Good Bait (DCI Karen Shields #1)(32)

There were still periods when she signed on or worked in bars; in between there was the odd show in Manchester or Liverpool; twelve weeks understudying an all-black production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in the West End; bits and pieces of telly – Wire in the Blood, Silent Witness, The Bill – usually, as she put it, standing around on street corners with my skirt up my arse looking for business, waiting for someone to smack me upside the head with a hammer.

Right now she was at the National, Jacobean tragedy, twenty-three performances at the Cottesloe, then out on tour. Carla playing five different roles and loving it.

They met at a place near the theatre, loud music, Mexican food and cocktails, Carla’s voice rising above everything: ‘Karen! Girlfriend! Over here.’ Carla with brightly beaded hair extensions, cleavage to die for, colours that clashed as deliriously as something in a Matisse painting.

After a hug and a kiss and a perfunctory, ‘So, how’s it all going?’, Carla set off, as Karen knew and hoped she would, on a rousing and ribald account of the previous few months of her life that drew applause and laughter from listeners at the surrounding tables.

After a day of no progress whatsoever, other than Hector Prince’s mother, between convulsions of grief and angry tears, identifying her son in the sterile cold of the morgue, Karen hadn’t wanted to spend the evening alone.

‘Don’t turn round now,’ she said, as the waiter delivered a fresh pair of mojitos, ‘but that guy over by the back wall, is he looking at us?’

Carla leaned over and fiddled with the strap of her shoe. ‘Black turtleneck, short hair, that the one?’

Karen nodded.

‘I should hope so.’

‘No, really. I’m serious.’

‘What? You fancy him? Doesn’t look like your type.’

‘No, it’s not …’

‘’Cause I can go over, make an introduction …’

‘No.’ She grabbed hold of Carla’s arm. ‘No, it’s fine. Just jumpy, that’s all.’

‘Okay, okay.’

The next time Karen looked, the man had gone.

‘Bad day, huh?’

‘Bad couple of days.’

‘Want to talk about it?’

Karen shook her head.

They went to a club across the river, just a nightcap, vodka tonics. When someone stumbled over his feet asking her to dance, Carla just laughed. ‘I ought to be heading home,’ she said, glancing at her watch. ‘Matinee tomorrow.’

They stood on the Embankment, looking out over the river, the slow trail of lights down towards St Paul’s.

Carla lit a cigarette.

‘Let me have one.’

‘I thought you’d given up.’

‘I did.’

Something caught Karen’s eye up on the bridge. The flash of a camera. Tourists capturing the city, the Thames at night.

‘If it was ever really getting to you,’ Carla said, ‘you know, really doing your head in, you’d chuck it all in, right? Step away.’

‘Yeah. Yeah, of course.’

Even as she said it, she wondered if it were true. It was her life, after all. What else could she do? And besides – Make somethin’ of yourself, her father had said. Make a difference if you can. She owed it to him to keep trying.

*

Five minutes later, she and Carla were in the Underground, different destinations, separate trains. A five-minute walk for Karen from Highbury and Islington, five or six, soft echo of her footsteps along the pavement. Someone, somewhere playing Al Green’s ‘Belle’, a song she’d always loved; an upstairs window left open, volume just high enough to tempt her into singing along. The living-room light was on as she’d left it, muted through closed curtains. Key in her hand, she looked up and down the empty street.

Inside, she slipped the bolt and turned the key. Switched on the TV and listened to the canned laughter from some rerun comedy as she moved around the flat, taking off her clothes. The man in the Mexican place earlier, standing up against the wall, bottle of Dos Equis in his hand; she knew him, someone like him. The way he had looked at her. As if he were in the job. God! What was this? Burcher on her tail from nowhere, checking up on her, asking questions. Ion Milescu’s father expressing concern, friends in high places, and now she was getting paranoid.

Ridiculous.

She clicked off the light.

The man in the restaurant: off duty or on?

The bedroom struck cold. Curling into position on her side, knees drawn up, one hand close to her face, she was asleep before realising she’d closed her eyes. Flat out.

And still she dreamed.





20


Come all this way, Kiley had said, with reference to the bookshop Letitia’s father ran in Hastings, shame not to check it out. Besides, it was too long, Cordon thought, though little time enough, since he had seen the sea. The smell, catching the air from as far back as the railway station, drawing him down.

He made his way past the chippies and the pizza parlours and the petty amusement arcades, on past the signs advertising Smugglers Adventure and Underwater World to where the fishing boats, bright reds and blues and greens, sat propped on a slope of pebbles beneath the East Cliff; net houses, narrow and all-over black, stood tall, shielding them from the road.

Cordon walked between the boats, sniffing the air, listening to the squawk and call of gulls, relishing the roll of small stones beneath his feet. Letitia might even like it here, he thought, the south coast, remind her of some of the things – few enough – she missed about home. A touch closer to Penzance than Finsbury Park.