He’d learned that from his father, of course, that and the fact that before antibiotics, another compound of arsenic had been used for curing syphilis. When it wasn’t being used as poison.
A bit of good and bad in everything.
What his father had believed.
He had just made it to where his car was parked when his mobile rang. Not a number he recognised.
‘Look, I’m not sure if I should be phoning you …’ Clifford Carlin’s voice was troubled, shaky. ‘I didn’t know what else to do.’
‘What’s happened?’
‘Letitia — she came here after the funeral …’
‘Tell me what’s happened.’
‘Nothing. Nothing, just … ever since she got here … she’s been, I don’t know, worried. Frightened, even.’
‘What of?’
‘That’s it, she won’t say. Not clearly, not exactly. But there have been these calls to the house. And people, she says, driving past, hanging round.’
‘You’ve seen them? These people?’
‘No, no, not really. But she’s not making it up, I’m certain. She’s scared. And if you know Letitia, you know she doesn’t scare easily.’
‘What about the police? If she’s in some kind of danger.’
‘She won’t. She said no. No police.’
‘You phoned me.’
‘Like I said, I didn’t know what else to do.’
A Land Rover backed into the space alongside him and Cordon moved away, down towards the stone wall that marked the car park off from the land that tumbled down towards the sea.
‘Are you still there?’ Carlin asked.
‘Yes, I’m here.’
‘The thing is, Letitia, I don’t even think it’s herself she’s most frightened for. It’s the boy.’
The line went dead, leaving Cordon staring out across limitless water.
What boy? he asked himself. What boy?
28
He was three years old. Rising four. He stood close to his mother, face fast against her hip, one hand clinging to the strands that were unravelling from the borrowed jumper she was wearing. Her father’s jumper. The boy’s grandfather. A lick of dark hair hung loose across his forehead; his brown eyes wide with uncertainty and fear.
‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ Letitia’s greeting.
The child flinched at the anger in his mother’s voice and clung tighter, closer to tears.
Cordon said nothing.
Off to one side, Clifford Carlin shuffled his feet.
‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘You stupid interfering bastard.’ Pushing the boy away, she lunged at her father and raked her nails across his cheek.
‘Christ, Letitia!’
‘Stupid, stupid, stupid!’ As he turned from her, she pummelled his back with her fists.
‘Mum! No, Mum, no. Don’t. Don’t.’
The boy tried to pull her away and she flung out a hand and caught him in the face and for an instant he stopped dead, as if in shock, then screamed.
‘Oh, Jesus! Now see — see what you’ve done? The pair of you?’
There was blood at the corner of her son’s mouth, starting to trickle down his chin and on to his neck.
‘See what you’ve made me fucking do?’
‘Letitia, listen …’
‘Here, sweetheart, here. It’s all right.’ Pulling a tissue from her pocket, she dabbed it at the boy’s face. ‘It’s nothing, really. Just a little cut. There, look. It’s already stopped.’ Crouching, she hugged him to her. ‘I’m sorry. Mummy’s sorry.’
The two men looked at one another and Clifford Carlin shook his head. A few moments later, without saying anything more, he left the room.
The boy was sobbing now, but quietly, face pressed against his mother’s chest.
‘Letitia …’
‘I told him …’ She spoke to Cordon without yet turning to look at him. ‘I told him, this stuff that’s happening, don’t say anything, not to anyone. It’ll sort itself out. Leave it be. Say anything to anyone, anyone at all, it’ll only make things worse.’
‘He was worried.’
‘Of course he was fucking worried. I’m worried. Worried sick. A sight more now you’re here.’
‘Maybe I can help.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yes, why not? Try, anyway.’
‘Try?’ She laughed. ‘Fuckin’ try?’
She stood to face him.
‘Sir Lancelot, now, is it? Knights of the Round fucking Table?’ She shook her head. ‘Okay, here we are, me and the kid, in need of rescue maybe and what do we get?’ She laughed, ragged and deep. ‘That bloke with a broken lance on some old nag. I saw a film about him once. That’s you, Cordon, about as much use as a tit in a trance.’
Cordon drew a slow breath and continued to stand where he was, the boy peeking out at him from behind his mother’s arm, only looking away when Cordon smiled.
Later.
They were sitting side by side on the stairs, the middle landing. It had seemed as good a place as anywhere. Clifford Carlin had gone in to open up his shop and left them to it.
Cordon sat with a mostly empty can of Carlsberg wedged between his feet; Letitia was drinking vodka and Coke, not the first.
She was still wearing one of her father’s old sweaters, faded jeans, feet bare, chipped polish on the toes. She’d pulled her hair away from her face and wiped most of the tiredness from around her eyes. The child was in one of the rooms above them, sleeping, thumb in his mouth, making occasional sucking sounds, a plastic stegosaurus tight in his other hand.
She’d cuddled him close earlier, the pair of them loving, silent; something inside Cordon’s gut had twisted like fish caught on a hook.
‘Your son,’ Cordon said quietly. ‘I don’t even know his name.’
‘Danya.’
‘Danya?’
‘Ukrainian. Means gift of God. Some fucking joke.’
‘And that’s what you call him?’
‘What his father calls him. I call him Danny. Dan.’
‘His father?’
‘Anton.’
‘Also from Ukraine?’
‘Oh, yes. From Odessa. Yellow and blue blood in his veins.’ She brought the glass to her mouth, a swallow rather than a sip. ‘Anton Oleksander Kosach. Oldest of five brothers. Anton, Taras, Bogdah, Parlo, Symon. Parlo and Symon are twins. Bogdah, the third eldest, he’s still in the Ukraine.’
‘The rest are here?’
‘Most of the time, yes. Anton’s here legally. Taras, too, maybe. The others, I’m not so sure.’
‘And he wants you to come home. Anton. The pair of you. That’s what all this is about? The phone calls, whatever. That’s what he wants?’
‘Danny, that’s what he wants. Me, I doubt if he could give a flying fuck. Not any more.’
‘But he wants you to go back, right? To wherever. You and Danny?’
‘His son, he goes on and on about his son. As if I’ve stolen him away. As if I’ve no intention of ever going back.’
‘And have you?’
A pause. Letitia fiddling with her hair. ‘I don’t know.’
‘So he’s right?’
‘No, he’s not fucking right.’
‘But if you’ve left him …’
‘I told you, I just don’t know. I don’t know, okay?’
‘So what is this?’
‘This?’
‘You and Danny, here?’
‘The funeral, my mum’s funeral — Danny, I was going to take him — but then I thought, no, no, time enough for all that. So I brought him here, to my dad, just a few days, right? While I was down in Penzance.’
‘He knew this? Anton, he knew?’
‘Sort of, yeah.’
‘And that was okay?’
‘Okay? Okay with Anton is he’s got you practically under lock an’ key, knows where you are every minute of the fuckin’ day. Him or his bloody brothers. Only wanted two of ’em to come down all the way to fuckin’ Cornwall with me, didn’t he? Parlo and Symon. I told him, I don’t want no Ukrainian bloody gangsters hangin’ round my mum’s funeral.’