Good Bait

59

She hadn’t meant to be back again, but there she was. Almost a habit, but not quite. Not yet summer but the trees in full leaf, or so it seemed. Karen wearing no topcoat today, just a light jacket, sweater, jeans. Swimmers at the far end of the pond, a few; one lowering himself from the board before striking out, arms carving the water with ease.

This time, the young woman was standing just a short way along the path, and without her hood now, easy to recognise.

Karen waited for her to come closer.

‘Sasha.’

A nervous smile.

‘That was you, before?’

The girl nodded.

‘How did you know I’d be here today?’

‘I didn’t. Not really. But I’d seen you here, a couple of times. I don’t think you saw me.’

‘Just the once.’

‘Yes.’

‘You come here a lot?’

Sasha pulled at a stray length of hair. ‘More and more.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t even want to. I just …’

Karen nodded. ‘I understand.’

‘Do you?’

‘I think so.’

Sasha waited a moment longer, then reached out towards Karen, and when she opened her fingers slowly, there in the palm of her hand was a ring.

‘What’s that?’ Karen asked.

But, of course, she knew.

‘That’s the ring he was wearing,’ Karen said. ‘Petru, the night he was killed.’

‘Yes.’ A breath more than a word.

‘You’ve had it all along?’

Sasha gave a fierce shake of the head.

‘Tell me,’ Karen said.

‘My dad, we was having this row. A few nights back. Awful. I’d come in late. A party. Just friends, that’s all. But he started calling me these names. Bitch and whore and all of that and then he … he took this from one of his pockets, like he’d been keeping it there special, and threw it in my face and said, “Don’t think I won’t fuckin’ do it again, ‘cause I will.”’

Her hand was shaking now and Karen reached out and covered it with her own, feeling between them the small hardness of the ring.

‘I just need to ask you, Sasha — there’s no doubt in your mind what he meant by that, is there?’

‘No.’ Sobbing. ‘No.’

‘And you’d be willing to make a statement, repeat what you just told me?’

‘Yes.’ The word barely heard.

Karen moved closer and held her tight, for those short moments a bulwark against her tears.