‘Who in God’s name d’you think you are?’ Clifford Carlin had asked. ‘Shane? Sorting out the bad guys? Setting things to rights?’ Jack Schaefer. Alan Ladd in buckskins. One of Carlin’s favourites. Cordon’s, too.
‘Something like that,’ Cordon had answered. He was taller than Ladd, he knew that for a fact.
‘Great!’ Letitia had said when he told her what had happened at the caravan site. ‘You’re going to get us all fucking killed, you know that, don’t you?’
It was a risk, a possibility. Simply, he hadn’t seen what else he could do. He’d said as much to Jack Kiley when he called him later, explaining the situation, asking if there were any ways in which Kiley thought he could help.
‘What?’ Kiley had replied. ‘A couple of nights’ bed and board and suddenly I’m your guardian angel? Picking up the pieces?’
‘Sorry, Jack. Bit out of my depth.’
Kiley gave it some thought. ‘Letitia and the kid, they’ve got passports?’
‘I think so.’
Uncertain where they might go after the funeral, what they might do, Letitia had taken that precaution, at least.
‘What you’ve got to do,’ Kiley said. ‘Buy a little time.’
After arriving in France, they’d taken a bus into Dinard, as Kiley had instructed, just a little way west along the coast. A fading old seaside town, mostly closed down for the winter. Grand hotels on the seafront boarded up, shuttered across. Only the one cafe open on the promenade, where Letitia sat and smoked and read whatever paperbacks she’d bought on the ferry, while Cordon and young Dan played desultory games of football on the beach.
‘Be patient,’ Kiley had told them. ‘Sit tight. I’ll get back to you soon as I can.’
For some reason, there was a statue of Alfred Hitchcock peering out across the water, surrounded by stone birds. A casino under redecoration. They found a little place across from the art gallery that sold good pizzas and sat there for hours, sheltering from the wind, listening to the same music playing over and over.
Kiley phoned again on the third day. One of Jane’s friends at the school had a holiday place in Brittany, a village just a couple of hours’ drive from where they were. Not even a village, a hamlet. Four dwellings and only one of them occupied year round, an old man and his dog. They could stay there, till Easter if necessary. Sort out what they were going to do.
‘Might need your help there, too, Jack,’ Cordon said.
‘Tell me something I don’t know.’
Cordon hired a car and drove it as far as Lamballe where he changed it for another. If anyone was going to be on their trail, he wanted to make it as difficult for them as possible. At the Carrefour in Guingamp they loaded up with supplies; the nearest village, some three or four miles from where they would be staying, had a
‘For Christ’s sake!’ Letitia exclaimed.
‘What?’
‘That bloody croissant. You’re getting crumbs all over the bed.’
‘Didn’t realise you were so fussy.’
‘Yeah, well …’
They heard the toilet flush and then Danny’s voice telling them it was raining. A moment later he appeared in the doorway, tousle haired, sleepy eyed, dinosaur pyjamas.
‘I’ll get the coffee on,’ Cordon said.
‘You do that.’
She lifted the covers and the boy slid in beside her, Letitia turning to slide an arm comfortably around him, kiss him on the forehead — ‘Why don’t you just snuggle down?’
Feeling a stranger, Cordon left the room.
It was a converted farmhouse, low and long, a
Inside there were three bedrooms, a bathroom, a living room, a wide kitchen with a refectory table and a tap that permanently dripped. You could have fitted Cordon’s old Newlyn sail loft in twice with space to spare. No need for them to get under one another’s feet.
Letitia seemed to be in denial: whenever Cordon tried to get her to talk about what they were going to do, consider their options, ‘There are no fucking options,’ was the best he could get.
Letitia stayed in bed late, drank supermarket wine and cooked a few unwilling meals. Listened in a half- hearted fashion to the Madeleine Peyroux CD that had been left in the portable stereo. Without too much of an argument, she let Danny talk her into helping him do one of the several jigsaw puzzles he’d found in one of the cupboards, played hide-and-seek with him until that too palled and she ran her hand through his hair, kissed his cheek and begged for a rest. Time to do a little reading instead.
When she’d finished the Martina Cole she’d bought on board, she tried some of the books the owners had left around-Ian McEwan, Rose Tremain, Julian Barnes — but with limited success. Sometimes she just sat, collar hunched up, on a folding chair close to the front door of the house, smoking cigarette after cigarette and staring at the empty lane beyond the gate.
As far as Danny was concerned the whole thing was just a holiday, a place to run around; the owners clearly had kids of their own and there were toys in boxes, DVDs of
‘Don’t make him too fond of you,’ Letitia said one afternoon, her voice edged like a rusted blade. ‘He’s already got one father to get over. He doesn’t need a fuckin’ second.’
Cordon drove to the town and bought lamb chops and a bottle of good Scotch, Johnny Walker Black Label. Scoured the bins of cheap CDs and found an old recording from the Paris Jazz Festival in 1949, remastered: the Tadd Dameron Quintet with Miles Davis.
He’d called the headquarters of the Devon and Cornwall Police in Exeter when they’d arrived and spoken in the vaguest terms of the need to take an extended break, leave without pay; let them try turfing him out a few years short of his pension if they cared to, if they dared. Serve them right for putting him out to grass for having a mind of his own, playing the awkward bugger one too many times.
Even so, they couldn’t stay there for ever.
A fantasy family.
Lives in hiding.
Recipients of someone else’s good nature.
Funny thing, Jack Kiley had told him, but a few days after he got one of his contacts to run a check on Anton Kosach, as Cordon had asked, he’d had a caller himself.
‘SOCA,’ Kiley said, ‘Serious and Organised Crime Agency. Bloke looked like a bloody tax inspector. Wanted to know about my interest in Kosach. Gave the impression I might have crossed some line. I spun him a bunch of lies and half-truths, how the name had come up as part of something I’d been helping out on, steered well clear of mentioning names. Not sure how much he bought of it, if any. Asked him why he was so interested, of course, but he wasn’t giving anything away. Mr Kosach is one of a number of people who are currently under investigation, that was the sum of it. Hands off, in other words. Steer well clear. Thought you should know.’
‘Thanks, Jack,’ Cordon had said.
He hadn’t mentioned it to Letitia.
Then one day when he got back to the farmhouse after taking a stroll around the narrow lanes, the door hung wide open.
There was no one there.
