Good Bait

What, after all, had he done? Achieved? Beyond rescuing someone who, in the end, only wanted to be found?

Still he didn’t go.

Sat morosely around Jack Kiley’s flat, talking very little or not at all. Spent a few long, slow afternoons in sad boozers in the back streets of Kentish Town, awash with self-pity and bad beer.

‘Come on,’ Kiley said, one early evening as the light was fading. ‘I’ve got just the thing.’

They took the overground from Gospel Oak to Leyton Midland Road and joined the crowd on its way along the high street to the floodlights of Brisbane Road. Orient versus Dagenham and Redbridge, a local derby of a kind. Raucous shouts and laughter. Stalls selling burgers, sausage and bacon rolls: the sweet scent of frying onions rising up into the evening mist.

They took their seats high in the main stand just as the teams were a

Then, there they were, the crowd on its feet, both sets of supporters chanting, applauding; the players jumping, stretching, easing tight muscles, moving into position, eager for the whistle that would break the tension.

At least, Kiley could watch now without kicking every ball, feeling every tackle, rising up to meet every cross with his head. Alongside him, Cordon was being drawn more and more into the action, putting in his share of oohing and aahing as the play moved swiftly from end to end, shots missed, shots saved, the referee coming in for the usual amount of stick, offsides wrongly signalled, penalties not given.

At half-time it was one apiece, the home team shading it but not by much. Still level then, and not through want of trying, less than quarter of an hour to go.

‘They’ll do it,’ Kiley said, ‘you see if they don’t.’

On the eighty-seventh minute, Charlie Daniels ran on to a punt upfield, turned the defender and raced towards the line; swung his foot and sent the ball hard and low across the face of goal and the striker, diving forward, headed it past the sprawling goalie into the net.

Pandemonium.

Game over.

They were waiting for them when they returned. Two men parked back along the road, between the burned-out supermarket and the school. The man from SOCA in his insurance-agent threads who’d quizzed Kiley before, together with a second, burly in leather jacket and jeans, his minder perhaps, in case things got out of hand.

‘Not a coincidence,’ Kiley said, ‘meeting again like this.’

‘Afraid not.’

‘And I suppose you’ll want to talk inside?’

‘If that’s acceptable to you.’

Acceptable, Kiley thought, would be if they went their merry way; if he had never let Cordon talk him into getting involved.

He could sense the big man watching Cordon on the stairs, as if he might be about to make a break for it, take to his heels.

‘Charlie Frost,’ the man from SOCA said, once they were in the room. His companion remained u

There were enough chairs, just, for them all to sit. Kiley’s hospitality began and ended there.

‘When we spoke before about your interest in Anton Kosach,’ Frost said, addressing Kiley, ‘what you told me, not to put too fine a point on it, was a pack of lies.’

‘I wouldn’t exactly say lies.’

‘A name you’d come up with while looking into something else, I think you said? No more than that.’

‘Things moved on.’

‘So it appears.’

Bending, Frost reached into the briefcase he’d been carrying; perhaps, Kiley thought, he was about to sell them insurance after all. What he took out was an iPad, which he switched on, opened a file, and swivelled in their direction.

‘There. You might take a look at these.’

The first image was of Taras Kosach, entering the Ukrainian restaurant on the Caledonian Road; then Kiley and Cordon arriving, leaving, Cordon with an upward glance towards a camera he had no idea was there.

Next, Taras with another man, later that same day — date and time at the foot of the screen — the pair of them standing outside, smoking. Taras and his brother, Anton.

Then a piece of video: an empty lane, restrained sunlight. Several seconds without movement till a dark saloon comes into view, travelling towards the camera, going past, a face at the rear passenger window in dark outline.

Freeze-frame.

Zoom in.

Cordon staring out.

‘You recognise,’ Frost said, ‘where you are? The occasion?’

Cordon nodded, said nothing.

A number of images then, taken with a telescopic lens in fairly quick succession. Cordon moving between the car and the house; Kosach’s minions in their black turtlenecks, waiting to greet him. Search him. The front door opening. Anton Kosach, the pale blue of his shirt bleached almost white. Then nothing.

‘It’s been difficult,’ Frost said, ‘for us to gain as much access as we might have liked. Without alerting the target, propelling him, possibly, into flight.’ A discreet cough into the back of the hand. ‘But, to be crystal clear, that is you, Mr Cordon, paying Mr Kosach a visit? There’s no room for doubt?’

‘Evidently not.’

‘Then in what capacity, may I ask?’

No reply.

‘I ask, because, as far as I am aware, the remit of the Devon and Cornwall constabulary does not stretch quite this far.’

Supercilious bastard, Kiley thought.

What Cordon was thinking didn’t show, not even in his eyes.

‘Mr Cordon …?’

‘I was visiting a friend.’ Cordon’s voice flat and ungiving.

‘Anton Kosach, he’s a friend? Is that what you’re saying? Anton …’

He told them. With the dull precision of someone making a report to a superior, which, in a way, was what this was. Letitia. Her mother. Danya. The apparent break she’d made with Kosach and his efforts to get her to return. He said nothing of the work Letitia had carried out on Kosach’s behalf, in his employ — the brothel, the halfway house — other things he might only have guessed at.

Frost listened with interest, rarely taking his eyes from Cordon’s face. His companion was more distracted, bored even, as if none of this really mattered; wanting to be away.

Kiley stood, stretched; made an offer of tea or coffee, a little late in the day.

‘The investigation into Kosach’s affairs,’ Frost said, ‘it’s near to reaching tipping point, I suppose that’s fair to say, and any new contacts we’ve been monitoring closely.’ A nod towards the iPad. ‘As you can see. And we were a little intrigued at the nature of whatever relationship it was you had. But after the usual checks …’ He smiled. ‘No conspicuous spending, no unexplained large payments into either of your accounts …’

Cordon blinked; Kiley bristled, but held his tongue.

‘… the explanation you’ve given doesn’t diverge too far from what we know. Indeed, adds a little grace note here and there, and I thank you, Mr Cordon, for that. But one thing I would urge you both, where Anton Kosach is concerned, you don’t go near, don’t try to communicate with him in any way.’

He was on his feet, minder at his side. ‘Apple cart. Upset. You know how it goes.’ He turned back at the door. ‘The game tonight, who won?’

‘Orient,’ Kiley said. ‘The odd goal.’

Frost nodded. ‘Always been something of a Spurs fan myself.’

Figures, Kiley thought.

From the window he watched them get into their car and drive away.

‘I’m sorry, Jack,’ Cordon said. ‘Dragging you into all this.’

Bit late for that, Kiley thought. He fetched two beers from the fridge. ‘Leaving it alone, walking away, you going to be all right with that?’

Cordon popped the can. ‘Case of having to, wouldn’t you say?’

He saw Letitia, holding her son tight on the stairs; face betraying little or no emotion, giving nothing away.