John Harvey - Good Bait

‘Between my French and his English, not a great deal. Attempted burglary, that’s what I said. Woke and caught them in the act, got this for my troubles. Too dark, too quick to be able to give a description. Left it at that.’

‘You didn’t mention Letitia? The boy?’

Cordon shook his head.

‘How about Kosach? Anton?’

He shook his head again. Not a good idea. Winced at the pain.

‘Down to him though, you reckon?’

‘Difficult to see what else.’

‘And you think that’s where they are now? With him?’

‘Good bet, I’d say.’

‘He can’t just keep them prisoner.’

‘He can try.’

A nurse stepped into the space, hovered, went away. The low hum from the central heating continued, unabated. Outside, the rain had started up again, buffeting the windows.

‘When this happened,’ Kiley said, ‘there was no warning?’

‘No.’

‘I’m surprised they got the drop on you, all the same.’

‘Preoccupied,’ Cordon said. ‘A little preoccupied.’

Kiley read the look in Cordon’s good eye. Made the universal sign. ‘Thought it wasn’t like that between you?’

‘It’s not.’

‘What was this then? A one-off? Pair of you got carried away? Or just a little something to alleviate the boredom?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Not to me. But it might make it tougher for her with Anton, if he knows she’s been screwing around.’

‘I wouldn’t exactly call it that. Besides, he knows she’s no angel. And Danny’s what he wants, not Letitia.’

‘In that case, why not just take the boy?’

‘Would have been difficult, bringing him out of France, back into the country on his own. All that much easier if Letitia agrees to play along.’

‘She’d do that?’

‘Pragmatic, that’s Letitia. Besides, I can’t see she’d’ve had a lot of choice.’

Kiley walked across to the window and looked out. The sky, shadings of deep purple and the occasional yellowish streak, was a similar colour to the skin round Cordon’s left eye.

‘You know,’ Kiley said, ‘I came to Brittany once when I was a kid. First time ever in France. Cycling holiday with the school. Some kind of exchange. First night a bunch of us shook off the teachers, went into town. First one cafe, then the next. One after another, pointing at the bottles behind the bar. Spending what little bit of money we had fast as we could. Sick, sick, sick as a dog. After that there was a curfew. Local police on duty to keep the stupid Anglais from causing any more commotion, getting drunk. Couldn’t have been much more than sixteen stupid years old.’

He smiled. ‘Met my first girlfriend on that trip, too. Pen pal more or less till I left school.’

‘Thinking of looking her up?’ Cordon asked caustically.

‘I did once. What? Dozen years ago? On holiday with a couple of friends. She was still living in the same place, little village outside Vannes, out near the Atlantic coast. Mistake. Five kids, moustache, wide as a house.’

‘What did you expect?’

‘I don’t know. Things like that, they nag at you.’

‘What kind of things?’

‘Oh, missed chances. Roads not taken. Relationships allowed to drift. Always that nagging question, what if, what if?’

‘French air, is it?’ Cordon asked. ‘Bringing out all this philosophy?’

‘I dare say.’

‘’Cause if it is, sooner you get back across the Channel the better it’ll be.’

‘Had a word with the doctor on the way in. Four or five days it’ll be before you’re discharged. That, at least.’

‘Nothing to say I can’t discharge myself,’ Cordon said. But, as he moved, some unspecified pain speared through him and he gasped loudly, hands gripping the sheets.

‘When I come back later,’ Kiley said, ‘I’ll bring grapes. A deck of cards. See if I can’t win some money off you while you’re disabled.’

The Volvo had been found in a scrap dealer’s yard outside Erith, close to the Thames Estuary at Crayford Ness. The same Volvo that had been stolen from the Westfield Shopping Centre in Shepherd’s Bush — 4,500 parking spaces, valet parking available, a lot of cars from which to choose — and then shown up on CCTV, tailing the leased Transit en route to Stansted and back; now with its engine removed, doors and side panels disassembled, chassis ready to be winched away. Bits and pieces for the fingerprint boys to play with. Girls, too. The result: one right index finger on the steering column, with a partial alongside; another partial, left little finger, on the fascia. Palm print on the inside of the offside door.

Where would we be, Karen thought, without computers, AFIS, DNA?

Answer: even farther behind.

The prints taken from the body of the Volvo confirmed what the dealer had already told them: the identity of the individual who’d brought it in — Stuart Dyer, just twenty-one years old and recently arrested for possession of a Class A drug with intent to supply, but then released. Two previous charges of possession of a controlled substance, one dismissed, the other for which he’d served a little juvenile time. His co-defendant in both cases was his cousin, Jamie Parsons. Parsons, who did scut work for Gordon Dooley and, because of that association, was gunned down outside the Jazz Cafe in Camden, presumed victim of an attack for which the torture and eventual murder of Valentyn Horak and his henchmen was a reprisal.

Give it time and, eventually, gradually, it all tied together.

When Ramsden, with some serious back-up, called round at the tower-block flat in Foots Cray where he lived, Dyer was sitting with his mum watching daytime TV, an ad for stairlifts screening when Ramsden came into the room. Dyer with a can of Kestrel in his hand, his mum favouring cider, both of them smoking, some kind of bull-headed mastiff growling through its slobber at their feet.

Dyer made as if to bolt, but then, reading the glint in Ramsden’s eye, thought better of it.

‘What the fuck’re you after now?’ Mrs Dyer asked.’ ‘Why’n’t you leave the boy alone?’

Jeremy Kyle appeared on screen to loud applause, doubtless about to reveal some poignant personal dilemma to the audience. Lifting the remote from the corner of the settee, Ramsden muted the volume.

‘Hey! I was fuckin’ watching that!’

The dog growled lazily, then lowered its head.

‘Sorry, Mrs Dyer. Just wanted a word with young Stuart here.’

‘Yeah, well, s’posin’ he don’t want a word with you?’

‘What’s it to be, Stuart?’ Ramsden said. ‘You want to talk here or down the station?’

‘I got a choice?’

Ramsden grinned, showing crooked teeth.

‘Just wait, yeah,’ Dyer said, ‘while I get me fuckin’ coat.’

‘Take it easy on him, yeah?’ his mum said, once he was out of the room. ‘Lot of mouth, but he’s not very bright. Easy led, know what I mean?’

Taking back the remote, she raised the volume loud.

Dyer sat uneasily, rocking the chair back on its metal legs. Grey drawstring hoodie with A amp; FITCH in white lettering down the sleeve. Tangle of dark hair. Something of a pretty-boy face, save for a cluster of whiteheads sprouting around his mouth. Half-hidden beneath his lashes, grey-green eyes.

Ramsden had asked one of the officers to fetch a Dr Pepper from the vending machine and Dyer drummed on it haphazardly with his fingers, nails bitten down.

Feigned nonchalance.

If he wasn’t already squirming inside, he was really as stupid as his mum had made out.

‘The Volvo,’ Ramsden said, ‘let’s start there.’

Nothing.

‘Come on, Stuart, don’t piss me about. The one you dumped in Erith. Snagged it from Westfield, remember? Volvo, S60, dark green. Asked for it special, did he, Arthurs? Dougie Freeman, maybe. Whoever it was, brought you in as driver. Get us a nice motor, Stuey, something with a bit of speed, comfortable. Volvo’d be handsome.’