Good Bait

27

Cape Cornwall was where Cordon sometimes went when he wanted to be alone and think; also to remember. And marvel. The extremity of the ocean that tipped out at that point against the rock. He zipped up his heavy jacket and started to climb; stood, finally, at the summit, facing out, oblivious to the wind, the cold.

He had come here first with his father, racing him to the top and then, breathless, pointing out beyond the lighthouse to the waves, the possibility of seals, pods of dolphins, basking sharks. His father focusing the binoculars, patient, waiting. The young Cordon anxious, eager to be up and moving, scrambling down the monument then round, faster and faster each time.

‘For God’s sake, sit still for a moment. Go on, it won’t hurt you, sit.’

And then from his father’s rucksack, the brown bread sandwiches, carefully cut; the Thermos flask. The book of birds; of grasses; of wild flowers: neatly annotated, ticked.

Cordon watched now as a little egret — see, he remembered — tugged something from between the pebbles back of the water’s edge and flew away. Were there moments, he wondered, when his son, off in Australia, looked up suddenly from whatever he was doing, startled by a memory of something they had done together, father and son, something they had shared?

He shook his head.

Argued, they’d done that. Little else.

Families, it was what they did. Fought, argued, walked out, walked away, tried to keep in touch and failed. Maxine Carlin had gone up to London to see her daughter, prompted by some unnecessary fear, and, not finding her, on her way home, unused to the busy thrust of the London Underground in the rush hour, had fallen under a train and been killed.

Clear as that.

The inquest, the inquiry had found nothing suspicious: accidental death. Her daughter had thrown black earth on to her coffin and walked away. You want to play the fucking policeman, don’t do it with me. We understood? We were understood.

People wanted help or they didn’t.

Friendship the same.

Love, even.

He kicked the toe of his shoe against the hardness of the rock, and, rising, set his back to the sea and took the slower, more winding path back down towards the old chapel that had long been converted to a cattle byre and now sat in partial disrepair. Away to the left, descending, he could see the tall chimney of the Kenidjack arsenic works, which in Victorian times had provided a compound that, when mixed with chalk and vinegar, women, anxious to lighten their complexion, had not only rubbed into their arms and faces but eaten.

He’d learned that from his father, of course, that and the fact that before antibiotics, another compound of arsenic had been used for curing syphilis. When it wasn’t being used as poison.

A bit of good and bad in everything.

What his father had believed.

He had just made it to where his car was parked when his mobile rang. Not a number he recognised.

‘Look, I’m not sure if I should be phoning you …’ Clifford Carlin’s voice was troubled, shaky. ‘I didn’t know what else to do.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘Letitia — she came here after the funeral …’

‘Tell me what’s happened.’

‘Nothing. Nothing, just … ever since she got here … she’s been, I don’t know, worried. Frightened, even.’

‘What of?’

‘That’s it, she won’t say. Not clearly, not exactly. But there have been these calls to the house. And people, she says, driving past, hanging round.’

‘You’ve seen them? These people?’

‘No, no, not really. But she’s not making it up, I’m certain. She’s scared. And if you know Letitia, you know she doesn’t scare easily.’

‘What about the police? If she’s in some kind of danger.’

‘She won’t. She said no. No police.’

‘You phoned me.’

‘Like I said, I didn’t know what else to do.’

A Land Rover backed into the space alongside him and Cordon moved away, down towards the stone wall that marked the car park off from the land that tumbled down towards the sea.

‘Are you still there?’ Carlin asked.

‘Yes, I’m here.’

‘The thing is, Letitia, I don’t even think it’s herself she’s most frightened for. It’s the boy.’

The line went dead, leaving Cordon staring out across limitless water.

What boy? he asked himself. What boy?