Good Bait (DCI Karen Shields #1)(10)
‘Kia.’
‘I’ll get some treats for her next time. You can pay me for ’em later. Oh, and yeah, know how long it takes, all the way over here from Penzance?’
‘Twenty minutes?’
‘And the rest. So that’s all included, right? My time.’
She slipped on the lead and the dog half-dragged her towards the door. ‘Hour or so, maybe, first time. You’ll still be here?’
‘Sunday. Bar emergencies, my day off.’
‘Course. No crime of a Sunday. I forgot.’
When they’d gone Cordon took one more look at the pan, shook his head and dumped it in the bin; next time he went into Lidl he’d buy another.
After that, she stopped by most Sundays, a few summer evenings; it got so the springer could recognise her step before Cordon knew she was even close. From time to time, he’d ask her about home or college, just making conversation, little more: blood out of a stone.
One particular evening, a Tuesday, Cordon not long back from sorting a domestic that resulted, as they often did, in both parties turning on him and telling him to f*ck off out, she arrived with a bottle of cheap sparkling wine and wearing what Cordon assumed was one of her mother’s cast-offs, either that or a charity shop special, pale purply chenille with a slit skirt and ruched front.
‘What’s this in aid of?’
‘Celebration. My birthday. Sixteen.’ She threw herself in the direction of the small settee. ‘Means I’m legal.’
‘Means you’re sixteen.’
‘Jesus! Don’t you ever lighten up?’
‘Rarely.’
‘Here …’ Holding out the bottle. ‘Help me get this open.’
He found two glasses and poured the wine, getting only a little on the floor as it fizzed up. It tasted like he remembered: cream soda, but cream soda that had turned sour.
‘This really your birthday?’
Dipping her finger into the glass, she made a crossing motion, anointing her breasts through the material of the dress. ‘Christening, too.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘Got a new name, haven’t I?’
‘Fed up with the old one?’
‘Rose, it’s not me. Not anyone. Anyone I know.’
‘So who are you now?’
‘Letitia.’
Cordon did a small double-take.
‘You like it?’ she asked.
‘Different, I’ll say that for it.’
‘Joy and happiness. What it means. My dad told me.’
Cordon had never heard her mention her father before; hadn’t imagined them to be in touch.
‘He chose it for you?’
‘Sort of.’ Head back, she drank some more wine. ‘Suits me, don’t you think?’
‘Maybe.’
‘My dad thinks so. Looked right into me, didn’t he? Joy and bloody happiness. Saw deep into my soul.’
Cordon waited for the laugh, but it didn’t come.
When she left, just a short while later, there was still a good half a bottle remaining. After due deliberation, Cordon poured it down the sink. When she came back to walk the dog a week or so later, Letitia now, neither of them referred to the occasion at all.
She didn’t mention her father again, either, only the once, Cordon getting on his high horse and launching into something of a lecture about the values of doing a little reading, studying – the kind of thing students were supposed to do, though, from his perspective, it seemed few of them did.
‘Fuck off!’ she said. ‘Stop naggin’ at me all the bloody time. You’re not my bloody father, you know.’
Cordon knew. His own fatherly responsibilities were scattered halfway across the world: a son, Simon, fully grown, who had used his gap year to put ample distance between the pair of them and decided he liked it that way best. The only contact Cordon had – the terse, almost formal requests for funds aside – was the occasional postcard from Santo Domingo, Bogotá or La Paz, just letting him know he was still alive. After Bolivia he’d heard nothing, six months of worry, and then the cards had resumed – Pangai, Lautoka, Auckland, Hobart, Sydney. Pins stuck in a notional map, marking a journey that never seemed to point home.
His ex-wife, Judith, Cordon scarcely spoke to at all: a desultory late-night phone call, usually around Christmas time, pauses longer than words.
You’re not my father.
What was he, then? A concerned individual? A friend? Hardly that.
When the other officers, down at the station, got wind of what was happening, there were knowing glances cast in his direction, more than a few lewd remarks. Cordon let them slide.
Then something happened and it all changed.
At four in the morning, on the way home from a night’s clubbing and buoyed up by too many pills and too much alcohol, she let herself into his flat and slipped into his bed, and he pushed her angrily back out. Angry at her presumption: angry at himself for being aroused; knowing, somewhere at the back of his mind and in his groin, he’d always regret an opportunity not taken, little enough love in his life, little enough abandon.
She didn’t come by again.
The dog padded circles around the room and cast wistful glances at the door. Cordon walked her himself till he could find someone else, a young lad whose father worked at the fish dock down by the quay.