Good Bait

10

Sasha Martin. Sixteen years and seven months. Sixth form student at the same school as her friend, Lesley Tabor. Only not today.

The house was a stone’s throw from Mountsfield Park. More Hither Green than Catford, truth be told. Suburbia, Karen thought, but not quite as we know it. A Range Rover and a customised Mini were parked outside. The hedge had been trimmed to within an inch of its life.

No hawkers, no circulars, no unsolicited mail.

Costello reached past Karen, rang the bell and stepped back.

The woman who came to the door was in her forties, slim, well-toned, fingernails that would have done justice to a bird of prey. Three mornings a week down the gym, Karen reckoned. That, at least. No obvious resort yet to plastic surgery, but it would come.

‘Mrs Martin?’

‘Yes?’

‘Fay Martin?’

‘Yes.’

Karen showed her warrant card, Tim Costello likewise.

‘We’d like to speak to your daughter, Sasha. They told us at the school she was here at home.’

‘You’ve not come about that, surely?’

‘No. No, not at all.’

‘Well, then …’ Her eyes flickered from one to the other, lingering on Costello a fraction longer. ‘You’d best come in. Sasha’s upstairs in her room.’

Someone, perhaps even Fay Martin herself, had been overworking the Pledge in the hall, shining the occasional table, buffing up the parquet.

‘Sasha! Sash! Come on down, there’s a love.’

A pause, a door opening, then the usual bored, resentful teenage voice, ‘What for now?’

‘It’s the police, Sash. Just a couple of questions, that’s all.’

‘What about?’

‘Come down and you’ll see.’

She raised an eyebrow to signify, kids, you know what they’re like, and led them into a living room that was a testament to World of Leather. French windows leading out to a conservatory. A large flat-screen television was tuned to some confessional chat show, sound barely above a whisper — I slept with my girlfriend’s sister, my mum’s best friend. Faces anxiously searching for the camera as they sought their moment in the mire.

‘She’ll be down in a minute.’ With a flick of the remote she switched off the TV. ‘Maybe you’d like to tell me what all this is about?’

‘Let’s wait for Sasha, shall we?’

Fay Martin looked as if she was about to argue, thought better of it and reached for her cigarettes instead. ‘Bad habit, I know …’ Favouring Costello with a knowing smile. ‘’Bout the only one I’ve got left.’

The attractiveness that twenty years before had drawn boys like flies to the slaughter was holding up well; Karen could sense Tim Costello responding to it alongside her, smiling back.

Sasha finally entered blearily, rubbing her eyes. A voluminous T-shirt fell well past her hips, bare legs, bare feet, fair hair tied back.

‘You might have put something else on,’ her mother said. ‘Made yourself decent.’

‘I am decent. I was sleepin’, wasn’t I?’

Folding her legs beneath her, she plonked herself at one end of the settee, T-shirt pulled down over her knees. A little puppy fat, but her mother’s daughter, her mother’s features nonetheless.

‘Sasha’s not been feeling too well, have you, babe? Else she’d be at school.’

‘Playing the wag,’ Costello suggested.

The girl shot him a look.

‘Sasha,’ Karen said, ‘we need to ask you about your boyfriend.’

‘What boyfriend?’

‘She hasn’t got a boyfriend, have you, Sash?’

‘Petru,’ Karen said. ‘Petru Andronic.’

Some people, when embarrassed, go red, others turn pale. Sasha turned pale.

‘He’s not her boyfriend,’ Fay Martin said. ‘Never was, was he, Sash? Not really. Besides, all done and dusted a long time back, eh, babe? What happened to him, though, the boy, reading about it, seeing it, you know, on the news … someone you sort of knew, even if it was only just a little …’

Face aside, Sasha was suddenly fighting back tears, gulping air.

‘Sash, what is it, babe? What’s the matter?’

Her mother reached for her hand and the girl pulled away, sobbing, starting to shake.

‘Sasha, come on …’

‘Just leave it! Leave it, okay? You don’t understand and you never did.’

‘What? Love of your life, was it? That bloody asylum seeker, whatever he was? That waster?’

‘What if he was?’

‘You stupid little cow! You haven’t got the foggiest idea what love is.’

‘Don’t I? That’s all you know.’

‘Love I’m talking about. Not getting down on your hands and knees in the back of some bloke’s car.’

‘Better than fucking your personal trainer three times a night while Dad’s out the fucking country.’

‘You little shit!’

She slapped the flat of her hand fast across her daughter’s face, then swung the hand back, knuckles clenched, against the side of her head.

Sasha cried out.

Karen seized both of Fay Martin’s arms and held them fast.

Blood was already starting to trickle from the corner of Sasha’s mouth.

Tim Costello fished a tissue from his pocket and pressed it into her hand, then set off for where he imagined he’d find the bathroom and fresh supplies.

Time passed. Tempers cooled. Outside, it was three-quarters dark. Sasha had retreated to her room and re-emerged in a skinny-rib jumper and a pair of old jeans, hair still pulled back from her face. A small scab forming at the edge of her mouth.

Fay Martin had poured herself a gin and tonic, which she’d topped up twice already with straight gin. Tempted though she’d been, Karen had said no to joining her, yes to a mug of coffee — instant, I’m afraid — Tim Costello was on to his second glass of tap water.

Sasha’s story slowly emerged.

She had met Petru Andronic early the previous summer, a concert in Victoria Park. Lounging on the grass. Hot Chip. Bombay Bicycle Club. Bands like that. She’d been with her mate Lesley and a few others; Petru had been there with a friend.

‘This friend,’ Karen asked, ‘he had a name?’

‘Ion.’

‘Ion Milescu?’

Sasha nodded. Karen filed it away.

They got on well, her and Petru, really well, Lesley and Ion too. It was a laugh. As the concert was winding down, the boys asked if they could see them again and after a quick conflab the girls said, why not? After that they saw them quite a bit, at least Sasha did, saw Petru that is. Ion kept texting Lesley, making arrangements to see her, then at the last minute crying off; after a few weeks of that she didn’t hear from him at all.

‘But you carried on? Seeing Petru?’

‘Yes.’ A quick glance across at her mum. ‘He was nice. Not like … not like most other boys. Not grabbing you all the time.’

‘Didn’t fancy you much, then, did he?’ her mother said with a sneer.

‘He respected me.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘He loved me.’

‘Jesus Christ!’

‘He was going to marry me.’

‘Over my dead body he was.’ Fay Martin reached for the gin.

‘You didn’t know. You didn’t care. I wore this ring he give me on a chain round my neck and you didn’t even notice.’

‘Your father would have skinned the pair of you alive.’

‘He wouldn’t have had the chance, would he?’

‘He warned you to keep away from him, you know he did.’

‘We was gonna run away.’

‘Run away? Where to? Back to Kosova or wherever he bloody comes from?’

‘Moldova. It was Moldova.’

‘Should have stayed there, shouldn’t he?Then the poor little sod might still be alive.’

Sasha bit her lip and clenched her fists, determined not to cry.

Off in another room, a clock struck six times.

‘Sasha,’ Karen said, ‘I have to ask you. The night that Petru was killed. Your friend Lesley texted you, Petru wanted you to contact him, he was worried, waiting to meet you.’

‘Yes.’ The word like a slow release of breath.

‘But you didn’t?’

A shake of the head.

‘You didn’t text? Call? Anything?’

‘No.’

‘Why was that?’

‘I was frightened.’

‘What of?’

She pushed her feet back and forth along the floor. ‘My dad.’

Sasha tugged at a thread that had worked its way loose from a rip in her jeans.

‘He found out, didn’t he?That I was seeing him again. Petru. He’d told me before, he didn’t want me seeing him, not talking to him or nothing.’

‘Why was that?’

‘I dunno. Just never liked him, right from the first.’

‘He’d met him, then?’

‘Just the once, that’s all. I brought him to meet my mum. I thought she’d like him, and my dad he was here. I didn’t know. I thought he was, I dunno, off somewhere. Wouldn’t’ve brought him otherwise. Soon as he saw Petru he started in on him — what was he doing here, how was he living, where all his money was coming from? — stuff like that. Not that Petru ever had any money, not really.

‘Then when he was leaving, my dad said he didn’t want him round here again. Not ever. Didn’t want me to have anything to do with him. When Petru started to stand up for himself, for us, talk back, I thought my dad was going to hit him. Petru, he wasn’t frightened, but he’s a big man, my dad, he’d’ve hurt him, I know he would. Hurt him bad. That’s what he’s like.’

She snapped the thread free.

‘After he’d gone, he told me I wasn’t to have nothing to do with him again. Said he’d stop me using the computer, Facebook an’ that, take away my mobile phone.’

‘So that’s when you started using Lesley as a go-between?’

‘Yeah. She didn’t mind. Liked it, really.’

‘And this particular evening, the one we’re talking about, that was how you’d arranged to meet him?’

‘Yes.’

‘But Hampstead — why Hampstead? Not exactly round the corner.’

‘That’s why, yeah? No way we’re going to bump into anyone we knew. Anyone who knew me and might tell my dad.’

‘This would have been late, though. It would have been dark.’

‘That was okay. I didn’t care.’

‘How about getting home?’

A quick glance away. ‘I wasn’t. I told my mum I was staying at Lesley’s. A sleepover.’

‘Little liar,’ Fay Martin said quietly.

‘There was this place, stayed open all night. Burgers and stuff. That’s where we’d go, just sit, you know, and talk. What was going to happen, what we were going to do.’

‘Do?’

‘Once we were married.’

‘Holy Jesus!’ Fay Martin rolled her eyes up towards the heavens.

‘Sasha,’ Tim Costello leaned forward, ‘you said your dad found out you were going to see Petru that evening — how did that happen?’

‘Mum was out and he was here. They’d …’ She looked towards her mother, then away. ‘I think they’d had a row. Mum’d stormed out.’

‘I walked,’ Fay Martin said, flatly.

‘Anyway, he was here and he asked me, you know, where was I going and I said, like, Lesley’s, and soon as I said it I could tell he didn’t believe me. Made me call her. Didn’t stand up to him more’n a couple of minutes, did she? Told him. After that it all come out. Everything. How I’d been going behind his back. Where we was goin’ to meet that evening, everything. I thought he was gonna go crazy, but he never. He’d warned me, that’s what he said. Warned both of us. Told me to go to my room and locked me in. He’d already took my phone. That’s an end to it, he said. Then I heard him leavin’.’

Tears were rolling slowly down Sasha’s cheeks.

‘You know where he went?’

A shake of the head, shoulders down.

‘Sasha?’

‘No.’

An ambulance went past along the main road, siren wailing.

‘You wouldn’t know, I suppose, Mrs Martin, where your husband went to after he’d locked Sasha in her room?’

‘Wasn’t here when I got back, I know that.’

‘And this was when?’

‘Eleven, eleven thirty.’

‘And you wouldn’t have any idea where he might have been?’

‘The pub, I dare say. Where he usually went off to when he was in one of his moods. And when he wasn’t.’

‘Any pub in particular?’

‘Four Hands, most likely. Down Lewisham. Landlord has a lock-in most nights.’

‘And that’s where you think he was?’

‘Good a guess as any. Gone three in the morning time he got home, anyway. Hammered didn’t come into it.’

‘Mr Martin,’ Karen said, ‘you’re expecting him home this evening?’

‘Not ’less he’s changed his plans.’

‘Which are?’

‘Over in Tallinn, isn’t he?’

‘Estonia?’

‘Last time I looked.’

‘Stag do?’ Costello suggested.

‘Business.’

‘So when are you expecting him?’ Karen asked.

‘Couple of days, maybe three.’

‘Only we’ll need to talk to him.’

‘What for?’

‘Hear his version of Sasha’s story. Confirm his whereabouts, the night Petru Andronic died.’

‘You don’t think he had anything to do with that? Terry? You must be jokin’.’

‘Normal procedure, Mrs Martin, that’s all.’

‘He’ll not like it.’

‘I’m afraid that’s too bad.’ Karen placed one of her cards on the table. ‘Ask him to contact this number as soon as he returns. We’ll need to see you as well, Sasha. Make a statement, what you’ve just told us.’

‘Do I have to?’

‘I think so. Best to get it all clear once and for all. Perhaps you could bring her in, Mrs Martin? Tomorrow around ten thirty?’

Fay Martin’s glare followed them all the way to the door.

Outside, the air bit cold and Karen shivered. Tim Costello pulled his coat collar up against his neck.

‘“He’d’ve hurt him, I know he would,” is that what she said?’

Karen nodded. ‘“Hurt him bad.”’

‘And then what was it? Before he went out? “That’s an end to it.”’

‘That’s what she said.’

‘Out of the mouths …’

‘I know.’ Karen glanced back at the house, silhouette at one of the upstairs windows, Fay Martin looking down. ‘You fancy a drink,’ she said, ‘before we head back?’

‘The Four Hands?’

‘Why not?’