Good Bait

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ Letitia’s greeting.

The child flinched at the anger in his mother’s voice and clung tighter, closer to tears.

Cordon said nothing.

Off to one side, Clifford Carlin shuffled his feet.

‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘You stupid interfering bastard.’ Pushing the boy away, she lunged at her father and raked her nails across his cheek.

‘Christ, Letitia!’

‘Stupid, stupid, stupid!’ As he turned from her, she pummelled his back with her fists.

‘Mum! No, Mum, no. Don’t. Don’t.’

The boy tried to pull her away and she flung out a hand and caught him in the face and for an instant he stopped dead, as if in shock, then screamed.

‘Oh, Jesus! Now see — see what you’ve done? The pair of you?’

There was blood at the corner of her son’s mouth, starting to trickle down his chin and on to his neck.

‘See what you’ve made me fucking do?’

‘Letitia, listen …’

‘Here, sweetheart, here. It’s all right.’ Pulling a tissue from her pocket, she dabbed it at the boy’s face. ‘It’s nothing, really. Just a little cut. There, look. It’s already stopped.’ Crouching, she hugged him to her. ‘I’m sorry. Mummy’s sorry.’

The two men looked at one another and Clifford Carlin shook his head. A few moments later, without saying anything more, he left the room.

The boy was sobbing now, but quietly, face pressed against his mother’s chest.

‘Letitia …’

‘I told him …’ She spoke to Cordon without yet turning to look at him. ‘I told him, this stuff that’s happening, don’t say anything, not to anyone. It’ll sort itself out. Leave it be. Say anything to anyone, anyone at all, it’ll only make things worse.’

‘He was worried.’

‘Of course he was fucking worried. I’m worried. Worried sick. A sight more now you’re here.’

‘Maybe I can help.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yes, why not? Try, anyway.’

‘Try?’ She laughed. ‘Fuckin’ try?’

She stood to face him.

‘Sir Lancelot, now, is it? Knights of the Round fucking Table?’ She shook her head. ‘Okay, here we are, me and the kid, in need of rescue maybe and what do we get?’ She laughed, ragged and deep. ‘That bloke with a broken lance on some old nag. I saw a film about him once. That’s you, Cordon, about as much use as a tit in a trance.’

Cordon drew a slow breath and continued to stand where he was, the boy peeking out at him from behind his mother’s arm, only looking away when Cordon smiled.

Later.

They were sitting side by side on the stairs, the middle landing. It had seemed as good a place as anywhere. Clifford Carlin had gone in to open up his shop and left them to it.

Cordon sat with a mostly empty can of Carlsberg wedged between his feet; Letitia was drinking vodka and Coke, not the first.

She was still wearing one of her father’s old sweaters, faded jeans, feet bare, chipped polish on the toes. She’d pulled her hair away from her face and wiped most of the tiredness from around her eyes. The child was in one of the rooms above them, sleeping, thumb in his mouth, making occasional sucking sounds, a plastic stegosaurus tight in his other hand.

She’d cuddled him close earlier, the pair of them loving, silent; something inside Cordon’s gut had twisted like fish caught on a hook.

‘Your son,’ Cordon said quietly. ‘I don’t even know his name.’

‘Danya.’

‘Danya?’

‘Ukrainian. Means gift of God. Some fucking joke.’

‘And that’s what you call him?’

‘What his father calls him. I call him Da

‘His father?’

‘Anton.’

‘Also from Ukraine?’

‘Oh, yes. From Odessa. Yellow and blue blood in his veins.’ She brought the glass to her mouth, a swallow rather than a sip. ‘Anton Oleksander Kosach. Oldest of five brothers. Anton, Taras, Bogdah, Parlo, Symon. Parlo and Symon are twins. Bogdah, the third eldest, he’s still in the Ukraine.’

‘The rest are here?’

‘Most of the time, yes. Anton’s here legally. Taras, too, maybe. The others, I’m not so sure.’

‘And he wants you to come home. Anton. The pair of you. That’s what all this is about? The phone calls, whatever. That’s what he wants?’

‘Da

‘But he wants you to go back, right? To wherever. You and Da

‘His son, he goes on and on about his son. As if I’ve stolen him away. As if I’ve no intention of ever going back.’

‘And have you?’

A pause. Letitia fiddling with her hair. ‘I don’t know.’

‘So he’s right?’

‘No, he’s not fucking right.’

‘But if you’ve left him …’

‘I told you, I just don’t know. I don’t know, okay?’

‘So what is this?’

‘This?’

‘You and Da

‘The funeral, my mum’s funeral — Da

‘He knew this? Anton, he knew?’

‘Sort of, yeah.’

‘And that was okay?’

‘Okay? Okay with Anton is he’s got you practically under lock an’ key, knows where you are every minute of the fuckin’ day. Him or his bloody brothers. Only wanted two of ’em to come down all the way to fuckin’ Cornwall with me, didn’t he? Parlo and Symon. I told him, I don’t want no Ukrainian bloody gangsters hangin’ round my mum’s funeral.’

‘Is that what they are then? Gangsters? Some kind of Soviet Mafia?’

She shot him a look, then turned her face away.

Anton, Letitia had told him earlier, had called her mobile when she and the boy hadn’t arrived back as expected, called and texted; threatened her, threatened her father, issued ultimatums. Forty-eight hours more. Then he would send someone to bring them back. She had already seen cars passing slowly along the street outside; glimpsed a face she thought she recognised.

Not enough to be sure.

Cordon straightened, stretched his arms. The edge of the step above was sticking uncomfortably into the small of his back.

‘We have to keep sitting on the stairs?’

‘No one’s forcing you to sit anywhere.’

‘For God’s sake …’

‘What?’

‘Why does everything with you have to be so bloody difficult?’

‘Because it is.’

He shook his head. There was a cry from above them, muffled, Da

While she was settling him, Cordon went downstairs. Tipping what remained of his lager down the sink, he set the kettle to boil and started opening cupboards. There was a jar of instant coffee, untroubled for some time, the granules set in a stiff rind that resisted the first taps with a spoon.

‘Decent stuff he keeps in the fridge,’ Letitia said from the doorway. ‘And there’s one of those filter things somewhere. Try the sink.’

Cordon switched on the radio as he waited for the coffee to drip slowly through. The middle of a news broadcast. The economy. Ethnic clashes in Uzbekistan. Afghanistan. Still Afghanistan. When had it all started, the first Anglo-Afghan war? Eighteen thirty-fucking-nine! Wars without fucking end. It made him angry in a way he didn’t quite understand. It all seemed so far away, another world. But then, even his own life in Cornwall seemed distant now, something seen through bottled glass, a blur. And this — threats of violence, Ukrainian gangsters, recrimination perhaps the world, the real world, was coming to him?

He found Letitia at the back of the house, smoking a cigarette. The sky above was muddy grey. Beyond the garden end the land rose up towards the cliff top and, on the far side, the sea. Dragging over two plastic chairs, he set the mugs of coffee down on uneven ground.

Letitia was staring off into the middle distance, shapeless in those shapeless clothes, scarcely any make-up on her face, no longer young. Despite everything, Cordon thought, she had some desperate kind of beauty. Beyond looking. Some steeliness; resilience, despite everything.