Good Bait

6

He didn’t see her again for a couple of months. Why did he think he ever would? He was in the middle of scouring out a pan in which he’d been making scrambled eggs — the phone drawing his attention away at the crucial moment and egg adhering to the pan like a second skin — when he glimpsed her face at the small window alongside the door.

‘Come for the dog, okay?’

Cordon wasn’t certain if she was still in her Goth phase or not: most of the henna had gone from her hair, black waistcoat though, white shirt, black jeans, studs and rings; white lipstick, purple fingernails.

‘Fine, as far as I’m concerned. Dog might need some convincing, though. Doesn’t take easily to strangers.’

But even as he spoke the springer was energetically wagging her tail and reaching up to lick the girl’s hand.

‘Yeah,’ she said, with a small look of triumph. ‘See what you mean.’

‘Here,’ Cordon said. ‘Here’s her lead. Take a couple of bin liners for when she does her business. You can let her off past the Tolcarne Inn. That patch of grass by the gallery. Then down on to the beach.’

The girl was crouching down, stroking the dog behind the ears. ‘She have a name?’

‘Kia.’

‘I’ll get some treats for her next time. You can pay me for ’em later. Oh, and yeah, know how long it takes, all the way over here from Penzance?’

‘Twenty minutes?’

‘And the rest. So that’s all included, right? My time.’

She slipped on the lead and the dog half-dragged her towards the door. ‘Hour or so, maybe, first time. You’ll still be here?’

‘Sunday. Bar emergencies, my day off.’

‘Course. No crime of a Sunday. I forgot.’

When they’d gone Cordon took one more look at the pan, shook his head and dumped it in the bin; next time he went into Lidl he’d buy another.

After that, she stopped by most Sundays, a few summer evenings; it got so the springer could recognise her step before Cordon knew she was even close. From time to time, he’d ask her about home or college, just making conversation, little more: blood out of a stone.

One particular evening, a Tuesday, Cordon not long back from sorting a domestic that resulted, as they often did, in both parties turning on him and telling him to fuck off out, she arrived with a bottle of cheap sparkling wine and wearing what Cordon assumed was one of her mother’s cast-offs, either that or a charity shop special, pale purply chenille with a slit skirt and ruched front.

‘What’s this in aid of?’

‘Celebration. My birthday. Sixteen.’ She threw herself in the direction of the small settee. ‘Means I’m legal.’

‘Means you’re sixteen.’

‘Jesus! Don’t you ever lighten up?’

‘Rarely.’

‘Here …’ Holding out the bottle. ‘Help me get this open.’

He found two glasses and poured the wine, getting only a little on the floor as it fizzed up. It tasted like he remembered: cream soda, but cream soda that had turned sour.

‘This really your birthday?’

Dipping her finger into the glass, she made a crossing motion, anointing her breasts through the material of the dress. ‘Christening, too.’

‘How d’you mean?’

‘Got a new name, haven’t I?’

‘Fed up with the old one?’

‘Rose, it’s not me. Not anyone. Anyone I know.’

‘So who are you now?’

‘Letitia.’

Cordon did a small double-take.

‘You like it?’ she asked.

‘Different, I’ll say that for it.’

‘Joy and happiness. What it means. My dad told me.’

Cordon had never heard her mention her father before; hadn’t imagined them to be in touch.

‘He chose it for you?’

‘Sort of.’ Head back, she drank some more wine. ‘Suits me, don’t you think?’

‘Maybe.’

‘My dad thinks so. Looked right into me, didn’t he? Joy and bloody happiness. Saw deep into my soul.’

Cordon waited for the laugh, but it didn’t come.

When she left, just a short while later, there was still a good half a bottle remaining. After due deliberation, Cordon poured it down the sink. When she came back to walk the dog a week or so later, Letitia now, neither of them referred to the occasion at all.

She didn’t mention her father again, either, only the once, Cordon getting on his high horse and launching into something of a lecture about the values of doing a little reading, studying — the kind of thing students were supposed to do, though, from his perspective, it seemed few of them did.

‘Fuck off!’ she said. ‘Stop naggin’ at me all the bloody time. You’re not my bloody father, you know.’

Cordon knew. His own fatherly responsibilities were scattered halfway across the world: a son, Simon, fully grown, who had used his gap year to put ample distance between the pair of them and decided he liked it that way best. The only contact Cordon had — the terse, almost formal requests for funds aside — was the occasional postcard from Santo Domingo, Bogota or La Paz, just letting him know he was still alive. After Bolivia he’d heard nothing, six months of worry, and then the cards had resumed — Pangai, Lautoka, Auckland, Hobart, Sydney. Pins stuck in a notional map, marking a journey that never seemed to point home.

His ex-wife, Judith, Cordon scarcely spoke to at all: a desultory late-night phone call, usually around Christmas time, pauses longer than words.

You’re not my father.

What was he, then? A concerned individual? A friend? Hardly that.

When the other officers, down at the station, got wind of what was happening, there were knowing glances cast in his direction, more than a few lewd remarks. Cordon let them slide.

Then something happened and it all changed.

At four in the morning, on the way home from a night’s clubbing and buoyed up by too many pills and too much alcohol, she let herself into his flat and slipped into his bed, and he pushed her angrily back out. Angry at her presumption: angry at himself for being aroused; knowing, somewhere at the back of his mind and in his groin, he’d always regret an opportunity not taken, little enough love in his life, little enough abandon.

She didn’t come by again.

The dog padded circles around the room and cast wistful glances at the door. Cordon walked her himself till he could find someone else, a young lad whose father worked at the fish dock down by the quay.

All that was a long time ago, over fourteen years.

Letitia moved away.

If he saw her on one of her visits home, it was a nod of the head, a wave, and nothing more. If he bumped into her mother on her own and sober enough to answer, he’d ask how she was.

Now this.

He made the calls as promised the next day, finding himself passed on from person to person, extension to extension, all to no avail. Nothing about a Letitia or Rose Carlin was known, no accident or serious injury reported, no incident in which she had been named. There was no body of a similar age and size waiting to be identified.

He left it alone. Had half a mind to get in touch with Maxine and see what she’d discovered on her trip to London, always supposing she’d gone, but never followed through.

Other matters intervened. A pub brawl that ended with someone being pushed through a sheet of plate glass. State-of-the-art climbing gear stolen from the car park close by the old Carn Galver mine. A break-in at the post office and general store in St Buryan. At a campsite on Trevedra Common a caravan was set alight, the couple sleeping inside lucky to escape with second-degree burns.

Life, such as it was, went on.