Good Bait

by John Harvey

  The moment the driver had tried to make off, all three passengers had bolted from the car, the near-side door slamming against Richie Stevenson’s legs and sending him stumbling back against the privet hedge; Stevenson recovering quickly enough to give chase and bring down the slowest of the runaways with a rugby tackle that wouldn’t have looked out of place at Twickenham or Murrayfield, even if it did tear his trouser leg against the edge of the kerb and badly graze both knees.

  ‘Okay, you little shit. You’re nicked.’ Just like Life on Mars.

  Hugo French stood in the doorway, still with his dressing gown over his pyjamas, soft slippers on his feet. He’d never imagined the police would respond as speedily as they had, half-prepared to be fobbed off with some excuse or other when he’d phoned, but pleased now that he’d gone ahead and everything had panned out the way it seemingly had. A little excitement no bad thing, he supposed, straightening his back automatically as the female officer made her way towards him, the young oaf that she’d dealt with so competently now handcuffed in the back of the police car and, from the sound of it, reinforcements on the way.

  Memory not what it was, he’d taken the precaution of jotting down a few things on a scrap of paper, what he’d heard and seen. You never know, he might even be called on to give evidence somewhere down the line. Now wouldn’t that be something, name in the local paper he’d not be surprised. Mary would have liked that, in her quiet way been proud. Not that she’d have said.

  ‘Mr French?’

  He held out his hand.

  41

  There were more beggars on the street now, Karen thought, as she made her way to work, several sitting crouched up against the walls outside the Tube. Earlier in the year it had been two, then four, then five; this morning, between the edge of Highbury Fields and the station, she’d passed half a dozen. Two women, one of them little more, seemingly, than a girl; four men. Three of the men with mangy dogs beside them, bristle-mouthed, whippet thin, all sheltering, as best they could, from the rain.

  Inside the forecourt, two more men, collecting for charity, stood shaking buckets at the incoming travellers: flood disasters here, AIDS sufferers there, poor and disabled everywhere.

  Karen fished into her purse for stray coins, slapped her Oyster card down on the reader and joined the throng. The train was crowded, people standing cheek by jowl, but by some good fortune she managed to squeeze into a seat. A few minutes along, they slowed to a halt. Due to a signal failure at King’s Cross, they were being held in a queue. Mutual groans, shaking of heads. The last time this had happened, it had been a good thirty minutes before they moved. No signal that far underground, there was no sense in trying to phone ahead, warning she’d be late. With a scowl, she reached her book from her bag.

  Tim Costello was waiting at her office door when she arrived, sporting a new jacket in industrial denim from somewhere like G-Star — a couple of hundred at least, Karen guessed, plus change. Someone with money enough to spare.

  ‘Want my opinion?’ Karen said, treating him to a quick up-and-down. ‘A little short, maybe, in the sleeves.’

  Costello, bless him, essayed a faint blush. ‘This guy,’ he said, ‘Brendan Cullen, brought in a couple of nights back, Kentish Town. Doing smack off the roof of his car right under a bloody street light, if you can believe that.’

  ‘I can believe anything. But what’s it got to do with us?’

  ‘When they searched the car they found a 9mm Glock and ammo in the boot, hidden beneath the spare. Intel reckon it’s the one used at Woodford. Double-checking now.’

  Karen’s eyes brightened. ‘He’s been charged?’

  ‘Possession of a firearm and ammunition in a public place.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘So far.’

  ‘What’s he saying about the gun?’

  ‘Not his.’

  ‘Surprise, surprise.’

  ‘Thought maybe I should get myself down there, Kentish Town, ask a few questions.’

  ‘Okay, but don’t go stepping on any toes.’

  Costello grinned. ‘Fairy footsteps, I promise.’

  Costello stood looking at Cullen through one-way glass as he stonewalled question after question, smirk like a razor cut across his face.

  Brendan Cullen. Bren.

  One leg was hooked nonchalantly across the other, tapered jeans, white T-shirt under a grey hoodie, one studded ear, a neat blue tattoo along his neck. Twenty-two? Twenty-three? He’d been practising for this since the local beat copper had first dragged him in, kicking and blaspheming, eight years old. Dad and granddad both doing time. Brother, one of them, in care. Another, the oldest, in the army, overseas; matter of time, Cullen thought, sad bastard, before he came home in a box.

  So far, he’d admitted little or nothing. Possession of a small amount of a Class A drug for personal use only. Taking and driving away.

  And the handgun found in the boot of his car?

  Not his.

  Not your gun?

  Not my car.

  Ba-boom!

  Stolen, like he’d said, from the free parking area close to the Forum a couple of nights before. As for the unlicensed weapon tucked under the spare, together with a box of shells, no idea they were there. Nicking a motor, you didn’t exactly hang around to search the boot now, did you? A grin, switched off as easily as it had been switched on. Just shows, can’t trust nobody nowadays.

  Cullen leaned back even farther; peered at Costello through lowered lids as he came into the room and one of the other officers left. Costello identifying himself for the tape.

  ‘The pistol, you say you’d no idea it was in the car?’

  Cullen looked up in the direction of the camera and yawned. ‘We got to go through all this again?’

  ‘Before you went off and met your mates, you didn’t tuck it away under the spare yourself?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Jesus, how many more times-’

  ‘Then how come one of your prints is on the gun …?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Up against the trigger housing, underside of the barrel.’

  ‘Bollocks!’

  ‘Okay, it’s a partial, but enough there to bring it up on the database. Ridges, bifurcations, whorls — amazing what they can do with AFIS nowadays. But you’re a bright boy, you probably know all that kind of stuff, right?’ Not over-egging it, just enough to spread a little confusion, plant a sliver of doubt in Cullen’s mind.

  Cullen staring at him and Costello holding that gaze and, without too much hostility, passing it back, beginnings of a smile around the eyes, willing him to believe the lie.

  ‘Of course,’ Costello said, ‘your brief will tell you a partial print on its own may not be enough to convince a jury, might not even stand up in court, but if I had as much as a partial print of mine on a weapon that had been used in at least one near-fatal shooting, I wouldn’t like to take that risk. Would you?’

  ‘What shooting?’

  ‘Woodford, not so many nights back. Unlawful wounding, grievous bodily harm, could be attempted murder, depends which way the CPS want to go. Kid doesn’t pull through, likely turn out to be the real thing. Go down for that and by the time you get out you’ll be lining up for your Freedom Pass and your old age pension both.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ Cullen said again, but without conviction.

  He reached for the plastic glass of water that had sat, up to then, untouched on the table getting warm, and as he did so, Costello reached out also and, for the briefest of moments, covered Cullen’s hand with his own.

  ‘Your gun, Brendan, fair enough, face the consequences. Not your gun, my advice, say now before you’re in too deep.’

  As Costello moved his hand away, Cullen lifted the glass. The water in his mouth was brackish, stale.

  ‘Liam’s,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘It was Liam’s, the gun. Liam Jarvis. A favour, like.’ He loo
ked away.

  Costello did his best not to smile. ‘Why don’t you tell me how that favour worked?’

  Karen listened carefully, tapping the tabletop lightly with the end of her pen. Cullen’s story: Jarvis had told him to get rid of the gun, instead of which, Cullen had clung on to it, thinking to lie about it being clean and sell it on — that the reason he’d had it with him that evening, but the prospective buyer had cried off. After which the smack took over and his sense of purpose became a little vague.

  ‘Last time we went looking for Jarvis,’ Karen said, ‘he proved hard to find.’

  ‘So eager to get into our good books,’ Costello said, ‘Cullen might’ve given us a hand there, too. Reckons there’s little Jarvis likes better than a few frames of snooker of an afternoon.’

  ‘Anywhere special?’

  ‘Snooker hall, Old Kent Road. Not far from the Thomas a Becket.’

  Her aunt used to love watching it on TV, Karen remembered, snooker; hour after hour from the Crucible, the movement of the colours, deep green of the baize.

  ‘You’ll need back-up,’ she said. ‘No point in taking risks. And best take Mike Ramsden with you. Just in case.’

  42

  When they arrived, Jarvis was coming towards the end of what would surely have been a winning break, two reds left on the table and the colours all lined up, nice and potable. He swung a cue in Costello’s direction, but his movement was too slow, his aim adrift, maybe he wouldn’t have sunk the black after all. Costello ducked easily beneath the swing and delivered a sharp kick immediately below the knee. Before Jarvis could hit the floor, three officers had seized hold of him and flung him on to the table, arms and legs akimbo, balls everywhere.

  His opponent took the game by default.

  Once Jarvis had been hauled away, Costello foolishly took up Ramsden’s challenge and lost the best of five frames in next to no time, Ramsden clearing the table on two occasions without Costello pocketing a single red.

  ‘One of those games,’ Ramsden said, as he relieved the younger man of much of the contents of his wallet, ‘where luck has bugger all to do with it. Craft, son. Practice. That …’ winking, ‘and a good eye.’

  In the interview suite, Jarvis had done his level best to suborn Brendan Cullen as a congenital liar. Why in God’s name would he be giving Cullen a gun? To throw away? Dispose of? What kind of idiot would do that? Cullen, of all people. But images of himself, clear as if in HD, making off after the shooting in Woodford, added to some careful reminders of the factors behind his original arrest — witnesses who had placed himself and Rory Bevan in Walthamstow at the approximate time of the shooting — brought about a change of tack.

  Yes, all right, maybe he’d passed along the pistol to Cullen. Maybe. But that night in Woodford, it’d just been about making a few threats, right, showing face. Warn the kid, back off, that was all. Stick the gun in his face and watch him shit himself. But, of course, for Rory fuckin’ Bevan, that wasn’t enough. Mad bastard that he was. Rory, who squeezed the bloody trigger, that was who.

  ‘You mean, like the time in Walthamstow?’ Costello had asked, mild as you please.

  ‘Yeah, like that,’ Jarvis said. ‘Just like that.’

  Since when, Rory Bevan had been brought in and charged and now the pair of them, Bevan and Jarvis, were busy putting one another in it, passing the blame, talking themselves into the best part of sixteen years and change.

  Well, Karen thought, they’d needed a break, deserved one, and, at length, it had come. She eased back the curtains to reveal pavements that were dark and slick from early morning rain. The first strands of light were stretched almost to breaking point across the sky.

  She set the kettle to boil, showered, dressed, switched on the radio — more bad news of the economy — and almost immediately switched it off again, opting for music from the stereo instead. Humming along, she made toast and coffee, fixed her make-up, checked her phone. Three messages and half a dozen texts, one from Carla, two from her sister, one from her mum in Jamaica, all of them wanting, deserving, a little of her time.

  She made a promise to phone her mother, at least; rinsed cup and plate in the sink and left them to dry, then reached for her coat. Her boots could have done with a lick and a polish, but what the hell.…

  A good hour later she was at her desk, checking rotas, signing forms, wondering where her next cup of coffee was coming from, and there was Mike Ramsden, looking for all the world as if he’d spent the night on a park bench, but balancing two cups of coffee, one above the other, a smile crinkling up his face regardlessless.

  ‘The lottery?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Do tell.’

  ‘CCTV on the approach roads to Stansted — nothing at the storage units themselves, as we know, so that’s been our best bet. Poor bastards going swivel eyed, hour after hour of sodding tape. Concentrating on vans, seemed the most likely, and you can imagine how many of those there are shuttling in and out. Need checking, each and every one, but it looks like in the end it might’ve paid off. Clocked a Ford van coming off the slip road from the M11 just after four in the morning, heading for the airport, Volvo saloon following, S60 by the look of it, dark green. An hour, give or take, later, the same journey in reverse. Van’s a Transit 360, registration clear as a bell at one point, leased six weeks before from a garage in Milton Keynes.’

  ‘Leased to? False name, don’t tell me.’

  ‘Thought at first it was, but no, I don’t think so. D amp; J Foods. Office in Milton Keynes. Dennis Broderick, director. His name on the letterhead.’

  ‘Good work. And Cormack, he’s up to speed on all this?’

  ‘Thought you’d like to do the honours.’

  Smiling her thanks, Karen punched in Warren Cormack’s number.

  A little over twenty-four hours later, prompt as before, Cormack got back to her with positive news. As well as Broderick’s office in Milton Keynes, there was another in Luton, plus storage facilities in a small industrial park off the Al close to Bedford and, until six months previously, on a disused airfield at Wing, close to the Bucks-Beds border.

  ‘Bit of help from the local force, we’ve been checking those out. Nothing at Bedford, not so far, but a patrol car from County Division went out to the airfield first thing. Not immediately clear which of the buildings Broderick might’ve rented, so they looked around. Found, maybe, more than they bargained for. One of the older buildings, disused for quite a while by the look of it. Blood all over the place inside. A lot of blood. Not new but no doubting what it was. Burned clothing. And more. Hooks and chains where somebody might have been tied.’

  Karen could feel the adrenalin beginning to race. ‘They’ve got the place secured?’

  ‘Tight as a nut. Their words.’

  ‘And where is it exactly? Wing, you said?’

  ‘M1 north. A5, then west. An hour’s drive, give or take. I’ll meet you there.’

  The airfield had been the home of No. 26 Operational Training Unit for RAF Bomber Command during the Second World War, and then was used as a gateway for large numbers of returning servicemen during the late spring and early summer of ’45. After the war it squandered into disuse, weeds growing up through the cracks that spidered across its two runways; Nissen huts and hangars falling into disrepair. Now, partly reclaimed as farmland, it was also the home to a small number of light industrial units along the edge closest to the road, though a few of the old buildings still remained.

  It was in one of these that the local officers had made their find.

  Cormack was waiting when Karen arrived, smart in a blue-black overcoat, unbuttoned, grey cashmere scarf. And not alone. Scene of Crime officers in attendance, others from the project team Cormack was heading.

  ‘It’s this way,’ he said, and Karen fell into step beside him, others following.

  When they reached the outbuilding, Cormack pushed open the high-arched wooden door and stepped back, letting Karen enter first. She
took three paces and then stopped, allowing her eyes to become accustomed to the levels of light.

  Chains slowly sharpened into focus, hanging from hooks attached to beams above, and switching her, in her mind’s eye, back to the container shed at Stansted, the butchered bodies, the smell of butchered flesh. Chains that would have held men fast while others did their work. Slow, careful work essayed with relish and not a little skill.

  Karen fancied she could scent the blood rising still from where it had congealed, near black, impasto like, close to where she stood. Something rustled amongst the mouldering debris in the farthest corner and scuttled away.

  ‘Seen enough?’ Cormack said, moving quietly alongside her.

  ‘Yes.’ She could taste it in her throat, like bile, thick enough to choke.

  ‘We ought to move back. Let Forensics get started.’

  They stood outside under an opaque sky, not speaking, not yet. Cormack kicking gently at a tuft of grass that had squeezed up between the slabs of concrete, small concentrated prods with the end of his toe. Karen brought her hand to her mouth and shivered, little to do with the wind that scythed across from the perimeter, the eastern edge of the field.

  Cormack reached into his pocket for his cigarettes, offered one to Karen, who shook her head, then accepted.

  ‘I’ve given up,’ Karen said, as Cormack, cupping a hand round his lighter, flicked it to life.

  ‘Me, too.’

  The soft grey of their smoke dissipated upwards and was lost.

  ‘Until Forensics have got a match from the blood,’ Cormack said, ‘there’s no way to be sure. It could be animal blood even, not human.’

  ‘A little black-market butchery on the sly?’

  ‘Not impossible.’

  ‘This was the place Broderick used for storage till recently?’