Good Bait

And still she dreamed.

20

Come all this way, Kiley had said, with reference to the bookshop Letitia’s father ran in Hastings, shame not to check it out. Besides, it was too long, Cordon thought, though little time enough, since he had seen the sea. The smell, catching the air from as far back as the railway station, drawing him down.

He made his way past the chippies and the pizza parlours and the petty amusement arcades, on past the signs advertising Smugglers Adventure and Underwater World to where the fishing boats, bright reds and blues and greens, sat propped on a slope of pebbles beneath the East Cliff; net houses, narrow and all-over black, stood tall, shielding them from the road.

Cordon walked between the boats, sniffing the air, listening to the squawk and call of gulls, relishing the roll of small stones beneath his feet. Letitia might even like it here, he thought, the south coast, remind her of some of the things — few enough — she missed about home. A touch closer to Penzance than Finsbury Park.

He sat.

Letitia’s face came clear to his mind. Not that last time, the last time so far, herself and Maxine dolled up to the nines, a night out on what passed for the town. This was Letitia at sixteen, just old enough, as she had put it, to be legal; Letitia the night she had let herself into the flat with the key she used when she came to walk the dog; let herself into the flat and into his bed, and Cordon, caught between fantasy and dream and recognising, just in time, the warmth and reality of bones and flesh, had pushed her out, and, stumbling to the bathroom, hand across his all-too-humanly tumescent cock, had splashed cold water in his face, and when he looked up, had seen Letitia’s face behind him in the mirror, half-mocking, half-exposed from the pain of being rejected, cast aside.

After that, between Letitia and himself, it had never been the same. And still there were times, when, unbidden, the memory returned, caught him off guard, riven between desire and shame.

He lifted a stone and weighed it in his hand before skimming it out to sea. One bounce, two, and he had turned away before it had sunk from sight.

Back beside the main road, he crossed against the traffic and headed for the centre of the old town.

The shop was tucked away between a web of narrow streets, the sign over the door in faded purple paint, Clifford Carlin, Bookseller. Antiquarian and Second-Hand.A couple of boxes stood partly blocking the entrance — Any Book 10p. Inside, books rose, floor to ceiling, up every wall; tall shelves of paperbacks, arranged by type, jutted out, maze-like, across the floor.

Taking his bearings, Cordon paused before a large selection of Westerns: Jubal Cade, Herne the Hunter, Apache, Edge. Who was that writer his father had liked to read? Louis L’Amour? They were here in their dozens. And there was somebody else, he was sure. Oakley someone, was that possible? Oakley Hall?

In the far corner, near the window, there was a children’s section with a little plastic table and chairs, crayons in old coffee tins, scraps of paper on which to draw, copies of old Beanoa

Music played from a battered beat box perched precariously atop a tower of encyclopedias. Twangy guitar, slapped bass, flailing vocals — rockabilly? Is that what this was? Cordon glanced at the red cover of the CD as he stepped past. Charlie Feathers. He was none the wiser.

Carlin — he presumed it was Carlin — was talking to a customer weighed down with plastic bags that seemed to contain all his worldly goods. Long hair pulled back off his face and tied in a pony tail, goatee beard, Carlin was wearing a faded T-shirt from the Rolling Stones tour of ’76. Late fifties he’d be, Cordon hazarded, early sixties. Ten years, or thereabouts, older than he was himself.

The customer demanding all of the proprietor’s attention, Cordon looked again at the Western shelves, and there was Oakley Hall, but out of sequence. Not Warlock— he remembered the title now — that was the one his father had read, not once but several times; there had even, Cordon thought, been a movie. This was a tall paperback, close on three hundred pages: Separations. A painting on the cover of a deep canyon, sheer cliffs leading to slate blue water.

He turned to the begi

When Mary Temple read in theAlta California that a white woman had been reported seen in an Indian village in Arizona Territory, she knew it was her sister.

So many stories, Cordon thought, fact or fiction, began with someone looking for someone else. Searching. He closed the book and carried it with him to the desk, the man with the carrier bags just leaving.

‘Two-fifty?’ Cordon queried.

‘If that’s what it says.’

‘Most of the others are less.’

‘That’s ’cause most of the others aren’t so good.’ Something sparkled, some fragment of gold, inside Carlin’s mouth when he smiled.

Cordon passed across a five-pound note and kept his hand out for the change.

‘Your daughter,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Your daughter.’

‘Who says I have a daughter?’

‘Rose. Letitia.’

Coins spilled through Carlin’s fingers. ‘You’re what? Police?’

‘More a friend.’

‘Of Letitia’s?’

Cordon nodded. ‘Down to you, that. The name. Or so she said.’

‘Suited her. Back then especially.’

‘Joy and happiness.’

‘That’s what it means.’ He shook his head. ‘Never liked Rose. Her mum’s choice, not mine.’

He broke off long enough to sell one of the Goths a book on Ancient and Medieval Necromancy.

‘You heard about her mother?’ Cordon asked. ‘About Maxine?’

Carlin nodded.

‘The reason she was in London,’ Cordon said, ‘as far as I can make out, she was looking for Letitia.’

‘Meant to come here, wasn’t she? Right after New Year. Called to say she was getting on the train. Last I heard of her. Till a couple of days back. Got a postcard. Here — I’ve got it somewhere.’ He started to rummage through one of the desk drawers. ‘Lake District somewhere. Here you are. Keswick.’

Cordon looked at a picture of artificially coloured lakes and mountains; spidery writing, kisses, a name.

‘Working in a hotel, that’s what she says.’

‘Why there?’

‘Why not? Law to herself, Letitia. Don’t seek to reason.’

‘You’re not worried then?’

‘No. I mean, I was, a bit anyway. But now I’ve heard …’ He gestured with his hands. ‘With her, that’s the way it is. Since she was knee high to a grasshopper it’s been the same. Mind of her own. Wouldn’t bend. Break, maybe, but not bend. And since she got of an age, no stopping her. Here today, gone tomorrow.’ A hasty smile. ‘Mostly the latter.’

He looked at the book in Cordon’s hand.

‘You want a bag for that or …’

‘No, thanks, you’re fine.’

‘Down for the day, is it?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Letitia phones — not as that’s likely — but if she does, who shall I say it was asking?’

Cordon fished out one of his cards and placed it on the desk.

‘Police, then. I was right.’

Cordon shrugged.

‘Police and a long way from home.’

Maybe too long, Cordon thought.

‘Enjoy the book,’ Carlin said.

‘Do my best.’

Charlie Feathers was still doing his thing as Cordon walked to the door, just hitting the closing chorus of ‘We’re Getting Closer to Being Apart’.

21

In the short space of time Cordon had been in the bookshop, the weather had changed: a cold wind buffeting along the narrow street, the first thrusts of rain. There was a pub a short way down on the opposite side, an exterior of blackened wood and brick. Cordon bought a pint of Timothy Taylor’s Landlord and took it across to a corner table, prepared to wait it out, the bookshop entrance just visible through a smear of glass. Two sups and he cracked open his book, the search for the sister, the missing girl. He was at chapter six, ‘Eureka’ — a journey downriver, shooting the rapids — when Carlin emerged and carried the boxes of sale books back inside; then, duffle bag on his shoulder, drab green waterproof still unzipped, he padlocked the door and turned away towards the interior of the town. Cordon swallowed the last mouthful of his lingering pint, used a beer mat to mark his place, and, book in hand, set out after him.