Good Bait (7 page)

‘But not together?'

‘No.'

‘And you're still with the UN?'

‘Unfortunately not. In '03 they relocated their European offices to Brussels. But Ion was already in school, had made friends, so we decided to stay. Besides, my husband's business was doing well. As you can see. For a while I was content to sit around, have long lunches with friends. Play tennis. Go to the gym. But it didn't really suit me at all. Now I'm working with an advice centre for refugees, those from Eastern Europe especially.'

Both heads turned at the sound of a key turning in the front door.

Ion Milescu was slender, almost willowy, his slenderness making him seem taller than he actually was; he had dark hair that fell forward across his forehead, his mother's blue eyes. He was wearing trainers, blue jeans ripped over one knee, a check shirt beneath a jeans jacket which he shucked off as he entered the room and tossed over the back of a chair.

Bending, he kissed his mother's raised cheek and glanced across towards where Karen was sitting.

When his mother made the introductions, he nodded briefly and flopped down on one of the settees. Karen waited to see if he would look again in her direction, instead of staring at the floor, the lace that was working its way loose from his shoe.

‘Petru Andronic,' she said eventually. ‘I believe you knew him?'

‘Who?'

She repeated the name.

‘No. Sorry.'

‘He's the young man whose body was found on Hampstead Heath just before Christmas. He'd been murdered.'

‘Oh, him.' A shuffling of feet. ‘Yes, I remember now. But he wasn't anyone I knew.'

‘You're sure of that?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Because it seems he knew you.'

‘No, I don't think so.'

‘On the night of December 20th, 21st, there were three calls made to your mobile by someone we believe to have been him.'

‘Then it must have been a wrong number.'

‘Three times?'

‘Sure. You put the number into your phone, you put it in wrong, each time you try it comes up the same.'

Until then, he'd scarcely looked her in the eye. Perhaps it was a teenage boy thing, Karen thought, perhaps not.

‘The first call was at a quarter to eleven,' she said, ‘the second roughly forty minutes later, the last at ten minutes past midnight.'

‘If you say so.'

‘On the first occasion you accepted the call. Why would you do that if you didn't recognise the number?'

‘I don't know. I suppose I didn't pay too much attention. You don't, do you? Not always. You hear the ring tone, you answer.'

‘And have a conversation?'

‘I've told you, there wasn't any conversation. I can't even remember any of this happening. But if it did, I suppose I just said something about wrong number and that was that. Finish. The end. What does it matter, anyway?'

The merest hint of an accent aside, his English was perfect.

‘Three minutes,' Karen said.

‘What?'

‘The first call, three minutes and seven seconds. A long time to say sorry, wrong number.'

‘Look, I've told you …' He was on his feet quickly, all signs of his previous lassitude disappeared. ‘All I know about Petru Andronic is what I read in the paper and whatever bits of gossip I've heard from friends. Okay? If he called my number like you say, I've no idea how or why, and I've no recollection of talking to him at all. So …'

Stepping past his mother's outstretched hand, he stormed out of the room. In the kitchen, the fridge door opened and bottles rattled before it was slammed shut.

Clare Milescu closed her eyes, sighed, looked towards Karen with a rueful smile.

‘Karen, I'm sorry. I'm not sure why he's like this. Let me talk to him.'

‘Of course.'

The kitchen door opened and closed and after a moment Karen could hear the rise and fall of voices without being able to decipher the words. Then the voices stopped and mother and son returned, Ion with his hands in his jeans pockets, head bowed.

‘Ion,' his mother said, measuring her words, ‘would like the opportunity to reconsider some of the remarks he's previously made.'

Clare Milescu made more coffee; her son fetched a bottle of Lucozade Sport from the fridge and, at his mother's insistence, grudgingly poured it into a glass. One of the windows out on to the balcony had been opened slightly, allowing a residue of breeze and traffic noise into the room.

The truth was, Ion said, he did know Petru Andronic, but by sight, little more. He'd bumped into him a few times at a café down in Chiswick where some of the Moldovan lads hung out, along with others from Romania and the Ukraine; they'd been involved, all of them, in a handful of scratch soccer games over in Brondesbury Park. He couldn't remember ever having given Andronic his mobile number, but he supposed it was possible. A lot of that went on, mobiles out all the time, the café especially, numbers being exchanged.

‘So,' Karen asked, ‘when Andronic called just before Christmas, what was all that about?'

He'd been in a bit of a state, excited about something, Ion told her, he'd never really been able to establish what. Something about someone who was supposed to meet him.

‘A girlfriend?'

Ion didn't know. Maybe. Yes, probably. But if it was a girl he didn't know her name. Calm down, he'd told him. Give me a call tomorrow. Tomorrow morning.

By tomorrow morning, he was dead.

‘Why didn't you come forward with any of this before?' Karen asked. ‘When it was all over the news and we were appealing for help? Information?'

A quick glance towards his mother. ‘I didn't want to get involved.'

‘He was your friend.'

‘He was not my fucking friend.'

‘Ion!' His mother's reaction was automatic, instantaneous.

‘I'm sorry, but how many times do I have to say it? He was not my friend.'

The burr of traffic from outside was more audible than before.

‘I really think,' Clare Milescu said, rising, ‘Ion has helped you all he can.'

Karen set her cup down evenly in its saucer. ‘Thank you. Thank you both.'

Clare Milescu walked her to the door.

‘You realise,' Karen said, ‘it's possible we may want to speak to your son again.'

‘I don't think that should be really necessary, do you?' The smile was there, then gone, the door closing with a firm click. Karen paused, then turned away. Stairs rather than lift.

10

Sasha Martin. Sixteen years and seven months. Sixth form student at the same school as her friend, Lesley Tabor. Only not today.

The house was a stone's throw from Mountsfield Park. More Hither Green than Catford, truth be told. Suburbia, Karen thought, but not quite as we know it. A Range Rover and a customised Mini were parked outside. The hedge had been trimmed to within an inch of its life.

No hawkers, no circulars, no unsolicited mail
.

Costello reached past Karen, rang the bell and stepped back.

The woman who came to the door was in her forties, slim, well-toned, fingernails that would have done justice to a bird of prey. Three mornings a week down the gym, Karen reckoned. That, at least. No obvious resort yet to plastic surgery, but it would come.

‘Mrs Martin?'

‘Yes?'

‘Fay Martin?'

‘Yes.'

Karen showed her warrant card, Tim Costello likewise.

‘We'd like to speak to your daughter, Sasha. They told us at the school she was here at home.'

‘You've not come about that, surely?'

‘No. No, not at all.'

‘Well, then …' Her eyes flickered from one to the other, lingering on Costello a fraction longer. ‘You'd best come in. Sasha's upstairs in her room.'

Someone, perhaps even Fay Martin herself, had been overworking the Pledge in the hall, shining the occasional table, buffing up the parquet.

‘Sasha! Sash! Come on down, there's a love.'

A pause, a door opening, then the usual bored, resentful teenage voice, ‘What for now?'

‘It's the police, Sash. Just a couple of questions, that's all.'

‘What about?'

‘Come down and you'll see.'

She raised an eyebrow to signify, kids, you know what they're like, and led them into a living room that was a testament to World of Leather. French windows leading out to a conservatory. A large flat-screen television was tuned to some confessional chat show, sound barely above a whisper – I slept with my girlfriend's sister, my mum's best friend. Faces anxiously searching for the camera as they sought their moment in the mire.

‘She'll be down in a minute.' With a flick of the remote she switched off the TV. ‘Maybe you'd like to tell me what all this is about?'

‘Let's wait for Sasha, shall we?'

Fay Martin looked as if she was about to argue, thought better of it and reached for her cigarettes instead. ‘Bad habit, I know …' Favouring Costello with a knowing smile. ‘'Bout the only one I've got left.'

The attractiveness that twenty years before had drawn boys like flies to the slaughter was holding up well; Karen could sense Tim Costello responding to it alongside her, smiling back.

Sasha finally entered blearily, rubbing her eyes. A voluminous T-shirt fell well past her hips, bare legs, bare feet, fair hair tied back.

‘You might have put something else on,' her mother said. ‘Made yourself decent.'

‘I am decent. I was sleepin', wasn't I?'

Folding her legs beneath her, she plonked herself at one end of the settee, T-shirt pulled down over her knees. A little puppy fat, but her mother's daughter, her mother's features nonetheless.

‘Sasha's not been feeling too well, have you, babe? Else she'd be at school.'

‘Playing the wag,' Costello suggested.

The girl shot him a look.

‘Sasha,' Karen said, ‘we need to ask you about your boyfriend.'

‘What boyfriend?'

‘She hasn't got a boyfriend, have you, Sash?'

‘Petru,' Karen said. ‘Petru Andronic.'

Some people, when embarrassed, go red, others turn pale. Sasha turned pale.

‘He's not her boyfriend,' Fay Martin said. ‘Never was, was he, Sash? Not really. Besides, all done and dusted a long time back, eh, babe? What happened to him, though, the boy, reading about it, seeing it, you know, on the news … someone you sort of knew, even if it was only just a little …'

Face aside, Sasha was suddenly fighting back tears, gulping air.

‘Sash, what is it, babe? What's the matter?'

Her mother reached for her hand and the girl pulled away, sobbing, starting to shake.

‘Sasha, come on …'

‘Just leave it! Leave it, okay? You don't understand and you never did.'

‘What? Love of your life, was it? That bloody asylum seeker, whatever he was? That waster?'

‘What if he was?'

‘You stupid little cow! You haven't got the foggiest idea what love is.'

‘Don't I? That's all you know.'

‘Love I'm talking about. Not getting down on your hands and knees in the back of some bloke's car.'

‘Better than fucking your personal trainer three times a night while Dad's out the fucking country.'

‘You little shit!'

She slapped the flat of her hand fast across her daughter's face, then swung the hand back, knuckles clenched, against the side of her head.

Sasha cried out.

Karen seized both of Fay Martin's arms and held them fast.

Blood was already starting to trickle from the corner of Sasha's mouth.

Tim Costello fished a tissue from his pocket and pressed it into her hand, then set off for where he imagined he'd find the bathroom and fresh supplies.

Time passed. Tempers cooled. Outside, it was three-quarters dark. Sasha had retreated to her room and re-emerged in a skinny-rib jumper and a pair of old jeans, hair still pulled back from her face. A small scab forming at the edge of her mouth.

Fay Martin had poured herself a gin and tonic, which she'd topped up twice already with straight gin. Tempted though she'd been, Karen had said no to joining her, yes to a mug of coffee – instant, I'm afraid –Tim Costello was on to his second glass of tap water.

Sasha's story slowly emerged.

She had met Petru Andronic early the previous summer, a concert in Victoria Park. Lounging on the grass. Hot Chip. Bombay Bicycle Club. Bands like that. She'd been with her mate Lesley and a few others; Petru had been there with a friend.

‘This friend,' Karen asked, ‘he had a name?'

‘Ion.'

‘Ion Milescu?'

Sasha nodded. Karen filed it away.

They got on well, her and Petru, really well, Lesley and Ion too. It was a laugh. As the concert was winding down, the boys asked if they could see them again and after a quick conflab the girls said, why not? After that they saw them quite a bit, at least Sasha did, saw Petru that is. Ion kept texting Lesley, making arrangements to see her, then at the last minute crying off; after a few weeks of that she didn't hear from him at all.

‘But you carried on? Seeing Petru?'

‘Yes.' A quick glance across at her mum. ‘He was nice. Not like … not like most other boys. Not grabbing you all the time.'

‘Didn't fancy you much, then, did he?' her mother said with a sneer.

‘He respected me.'

‘Oh, yes?'

‘He loved me.'

‘Jesus Christ!'

‘He was going to marry me.'

‘Over my dead body he was.' Fay Martin reached for the gin.

‘You didn't know. You didn't care. I wore this ring he give me on a chain round my neck and you didn't even notice.'

‘Your father would have skinned the pair of you alive.'

‘He wouldn't have had the chance, would he?'