Without any apparent signal, a waiter appeared with a bottle and two fresh glasses. The wine was dark and thick, like plum brandy.
Taras was somewhere in his forties, Cordon thought, a darkish complexion, darkened further by several days’ stubble, dark eyes; nicotine stains on his fingers, but the nails smoothed into even ovals, manicured. Some kind of balm or cologne that cut through the lingering smell of food from the kitchen.
He was looking at the markings round Cordon’s eye, the residue of swelling.
‘I think, perhaps, you are lucky guy.’
‘You’ll understand,’ Cordon said, ‘if I don’t see it in quite the same way.’
Taras shrugged. ‘What you did, it was very foolish.’
‘Story of my life,’ Cordon said, amiably.
‘Story?’
‘You wanted to see us,’ Kiley said.
Taras lit another cigarette. When he tilted back his head to release the smoke, there was a scar line, thin like a razor cut, across his neck.
‘A message from my brother. For you, especially.’ His eyes on Cordon. ‘What’s done, is done. He holds no …’ he searched for the word, ‘no malice. You understand?’
Cordon said nothing.
‘You understand?’ Taras said again. ‘Is finished.’
He drank some wine.
‘And Letitia?’ Cordon said.
‘What of her?’
‘Exactly.’
‘She is with her family. None of your concern.’
‘You say.’
‘Yes, I say.’
‘I think,’ Kiley said, ‘we would like to be sure of that, that Letitia is okay.’
‘And the boy,’ Cordon put in.
Taras waved a well-groomed hand. ‘Is no longer your business.’
Kiley started to say something, but Cordon cut him off. ‘You listen.’ He jabbed two fingers towards Taras’ chest. ‘I’m the one decides what’s my business. Not you or your brother or anyone else. Understood?’
A small nod from Taras, a retreat.
‘Last I knew of Letitia and Danny,’ Cordon said, ‘they were being taken by men who were dangerous and almost certainly armed, and I doubt would have any scruples about using as much force as they thought was necessary or they could get away with.’
Taras opened his mouth as if about to protest, but Cordon paid no heed.
‘You tell me Letitia’s back in the bosom of her family, well, I want proof. Proof that she and the boy are okay and not being held against their will. Then you can say it’s no longer my business. And not until.’
He eased away, hands gripping the table edge.
Steadying himself, Taras drew deeply on his cigarette and set it carefully down; picked up his lighter and rolled it across his fingers.
‘And if this does not happen as you wish?’
Cordon leaned forward again, his voice lowered to little more than a hiss. ‘Then I’ll move heaven and earth to make your brother’s life an absolute misery. Pull in every police contact, every favour I can. Dig into every nasty little corner I can find. By the time I’ve finished he’ll wish he’d never clapped eyes on Letitia, never heard my name.’
Taras lifted his glass and swirled the contents around the sides before he drank. ‘You are in no position, I think, to make threats.’
‘Try me.’ Cordon held his gaze.
Something inside Taras’ head switched gear. As if he had been prepared for this. Plan B.
‘I will talk to my brother. Tell him your concerns. I’m sure there will be a way to do as you wish. Put your mind at rest.’
A smile leaked from his face.
Pushing back his chair, Kiley stood, Cordon following suit. Behind them, a waiter hovered near the door.
‘Forty-eight hours,’ Taras said. ‘No more.’ Then looked away, as if dismissing them from his mind.
Back on the street, Kiley nodded left. ‘Let’s walk.’
A short way along, they crossed against the traffic and cut away from the main road into a street of tall, Victorian houses, plane trees, skips, aspirations.
‘All that guff about moving heaven and earth,’ Kiley said. ‘Where’d that come from?’
‘God knows.’
‘I thought for one minute you were going to deck him.’
‘I was.’
‘What happened?’
‘My good nature got the better of me. That and my natural discretion.’
Kiley laughed. ‘Natural bollocks!’ he said.
‘That, too.’
50
The sky seemed to lower itself, shroud like, over Karen as she walked. The car she’d squeezed into a space in the parking area alongside East Heath Road and from there she’d made her way down towards South End Green, the forbidding grey of the Royal Free hospital rising directly ahead. She bought coffee in a takeout cup and crossed back on to the Heath, taking the path that led towards the mixed bathing pond, where, at the tail end of the previous year, she had seen Petru Andronic’s young face staring blankly back at her through the ice.
Today, there was no ice, though the wind that sliced across the surface was keen enough to make Karen shiver and pull her scarf closer round her neck, the temperature no more than four or five degrees above freezing.
Behind her, a dog barked loudly, suddenly, and a small child cried in its buggy as its mother, or, more likely, the au pair, hurried it on past.
Karen tore a hole in the lid of the cup and held it in both hands as she drank.
The wind sent the water scurrying towards her in iron-grey waves, splashing up close to where she stood. Soon, the surrounding bushes and trees would be in bud and despite the ripples that had flowed out following his death, they were not much closer to solving Andronic’s murder than they had been in those first few days.
Whether it was somehow linked to the mayhem that had followed, or a consequence of his relationship with Terry Martin’s daughter, Sasha, was still not clear. Only Karen’s instincts leaned her this way rather than that, and still without a shred of proof.
Follow your gut, Mike Ramsden would tell her. Follow your gut.
Much good had it done.
Her reflection gazed back at her, dark and uncertain at the water’s edge. What had happened here was still as slippery, as opaque as it had ever been, and other things were only slowly falling into place. A watching brief over the Stansted murders meant a watching brief. SOCA were still following leads, backtracking accounts over borders and across continents; careful work undertaken with the aid of the Internet, the computer, the cautious and less than legal hacking of mobile phones.
Frustrated by the lack of apparent action, she had called Cormack that morning and been able to raise nothing but his voicemail; left messages for Charlie Frost that went unanswered. She had considered calling Burcher direct, then thought better of it. Called Alex Williams instead.
‘Alex, any idea what’s going on?’
‘In general, or in particular?’
