Good Bait

Road, the coffee still retaining the smell of grease and burning fat.

Mike Ramsden ducked under the tape and made his way towards her.

‘Half a dozen of them by the sound of it,’ he said. ‘Fronted Prince while he was in line waiting to get his bucket of chicken wings, chased him in here, caught up with him on the stairs. Whether he got into the lift himself, trying to get away, or they pushed him in there isn’t clear. They did a runner when someone raised the alarm.’

‘Witnesses?’

‘One so far. Saw them legging it from way up. Black, or so he thinks. Hoodies. No surprises there.’

‘Payback, then. For Derroll Palmer. That’s what we’re thinking?’

‘Looks like. Once we’d brought Prince and he’d walked away, bragging about it, as far as Palmer’s cohorts were concerned he was marked meat.’

‘You think he knew that?’

‘Kids like Prince — what did he call himself on the street? Mohock? — they take their life in their hands each time they step out the front door. Part of the charge, the buzz, that risk. Never knowing when you might get capped.’

‘I thought Palmer wasn’t gang related?’

‘He was killed on gang turf, that’s enough.’

‘Wood Green, MOB gang, then? First port of call?’

‘I’d reckon. Talk to someone at Trident tomorrow, see if I can’t get them to throw us some names.’

Karen turned aside as a shiver ran through her. Not just the cold. The whole senseless, bloody business. Revenge, respect, tit for tat. Standing up to be counted. What was it just the other day? One youth stabbing another to death for calling him a pussy on Facebook.

Most times it didn’t get to her, not like this, but now, suddenly, it did.

The waste.

Ramsden read it in her eyes. ‘Go home,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘You’re here. You’ve showed. No call for you to stay.’

‘Mike …’

Not roughly, he rested a hand on her arm. ‘You look wasted, go home.’

‘I can’t.’

‘One of the privileges of high rank. Delegation. Go on, get some sleep, I’ll close up here. See you in the office first thing.’

She still didn’t go, not for the best part of another hour, but then, when there really was nothing more she could do, she decided to take Ramsden at his word.

The kofta was cold; she took one bite and dumped the rest into the bin. The red wine tasted sour. She made herself a cup of weak tea instead, two sugars, and drank it while she got ready for bed. The book she’d been reading was on the floor, a scrap of paper marking her place; she picked it up and began to read.

Black Water Rising: Attica Locke.

Houston, Texas in the late sixties. Revolution in the air. Aretha Franklin singing Sam Cooke’s ‘A Change is Gonna Come’. Stokely Carmichael, about to throw in his lot with the Black Panthers, speaking at a student rally on the subject of Black Liberation, speaking to those few Negroes, armed with their passports — their university degrees — who had escaped into middle-class America. Integration was not the way. Integration meant accepting that your own culture, your own way of life was worth nothing, not worth hanging on to.

Karen could remember, as a young woman, dancing to that slice of seminal James Brown in a way that would have made her poor aunt feel shamed, shaking her hips, hands in the air, singing it loud, how she was black and proud.

Those young people, young men from Tottenham and Wood Green; those like Hector Prince who were ganged up, others like Derroll Palmer, caught between — no danger of them joining the white middle class, getting university degrees. Their choice, she wondered, or somebody else’s? And if so, whose?

Kids like that, Ramsden had said, they take their lives in their hands each time they step out the front door.

And here she was, a black woman who, as one of her sisters had informed her when she was still out patrolling the streets, was wearing the white man’s uniform, enforcing his laws. No answer from Karen, other than to move on, the sister had spat in her face.

Some days, years later, she still reached up a hand to wipe it away.

Only when she could feel her eyes failing did she set the book aside and switch out the light.

19

Carla James had been in Karen’s year at secondary school, a bit of a star even then; the lead in the school production of The Wiz, her picture all over the local paper, Acton’s own Diana Ross. In the sixth form she had hung out with the guys who were forever putting together some band or other, rumours of recording contracts that never quite came off, Carla laying down vocals that somehow got lost in the final mix. Her boyfriend then was an athlete on the fringes of the national team, a sprinter; thigh muscles, Carla told them all proudly, like you wouldn’t believe.

Karen would go with her sometimes, evenings, down to the track to watch him train: stretches, drills, strides; sweat dripping off him beneath the lights, making his body shine.

Honey to the bee.

A levels over, Carla applied to drama school and failed to get in; she got a job in a bar instead, sang back-up for a band that did Motown covers in places like Basingstoke and Stevenage, and took classes, part-time, at the Poor School near King’s Cross — movement and voice, dialect, singing, stage fighting, Shakespeare and contemporary text. At the end of the year, she reapplied and was accepted. All of that more years ago than she cared to remember.

There were still periods when she signed on or worked in bars; in between there was the odd show in Manchester or Liverpool; twelve weeks understudying an all-black production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in the West End; bits and pieces of telly — Wire in the Blood, Silent Witness, The Bill — usually, as she put it, standing around on street corners with my skirt up my arse looking for business, waiting for someone to smack me upside the head with a hammer.

Right now she was at the National, Jacobean tragedy, twenty-three performances at the Cottesloe, then out on tour. Carla playing five different roles and loving it.

They met at a place near the theatre, loud music, Mexican food and cocktails, Carla’s voice rising above everything: ‘Karen! Girlfriend! Over here.’ Carla with brightly beaded hair extensions, cleavage to die for, colours that clashed as deliriously as something in a Matisse painting.

After a hug and a kiss and a perfunctory, ‘So, how’s it all going?’, Carla set off, as Karen knew and hoped she would, on a rousing and ribald account of the previous few months of her life that drew applause and laughter from listeners at the surrounding tables.

After a day of no progress whatsoever, other than Hector Prince’s mother, between convulsions of grief and angry tears, identifying her son in the sterile cold of the morgue, Karen hadn’t wanted to spend the evening alone.

‘Don’t turn round now,’ she said, as the waiter delivered a fresh pair of mojitos, ‘but that guy over by the back wall, is he looking at us?’

Carla leaned over and fiddled with the strap of her shoe. ‘Black turtleneck, short hair, that the one?’

Karen nodded.

‘I should hope so.’

‘No, really. I’m serious.’

‘What? You fancy him? Doesn’t look like your type.’

‘No, it’s not …’