Good Bait

Rowe shook his head. ‘If you’re looking for some other explanation, something to hang on to, maybe there’s an outside chance. But after what you’ve just seen, the evidence as it stands …’ On his feet, he offered a hand. ‘I’m sorry.’

Cordon nodded. ‘Thanks for your time.’

Rowe led him through towards the outer corridor, the stairs. ‘Tell Jack he owes me one, okay?’

13

Not expecting overmuch, Cordon sought out Letitia’s last known London address, culled from the scrap of paper Maxine had thrust into his hand. A brief walk from where she had met her death.

Rain fell, almost invisibly, from a sky of palest grey. Paving stones slick and slippery beneath his feet.

The house was midway along a residential street, all of them double fronted, once grand, now shabby, down at heel. Both upper floors of the number he was seeking had been burned out. And not too long since. Woodwork blackened, trails of sooted smoke residue clinging plume-like to the brick. Up close, you could still catch the faint smell of burned wood on the air.

A matter of days, then, he thought. Round about the time of Maxine Carlin’s death or just after.

On the raised first floor the windows had been temporarily boarded over; those in the basement partially covered by old sheeting. Bins at the front overflowed with rubbish; several charred mattresses and a broken bed frame leaned precariously against the wall. A sign had been partially removed from the glass above the front door, the faintest outline of letters still advertising some earlier existence: Bentinct Hotel. Rooms. B amp;B.

A while since it had been that, Cordon ventured.

A double line of bell pushes was attached to the side wall, faded name cards alongside, all blank. Cordon set his hand against the front door, prised up the flap to the letter-box and peered through.

‘Done a bunk, mate. Scarpered and good fuckin’ riddance. Set fire to the place before they left an’ all. Someone hadn’t nipped in quick with the alarm, whole soddin’ street’d’ve burned down.’

Cordon had spotted the man earlier — ex-boxer, ex-wrestler, scar tissue around the eyes, muscle gone to seed — his dog off the leash ahead of him, in and out of gardens, cocking its leg, rummaging in bins.

‘It was serious, then?’

‘Serious enough. Half a dozen engines round here, more, middle of the bleedin’ night, how serious d’you want?’

‘This was when?’

‘Last week, just.’

‘How about casualties? Anybody trapped inside?’

The man leaned a shade closer. ‘That’s the thing. Right up till that happens there’s people in and out all the time. Blokes, all of ‘em. Regular knocking shop, that’s what it was.’

‘A brothel, you mean?’

‘Call it what you like. Never see the same face twice. Then this happens, fire brigade, police all arrive, ‘side from cockroaches and the like, the place is empty. Someone after the insurance, either that or clearin’ out ahead of gettin’ their collars felt. Mind you, don’t take many blow jobs to get most coppers lookin’ the other way.’

‘The people who lived here? Whoever was ru

‘Why’s that then? What’s it to you?’ At the hint of aggression in the man’s voice, the dog growled and snapped and the man cursed it softly and aimed a kick at its ribs.

‘Just looking for someone. A friend. Might have worked here a while back. Letitia Carlin. Early thirties, most probably reddish hair. Could’ve been calling herself Rose.’

‘Could’ve been callin’ herself Mary bloody Magdalene for all I know. Kept ’emselves to ’emselves.’

‘You don’t recall seeing anyone like her then?’

‘Wastin’ your time, mate, sorry.’ With a hunch of the shoulders, he turned away.

Cordon stood back and watched him go. The rain continued to fall in a steady drizzle as he walked, damp seeping steadily into his shoulders and along his back.

‘So what now?’ Kiley said.

They were sitting in the Tufnell Park flat, the sounds of Mose Allison’s piano and Southern-inflected voice barely covering the stop-start of homeward-bound traffic as it made its cautious way towards Muswell Hill, Finchley Central and points north.

Kiley had thrown him a towel on his return, lent a sweater, poured a glass of Scotch and set it down close to Cordon’s right hand.

‘The father,’ Cordon said, ‘he’s supposed to run a bookshop down in Hastings. At least he did.’

‘Thinking of going down?’

‘Thinking of it.’

‘Hour or so on the train. Victoria, probably. Charing Cross? Come all this way, shame not to check it out.’

Cordon knew he was right. After leaving the house where, according to her mother, Letitia was reputed to have lived and worked, he had stopped off at the local nick and found a uniformed sergeant of around his own age who wasn’t averse to talk. There had been reports of the place being used for immoral purposes, but nothing had ever been proved. Not enough to prosecute anyone, at least, take them to court. And, yes, there was some suspicion of the fire being started deliberately, but nothing conclusive in the Fire Officer’s preliminary report. Certainly not enough to bring charges, always assuming they’d been able to untangle the maze of paperwork that surrounded the building’s actual owners. And no casualties, that was correct. Whole place seemed to have been cleared before the fire took hold.

How much better off, Cordon thought, he would have been pottering around in Newlyn, doing his level best to give community policing a good name.

‘Later,’ Kiley said, ‘there’s a pub down Kentish Town, the Oxford. Jazz upstairs some nights. Decent food in the bar. We could give it a try, if you like.’

‘Why not?’

The guitarist, over from the Continent somewhere, made noises like a scalded cat. Seated behind a kit that included five cymbals, three tom-toms and a bass drum that looked to have come from a kid’s practice set, the drummer bashed and crashed through a polyrhythmic world of his own. Only the pianist, perched high behind an electric keyboard, seemed touchingly aware of old-fashioned words like ‘melody’ or ‘tune’. Eric Dolphy was one thing, Cordon thought, some people’s idea of far out, but this was altogether something else.

Downstairs saved it. The premium guest beer was Sussex Old Ale from Harveys in Lewes, rich and dark, and both the steak and the lamb fillet were tasty and tender, nicely pink. An hour or so from closing, Kiley rang Jane and asked if she fancied joining them, which she did. Dark hair; small, neat features; a true and open laugh; hands that were rarely still, emphasising this, demonstrating that. Cordon, enjoying her company, could just see her in front of a class of kids. When she and Kiley headed off together at the end of the evening, leaving him with the key to the flat, he felt a regret he fought hard to understand.

14

It would have been her father’s birthday. A picture of him in her mind, another fixed by magnets to the fridge door. A tall black man, open-necked shirt, hair brushed back, the begi

Serious he had been. A serious man.

This country, I don’t like the way it’s goin’.

Rioting on the streets of Brixton after a black woman was shot during a police raid; more rioting on an estate in Tottenham, in the midst of which a white police officer was hacked — hacked — to death. Earlier that year, the Miners’ Strike, police and pickets in pitched battles every night on the television news. And everywhere now, it seemed, her father looked, knots of men, young men, young men black and white, on street corners, unemployed.