Good Bait

Cordon used a fork to turn the sausages in the pan, where they were cooking with onions, a couple of bay leaves and a scattering of fe

‘You’d make someone a lovely husband,’ Letitia said, coming back into the room. ‘Anyone ever tell you that?’

‘Not recently.’

She picked up his glass and sampled the wine. Made an approving face and poured some generously into a glass of her own.

‘You could tell Da

Some forty-five minutes later, plates that had been full were close to empty; even Da

‘Now tell me there’s apple pie,’ Letitia said.

‘Afraid not.’

‘Anything?’

‘Pears. Cheese.’

‘What kind of cheese?’

‘Goat’s.’

She put two fingers in her mouth and mimed throwing up and, laughing at this, Da

Cordon did the washing-up and Letitia, having run a bath for Da

Cordon opened a second bottle of wine.

Letitia washed her son’s hair, rinsed it, and rubbed it dry. Kissed him and tucked him up in bed. Read him story after story until his eyelids fluttered closed. Kissed him again, gently, sat watching him a while longer, then tiptoed away, angling the door quietly closed.

She was not going to lose him, no matter what.

There was a sliver of moon in the sky; faint clusters of stars. Close against the open doorway, Letitia shivered and lit a cigarette. Cordon was standing midway between the house and the barn, staring up into the sky. His father had taught him the names of all the constellations and now, though he could trace their patterns with his eyes, Orion aside, he could not have named a single one.

It didn’t matter, he told himself, why should it? But in some way he couldn’t quite explain, not knowing was letting his father down; dishonoured him; what he stood for, what he was.

‘Don’t you have a son somewhere?’ Letitia had said to him the other day. ‘South Africa, somewhere? Australia?’

He hadn’t answered.

Her cigarette sparked now in the darkness.

‘Da

‘I think so.’

She thought he was going to stop beside her as he drew level, but instead he carried on into the house.

36

Ramsden had been right about the car used in the Camden shootings, the BMW; it had been found on the upper level of a supermarket car park out at St Albans, burned to a blackened shell. The lab techs had done what they could — cyanoacrylate fuming, VMD — but to no avail. If there was a link back to Valentyn Horak, always assuming Horak and his associates had been responsible, this wasn’t it.

So far, they had had no success in discovering whatever vehicle had ferried the bodies to Stansted, nor where Horak and the others had been tortured prior to being killed. Gordon Dooley, suspected of being behind the crimes, avenging the gu

The CCTV operator who’d conveniently phoned in sick on the evening the three bodies were placed inside the airport storage unit, was still adamant that his migraine had been real, no one had got to him, no pressures exerted, no payment made. His bank account showed no unexplained sums as income; a search of the flat where he lived in Harlow had discovered no suitcases crammed with used banknotes on top of the wardrobe or under the bed. Taking up the floorboards yielded only dry rot and a small family of mice.

‘Bastard’s lying through his back teeth,’ Ramsden said and Karen thought he was right. But proving it, like so much else …

The security officer supposedly on patrol that evening had proved an easier nut to crack. Up to a certain point. Sick about it, wasn’t he? Sick to his stomach about what had happened. Never would have imagined it, never in a million years. These two fellers had approached him, he told Ramsden, just a couple of nights before. All we need you to do, they said, turn a blind eye. To what? He didn’t know to what, didn’t ask. Bit of jiggery pokery with one of the containers, he imagined. Something smuggled in. Stuff being knocked off, stripped from the manifest. If he’d thought for a moment it was going to be anything like it was …

‘How much?’ Ramsden had asked. The room a sweat box, despite the outside temperature; low ceilings, space just enough for a metal table and chairs, the only window locked fast, heating turned up deliberately high.

‘How much?’ Ramsden said again.

‘How much what?’

‘How much they drop you?’

‘I told you, nothing.’

‘Listen, you miserable little scrote, don’t fuck me around. How fuckin’ much?’

‘Couple of hundred, that’s all.’

‘And the rest.’

‘No, no, straight up.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yes.’

‘Come cheap, then, don’t you? ’Less you knew them, of course. Make more sense that. Old mates pulling a favour. That how it was?’

‘No. No, I swear.’ Sweat pouring off him like rain.

‘You did know them, though.’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘Never seen ’em before. Not till that night. I told you. Never.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘No.’

‘We’ll see.’

‘I told you, my oath.’

‘Your what?’

‘My oath. My word.’

Ramsden grated out a laugh. ‘Your fucking word! Not worth a fiddler’s fart and any self-respecting silk who gets you on the stand’ll have the lies stripped off you so fast you’ll be up there shivering with one hand hanging on to your scrawny balls and the other covering your arse.’ He laughed again, pushed back his chair. ‘You’re going down, you miserable little dipshit, down for a long time, unless you give me something I can use. You understand? We understood?’

‘Yes. I mean, no. I du

‘Pentonville. Brixton. The Scrubs. Aiding and abetting, that’d be the least of it. Accessory to murder, I’d say. Depends. ’Less, of course, you recognise the shit you’re in. Give us a reason for putting in a word. Show us how good you are, remembering faces, naming names.’

Head bowed, the security officer closed his eyes. Sweat dripped from the end of his nose. His voice was a whisper, little more. ‘I’ll do what I can.’

‘Say again?’

‘I’ll do what I can.’

Ramsden allowed himself a smile. It wasn’t to last for long.

Four sessions: faces on the computer, folders of well-handled 6 x 4s, try as he might the man failed to pick out a single face, a single name. He was lying, of course, just as the CCTV operator was lying, but what could they do? The threatened possibility of a jail sentence against the embedded certainty that if he grassed sooner or later someone would use a blade on him, likely even cut his throat, in the nick or out.

In her office later, Karen read the anger, the frustration on Ramsden’s face.

‘Bastard!’ he said, slamming a fist down on to her desk. ‘Chickenshit bastard!’

‘It’ll come. You know it will. Sooner or later, it’ll come.’

Not soon enough for Burcher. True to his word, he had made more officers available, civilian support staff, too, but for that he expected results. Homicide, he had said, holding back just a little on the irony, your field of expertise. There’d been an urgent message just that morning: the Detective Chief Superintendent would appreciate a progress report ASAP. So far she hadn’t returned the call.