Good Bait (20 page)

‘And he doesn't say anything?'

‘Just the once. I hadn't even seen him, not that day, didn't know he was there. An' all of a sudden he comes up behind me. “How come,” he says, “you filthy slut, you whore, you're carryin' another man's baby?” Whispers it, right in my ear. I started crying, couldn't help it. Then when I dared look round he'd gone.'

She reached out for Karen's hand.

‘I'm frightened. Frightened he'll do something. Hurt me. Hurt my baby.'

Karen squeezed her hand. ‘It's okay. I had a word with the local police on the way up. Maybe they weren't taking this as seriously as they should. I'll go and see them in person before I leave. Suggest a panic button. The minute you see Wayne again, if he approaches you, you activate that, it'll go right through to the station. I'll ask for a drive-by outside here every hour through the night. And see if we can't get someone in plain clothes in the shopping centre to help out security.' She squeezed the small hand again. ‘Nothing will happen. He's not going to hurt you, I promise.'

‘But if he—'

‘I promise. You've got my word.'

Another saying of her grandmother's started jinking round inside her head as she stepped back out on to the street, something about promises being like pie crusts, crumbling, she thought, at the merest touch.

She was back on the motorway, heading south, headlights spindling about her, when her mobile rang and she pulled over on to the hard shoulder.

Ramsden's voice, off-pitch, urgent. ‘On your way back down? Might want to make a detour. Stansted. Something you ought to see.'

32

She had read it somewhere: the smell of a slaughterhouse, blood and piss and shit and fear. The sweet bite of vomit at the back of the throat.

For a moment, she swayed, eyes glazed.

She had seen death before, too many times, but not like this.

She had to force herself to look again, to see.

Kebab shop, she thought. That's what it reminded her of. A kebab shop, late at night: walking home, two, three in the morning, head furred and thick from too much vodka, too many cigarettes, the overlapping stink of sweet chilli sauce and slowly turning meat; the man behind the counter, bored, tired, wiping his fingers down the front of his filthy apron before slicing the meat into veinous, bloodied strips. Except that these slabs of scored meat, hanging from the aluminium struts of the roof, had arms and legs and heads; the latter barely recognisable, burned, gouged, torn.

Bile caught in her mouth and she held it there while her body juddered before swallowing it back down.

Her head swam.

The belly of the nearest man hung down in folds, half covering his shrivelled cock and balls.

‘Outside,' Ramsden said quietly, close behind. ‘Talk outside.'

He touched her arm at the elbow; started, gently, firmly, to steer her towards the doors.

As Karen stepped through into the air, Scene of Crime officers turned aside.

The light bit at her eyes.

The parking area, surrounded on three sides by multi-level storage units, was busy with police vehicles, ambulances, unmarked cars.

Karen counted, slowly, one to ten inside her head.

‘What do we know?' she asked.

‘Found by a delivery team from the airport. Come to collect a container, evening flight to Ankara. Poor bastards, got more than they bargained for.'

‘The bodies. Any idea how long they'd been there?'

‘Best guess so far, early hours.'

‘This morning?'

‘Be a sight worse, else.'

He gave it a moment, watching her eyes. ‘Security comes round every couple of hours. Two men usually, sometimes one.'

‘This morning?'

‘Just the one.'

‘Handy.'

‘Nothing noted in the log. Call out now for him to come back in.'

Karen looked up at the CCTV cameras attached to several of the buildings; another, mounted on a high stand, slowly revolving, centrally placed.

‘Funny thing,' Ramsden said, following her gaze. ‘System went down, two thirty, thereabouts. This whole area. Malfunction. Didn't get up and running till close on four.'

‘Coincidence?'

‘What's that? An explanation waiting to happen? Don't you soddin' believe it.'

‘What then?'

‘Bloke in charge went off conveniently sick. A while before they could get someone else in to cover. Couple of uniforms, local, went round to his address. Nobody home. We're still looking.'

‘Whoever worked them over,' Karen said. ‘All that was done somewhere else. That's what we're assuming?'

Not really a question that demanded answering. Anything else, there would have been far more blood than there was: ceiling, walls, floor. And even there, that close to the airport, too great a risk of noise. Slow screams of a dying man. Three dying men. She realised she didn't know exactly how they had died.

‘Two of them,' Ramsden said when asked, ‘a bullet to the back of the head. Small calibre by the look of it, close range. After they'd been worked on, my guess, not before. Biggest of the three, apart from what's been done to his face and hands, no obvious cause.' He shrugged. ‘Maybe his heart just gave out.'

‘No way yet of knowing who they are?'

‘Not as yet. Once the computer guys get to work on the faces we'll have a better idea what they looked like before all this. Run 'em through the system after that. See what pops.'

Nodding acknowledgement, Karen stepped away, slowly turned and looked up into the sky. A late plane, taking off, its lights curving gradually upwards into the night sky. Wherever it was heading, she wished she were on board, bound for wherever. Anywhere. Anywhere but here.

33

‘Croissant?'

‘What?' Letitia's voice was harsh, bruised by sleep.

‘Croissant? It's a sort of curved doughy thing, a bit like–'

‘I know what a fucking croissant is.'

‘Good. Here. Have one.' Cordon sat on the side of the bed, paper bag in his lap.

Letitia shook her head and, shuffling into a sitting position, pulled the pillows up against the headboard and leaned back. The sheet slipped as she twisted round, leaving one breast exposed. Outside, rain was falling lightly; you could hear it faintly against the shutters.

‘Where've you been anyway?' she asked.

He held up the bag. ‘To get these.'

‘I didn't hear the car.'

‘I walked.'

‘In this?'

He shrugged. ‘Live in Cornwall, remember? You get used to it.'

His hair had been darkened by the rain; shoes and waterproof jacket he'd taken off and left just inside the door. His idea had been to give himself time to think, think – what was the expression? outside the box? – but all he could see was the same set of imponderables, the same set of walls.

They'd taken the ferry from Portsmouth to St. Malo. Letitia's father had driven them to the port and then continued on his way towards Bristol, old friends he hadn't seen in far too long a time. The bookshop was locked up. A sign:
Closed Till Further Notice
. After what had happened, there would be people coming round, he didn't doubt; more friends of Anton's, asking questions, none too fussy about how they got their answers. One more consequence of Cordon's actions.

‘Who in God's name d'you think you are?' Clifford Carlin had asked. ‘Shane? Sorting out the bad guys? Setting things to rights?' Jack Schaefer. Alan Ladd in buckskins. One of Carlin's favourites. Cordon's, too.

‘Something like that,' Cordon had answered. He was taller than Ladd, he knew that for a fact.

‘Great!' Letitia had said when he told her what had happened at the caravan site. ‘You're going to get us all fucking killed, you know that, don't you?'

It was a risk, a possibility. Simply, he hadn't seen what else he could do. He'd said as much to Jack Kiley when he called him later, explaining the situation, asking if there were any ways in which Kiley thought he could help.

‘What?' Kiley had replied. ‘A couple of nights' bed and board and suddenly I'm your guardian angel? Picking up the pieces?'

‘Sorry, Jack. Bit out of my depth.'

Kiley gave it some thought. ‘Letitia and the kid, they've got passports?'

‘I think so.'

Uncertain where they might go after the funeral, what they might do, Letitia had taken that precaution, at least.

‘What you've got to do,' Kiley said. ‘Buy a little time.'

After arriving in France, they'd taken a bus into Dinard, as Kiley had instructed, just a little way west along the coast. A fading old seaside town, mostly closed down for the winter. Grand hotels on the seafront boarded up, shuttered across. Only the one café open on the promenade, where Letitia sat and smoked and read whatever paperbacks she'd bought on the ferry, while Cordon and young Dan played desultory games of football on the beach.

‘Be patient,' Kiley had told them. ‘Sit tight. I'll get back to you soon as I can.'

For some reason, there was a statue of Alfred Hitchcock peering out across the water, surrounded by stone birds. A casino under redecoration. They found a little place across from the art gallery that sold good pizzas and sat there for hours, sheltering from the wind, listening to the same music playing over and over.

Kiley phoned again on the third day. One of Jane's friends at the school had a holiday place in Brittany, a village just a couple of hours' drive from where they were. Not even a village, a hamlet. Four dwellings and only one of them occupied year round, an old man and his dog. They could stay there, till Easter if necessary. Sort out what they were going to do.

‘Might need your help there, too, Jack,' Cordon said.

‘Tell me something I don't know.'

Cordon hired a car and drove it as far as Lamballe where he changed it for another. If anyone was going to be on their trail, he wanted to make it as difficult for them as possible. At the Carrefour in Guingamp they loaded up with supplies; the nearest village, some three or four miles from where they would be staying, had a
boulangerie
and nothing else.

*

‘For Christ's sake!' Letitia exclaimed.

‘What?'

‘That bloody croissant. You're getting crumbs all over the bed.'

‘Didn't realise you were so fussy.'

‘Yeah, well …'

They heard the toilet flush and then Danny's voice telling them it was raining. A moment later he appeared in the doorway, tousle haired, sleepy eyed, dinosaur pyjamas.

‘I'll get the coffee on,' Cordon said.

‘You do that.'

She lifted the covers and the boy slid in beside her, Letitia turning to slide an arm comfortably around him, kiss him on the forehead – ‘Why don't you just snuggle down?'

Feeling a stranger, Cordon left the room.

It was a converted farmhouse, low and long, a
longère
, thick stone walls that had stood for more than a century. Brown shutters, red paint around the window frames starting to blister and fade. A garden front and back, gravel, lawn and shrubs. A few stunted apple trees. Other trees, taller, shielded the house from the road. Scots pine? Cordon wondered. Breton pine, perhaps? Was there such a thing? His father would have … he stopped the thought on hold.

Inside there were three bedrooms, a bathroom, a living room, a wide kitchen with a refectory table and a tap that permanently dripped. You could have fitted Cordon's old Newlyn sail loft in twice with space to spare. No need for them to get under one another's feet.

Letitia seemed to be in denial: whenever Cordon tried to get her to talk about what they were going to do, consider their options, ‘There are no fucking options,' was the best he could get.

Letitia stayed in bed late, drank supermarket wine and cooked a few unwilling meals. Listened in a half-hearted fashion to the Madeleine Peyroux CD that had been left in the portable stereo. Without too much of an argument, she let Danny talk her into helping him do one of the several jigsaw puzzles he'd found in one of the cupboards, played hide-and-seek with him until that too palled and she ran her hand through his hair, kissed his cheek and begged for a rest. Time to do a little reading instead.

When she'd finished the Martina Cole she'd bought on board, she tried some of the books the owners had left around–Ian McEwan, Rose Tremain, Julian Barnes – but with limited success. Sometimes she just sat, collar hunched up, on a folding chair close to the front door of the house, smoking cigarette after cigarette and staring at the empty lane beyond the gate.

As far as Danny was concerned the whole thing was just a holiday, a place to run around; the owners clearly had kids of their own and there were toys in boxes, DVDs of
Toy Story, Chicken Run, Tintin, Planet Earth
. There was even a child's bike with a slow puncture in the rear tyre forever in need of pumping up, and Cordon taught Danny, after a fashion, to ride. Wobbly circles that ended less and less in tears and bumps and grazed knees.

‘Don't make him too fond of you,' Letitia said one afternoon, her voice edged like a rusted blade. ‘He's already got one father to get over. He doesn't need a fuckin' second.'

Cordon drove to the town and bought lamb chops and a bottle of good Scotch, Johnny Walker Black Label. Scoured the bins of cheap CDs and found an old recording from the Paris Jazz Festival in 1949, remastered: the Tadd Dameron Quintet with Miles Davis.

He'd called the headquarters of the Devon and Cornwall Police in Exeter when they'd arrived and spoken in the vaguest terms of the need to take an extended break, leave without pay; let them try turfing him out a few years short of his pension if they cared to, if they dared. Serve them right for putting him out to grass for having a mind of his own, playing the awkward bugger one too many times.