Simon Beckett - Owning Jacob - SA

“Where are you meeting her?”

Colin tried to hide his awkwardness with activity, putting his glass on the cigarette machine, slipping on his overcoat. “Just some restaurant in Soho. Not Lebanese,” he added, wryly.

“What have you told Maggie?”

He regretted the question immediately.

Colin looked momentarily stricken. “She thinks I’m working late. What a cliché, eh?” He smiled wanly. “Let me know what happens.”

Ben said he would. He watched Colin walk out of the pub, the expensive coat still wet on the shoulders, the thinning hair now becoming an actual bald patch, and hoped he hadn’t spoiled his mood. Then he thought about Maggie, at home with the two boys, and felt sorry for her too. He hoped for Colin’s sake the girl was worth it. He began feeling sorry for her as well before he caught himself.

Fuck it, he thought, resisting the drift towards self-pity. Who am I to feel sorry for anyone?

He finished his beer. Then, because it was still snowing outside and he had nothing better to do, he bought himself another.

He followed Colin’s advice for a whole day before he gave in and phoned Quilley. The resurgence of hope had unsettled him, and when he heard the mechanical tones of an answerphone the anticlimax was killing. He waited ten minutes and tried again, with no more success. He continued trying throughout the afternoon, but each time was greeted by the secretary’s recorded voice telling him to leave his name and number. He hung up without speaking. When there was no answer by the early evening he accepted that he would have to wait until the next morning.

He got the answerphone then as well.

This time he left a message, brusquely telling Quilley to call. After that he felt better for a while, knowing he had committed himself. It was up to the detective now.

But Quilley didn’t get in touch.

Ben waited another day before he rang again. He phoned from home, and then from the studio, where he and Zoe were preparing for a shoot. He was so accustomed to hearing the recording that it took him by surprise when someone answered.

The secretary sounded even more truculent than he remembered. “He’s not here,” she snapped when he asked for the detective. She didn’t enlarge.

“When will he be back?”

“No idea.”

“Will it be later today or tomorrow?”

“I’ve told you, I don’t know.”

He tried not to lose his temper. “Is there another number where I can get hold of him?”

There was a bitter laugh. “Not unless you want to ring the hospital.”

“He’s in hospital?”

Some of his paranoia receded at hearing there were no darker motives behind the detective’s absence.

“What’s the matter with him?”

“He got beaten up.”

The paranoia returned. “Who did it?”

“How should I know?”

“When did it happen?”

“I don’t know, a couple of days ago,” she snapped. “Look, it’s no good asking me anything. I don’t work for him any more. He owes me two months’ wages, and I bet I’m really going to see that now he’s stuck in there. I’ve only come in to collect some things. I don’t even know why I bothered to pick up the phone.”

He sensed she was about to hang up. “Just tell me which hospital he’s in.”

She gave an irritable sigh, but told him before she broke the connection. Ben slowly set down the receiver. There were probably dozens of people who would like to give Quilley a kicking, he told himself. It didn’t necessarily mean anything.

He could have been mugged, even.

But he didn’t believe that.

The shoot wasn’t scheduled for a couple of hours. He promised Zoe that he’d be back in plenty of time and drove to the hospital. It took him a while to locate Quilley’s ward.

He’d been prepared to make up some story so he’d be allowed to see him, but it was all-day visiting. No one stopped him as he walked in.

The detective’s bed was half screened by striped curtains.

He didn’t appear to notice Ben. He was lying flat on his back and wore a creased blue hospital gown. A drip fed into his arm from the chrome stand beside him. His face was so blackened with bruising it looked as though he’d been burnt. A dressing was taped across his nose, and another covered one ear. The hair around it had been shaved. An old man’s silver stubble frosted his hollowed cheeks and the loose wattles of his throat.

He was staring at the ceiling. He glanced briefly at Ben when he reached the bedside, then away again. He showed neither recognition nor interest.

“Your secretary told me where you were,” Ben said.

Quilley didn’t respond.

“It’s Ben Murray,” Ben added, not sure how aware the man was.

“I know who you are.” The voice was a weak croak.

Quilley’s gaze remained fixed above him. Some of his front teeth were missing, Ben noticed. He sat on the armrest of the vinyl chair.

“Have you told the police?” There was no response. “You told him you’d found something out, didn’t you? What did you do, say you’d tell me if he didn’t pay you? Then what? Were you going to go with whoever offered the most, or take money from both of us? Except Kale beat the shit out of you instead.”

Quilley didn’t look at him, but his chin was quivering.

Ben leaned nearer. A smell of antiseptic and unwashed body came from the bed.

“What did you find out?”

The detective stared resolutely at the ceiling. The tremor in his mouth grew more pronounced. His Adam’s apple looked as though it would break through the skin as he swallowed.

“I’ll pay you,” Ben said.

Quilley closed his eyes. A tear ran out from the corner of one and ran sideways towards his ear.

“Please. It’s important. Was it something about Kale?”

It seemed that Quilley was going to ignore this also. Then he moved his head fractionally from side to side.

“What, then? His wife? I know she has men round while Kale’s at work. Is that it? Or is it something else?”

There was no further movement Ben took a deep breath, trying to control his frustration.

“Why won’t you tell me? Because you’re frightened of him?”

The detective turned his head away.

Ben stood up. He’d thought he’d feel some satisfaction in seeing the man broken. He didn’t, but he didn’t feel any pity either. He walked away from the bed without another word. On the way out he stopped at the nurses’ station. A plump young nurse was writing behind it. She looked up as Ben approached.

“I’m a friend of Mr Quilley’s. Does anyone know what happened to him?”

It took her a moment to place who he was talking about. “Oh, the man who was beaten up? No, I don’t think so. He says he can’t remember. We think it must have been more than one person, though, from the extent of his injuries. There’s a lot of internal bruising. He’s lucky he wasn’t killed.”

Ben thought he was very lucky.

He felt the pull of Tunford even after he had driven past the turnoff that led to it. For several miles afterwards he was conscious of where it lay behind him, as though part of his brain were looking backwards, watching it recede.

The snow had lingered here, piles of dirty white melting slowly by the roadside, staining the bare trees and dead grass like mould. Ben had turned the car heater up high, but the frigid damp still seemed to cling to his clothes.

Or perhaps it was him it was clinging to.

The industrial estate had an abandoned Sunday air about it. The town itself looked similarly deserted. One or two windows of the terraced houses were decorated with tinsel and coloured baubles, but they seemed unconvincing in the grey daylight.

When he reached the street where the Patersons lived he saw that more of the boarded-up houses had gone. The strip of semi-levelled rubble now extended halfway along the row of terraces. The JCBs and earth-shifting machinery stood patiently amongst the bricks, waiting to be loosed on the rest.