John Harvey - Good Bait

All day now, all through the evening, the scenes which showed Wallander trying with some desperation to bridge the gulf between himself and his grown-up daughter — trying and failing — she had fought to keep her own father at bay. His birthday — late January — little more than a week away. Seventy-three. Seventy-three he would have been had he lived. The car outside, headlights burning, pulled slowly away from the kerb and passed from sight. He had been running, her father, across the street towards where a group of teenage boys was hassling a single, frightened girl. The boys white, the girl light-skinned, mixed race. Jostling, pushing, grabbing, calling names. The girl, her face besmirched with tears, stumbling to her knees and Karen’s father, with a roar of righteous anger, rushing out towards her, towards the surrounding youths, unable, in his haste, to see or hear the van that swung, at that moment, around and into the road, accelerating hard.

Her father’s body, as she had never seen it, other than in her imagination, lifted — hurled — into the startled emptiness of the night air, only to fall, broken, torn, by the pavement’s edge.

Three days in hospital he lived on, unconscious, sustained by drips and tubes and prayer. Her mother scarcely left his bedside till there was only prayer left and then he died.

Karen came and went, just thirteen and unable to withstand the pain.

Her father dead, her mother had gone back to Jamaica. Unlike her sister, Lynette, who had agreed to go, only to return three years later, Karen had dug in her heels, refused. Not wanting to leave her school, her friends. Already close, her aunt and uncle agreed to take her in. Now, they too, distressed by a city that was no longer, in their eyes, the same place where they had chosen to live most of their adult lives, were back in Spanish Town, retired, resigned.

Karen pulled the curtains closed.

Her father’s face flickered like a passing light, then disappeared.

‘Cry, Baby, Cry’ and then ‘Good Night’, from Ramsey Lewis’s version of the Beatles’ White Album , piano and strings, accompanied Karen as she removed her make-up and undressed for bed. After just three pages, the book she was reading slipped from her hands and she was asleep.

Morning. Cold. Overcast. Upper Street and St Paul’s Road at a standstill, cars stacked up in both directions. Karen’s mobile rang just as she reached the counter in Caffe Nero. Juggling coins and loyalty card, she flipped open the phone as she gave her order.

‘Sorry,’ said the voice in her ear, ‘no lattes here. Must be a wrong number.’ The suggestion of a Midlands accent. Wolverhampton, West Bromwich. She guessed the man from Telecommunications Intel.

‘You’ve got something for me?’

‘Sugar? A sprinkling of chocolate?’

‘Information?’

‘A brand new SIM card, only five calls. Three to a Lesley Tabor, that’s Lesley with an E-Y, T-Mobile. Other two to an Orange phone registered to an Ion Milescu — I-O-N, Ion — Milescu, M-I–L-E-S-C-U. All the details in an email. On its way.’

‘Thanks. I owe you.’

‘Double espresso. Two sugars.’

‘Deal.’

By the time both addresses had been traced and verified, Mike Ramsden was on his way to Wood Green to check out a possible break in the investigation into the Derroll Palmer murder. A fresh poster campaign and some door-to-door leafleting had jogged the memory of a night cleaner who’d been making her way into work when the stabbing had occurred and she’d contacted her local station. Now it was a question of teasing out the details of what the woman had seen and heard, Ramsden only too aware of the need to proceed with caution. Push too hard and the danger is the witness becomes confused — either that or gives the answers he or she feels are wanted, only to falter later under crossexamination.

Karen picked up the phone. ‘Tim, a minute?’

He was wearing a loose-fitting casual jacket over a muddy green V-necked T-shirt, slim-line black trousers and blue-black suede shoes with a rubber sole.

Karen allowed herself a smile. Elvis and the Beatles in one.

‘Fancy a break from arms and ammo?’

‘Please.’

She brought him up to speed.

‘As far as we know, these were the last people he spoke to before he was killed. Just in case they know one another, I want them seen as close to the same time as possible. Less chance of either of them contacting the other. Concocting stories. Okay?’

Costello nodded.

‘I thought you could take the girl.’

Which meant Costello heading south across the river to a large comprehensive in Catford. Alien territory though he didn’t intend it to show.

Behind a fascia of bare, stunted trees and tall railings, its main buildings a fortress of darkening brutalist concrete, the school, Costello thought, had all the welcoming aura of a Soviet labour camp from the last century. Even the first fractures of grey sky, a timid leavening of blue, didn’t do a lot to help.

The youth who met Costello at the gate was chirpy enough, however, if a little disappointed not to find an officer in uniform.

‘You sure you’re police?’

‘Sure.’

‘You don’t look like no police.’

Costello was quietly pleased.

‘So what?’ the youth asked. ‘You here to nick someone, or is gonna be another of them lectures on drugs and gangs and knives an’ keepin’ off cheap cider?’

The deputy head, uncertain whether to shake Costello’s hand or not, settled for some vague arm flapping and a sideways nod of the head and ushered him along to what looked to have formerly been an office, but was now a depository for some outmoded filing equipment and a convocation of broken chairs.

‘You’ll be able to talk quietly in here.’

He left the door ajar and reappeared a few minutes later with the sixteen-year-old Lesley Tabor at his side.

‘All right, Lesley …’

The door closed.

Costello smiled.

‘Lesley, I’m Detective Sergeant Costello. Tim.’

No reply. Slouch shouldered, mousy haired, a school uniform of white blouse, navy jumper, navy skirt, grey tights, the girl stared determinedly at the scuffed tops of her shoes.

‘Lesley?’

Her face angled up an inch.

‘You’re not in any trouble, you realise that, don’t you? This is not about anything you might have done. Okay?’

Another inch, a first sight of pale eyes.

‘I just need to ask a few questions, that’s all. A few quick questions, then I’m out of here. Never to be seen again.’ He lowered his face, swiftly, towards hers. ‘Think you’ll miss me? When I’m gone?’

She looked at him then. Miss him? What was he on?

He winked, face creasing into a grin.

‘What say we get out of here? Go for a walk in the palatial grounds? Take in some of that winter sun?’

‘We can’t …’

‘Come on …’ Reaching past her for the door. ‘What are they going to do? Arrest us?’

There were indeed a few vestiges of sun, just visible above the turrets of a tower block to the east. Sweet papers and food wrappings from break were scattered here and there on the ground around their feet where they slowly walked. Faces, curious, appeared at windows and then were called rapidly away, back to the pleasures of citizenship or ICT, considerations of the opposite angle to the hypotenuse or the importance of the slave trade to the rise of capitalism.

‘What are you missing?’ Costello asked.

She didn’t immediately seem to understand.

‘What lesson?’

‘Oh, history.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘S’all right, it’s boring.’

History, how could it be? Wars, alliances, betrayals, dates, the movements of great powers, Costello had loved it.