John Harvey - Good Bait

‘But you knew, when you came round. Waited.’

‘What I wanted, yes. At least, I thought I did.’ She stroked Karen’s arm. ‘I wasn’t at all sure about you.’

Karen covered her face with her hands.

‘Regrets?’ Alex said.

‘No. Yes. Yes, a million of them, probably. But no. Not really. Not at all.’

‘Come out together after breakfast then, shall we? You know, an announcement. Facebook. Twitter.’

Karen had to look at her carefully to be sure she was joking.

‘Can you imagine …?’

‘All too easily.’

It was still dark outside and would be for a good couple of hours.

‘Roger,’ Karen said. ‘What if …’

‘Roger’s in Whitby, remember?’

‘Yes, but does he …?’

‘Know sometimes I swing the other way?’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

Alex smiled. ‘What he doesn’t know, can’t hurt him.’

‘You believe that?’

‘Maybe I have to.’ She lifted her tea. ‘When I’ve finished this, I’ll go. Maybe a quick shower.’

‘Breakfast? There’d be time.’

‘No, it’s fine.’

‘Toast? There’s toast. Could be.’

‘Okay, toast it is.’

Toast with marmalade; with the last few scrapings of Marmite; with raspberry jam. Uncertain in the kitchen, doing her best to ignore the alcohol ache in her head, Karen made coffee as she listened to the throw of water in the shower.

Alex emerged looking fresh, still towelling her hair. Karen pulled back the curtain and they sat at the table in the shallow bay, looking out across the empty street.

‘Burcher,’ Alex said suddenly. ‘Has he ever said anything to you about a Paul Milescu?’

‘You mean Ion’s father? Ion, the friend of the Andronic boy?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why d’you ask?’

‘That last meeting. You remember Burcher asked me to stay behind? A private word.’

Karen nodded.

‘It’s Milescu he was asking about. Were we investigating him? If so, at what level? What reason? Did we think there was any link with Kosach? Anton Kosach. Anyone else we’d been discussing?’

‘He give a reason?’

‘Not really. Name had cropped up, something vague like that.’

‘That’s interesting,’ Karen said, leaning forward. ‘Quite early on in all this, way back before Camden or Stansted, when it was just an investigation into the Andronic murder, I’d been out to talk to Ion Milescu and Burcher came looking for me — no two ways about it — stopped me on the way home. Quizzed me about the boy’s involvement. Claimed his father had been making waves, calling in favours. Friends in high places, that’s what he said. After that, I did a little checking, spoke to Tom Brewer in Economic and Specialist Crime. Worst he could come up with, Milescu had maybe sailed close to the wind a few times, but no more no less than anyone else.’

Alex took a quick glance at her watch. ‘Well, Burcher, Milescu, something’s going on somewhere.’ She took a last swig of coffee and got to her feet.

‘That morning in December. When you were called out to the ponds, early. How long did it take Burcher to arrive?’

Karen thought, shrugged. ‘No time at all. In the area that night, he said, staying with friends.’

‘Paul Milescu’s address,’ Alex said. ‘New End Square, Hampstead. Might be nothing to it, but maybe the friends in high places include Burcher himself.’

Cordon’s first instinct after seeing Letitia had been to retreat back down to Cornwall and put as much distance between them as he could. Finito. An end to it, as he’d said. Case closed. Except there had never been a case, not in any orthodox sense of the word. And who was he to investigate it if there were?

A woman whose life had ended beneath a train — by accident or design he still didn’t know and likely never would. Another who had disappeared. Except not really, other than by her own choice. Put herself in harm’s way. And here he had come, clumsy, slow witted, shielding his eyes when they should have been open. Floundering without jurisdiction; without direction. Whatever he had allowed himself — driven himself — to be drawn into involving Letitia was something he had never properly understood. Some private battle between herself and her husband, if that’s what he truly was, in which he’d been little more than a pawn.

What, after all, had he done? Achieved? Beyond rescuing someone who, in the end, only wanted to be found?

Still he didn’t go.

Sat morosely around Jack Kiley’s flat, talking very little or not at all. Spent a few long, slow afternoons in sad boozers in the back streets of Kentish Town, awash with self-pity and bad beer.

‘Come on,’ Kiley said, one early evening as the light was fading. ‘I’ve got just the thing.’

They took the overground from Gospel Oak to Leyton Midland Road and joined the crowd on its way along the high street to the floodlights of Brisbane Road. Orient versus Dagenham and Redbridge, a local derby of a kind. Raucous shouts and laughter. Stalls selling burgers, sausage and bacon rolls: the sweet scent of frying onions rising up into the evening mist.

They took their seats high in the main stand just as the teams were announced, prior to running out on to the pitch. Years since Kiley had stood in the tunnel waiting, nights like this, his stomach still knotted with the anticipation, sweat, cold, seeping into the palms of his hands.

Then, there they were, the crowd on its feet, both sets of supporters chanting, applauding; the players jumping, stretching, easing tight muscles, moving into position, eager for the whistle that would break the tension.

At least, Kiley could watch now without kicking every ball, feeling every tackle, rising up to meet every cross with his head. Alongside him, Cordon was being drawn more and more into the action, putting in his share of oohing and aahing as the play moved swiftly from end to end, shots missed, shots saved, the referee coming in for the usual amount of stick, offsides wrongly signalled, penalties not given.

At half-time it was one apiece, the home team shading it but not by much. Still level then, and not through want of trying, less than quarter of an hour to go.

‘They’ll do it,’ Kiley said, ‘you see if they don’t.’

On the eighty-seventh minute, Charlie Daniels ran on to a punt upfield, turned the defender and raced towards the line; swung his foot and sent the ball hard and low across the face of goal and the striker, diving forward, headed it past the sprawling goalie into the net.

Pandemonium.

Game over.

They were waiting for them when they returned. Two men parked back along the road, between the burned-out supermarket and the school. The man from SOCA in his insurance-agent threads who’d quizzed Kiley before, together with a second, burly in leather jacket and jeans, his minder perhaps, in case things got out of hand.

‘Not a coincidence,’ Kiley said, ‘meeting again like this.’

‘Afraid not.’

‘And I suppose you’ll want to talk inside?’

‘If that’s acceptable to you.’

Acceptable, Kiley thought, would be if they went their merry way; if he had never let Cordon talk him into getting involved.

He could sense the big man watching Cordon on the stairs, as if he might be about to make a break for it, take to his heels.

‘Charlie Frost,’ the man from SOCA said, once they were in the room. His companion remained unnamed.

There were enough chairs, just, for them all to sit. Kiley’s hospitality began and ended there.

‘When we spoke before about your interest in Anton Kosach,’ Frost said, addressing Kiley, ‘what you told me, not to put too fine a point on it, was a pack of lies.’