Good Bait (DCI Karen Shields #1)(49)
As he watched, the man double-checked his watch, lowered the zip on his jacket midway down.
Iron held down flat against his thigh, Cordon stepped into sight.
‘Who the f*ck are you?’
‘Never mind.’
‘Where’s the woman? The boy?’
‘They’re not coming.’
‘They better f*ckin’ be. S’posed to be here now.’
His face was flushed, cheeks swelling out.
Cordon walked towards him, taking his time. ‘You’re not listening,’ he said.
‘Don’t give me f*ckin’ listening. You call ’em, get ’em here, or f*ckin’ else.’
Cordon shook his head, the brittle edges of the iron biting into his hand.
Angling his head to one side, the man hawked phlegm and spat at the ground, then, as if making a decision, he arched suddenly forward, reaching round to the back of his jacket as if he might be going for a gun.
The one chance, likely the only one he was going to get, Cordon hit him with a fast swing, smack against the underside of the elbow with a crack that made him scream.
‘You bastard! You broke my f*ckin’ arm.’
In for a penny, Cordon hit him again, the knee this time, and the man went down in a sprawling heap. Cordon pressed his foot down hard against the damaged leg and pulled the pistol from where it had been resting against the small of the man’s back. One click and he pocketed the magazine. The gun he hurled away as far as he could.
‘You’ll live to f*ckin’ regret this.’
‘I hope you’re right.’
Cordon rested the rusted end of iron against the man’s sweated forehead, oblivious to the pain in his eyes.
‘A message for Anton …’
‘I don’t know no f*cking Anton.’
‘Then whoever sent you on his behalf. Steer clear. The woman and the boy. Well clear. This isn’t the way.’
Stepping quickly round him, Cordon freed the keys from where they’d been left in the Merc and launched them in a high, steepling arc, deep into the woods.
‘Bastard!’ the man shouted. ‘You’re gonna f*ckin’ pay for this. Fuckin’ pay.’
Cordon thought, one way or another, he was probably right. Walking away, breath raw, his heart hammered inside his chest. This time he’d managed it without a scratch.
31
Late afternoon. Karen was on the M1, heading north. A pool car, unmarked, no more than a couple of years old, clutch tight as an old man’s chest. The traffic travelling out of the city was already beginning to bunch and stall. When they played their second Neil Diamond track within the hour, she switched off Magic FM and, slipping an Aretha CD into place, notched up the volume just a tad.
The call had come through that morning, high-pitched, hesitant, a definite accent – South Yorkshire, somewhere close? – a young woman sounding early twenties at best. Jayne Andrew. No s. Jayne with a y. An address in Mansfield. Wayne Simon, he’d been hanging round the Four Seasons shopping centre where she worked. Where she lived, too. No doubt, no doubt at all. Used to go out with him, didn’t she? Years back. Two or three, at least, must be. She’d been into the local police station and they’d said they’d have a word with security in the centre, drive by the house where she lived, but, far as she could tell, they never had. Told her to call the police in London, so that’s what she’d done. She hoped that was okay?
‘Fine,’ Karen had assured her. ‘You did the right thing.’
Ramsden, Costello, the rest of her team were out of the office, busy; she could have sent someone junior, but somehow she fancied it herself. As long as what the woman was claiming panned out and it wasn’t just another lonely fantasist, desperate for some attention, this was the best lead they’d had. And there was the weather – earlier there’d been scarcely a cloud worth its name overhead, the sky a pale but definite blue, all the promise of a lovely, late winter day. A still-distant harbinger of spring. Just right for a drive, an hour or more alone in the car with just the stereo for company. A change is gonna come, sang Aretha, and who was to say she was wrong?
Jayne Andrew was whey faced and small boned – petite, the word – four or five months’ pregnant and just beginning to show. Hair that had once been dyed blonde hung lank past her face; grey eyes, dark lashes, surprisingly long. She was wearing a loose top, stretch pants, slippers on her feet. She squinted at the identification Karen showed her without really seeing it and invited her inside.
The block of flats where she lived looked to have been built in the seventies: flat-fronted, flat-roofed, a rectangular box of identical units with a straggle of grass out front and cream-coloured exterior walls in sore need of several fresh coats of paint. Jayne Andrew’s flat was on the upper floor, neat and small, the furniture a mixture of what Karen assumed were hand-me-downs and newer stuff from Ikea.
‘Not working today?’
She shrugged. ‘Keep cutting back, don’t they? Three days a week at the moment, that’s all there is.’ She touched the curve of her belly. ‘Not as that’ll matter much pretty soon.’
‘When’s the baby due?’
‘June. June 15th.’
‘And is this the dad?’ Karen pointed at the photograph framed above the television, a young man in military uniform, staring out.