Good Bait (DCI Karen Shields #1)(93)

‘So, to what do we owe the honour?’

He hesitated, just for a moment, lost for words.

‘I was worried about you.’

It sounded pathetic. It was.

‘No need. Not now. Look …’ She gestured around the oversized room, the fading, expensive furnishings. ‘Sitting pretty.’

‘You can’t stay here.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know. I just thought …’

‘Thought what?’

‘Now he’s not here, you could go. Leave. You and Danny, there’s nothing stopping you. Go anywhere.’

She was laughing. ‘Anywhere? Down to Cornwall with you, start a new life? That what you’re thinking?’

‘Maybe. If that’s what you wanted.’

‘Back down to where I’ve spent half my life trying to get away from.’

‘All right, then. You said it, anyway, not me.’

‘But it’s what you were thinking.’

‘Not really.’

‘Liar. Bloody liar.’

Lighting a cigarette, she arched back her head and let the smoke slide upwards from the corners of her mouth.

Already, Cordon was wishing he’d never come.

‘What will you do, then?’ he said.

‘Like I say, stay here long as I can.’

‘You can afford to do that?’

She sat forward. ‘When the police were here, searching, taking stuff away by the truckload, anything to do with Anton’s business, one or two little things they missed. Place this size, have to take it to pieces, bit by bit, to find everything.’ Her face creased in a smile. ‘Leather holdall, good leather, too. Behind the panelling in one of the bathrooms, the one Danny uses most often. Five-hundred-euro notes, packed to the brim. Got to twenty thousand and stopped counting. When that’s all gone, I’ll find something else.’

She fixed him with a look, narrowed her eyes. ‘You know me, Cordon. Resourceful, i’n’t that the word?’ A laugh, throaty. ‘Maybe not the one you’re thinking.’

She was on her feet.

‘That cab you came in, I don’t suppose you told him to wait?’

He shook his head.

‘No, well, I’ll call one. Trains every half-hour from the station.’ She caught hold of his arm. ‘Christ, Cordon, don’t look so glum. It’s all turned out okay. For now, anyway. Bugger the future, that’s what I say. Look after what’s happening now.’

Reaching up, she kissed him on the cheek.

‘You’re a soft bastard, Cordon, you know that, don’t you? Always was.’

He didn’t need telling.

‘Why don’t you go find Danny? See him before you go. Tell him he might come down some time, see you in Cornwall. He’ll like that. I can always put him on the train.’





58


It had kept circling around in Karen’s brain, hovering over everything else, never settling. On the rare instances she came into contact with Burcher in the ensuing weeks, he seemed much the same as before; no signs of being under particular stress, under fear of investigation. When she bumped into Alex Williams – a brief conversation on their way back from separate meetings – she came close to asking her about passing on something told in confidence, but the moment wasn’t right. If there were rumours of the Chief Superintendent being involved in some criminal conspiracy, she didn’t hear them, not directly. Just that same insistent, distant, buzzing. Work to do, she ignored it as best she could.

A party to several interrogations herself, a close witness to others, it became clear that the various members of Dooley’s gang responsible for the Stansted killings were intent upon shifting blame from one to another. Talking themselves, as Mike Ramsden put it, into life inside with less chance of parole than I’ve got of pulling off an accumulator at f*cking Ascot.

More tenuous, but promising, the earlier set of arrests officers from Operation Trident had made in connection with the murder of Hector Prince had been followed by another, four young men currently being held for questioning, the magistrate’s court having agreed to an additional time in custody.

Only the death that had, in a way, begun it all, remained unsolved. Petru Andronic, his dead eyes staring blankly up at her through the ice. Terry Martin, their prime – their only – real suspect untouched by the recent spate of arrests, his alibis still unbroken.

‘How long is it, girlfriend,’ Carla asked over a late-night vodka tonic, ‘since you gave yourself any kind of a break? Had a proper holiday?’

They went to Fuerteventura: five nights in a four-star hotel on the edge of Jandia, just six hundred metres from the beach. Some days they didn’t even get that far. The hotel had three swimming pools, sauna, Jacuzzi and spa. Karen rested, allowed herself to be pampered, read trashy novels, tried to erase the buzzing from her head.

On their final night, Carla talked her into joining her on stage towards the end of the karaoke. ‘Respect’, ‘Single Ladies’, ‘Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves’.

As an encore, ‘It’s Raining Men’.

It wasn’t.

They slept, each, alone. Flew back into Gatwick the next day feeling, if not cleansed, then, at the very least, refreshed. Even the sun was shining. The visibility as they approached over southern England was clear and good; the winds, a low five miles per hour from the south-west. They laughed and joked aboard the Gatwick Express, said how they must do that again and before too long. Autumn. An autumn break before the cold of winter. Snow and ice.