Good Bait (12 page)

A bus pulling by on its way towards New Cross Gate.

She spotted Ion Milescu walking briskly, winding between small knots of people, rucksack slung over one shoulder.

Karen moved to intercept him and as she did so he stopped to talk to two fellow students, the man seemingly African, the girl Chinese.

‘Ion …'

At first he didn't recognise her, a face seen out of context.

‘I just need a word.'

‘I've got a class.'

‘A quick coffee, that's all.'

‘I don't know.' He seemed flustered, uneasy.

‘Look,' the African said, ‘if he doesn't want to speak with you …'

‘No,' Milescu said, ‘it's all right.'

‘You're sure?'

‘Sure.'

The African shrugged – ‘Catch you later' – tapped the Chinese girl on the shoulder and they walked away.

‘Is there somewhere we can talk?' Karen asked.

What she was hoping for was a little pop-up espresso bar run by a couple of Kiwis working their way round the world; what she got was a tired café between a launderette and a newsagent's, on a small row of premises laid back from the main road; a greasy spoon that had moved some way to catering for its increasing student population, then stalled. Paninis alongside fry-ups; soya milk cappuccinos and mugs of tea you could stand a spoon in.

Karen played safe with an Americano; Ion Milescu a Pepsi.

‘A few things,' Karen said, ‘have come to light since we talked last. I just wanted to make sure I've got the right end of the stick.'

‘What kind of things?' He was looking off in the direction of the counter, the far wall, anywhere but at her.

‘You and Petru, for instance, from what you said before, you didn't know him very well at all.'

‘That's right.'

‘A few kickabouts and stuff like that.'

‘Right.'

‘Which sort of leaves out Victoria Park.'

‘What?'

‘Victoria Park. Hot Chip. Lesley Tabor. You remember Lesley?'

He mumbled something that might have been slag. She hoped it wasn't.

‘You do remember Lesley?'

‘Unfortunately.'

‘I thought you went out with her, for a while at least.'

‘She thought so, you mean.'

‘You and Lesley, Petru and Sasha, quite a foursome.'

‘It wasn't like that.'

‘What was it like?'

‘It wasn't like anything. I just went with her a few times because …' Ill at ease, he took a quick breath, dipped his head.

‘Because?'

‘'Cause he asked me to.'

‘He?'

‘Petru. Petru, who else?'

‘This kid you hardly knew.'

‘All right, all right. God!' His voice loud enough to turn heads, the workman on his right glancing up from the
Sun
, a couple of students looking across from the plate of beans on toast they appeared to be sharing.

‘All right, we hung out for a while, went to a couple of gigs here and there – he didn't have many friends, I don't know why. After we played soccer a few times, went back to the café…'

‘The Chiswick café?'

‘Yes, after that he sort of latched on to me. For a while anyway. I suppose I felt a bit sorry for him. Living with some uncle over Wood Green somewhere. Least, that's what he said.'

‘You didn't believe him?'

‘I don't know. It was all a bit – you know – vague. We were going to go over there once, I remember, he sort of built it up, then at the last minute he called it off, something about his uncle being busy, not wanting to be disturbed. Way he said it, just seemed a bit strange that's all.'

‘You carried on seeing him?'

‘Maybe not as much. I had all this work, you know, college. Different assignments. I was busy, and he – most of the time, he didn't seem to be doing anything. Just hanging out. And then there was all that stuff with Lesley. Her friend, the one Petru was going with, Sasha, every time I'd see her it'd be, oh, why don't you get in touch with Lesley, send her a text, she's dying to see you, blah, blah, blah. I got sort of sick of it.'

Karen took a mouthful of coffee. No better nor worse than she'd expected.

‘Petru, you say he spent a lot of time just hanging out?'

‘Yes.'

‘He didn't have a job, then? Wasn't studying, anything like that?'

‘He'd applied. Some college, to do I'm not sure what. Computer stuff, maybe. IT. I don't even know if he got in or not. If he did get a place, he never took it up.'

‘And a job? Presumably if you were going out places, he had cash in his pocket from somewhere?'

‘I don't know. He helped out his uncle sometimes, that's all he ever said.'

‘Doing what, d'you know?'

‘No.' A quick shake of the head.

‘There's a suggestion that he might have been dealing drugs.'

‘Petru?'

‘Yes.'

‘No way.'

‘You seem pretty positive.'

‘Yes.'

‘How can you be so sure?'

‘He wouldn't even …' He hesitated.' If ever, you know, there was something going round, a smoke, a few pills, he'd always pass. Always.'

‘That doesn't mean …'

‘I know. But, no, Petru getting mixed up in something like that, I just can't see it. Really.'

He looked at his watch.

‘I should be going.'

‘Okay. Fine.' She pushed her half-full cup away. ‘This uncle – Petru didn't mention a name? An address?'

‘Afraid not. He never said anything much about himself at all. Except something once about missing his family, his mother especially. So I guess he wasn't living with them at least. I got the impression she was still back in Moldova.'

Karen nodded. So far any attempts to contact Petru Andronic's next of kin via the Moldovan Embassy in Dolphin Square had foundered amidst red tape and inertia. She would get one of the team to make a fresh attempt, diplomatically kick a few backsides.

Out on the street, Milescu following, she took two paces, then stopped. ‘Apparently your father's been talking to my boss, my boss's boss. Whatever you've got yourself involved in, he seems a bit concerned about.'

‘You serious?'

‘Uh-huh.'

‘He's crazy. I'm not involved in anything.'

I hope not, Karen thought. She slipped one of her cards into his hand. ‘Anything you want to talk about, any time, just give me a call.'

18

The rest of the day passed, for Karen, in some sort of middle-management haze. Questions that were at best half-answered, leads that petered out into blind alleys, areas of inquiry that became abruptly stalled; the distant but familiar sound of heads being banged, relentlessly, against brick walls.

She stopped off at the supermarket on the way home and picked up a couple of ready-cooked meals and some discounted wine. Showered, she was just slipping the lamb kofta and rice into the microwave, a bottle of Shiraz already opened, when Ramsden called, his voice harsher than usual, more abrasive. The sound of a fist being rasped along raw brick.

Karen swore to herself as she listened; switched off the microwave.

‘Be there, Mike, soon as I can.'

Hector Prince's body had been found jammed into the lift of a high-rise off Tottenham High Road, his left foot and ankle sticking out and preventing the door from closing, the lift marooned on the fourteenth floor. There were numerous stab wounds to his left side and down the backs of both legs, the cuts deep into the muscle of the thigh; his right shoulder blade had been shattered by a heavy blow from something like a baseball bat; something like the baseball bat that had crushed his cheekbone and splintered the cranial bone above the left eye.

He was still alive when the paramedics got to him, breathing but only just, his blood matted against the material of his cuffed fleece trackies and sticking against the already sticky lift floor.

One of the long-term tenants on the floor above, hearing the sounds of the assault, had dialled 999, and, watching from his balcony, seen the attackers flee. Now the lift and stairs were cordoned off, some officers already down on their knees searching for evidence, others beginning the thankless task of knocking on doors.

Karen stood in the courtyard, hands wrapped around a takeout coffee from a fast food place on the High Road, the coffee still retaining the smell of grease and burning fat.

Mike Ramsden ducked under the tape and made his way towards her.

‘Half a dozen of them by the sound of it,' he said. ‘Fronted Prince while he was in line waiting to get his bucket of chicken wings, chased him in here, caught up with him on the stairs. Whether he got into the lift himself, trying to get away, or they pushed him in there isn't clear. They did a runner when someone raised the alarm.'

‘Witnesses?'

‘One so far. Saw them legging it from way up. Black, or so he thinks. Hoodies. No surprises there.'

‘Payback, then. For Derroll Palmer. That's what we're thinking?'

‘Looks like. Once we'd brought Prince and he'd walked away, bragging about it, as far as Palmer's cohorts were concerned he was marked meat.'

‘You think he knew that?'

‘Kids like Prince – what did he call himself on the street? Mohock? – they take their life in their hands each time they step out the front door. Part of the charge, the buzz, that risk. Never knowing when you might get capped.'

‘I thought Palmer wasn't gang related?'

‘He was killed on gang turf, that's enough.'

‘Wood Green, MOB gang, then? First port of call?'

‘I'd reckon. Talk to someone at Trident tomorrow, see if I can't get them to throw us some names.'

Karen turned aside as a shiver ran through her. Not just the cold. The whole senseless, bloody business. Revenge, respect, tit for tat. Standing up to be counted. What was it just the other day? One youth stabbing another to death for calling him a pussy on Facebook.

Most times it didn't get to her, not like this, but now, suddenly, it did.

The waste.

Ramsden read it in her eyes. ‘Go home,' he said.

‘What?'

‘You're here. You've showed. No call for you to stay.'

‘Mike …'

Not roughly, he rested a hand on her arm. ‘You look wasted, go home.'

‘I can't.'

‘One of the privileges of high rank. Delegation. Go on, get some sleep, I'll close up here. See you in the office first thing.'

She still didn't go, not for the best part of another hour, but then, when there really was nothing more she could do, she decided to take Ramsden at his word.

The kofta was cold; she took one bite and dumped the rest into the bin. The red wine tasted sour. She made herself a cup of weak tea instead, two sugars, and drank it while she got ready for bed. The book she'd been reading was on the floor, a scrap of paper marking her place; she picked it up and began to read.

Black Water Rising
: Attica Locke.

Houston, Texas in the late sixties. Revolution in the air. Aretha Franklin singing Sam Cooke's ‘A Change is Gonna Come'. Stokely Carmichael, about to throw in his lot with the Black Panthers, speaking at a student rally on the subject of Black Liberation, speaking to those few Negroes, armed with their passports – their university degrees – who had escaped into middle-class America. Integration was not the way. Integration meant accepting that your own culture, your own way of life was worth nothing, not worth hanging on to.

Karen could remember, as a young woman, dancing to that slice of seminal James Brown in a way that would have made her poor aunt feel shamed, shaking her hips, hands in the air, singing it loud, how she was black and proud.

Those young people, young men from Tottenham and Wood Green; those like Hector Prince who were ganged up, others like Derroll Palmer, caught between – no danger of them joining the white middle class, getting university degrees. Their choice, she wondered, or somebody else's? And if so, whose?

Kids like that, Ramsden had said, they take their lives in their hands each time they step out the front door.

And here she was, a black woman who, as one of her sisters had informed her when she was still out patrolling the streets, was wearing the white man's uniform, enforcing his laws. No answer from Karen, other than to move on, the sister had spat in her face.

Some days, years later, she still reached up a hand to wipe it away.

Only when she could feel her eyes failing did she set the book aside and switch out the light.

19

Carla James had been in Karen's year at secondary school, a bit of a star even then; the lead in the school production of
The Wiz
, her picture all over the local paper, Acton's own Diana Ross. In the sixth form she had hung out with the guys who were forever putting together some band or other, rumours of recording contracts that never quite came off, Carla laying down vocals that somehow got lost in the final mix. Her boyfriend then was an athlete on the fringes of the national team, a sprinter; thigh muscles, Carla told them all proudly, like you wouldn't believe.

Karen would go with her sometimes, evenings, down to the track to watch him train: stretches, drills, strides; sweat dripping off him beneath the lights, making his body shine.

Honey to the bee.

A levels over, Carla applied to drama school and failed to get in; she got a job in a bar instead, sang back-up for a band that did Motown covers in places like Basingstoke and Stevenage, and took classes, part-time, at the Poor School near King's Cross – movement and voice, dialect, singing, stage fighting, Shakespeare and contemporary text. At the end of the year, she reapplied and was accepted. All of that more years ago than she cared to remember.

There were still periods when she signed on or worked in bars; in between there was the odd show in Manchester or Liverpool; twelve weeks understudying an all-black production of
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
in the West End; bits and pieces of telly –
Wire in the Blood, Silent Witness, The Bill
– usually, as she put it, standing around on street corners with my skirt up my arse looking for business, waiting for someone to smack me upside the head with a hammer.