ‘No point in taking risks. And best take Mike Ramsden with you. Just in case.’

When they arrived, Jarvis was coming towards the end of what would surely have been a winning break, two reds left on the table and the colours all lined up, nice and potable. He swung a cue in Costello’s direction, but his movement was too slow, his aim adrift, maybe he wouldn’t have sunk the black after all. Costello ducked easily beneath the swing and delivered a sharp kick immediately below the knee. Before Jarvis could hit the floor, three officers had seized hold of him and flung him on to the table, arms and legs akimbo, balls everywhere.

His opponent took the game by default.

Once Jarvis had been hauled away, Costello foolishly took up Ramsden’s challenge and lost the best of five frames in next to no time, Ramsden clearing the table on two occasions without Costello pocketing a single red.

‘One of those games,’ Ramsden said, as he relieved the younger man of much of the contents of his wallet, ‘where luck has bugger all to do with it. Craft, son. Practice. That …’ winking, ‘and a good eye.’

In the interview suite, Jarvis had done his level best to suborn Brendan Cullen as a congenital liar. Why in God’s name would he be giving Cullen a gun? To throw away? Dispose of? What kind of idiot would do that? Cullen, of all people. But images of himself, clear as if in HD, making off after the shooting in Woodford, added to some careful reminders of the factors behind his original arrest — witnesses who had placed himself and Rory Bevan in Walthamstow at the approximate time of the shooting — brought about a change of tack.

Yes, all right, maybe he’d passed along the pistol to Cullen. Maybe. But that night in Woodford, it’d just been about making a few threats, right, showing face. Warn the kid, back off, that was all. Stick the gun in his face and watch him shit himself. But, of course, for Rory fuckin’ Bevan, that wasn’t enough. Mad bastard that he was. Rory, who squeezed the bloody trigger, that was who.

‘You mean, like the time in Walthamstow?’ Costello had asked, mild as you please.

‘Yeah, like that,’ Jarvis said. ‘Just like that.’

Since when, Rory Bevan had been brought in and charged and now the pair of them, Bevan and Jarvis, were busy putting one another in it, passing the blame, talking themselves into the best part of sixteen years and change.

Well, Karen thought, they’d needed a break, deserved one, and, at length, it had come. She eased back the curtains to reveal pavements that were dark and slick from early morning rain. The first strands of light were stretched almost to breaking point across the sky.

She set the kettle to boil, showered, dressed, switched on the radio — more bad news of the economy — and almost immediately switched it off again, opting for music from the stereo instead. Humming along, she made toast and coffee, fixed her make-up, checked her phone. Three messages and half a dozen texts, one from Carla, two from her sister, one from her mum in Jamaica, all of them wanting, deserving, a little of her time.

She made a promise to phone her mother, at least; rinsed cup and plate in the sink and left them to dry, then reached for her coat. Her boots could have done with a lick and a polish, but what the hell.…

A good hour later she was at her desk, checking rotas, signing forms, wondering where her next cup of coffee was coming from, and there was Mike Ramsden, looking for all the world as if he’d spent the night on a park bench, but balancing two cups of coffee, one above the other, a smile crinkling up his face regardlessless.