John Harvey - Good Bait

‘Um?’

‘Logging them out, twenty-four hours a day?’

‘Obviously not.’

‘You don’t keep a check on mileage?’

‘If one of the vehicles was getting a lot of extra use it would be noticed, yes, but otherwise, no.’

‘And do they get used?’ Ramsden asked. ‘Your employees, personal use. Outside normal hours. That happens? Running the kids to the football, stuff like that?’

‘Sometimes, yes.’

‘Use them sometimes yourself?’

‘Once in a while.’

‘Recently?’

‘Not recently.’

‘You sound very certain.’

‘I am.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘I know, because apart from shifting it round the yard a couple of times, since we took delivery of that van, I doubt I’ve been behind the wheel.’

‘Well, somebody was.’

‘Yes, well. That’s sort of your problem then, isn’t it? Not mine. So if there’s nothing else …’

He glanced at his solicitor, who gave a small nod.

‘I do think,’ the solicitor said, ‘my client has helped you all he can.’

Broderick started to rise, push back his chair.

‘Ask him about Gordon Dooley,’ Cormack said in Karen’s ear.

‘Gordon Dooley,’ Karen said. ‘He’s a friend of yours?’

‘Gordon?’ Broderick hesitated, sat back down. ‘Yes, why?’

‘A good friend?’

‘Ye-es.’

‘Close.’

‘Not exactly, no.’

‘But you’ve known him a long time?’ Karen asked.

‘Since we were kids.’

‘At school together.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Since when you’ve kept in touch.’

‘Pretty much.’

‘And this friendship, how would you define it?’

‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

‘Social or what?’ Ramsden asked. ‘Drink down the pub, dinner a few times a year with the wives. Birthdays, stuff like that?’

‘Yes. Yes, that’s right.’

‘And business?’

‘What business?’

‘That’s what we’re asking you.’

‘No, not really.’

‘Joint ventures?’

Broderick shook his head.

‘Not what we’ve heard.’

‘Heard? Who from?’

‘Your wife, for one.’

‘That bitch! All she knows is the price of Botox and which delivery boy’s worth a quick fuck.’

‘That’s as maybe.’ Karen said. ‘But according to her, you and Gordon Dooley had a business relationship in the past. Probably not the kind could be traced back through Companies House.’

‘Fuck off,’ Broderick said, but without conviction.

‘You know, of course, what your friend Dooley’s business is these days?’

Broderick affected to give it some thought. ‘Some kind of buying and selling? Scrap, he was into that for a while, I know. Stripping out old houses and flogging the proceeds.’ He shrugged. ‘That kind of thing, I suppose.’

‘Drugs,’ Karen said.

‘Do what?’

‘Cannabis, amphetamines, heroin, cocaine. Take your pick. About as many outlets across the country as you’ve got for your whatever it is, chorizo and corned beef.’

‘I wouldn’t know. Didn’t know.’

‘You disapprove?’

‘His business is his business.’

‘No matter what?’

‘Look,’ Broderick aimed a finger, ‘Gordon’s breaking the law, and I’m not saying he is, your affair, not mine.’

‘We’re in danger of losing it,’ Cormack said. ‘Get back to the van.’

‘Why you?’ Karen said.

‘What?’

‘Surely you’ve got people working for you who can do jobs like that? Why did you personally go and lease the van?’

‘God! Who knows? Most probably I was there, in the area, I don’t know.’

‘And you needed another van why?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Try.’

Broderick gave a theatrical sigh, assumed the face of the sorely put-upon. ‘Far as I recall, we had one van in for long-term repairs, another had broken down somewhere the day before. Hitchin, Hertford, Hatfield, one of those.’

‘And that’s why you leased the van?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not because Gordon Dooley asked you?’

‘Dooley? What the hell’s Dooley got to do with this?’

‘You tell me.’

‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing.’

‘You sure that’s not why he phoned you three days running, up to and including the day the van was hired?’

‘I doubt Gordon’s phoned me three days running his whole life.’

‘Our records show otherwise.’

‘I trust,’ the solicitor said, ‘you haven’t been accessing my client’s phone records without a warrant?’

Karen smiled.

‘Or hacking into his mobile phone?’

‘Who d’you think we are?’ Ramsden grinned. ‘ News of the World ?’

‘What I suggest,’ Karen said, ‘Dooley phoned you three days before you went out to Milton Keynes, wanting you to get hold of a van in such a way there would be no clear link back to himself. Could be you needed a little persuading.’

‘Bullshit,’ Broderick said. ‘Never happened. Absolute bloody fantasy.’

‘Conjecture,’ said his solicitor. ‘Fishing expedition, pure and simple. Only this time, no bait.’ He tapped Broderick on the shoulder. ‘We’re leaving.’

‘I’d like to put on record,’ Karen said, ‘our thanks to Mr Broderick for so wholeheartedly helping us with our inquiries.’

She managed to hold her smile till he’d left the room.

The Centre Hospitalier de Guingamp was on the rue de l’Armor, one of the principal roads winding north from the town centre. Kiley had spent enough time in hospitals to recognise the antiseptic smell, the mixture of frayed hope and resignation on patients’ faces, the hushed purposiveness of staff as they busied this way and that. He could remember the forced cheerfulness of the surgeon after the second, failed, operation on his leg. Find a more sedentary game after this, perhaps? Less in the way of physical contact. Ping-pong? Chess? Soccer for you henceforth, Jack, will be Match of the Day, I’m afraid, Saturday nights. You and Gary Lineker . It twinged now, the leg, at the memory.

Cordon was in a side room at the end of the ward, a window looking out on to a phalanx of tall firs, their branches bright from the recent rain.

A drip had recently been detached, the stand still close alongside the bed. Bandages around the head, traversing the corner of one swollen eye, stitches threading their way across bruised skin.

The rest of his face was bloodless, pale.

In the way that people in hospital frequently did, he looked to have aged ten years at least.

‘Took your fucking time,’ Cordon said.

‘Few things to arrange. Came when I could.’

‘Good of you to bother.’

‘Call I got, made out you were at death’s door. ‘Stead of a few bumps and bruises. Couple of cracked ribs. Might not’ve hurried if I’d known.’

‘Bastards must’ve put the boot in when I was out.’

‘Lucky it was nothing worse.’

Cordon knew it to be true: he could have lost an eye; he could have been dead.

‘Want to tell me what happened?’ Kiley moved a book, sat on the side of the bed.

‘What’s to tell? Whoever it was got somehow into the house, a window at the back somewhere, I don’t know. Suckered me. Left me unconscious. When I came round, Letitia and Danny had gone. Car disabled, something with the carburetter, I don’t know, tyres fucked. After God knows how long I managed to crawl as far as the lane, rouse the old man. Must have passed out again after that. Woke up here. Tubes sticking out of me like some bloody porcupine. Someone from the local gendarmerie waiting at the end of the bed.’

‘How much d’you get away with telling them?’