Good Bait

He smiled. ‘Met my first girlfriend on that trip, too. Pen pal more or less till I left school.’

‘Thinking of looking her up?’ Cordon asked caustically.

‘I did once. What? Dozen years ago? On holiday with a couple of friends. She was still living in the same place, little village outside Va

‘What did you expect?’

‘I don’t know. Things like that, they nag at you.’

‘What kind of things?’

‘Oh, missed chances. Roads not taken. Relationships allowed to drift. Always that nagging question, what if, what if?’

‘French air, is it?’ Cordon asked. ‘Bringing out all this philosophy?’

‘I dare say.’

‘’Cause if it is, sooner you get back across the Cha

‘Had a word with the doctor on the way in. Four or five days it’ll be before you’re discharged. That, at least.’

‘Nothing to say I can’t discharge myself,’ Cordon said. But, as he moved, some unspecified pain speared through him and he gasped loudly, hands gripping the sheets.

‘When I come back later,’ Kiley said, ‘I’ll bring grapes. A deck of cards. See if I can’t win some money off you while you’re disabled.’

47

The Volvo had been found in a scrap dealer’s yard outside Erith, close to the Thames Estuary at Crayford Ness. The same Volvo that had been stolen from the Westfield Shopping Centre in Shepherd’s Bush — 4,500 parking spaces, valet parking available, a lot of cars from which to choose — and then shown up on CCTV, tailing the leased Transit en route to Stansted and back; now with its engine removed, doors and side panels disassembled, chassis ready to be winched away. Bits and pieces for the fingerprint boys to play with. Girls, too. The result: one right index finger on the steering column, with a partial alongside; another partial, left little finger, on the fascia. Palm print on the inside of the offside door.

Where would we be, Karen thought, without computers, AFIS, DNA?

Answer: even farther behind.

The prints taken from the body of the Volvo confirmed what the dealer had already told them: the identity of the individual who’d brought it in — Stuart Dyer, just twenty-one years old and recently arrested for possession of a Class A drug with intent to supply, but then released. Two previous charges of possession of a controlled substance, one dismissed, the other for which he’d served a little juvenile time. His co-defendant in both cases was his cousin, Jamie Parsons. Parsons, who did scut work for Gordon Dooley and, because of that association, was gu

Give it time and, eventually, gradually, it all tied together.

When Ramsden, with some serious back-up, called round at the tower-block flat in Foots Cray where he lived, Dyer was sitting with his mum watching daytime TV, an ad for stairlifts screening when Ramsden came into the room. Dyer with a can of Kestrel in his hand, his mum favouring cider, both of them smoking, some kind of bull-headed mastiff growling through its slobber at their feet.

Dyer made as if to bolt, but then, reading the glint in Ramsden’s eye, thought better of it.

‘What the fuck’re you after now?’ Mrs Dyer asked.’ ‘Why’n’t you leave the boy alone?’

Jeremy Kyle appeared on screen to loud applause, doubtless about to reveal some poignant personal dilemma to the audience. Lifting the remote from the corner of the settee, Ramsden muted the volume.

‘Hey! I was fuckin’ watching that!’

The dog growled lazily, then lowered its head.

‘Sorry, Mrs Dyer. Just wanted a word with young Stuart here.’

‘Yeah, well, s’posin’ he don’t want a word with you?’

‘What’s it to be, Stuart?’ Ramsden said. ‘You want to talk here or down the station?’

‘I got a choice?’

Ramsden gri

‘Just wait, yeah,’ Dyer said, ‘while I get me fuckin’ coat.’

‘Take it easy on him, yeah?’ his mum said, once he was out of the room. ‘Lot of mouth, but he’s not very bright. Easy led, know what I mean?’

Taking back the remote, she raised the volume loud.

Dyer sat uneasily, rocking the chair back on its metal legs. Grey drawstring hoodie with A amp; FITCH in white lettering down the sleeve. Tangle of dark hair. Something of a pretty-boy face, save for a cluster of whiteheads sprouting around his mouth. Half-hidden beneath his lashes, grey-green eyes.

Ramsden had asked one of the officers to fetch a Dr Pepper from the vending machine and Dyer drummed on it haphazardly with his fingers, nails bitten down.

Feigned nonchalance.

If he wasn’t already squirming inside, he was really as stupid as his mum had made out.

‘The Volvo,’ Ramsden said, ‘let’s start there.’

Nothing.

‘Come on, Stuart, don’t piss me about. The one you dumped in Erith. Snagged it from Westfield, remember? Volvo, S60, dark green. Asked for it special, did he, Arthurs? Dougie Freeman, maybe. Whoever it was, brought you in as driver. Get us a nice motor, Stuey, something with a bit of speed, comfortable. Volvo’d be handsome.’

‘Du

‘Come on, Stuart. Your prints are all fucking over it and, if that weren’t enough, we’ve got you barellin’ down the road to Stansted on CCTV.’

‘Bullshit!’

‘You think so?’

Dyer took a swallow from the Dr Pepper, bought a little time. Cleared his throat.

‘Just say. Just say, mind — and I’m not admitting anythin’, right, but, like I say, just s’posin’ I took the motor, right, like you said, all that’d be, takin’ and drivin’ away. No one’s go

‘Stuart, Stuart, you’re not listening. The minute you got behind that wheel, that journey out to Stansted, you were getting into something a lot more serious. More serious than you believe. Accessory, Stuart, that’s you. Accessory to torture. Better than that, murder.’ Ramsden shook his head. ‘You done it this time, boy, and no mistake.’

The colour had blanched from Dyer’s cheeks and there was a pronounced twitch in one of his grey-green eyes.

‘You want to take a look, Stuart? Take a look at these?’

With exaggerated care, Ramsden fa

‘Pretty, don’t you think?’

Dyer bit into his lower lip hard enough to draw blood.

‘Of course,’ Ramsden said, a change of voice, change of tone, ‘I can understand why you’d have wanted to be involved. Jamie Parsons, him as was gu

Dyer nodded.

‘Any kind of payback, only right you’d want to be involved. Family, yeah? Your mum’d have told you, I’m sure. Got to stand up, Stu. Be counted on this. But I bet she never, you never, thought it would come to this …’ Tapping the photographs. ‘Am I right, Stuart? Am I right? You never …’

There was panic now, bright and darting, in his eyes. The kind you see in rats, Ramsden thought, trapped up against the wire.

Slowly, he leaned in, not enough to frighten, just enough to reassure. ‘What we need to talk about, Stuart, is how you got yourself mixed up in all this. See if there isn’t something we can do. Some way round this, don’t leave you in the dock along with everyone else. Culpable homicide, Stuart, three times over. Life inside. You don’t want that.’ Reaching across, Ramsden patted his hand. ‘Okay, Stuart? Okay? Let’s see what we can do.’

‘This is all on tape?’ Karen said. ‘Transcribed?’

//