Good Bait (36 page)

‘Maybe. If that's what you wanted.'

‘Back down to where I've spent half my life trying to get away from.'

‘All right, then. You said it, anyway, not me.'

‘But it's what you were thinking.'

‘Not really.'

‘Liar. Bloody liar.'

Lighting a cigarette, she arched back her head and let the smoke slide upwards from the corners of her mouth.

Already, Cordon was wishing he'd never come.

‘What will you do, then?' he said.

‘Like I say, stay here long as I can.'

‘You can afford to do that?'

She sat forward. ‘When the police were here, searching, taking stuff away by the truckload, anything to do with Anton's business, one or two little things they missed. Place this size, have to take it to pieces, bit by bit, to find everything.' Her face creased in a smile. ‘Leather holdall, good leather, too. Behind the panelling in one of the bathrooms, the one Danny uses most often. Five-hundred-euro notes, packed to the brim. Got to twenty thousand and stopped counting. When that's all gone, I'll find something else.'

She fixed him with a look, narrowed her eyes. ‘You know me, Cordon. Resourceful, i'n't that the word?' A laugh, throaty. ‘Maybe not the one you're thinking.'

She was on her feet.

‘That cab you came in, I don't suppose you told him to wait?'

He shook his head.

‘No, well, I'll call one. Trains every half-hour from the station.' She caught hold of his arm. ‘Christ, Cordon, don't look so glum. It's all turned out okay. For now, anyway. Bugger the future, that's what I say. Look after what's happening now.'

Reaching up, she kissed him on the cheek.

‘You're a soft bastard, Cordon, you know that, don't you? Always was.'

He didn't need telling.

‘Why don't you go find Danny? See him before you go. Tell him he might come down some time, see you in Cornwall. He'll like that. I can always put him on the train.'

58

It had kept circling around in Karen's brain, hovering over everything else, never settling. On the rare instances she came into contact with Burcher in the ensuing weeks, he seemed much the same as before; no signs of being under particular stress, under fear of investigation. When she bumped into Alex Williams – a brief conversation on their way back from separate meetings – she came close to asking her about passing on something told in confidence, but the moment wasn't right. If there were rumours of the Chief Superintendent being involved in some criminal conspiracy, she didn't hear them, not directly. Just that same insistent, distant, buzzing. Work to do, she ignored it as best she could.

A party to several interrogations herself, a close witness to others, it became clear that the various members of Dooley's gang responsible for the Stansted killings were intent upon shifting blame from one to another. Talking themselves, as Mike Ramsden put it, into life inside with less chance of parole than I've got of pulling off an accumulator at fucking Ascot.

More tenuous, but promising, the earlier set of arrests officers from Operation Trident had made in connection with the murder of Hector Prince had been followed by another, four young men currently being held for questioning, the magistrate's court having agreed to an additional time in custody.

Only the death that had, in a way, begun it all, remained unsolved. Petru Andronic, his dead eyes staring blankly up at her through the ice. Terry Martin, their prime – their only – real suspect untouched by the recent spate of arrests, his alibis still unbroken.

‘How long is it, girlfriend,' Carla asked over a late-night vodka tonic, ‘since you gave yourself any kind of a break? Had a proper holiday?'

They went to Fuerteventura: five nights in a four-star hotel on the edge of Jandia, just six hundred metres from the beach. Some days they didn't even get that far. The hotel had three swimming pools, sauna, Jacuzzi and spa. Karen rested, allowed herself to be pampered, read trashy novels, tried to erase the buzzing from her head.

On their final night, Carla talked her into joining her on stage towards the end of the karaoke. ‘Respect', ‘Single Ladies', ‘Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves'.

As an encore, ‘It's Raining Men'.

It wasn't.

They slept, each, alone. Flew back into Gatwick the next day feeling, if not cleansed, then, at the very least, refreshed. Even the sun was shining. The visibility as they approached over southern England was clear and good; the winds, a low five miles per hour from the south-west. They laughed and joked aboard the Gatwick Express, said how they must do that again and before too long. Autumn. An autumn break before the cold of winter. Snow and ice.

At Victoria, Carla gave Karen a big hug and they went their separate ways.

Karen saw the news placard on her way down into the Tube.

House fire in North London. Arson suspected. Seven dead
.

Seizing a copy, her eyes raced down the page.

Address in Wood Green … seven killed, five others being treated for severe burns … leg broken, jumping from upstairs window … firefighters beaten back by the intensity of the flames … unconfirmed rumours that three of the dead had recently been questioned in connection with the murder of Hector Prince … asked to comment on the possibility of revenge as a motive, there was no response from …

She punched in Ramsden's number.

‘Been trying to raise you,' he said, ‘since early this morning.'

Karen had deliberately switched off her mobile.

He gave her the address. One of a row of terraced houses, cramped together east of Wood Green High Road. When she saw Ramsden, he looked as desolate as the scene before him. Brickwork blackened, windows shattered and shorn of glass; front door badly charred and hanging from a single hinge. The last wisps of soot, restless on the air. Inside, a glimpse of hell.

There were two fire engines still in attendance, men and women inside, still damping down.

The last vestiges of smoke in the air.

Bunches of flowers, a few, clustering along the pavement to either side.

‘When did it happen?' Karen asked. Vestiges of smoke catching at her throat, smarting her eyes.

‘Two in the morning, give or take. Petrol bombs through both downstairs windows. Some kind of accelerant through the front door. Poor bastards inside never stood a chance.'

‘Payback.'

‘Without a doubt.'

Three young men, aged between fifteen and seventeen.

A girl of sixteen; another just twelve.

One thing to withhold names from public scrutiny, maintain reporting restrictions in place; another within the world in which they lived: holding them back for further questioning, even if they were later released, like painting a target on their backs.

‘Witnesses?' Karen asked.

Ramsden laughed and shook his head.

There had been a fire in New Cross, Karen knew, some thirty years before. Thirteen young black people killed. Part of her history. A racist attack? An accident? Revenge for some uncharted wrong? At the inquests an open verdict was twice returned. To this day, no charge in relation to the fire had been brought.

And if those lives lost had been white …?

She remembered her father driving her past the spot when she would have been no more than seven or eight years old.

‘Remember what happened here,' he had said, removing his hat. ‘Don't forget.'

She did remember, a small part of her, every day. And if ever it looked as if she might forget, there was something like this.

Or this …

Just five days later, what had happened in Wood Green and the events that had led up to it faded from the news, the head of the Trident independent advisory group issued a statement proclaiming a very real fear that, due to further government cuts, the unit, despite its successful record of building trust and solving gun and violent crime within the black community, was, as previously rumoured, facing imminent disbandment.

Sure, Karen thought, why not? Just a few black kids, capping one another for fun, why not put the money where it's really needed? Where the votes are.

59

She hadn't meant to be back again, but there she was. Almost a habit, but not quite. Not yet summer but the trees in full leaf, or so it seemed. Karen wearing no topcoat today, just a light jacket, sweater, jeans. Swimmers at the far end of the pond, a few; one lowering himself from the board before striking out, arms carving the water with ease.

This time, the young woman was standing just a short way along the path, and without her hood now, easy to recognise.

Karen waited for her to come closer.

‘Sasha.'

A nervous smile.

‘That was you, before?'

The girl nodded.

‘How did you know I'd be here today?'

‘I didn't. Not really. But I'd seen you here, a couple of times. I don't think you saw me.'

‘Just the once.'

‘Yes.'

‘You come here a lot?'

Sasha pulled at a stray length of hair. ‘More and more.' She shook her head. ‘I don't even want to. I just …'

Karen nodded. ‘I understand.'

‘Do you?'

‘I think so.'

Sasha waited a moment longer, then reached out towards Karen, and when she opened her fingers slowly, there in the palm of her hand was a ring.

‘What's that?' Karen asked.

But, of course, she knew.

‘That's the ring he was wearing,' Karen said. ‘Petru, the night he was killed.'

‘Yes.' A breath more than a word.

‘You've had it all along?'

Sasha gave a fierce shake of the head.

‘Tell me,' Karen said.

‘My dad, we was having this row. A few nights back. Awful. I'd come in late. A party. Just friends, that's all. But he started calling me these names. Bitch and whore and all of that and then he … he took this from one of his pockets, like he'd been keeping it there special, and threw it in my face and said, “Don't think I won't fuckin' do it again, ‘cause I will.”'

Her hand was shaking now and Karen reached out and covered it with her own, feeling between them the small hardness of the ring.

‘I just need to ask you, Sasha – there's no doubt in your mind what he meant by that, is there?'

‘No.' Sobbing. ‘No.'

‘And you'd be willing to make a statement, repeat what you just told me?'

‘Yes.' The word barely heard.

Karen moved closer and held her tight, for those short moments a bulwark against her tears.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Apropos a list of some three or four years' reading towards the back of his excellent little book,
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
, Stephen King says he suspects most of those books noted had some kind of influence on the novels he was writing at the time. In which case, glancing back through the last twelve or more months of my own reading during the course of writing this book, and seizing on authors whose names reappear several times, there should be traces here of, in no particular order, John le Carré, John McGahern, Willy Vlautin, Kate Atkinson, Horace McCoy and Colm Tóibín. More specifically, I reread with intent Peter Temple's
The Broken Shore
and
Truth
, because they seem to me to exemplify the very best of the kind of novel I'm trying to write, and Brian Thompson's
Ladder of Angels
, which is, for me, the great unsung British crime novel of the last few decades, rivalled only by his own
Bad to the Bone
.

In common with two of my characters, I read and was gripped by Attica Locke's
Black Water Rising
, dealing with civil rights, racism and political chicanery in the state of Texas, and Oakley Hall's
Separations
, which, like
Ladder of Angels
, revolves around the search for a missing woman – just find the girl!

Peter Coles, formerly a detective superintendent with the Nottinghamshire police, was of great help, as usual, in the early stages of writing this book, answering my often hapless and naive questions with patience and attention to detail.

My thanks, also, to Mark Gardner of
Jazz Journal
, who, when he learned the title I was intending to use, went out of his way to acquaint me with as many recorded versions of the Tadd Dameron composition ‘Good Bait' as exist.

My editor at Random House, Susan Sandon, in addition to her usual good advice and accurate eye, has shown patience almost beyond the call of duty in the, for me, unusually lengthy gestation of this book, as has my agent, Sarah Lutyens. What my partner and our daughter have had to contend with during this time is best left undocumented, but they did and I love them all the more for it.

John Harvey, London, June 2011

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2012 by John Harvey

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