Текст книги "Good Bait"

Автор книги: John Harvey

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

29

Afternoon turned evening. The temperature dropped, reminding them it was winter still. Clifford Carlin went into town for fish and chips and brought them back wrapped in pages from the local paper.

St Leonards man narrowly escapes being first in Britain to die of snake bite since 1975.

Petula Clark president of Hastings Music Festival.

Carlin hadn’t known she was still alive.

He decanted the food on to plates, offered salt, vinegar, tomato sauce. Buttered bread. Poured mugs of tea. Even lukewarm, the chips retained some bite, the cod flakey inside its batter and pearly white. Danny ate with his fingers, despite his mother’s attempts to get him to use a fork.

Before they’d finished eating, Carlin went over to the record player and slipped a nearby album from its sleeve. Jazzy piano, smooth voice, banks of strings.

‘Christ,’ Letitia said, ‘can’t we get through just one meal without you making us listen to that old junk?’

‘Charlie Rich,’ Carlin said, unrepentant. ‘The original Silver Fox.’

‘You don’t fuckin’ say.’

‘Mum,’ Danny piped up, ‘you said a naughty word.’

‘Just shut it and eat your chips.’

Cordon excused himself, went out into the garden to make his call. Kiley’s voice, when he answered, was slightly breathless, as if he’d been hurrying up several flights of stairs.

‘Jack,’ Cordon said, ‘I need a favour.’

‘Not going to turf me out of my bed again, are you?’

‘No, not that.’

‘Where are you now, anyway? Back down in Cornwall?’

‘Hastings.’

‘I thought that was over.’

‘Yes, well …’

‘Okay, out with it. What do you want?’

‘These famous connections of yours. You don’t know anyone in – I’m not sure what it’d be – Serious and Organised Crime, maybe? Someone involved in keeping tabs on criminals from Eastern Europe operating over here.’

Kiley gave it a moment’s thought. ‘I might have, why?’

‘I need someone to check a name for me.’

‘That’s all?’

‘For now.’

‘Let’s have it, then.’

‘Kosach. Anton Oleksander Kosach.’

‘Say it again slowly.’

Cordon did. Kiley wrote it down.

‘Russian?’ Kiley asked.

‘Ukrainian.’

‘Okay, leave it with me. I’ll get back to you soon as I can.’

‘I owe you one, Jack.’

‘A pint or two when I see you.’

‘Done.’

Cordon heard the click of a lighter and saw Letitia in the doorway, watching.

‘Girlfriend?’

‘Work.’

‘This time of night?’

‘Just checking in. Making sure the neighbourhood’s being properly policed in my absence.’

‘And is it?’

‘Even the seagulls behaving themselves.’

Letitia nodded and went back inside.

Cordon decided on a walk around the block, a couple of blocks; before he knew it, almost, he was down at the sea road, the shore. Fishermen here and there on the shingle: standing, some of them, feet firmly planted, legs splayed; others seated on small canvas chairs, two or three lines each. One of them whistling quietly to himself. The wink and blur of cigarettes.

He tugged the collar of his jacket up against the wind, felt the round hardness of pebbles beneath his feet. Anton and Letitia. Letitia and Anton. He’d known couples where the woman had left and taken the children with her; just threatening to leave, sometimes that was enough. Some men threw up their arms and said good riddance, some cried; some, a few, arranged to meet on neutral territory, talked it all through, who and how to share, who to pay. And then there were others. Men for whom leaving was a direct assault, a challenge to their power, what they saw as their rights, their self-esteem.

Leave me, they said, and I’ll take the kids, strap them in the car and drive us all off the cliff edge into the sea. Leave me and I’ll kill myself, I swear it. Let you live with that on your conscience the rest of your lousy life.

One man he knew, a trawler owner out of Newlyn, when his wife left him, painted her name in letters a metre high on walls up and down the town, the name and the word WHORE in brightest red alongside. And when she came back six months later, penitent, ashamed, begging forgiveness, he beat her within an inch of her life and threw her out again.

He’ll kill me, Letitia had said. Have me killed.

Cordon could see the lights from the amusement arcades along the front, the distorted sounds of Chicory Tip from the early seventies. ‘Son of My Father’.

Time to be heading back.

Danny was long in bed, fast off; Carlin had disappeared up to his room. Letitia was sitting, curled up, at one end of the settee, a bottle of wine on the small table close by, a glass in her hand. The television was switched on, the sound low, some programme about old England by the look of things, church spires, market halls, baptismal fonts, an earnest young man gesturing enthusiastically as he mugged for the camera.

‘Thought you’d sodded off,’ Letitia said. ‘Done a runner.’

‘Sorry to disappoint.’

‘Here,’ she slid the bottle towards him. ‘Get yourself a glass, have a drink.’

He did as he was told.

She tucked her feet up tighter beneath her. ‘Have a seat.’

‘You watching this?’ Cordon asked, pointing at the set.

‘Not so’s you’d notice.’

Cordon switched it off with the remote; sat at the opposite end of the settee, legs crossed at the ankle. Letitia had replaced her father’s old sweater with something of her own, softer, closer fitting, a skirt instead of blue jeans. Let down her hair.

‘You’ve not heard anything?’ Cordon asked. ‘Anton, no calls?’

A shake of the head.

‘Maybe he’s calmed down, seen sense.’

‘Yeah. An’ pigs can fly.’

The curtains had been pulled most of the way across, leaving space enough for the lights of the odd passing car to shimmer through. Quiet enough to hear the occasional cat cry, the footsteps of someone out walking their dog. Cordon thought he could hear, lifted on the wind, distant and indistinct, the occasional taint of music from the town, but he was never sure.

He reached down and refreshed Letitia’s glass and then his own.

‘Anton,’ he said. ‘You want to tell me about him?’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know. Anything. You and him, for instance.’

‘What? Our romance? How true love found Letitia at last? Rich Ukrainian sweeps her off her feet like Cinder-fucking-rella.’

‘If you like.’

‘Fuck off, Cordon.’

Cordon shrugged, took another drink.

‘You want to know the truth?’ she said.

He shrugged. ‘Up to you.’

‘The truth is this, this story, I’m the Ugly Sister, right? Running some knocking shop in Streatham. Nursemaid and matron to scabby little whores from every godforsaken bit of Eastern Europe, selling their skinny arses to send money back home an’ pay off what they owe. Forever bitching and bloody complaining. Not that I blame them.

‘Anyway, one night there’s this big party. Anton’s there, guest of honour, fifty-pound notes spilling out of his pockets like bloody Kleenex, everyone kowtowing to him like he’s something special. Coke. Champagne. Enough pills to start a fucking Salsa band. The girls putting on some kind of lezzy sex show. Anton, he’s got the pick of the crop, and fuck if he don’t choose me. “What I want’s a real woman,” he says. “Not some kid, doesn’t know what it’s all about.” Crap like that. As if I’ve got any choice. So, anyway, I show him, don’t I? Not a lot to lose. Wants to see what a real woman can do, why not?’

She grinned, remembering, enjoying the discomfort on Cordon’s face.

‘Only sent for me again after that, didn’t he? Couple of nights later. Bloody great limousine. Roses in his hotel room. Coke laid out on the pillow like them little chocolates the maid leaves, hoping for a tip. More fucking champagne. Wants me to blow him in front of the mirror while he pretends to slap me around. No pain, no gain, right?’

A quick glance at Cordon to see how he’d take that, make sure he was paying close enough attention.

‘After all that palaver, instead of chucking me out he says he wants me to go and work for him. Reckons he can trust me. This place in Feltham, out near the airport, that’s where it was first. Hostel. Sort of. Finsbury Park came after. Asylum seekers, that’s what it was, mostly. Little more than kids, some of them. A lot of them. They’d stay there a few weeks, month maybe, then move on.’

‘Move on where?’

‘I don’t know.’

Cordon looked at her until she looked away.

‘Move on where?’

‘I don’t know. Wherever he wanted them. Could be anything. Anywhere. Anything he had a hand in. Him and his brothers, the guys they used to hang around with. Pizza parlours, that’s where a lot of ’em went, this chain of pizza parlours, all across the fuckin’ Midlands. Working twelve-hour fuckin’ shifts. Some, they went off to cannabis factories, worked there, least that’s what I heard. Never knew for sure.’

‘And brothels? Massage parlours? How about those? Like the one in Streatham.’

‘Maybe.’

‘And that was okay?’

‘Okay? How d’you mean?’

‘Helping pimp these people – kids, isn’t that what you said? Little more than kids. Pimping them into prostitution.’

‘Christ, Cordon! Listen to yourself, will you? When did you take holy fucking orders?’ She brought her glass down hard against wood and the wine splashed up over her hand. ‘Let me tell you about those girls, yeah? Over here from Bela-bloody-Rus or somewhere, illegal, broke, barely speak half a dozen words of the fucking language, it’s either lay back and spread your legs or get sent home and freeze your arse off on some autobahn, looking to suck off lorry drivers for the price of a salami and a loaf of bread.’

Cordon was slowly shaking his head. ‘Social Services, then, that’s what it was? What you were doing? Picking up the slack from the local council. Part of what’s his face’s Big Society?’

‘Sod off, Cordon, you sarcastic bastard.’

‘Yes, right, fine.’

He got as far as the window, lifting back the curtain to look out. The street lamp nearest to the house was no longer working. Lights were still showing faintly, here and there along the street; the darkened silhouettes of parked cars. Then, deep in the shadows, a movement. Cordon tensed, uncertain. Someone local, she’d said, a possibility, someone he’d used before.

He looked again: there was nothing.

His imagination.

The boy whimpered in his sleep and as Cordon turned, Letitia got to her feet.

No further sound, she sat back down.

‘Danny,’ Cordon said, with a glance towards the stairs. ‘You and Anton, having a child together, that seems like something serious.’

Letitia reached for her cigarettes.

‘Once I was there, working, Feltham, things running smoothly, I didn’t see him for weeks at a time. One of his brothers, sometimes; Parlo usually. Checking up. Then, when he did come by, Anton, sometimes he’d ignore me, part of the furniture, sometimes not.’

Smoke lingered at the corners of her mouth.

‘One of those times, I got careless.’ She smiled a rueful smile. ‘Got myself knocked up. Okay, I thought, stupid cow. Termination. Not the first time, likely not the last. Made the mistake of saying something and it got back to him. And, course, when he learns it’s a boy, he’s bloody beside himself. Next thing you know he’s waving flowers, making promises, threatening what he’ll do if I abort his child. Sets me up in a flat he’s got in Pimlico and insists on this gynaecologist with umpteen letters after his name and fingers like spiders. Soon as Danny’s born and we’re out of hospital, he takes us into this place of his outside London. Down in Surrey. Like a bloody mansion, i’n it? Swimming pool, Jacuzzis, the whole bit. Woods all around.’

She set down her cigarette, sipped some wine.

‘So there we are, we’re living together, right? Two, three months it’s like fucking paradise. Then he starts getting bored, you can tell. Bored with me, bored with the kid. Half the time now he’s not there, and when he does come home, four in the fucking morning, I can smell these other women all over him. First I tell myself I don’t care, but then I realise all I am’s a fucking nursemaid and housekeeper, so I try and have it out with him and he loses it, each time I try and talk to him about it, he loses it …’

‘He hits you.’

‘He loses it and wants to throw me out, but there’s Danny, and by this time he’s crawling around, bumping into things, breaking things. In the end he suggests I go and look after this place in Finsbury Park, take Danny with me till he can go to nursery. For a time, this is fine. Finsbury Park’s a dump, the house is filthy, falling apart. But at least it’s calmer. Anton’s – well, Anton’s being really nice again. Charming.

‘Then things start to go wrong. I don’t know the ins and outs, so don’t ask, never did. Some kind of dispute, that’s all I know. Business. Anton and me, we have this furious row. So bad, I’m frightened – for the first time, truly frightened. I lost it, totally lost it and did a runner, an’ he sent some of his people after me. Dragged me back.’

She looked away.

‘What happened then weren’t pretty. And then, a few days later, it’s all calmed down again. But tense. Something’s changed. Happened. Not with us. Outside. I don’t know what. But it’s like he’s expecting trouble. Take Danny and keep him safe, he tells me, out of the way. His brother, Taras, he’s bought this hotel in the Lakes, some kind of investment. Go up there for a bit, he says, help Taras, lay low till this trouble gets sorted.’ A lazy shrug of the shoulders. ‘You know the rest.’

When the phone went, they both jumped.

Letitia picked it up.

No trace of an accent, the voice was English, harsh and clear.

‘Off the road that goes north out of the town through St Helen’s. There’s a caravan site on your right, this side of the railway tunnel. Just past the edge of the woods. Tomorrow morning, be there, ten sharp. You and the boy.’

30

A few of the caravans looked as if they might be lived in year round, though signs of occupancy were few. Most stood empty, waiting for summer residents, short-term rentals, six hundred a week for a twin berth and counting. Along one side, a phalanx of empty concrete stands, weeds starting to push through, cracks appearing. Before the season there’d be a lick of paint, a few flowering shrubs, a stiff broom; the kiosk that now stood empty, partly boarded over, would be back in business, selling milk and bread, Calor gas, cereals, cheap DVDs and morning papers.

Off to one side, someone had been dismantling an old trailer, wheels and planks of splintered wood, the chassis bare and rusted over. Metal glinted for a moment in a sudden shaft of sun, bright through lowering skies.

Jack Kiley had called back first thing.

Anton Kosach was currently under investigation for his possible participation in money laundering. He was also suspected of involvement in people trafficking, prostitution and the illegal import and sale of arms. The works.

He had been targeted, questioned, never charged.

‘Nice guy,’ Kiley had remarked.

Cordon looked at his watch. Fifteen minutes shy of ten. The local east-west train disappeared into the tunnel on its way towards Warrior Square. Behind him, the trees at the wood’s edge leaned in together, tall and mostly bare. Dust kicked up as he walked and left a grey film across his shoes.

Crouching down towards the dismembered trailer, he selected a length of rusted iron and backed away towards the space between two empty caravans.

Minutes later, a car slowed and, without indicating, turned into the yard. A silver Merc with alloy wheels. No subtlety here.

Engine switched off, the driver sat for several moments before swinging his legs round and climbing out, the click of the car door behind him soft and precise. Broad shouldered, not tall, he was wearing a blue Nike zip-up jacket with loose-fitting black trousers, leather shoes. Late thirties, Cordon guessed, early forties, just starting to go to seed.

As he watched, the man double-checked his watch, lowered the zip on his jacket midway down.

Iron held down flat against his thigh, Cordon stepped into sight.

‘Who the fuck are you?’

‘Never mind.’

‘Where’s the woman? The boy?’

‘They’re not coming.’

‘They better fuckin’ be. S’posed to be here now.’

His face was flushed, cheeks swelling out.

Cordon walked towards him, taking his time. ‘You’re not listening,’ he said.

‘Don’t give me fuckin’ listening. You call ’em, get ’em here, or fuckin’ else.’

Cordon shook his head, the brittle edges of the iron biting into his hand.

Angling his head to one side, the man hawked phlegm and spat at the ground, then, as if making a decision, he arched suddenly forward, reaching round to the back of his jacket as if he might be going for a gun.

The one chance, likely the only one he was going to get, Cordon hit him with a fast swing, smack against the underside of the elbow with a crack that made him scream.

‘You bastard! You broke my fuckin’ arm.’

In for a penny, Cordon hit him again, the knee this time, and the man went down in a sprawling heap. Cordon pressed his foot down hard against the damaged leg and pulled the pistol from where it had been resting against the small of the man’s back. One click and he pocketed the magazine. The gun he hurled away as far as he could.

‘You’ll live to fuckin’ regret this.’

‘I hope you’re right.’

Cordon rested the rusted end of iron against the man’s sweated forehead, oblivious to the pain in his eyes.

‘A message for Anton …’

‘I don’t know no fucking Anton.’

‘Then whoever sent you on his behalf. Steer clear. The woman and the boy. Well clear. This isn’t the way.’

Stepping quickly round him, Cordon freed the keys from where they’d been left in the Merc and launched them in a high, steepling arc, deep into the woods.

‘Bastard!’ the man shouted. ‘You’re gonna fuckin’ pay for this. Fuckin’ pay.’

Cordon thought, one way or another, he was probably right. Walking away, breath raw, his heart hammered inside his chest. This time he’d managed it without a scratch.

31

Late afternoon. Karen was on the M1, heading north. A pool car, unmarked, no more than a couple of years old, clutch tight as an old man’s chest. The traffic travelling out of the city was already beginning to bunch and stall. When they played their second Neil Diamond track within the hour, she switched off Magic FM and, slipping an Aretha CD into place, notched up the volume just a tad.

The call had come through that morning, high-pitched, hesitant, a definite accent – South Yorkshire, somewhere close? – a young woman sounding early twenties at best. Jayne Andrew. No s. Jayne with a y. An address in Mansfield. Wayne Simon, he’d been hanging round the Four Seasons shopping centre where she worked. Where she lived, too. No doubt, no doubt at all. Used to go out with him, didn’t she? Years back. Two or three, at least, must be. She’d been into the local police station and they’d said they’d have a word with security in the centre, drive by the house where she lived, but, far as she could tell, they never had. Told her to call the police in London, so that’s what she’d done. She hoped that was okay?

‘Fine,’ Karen had assured her. ‘You did the right thing.’

Ramsden, Costello, the rest of her team were out of the office, busy; she could have sent someone junior, but somehow she fancied it herself. As long as what the woman was claiming panned out and it wasn’t just another lonely fantasist, desperate for some attention, this was the best lead they’d had. And there was the weather – earlier there’d been scarcely a cloud worth its name overhead, the sky a pale but definite blue, all the promise of a lovely, late winter day. A still-distant harbinger of spring. Just right for a drive, an hour or more alone in the car with just the stereo for company. A change is gonna come, sang Aretha, and who was to say she was wrong?

Jayne Andrew was whey faced and small boned – petite, the word – four or five months’ pregnant and just beginning to show. Hair that had once been dyed blonde hung lank past her face; grey eyes, dark lashes, surprisingly long. She was wearing a loose top, stretch pants, slippers on her feet. She squinted at the identification Karen showed her without really seeing it and invited her inside.

The block of flats where she lived looked to have been built in the seventies: flat-fronted, flat-roofed, a rectangular box of identical units with a straggle of grass out front and cream-coloured exterior walls in sore need of several fresh coats of paint. Jayne Andrew’s flat was on the upper floor, neat and small, the furniture a mixture of what Karen assumed were hand-me-downs and newer stuff from Ikea.

‘Not working today?’

She shrugged. ‘Keep cutting back, don’t they? Three days a week at the moment, that’s all there is.’ She touched the curve of her belly. ‘Not as that’ll matter much pretty soon.’

‘When’s the baby due?’

‘June. June 15th.’

‘And is this the dad?’ Karen pointed at the photograph framed above the television, a young man in military uniform, staring out.

‘That’s Ryan, yes. He’s with the Royal Engineers. A corporal.’

‘Nice-looking man. Handsome.’

Pride reflected in the younger woman’s eyes. ‘He’s in Afghanistan. Helmand.’ She pulled at a stray length of hair. ‘He’s always telling me, don’t worry, don’t worry, I’ll be fine. An’ I know he will. He’s careful, Ryan. Not like some of them – things he’s told me. But even so – you see these things on the news, you know, his family has been informed, and all them people linin’ the streets …’

She turned away to hide the prick of tears.

Karen rested a hand on her shoulder and she flinched.

‘I don’t know about you,’ Karen said, stepping back, ‘but I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea.’

‘Yes, of course. Sorry, I didn’t think …’

‘Why don’t you let me …?’

‘No, no, You sit down. Please.’

Karen stood by the window instead. A short, bow-legged dog, some kind of bulldog cross, was waddling its way across the patchy grass below. A young woman in a puffa jacket, no more than late teens, surely, went past along the other side of the street, one child strapped into a buggy, another lagging behind. Over the crowded hotchpotch of rooftops, the sky was beginning to darken, the evening soon setting in.

The tea came in bright mugs, placed carefully on coasters. ‘I didn’t know if you wanted sugar …’

‘No, thanks. This is fine.’

They sat for a moment, awkwardly, one leaning forward, the other back. Jayne Andrew avoiding Karen’s gaze. The tea, as Karen’s grandmother might have said, looked as if it lacked the strength to stand.

‘Wayne Simon, how did you know him?’

‘Before, you mean?’

‘Yes, before.’

‘That were ages back. Before I met Ryan. I was out wi’ me mates. Sat’day night, you know. Wayne was there on his own, this pub we were all in. Up here working. Construction, what he did. Started chattin’ to us, just, you know, friendly like. I thought he were nice. Not loud or rough or anything.’ She looked directly at Karen for the first time. ‘When I heard what he’s supposed to have done. His wife and kiddie. I couldn’t believe it. Just couldn’t.’

‘Back then, though, you went out with him?’

‘For a while, yes. A few months, maybe, six at most. That were all.’

‘It was serious, though?’

‘He thought it were.’

‘And you didn’t know there was somebody else? Down in London?’

‘Course not.’

Karen swallowed down a mouthful of weak tea. ‘So what happened?’

‘Nothing. Nothing really. No row or anything. Not then. Wayne went back down to London when the job he was working was over. Like all of a sudden it didn’t matter.’

‘And you were upset?’

‘Not really. Like I said, it were always more serious for him’n for me.’ She pushed her hands up across her face. ‘Only set eyes on him the once after that till now. Just the once. Fetched up here, didn’t he? Out of the blue. Bangin’ on the door. Shoutin’ all kinds of things. Filthy things, some of them. Been drinking, mind you, but all the same. I was with Ryan by then and thank God he were out, cause Ryan’d’ve killed him. Still would, if he found out what was happening.’

‘And now, he’s been what? Making a commotion? More of the same?’

‘No. That’s it. He just stands there, right up against the shop window. One minute he’s there and when I look again he’s gone. As if I’m making it up, but I’m not. Most times I’m on the till, see, close by the door and there’s only the glass between us.’ She shivered. ‘The manager, he’s complained to security but that don’t seem to make any difference ’cause the next time you look he’s back again.’

‘And he doesn’t say anything?’

‘Just the once. I hadn’t even seen him, not that day, didn’t know he was there. An’ all of a sudden he comes up behind me. “How come,” he says, “you filthy slut, you whore, you’re carryin’ another man’s baby?” Whispers it, right in my ear. I started crying, couldn’t help it. Then when I dared look round he’d gone.’

She reached out for Karen’s hand.

‘I’m frightened. Frightened he’ll do something. Hurt me. Hurt my baby.’

Karen squeezed her hand. ‘It’s okay. I had a word with the local police on the way up. Maybe they weren’t taking this as seriously as they should. I’ll go and see them in person before I leave. Suggest a panic button. The minute you see Wayne again, if he approaches you, you activate that, it’ll go right through to the station. I’ll ask for a drive-by outside here every hour through the night. And see if we can’t get someone in plain clothes in the shopping centre to help out security.’ She squeezed the small hand again. ‘Nothing will happen. He’s not going to hurt you, I promise.’

‘But if he-’

‘I promise. You’ve got my word.’

Another saying of her grandmother’s started jinking round inside her head as she stepped back out on to the street, something about promises being like pie crusts, crumbling, she thought, at the merest touch.

She was back on the motorway, heading south, headlights spindling about her, when her mobile rang and she pulled over on to the hard shoulder.

Ramsden’s voice, off-pitch, urgent. ‘On your way back down? Might want to make a detour. Stansted. Something you ought to see.’