Owning Jacob (1998)

by Simon Beckett

  He outlined the conversation with the detective.

  Colin sipped his tonic as he listened attentively, every inch the solicitor. 'Well, you've got two choices,' he said when Ben had finished. 'You either tell him to fuck off, or pay up and hope he really does know something useful. If you do that you've got to decide how much you're prepared to fork out, and how to make sure Quilley doesn't stiff you completely.'

  'You think it might be worth taking a chance, then?'

  'Can you just ignore it?'

  Ben reluctantly shook his head.

  'So there's your answer. But make him give you some idea what it is he's selling before you pay him, otherwise he might just take the money and tell you that Kale has All-Bran for breakfast. If he really does know something, and he's as strapped for cash as he sounds, he'll give you some sort of clue. If he won't then he's probably just trying to rip you off.'

  'If he is I'll fucking kill him.'

  Colin dropped his lemon rind into an ashtray. 'That'll certainly help you get Jacob back, won't it?'

  The anger died as quickly as it had appeared. After the vacuum of the past two weeks the sudden onslaught of emotions was like eating over-rich food after a fast.

  'There's no guarantee that what he tells me'll help anyway,' he said, despondent again.

  'No, but there's only one way you can find out.'

  Ben stared into his beer but found no inspiration.

  'If you decide to risk it you still shouldn't let him think you're too eager. He'll only try to screw you for as much as he can if you do.'

  'He warned me not to leave it too long.'

  'He's hardly going to tell you there's no rush, is he? I'd make the bastard sweat for a day or two. Play it cool.' Colin looked at his watch. 'Sorry, I'm, er, going to have to go.'

  '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 thou
ght 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.

  Ben parked outside the house and knocked on the door.

  The window box held only soil. The glass above it was misted over. He stamped his feet, feeling the dank atmosphere penetrate his lungs.

  The door was opened. Ron Paterson nodded a greeting and stood back to let him in.

  The kitchen smelled of roasting meat. A coal fire burned in the small grate set into the tiled fireplace. Ben felt the warmth close around him, snuffing the chill in an instant.

  Paterson closed the door. 'Give me your coat.'

  Ben took it off and handed it to him. He went out to hang it at the bottom of the stairs.

  'You sure you don't mind me coming?' Ben asked when he came back.

  'I'd have said if I did.' He nodded at the table. 'You might as well sit down.'

  Ben had phoned the day before to ask if he could call around. Paterson had told him to come before lunch—he'd called it 'dinner'—the next day. He hadn't asked why. It didn't need to be said that it would be something to do with Jacob.

  'How's Mary?'

  Paterson was filling the kettle. 'In hospital.'

  'Is she all right?' Ben had thought she must be upstairs.

  'They're doing tests.' He said it matter-of-factly, keeping whatever he felt out of sight. He plugged in the kettle. 'Want a cuppa?' He set out the teapot and mugs, then came and sat at the table. 'So what can I do for you?'

  'You said something last time I was here. About Sandra Kale.'

  'I said a lot of things.'

  'But you started to say that you'd heard something about her, and then you stopped. I wondered what it was you'd heard.'

  Ben had remembered the conversation after he'd visited Quilley. He knew he might have made the journey just to hear a piece of useless gossip. But it wasn't as if his Sundays were so fun-filled any more that he couldn't spare the time.

  Paterson sucked on a tooth. He didn't look at Ben, but he didn't give the impression of looking away from him either.

  'Just rumours.'

  'What rumours?'

  'I don't spread gossip.'

  'It might be important.'

  Paterson considered that. 'Why?'

  Ben told him.

  Jacob's grandfather listened without making any comment.

  Once he got up to unplug the kettle, although he didn't bother making any tea. Other than that he didn't move as Ben described Kale's activities in the garden, and Sandra's in the bedroom. Ben told him how Jacob was being kept off school, and what had happened when the two men had found him in the woods. He left nothing out, except the fact that he'd almost allowed himself to be sidetracked by Sandra Kale's ruttish sexuality.

  He wanted to emphasise how Kale was unbalanced, not only unfit to bring up Jacob but an actual danger to him. But he saw the grimness in Paterson's face and knew there was no need.

  There was a silence when he had finished. The coals of the fire tumbled in on themselves in a swarm of sparks. The gas oven hissed softly. Paterson went over and turned it down.

  'We don't keep drink in the house,' he said, fetching Ben's coat.

  He took Ben to the working men's club. It was non-political, an old and ugly brick building with an even uglier 1960s extension tacked on to its front. An elderly fat man in a three-piece brown suit sat behind a table in the entrance. He greeted Paterson with a wheezed 'Afternoon, Ron' as he pushed across a book for him to sign. Ben wrote his own name in the 'guest' column and followed him inside.

  It was a big room with a high stage at one end. Brightly coloured paper streamers ran from the edge of the ceiling to its centre, and already deflated balloons hung limply on the walls. The stage itself was fringed with gold plastic tassels that could have been a part of the Christmas decorations except for a tired look of permanence about them. Round, dark wood tables and matching stools filled the floor space with no clear aisles in between. A few were occupied, mainly by men, but most were empty.

  Ben tried to buy the drinks but Paterson would have none of it. 'You're my guest,' he said, in a tone that spoke of protocols and tradition.

  They carried their pints to a table by the window. Paterson exchanged nods with one or two of the other customers but didn't stop to talk. They sat down, taking the top off their beer in the ritual that had to precede any conversation. The beer was cold and gassy. Ben stifled a belch as they set down their glasses.

  The lull wasn't so much awkwardness as not knowing where to start.

  'Gets busy in here at nights. Specially weekends.' Paterson lifted his chin towards the stage. 'Get some good acts on, as well.'

  'Right.'

  'Used to come in here a lot, Mary and me. Before we moved to London, and then for a bit when we first moved back. Till Mary got really bad. It's difficult now, though.' He looked around the room as if noticing it for the first time.

  They took another drink.

  'I can't vouch for anything,' Paterson said, abruptly coming to the point. 'It's only what people have said. Nothing specific.'

  Ben nodded.

  Paterson studied his pint. 'She's supposed to have a bit of a history, that's all…'

  'History?'

  'Been a bit of a bad 'un. Taking money for it.' He looked across at Ben to make sure he understood.

  'You mean she was a prostitute?'

  'That's what I've heard. One of the club members' sons had a mate who was based at Aldershot with Kale. Reckoned she'd sold it to half the regiment before she married him.' He pursed his lips disapprovingly. 'Sounds like she's still at it, from what you've said.'

  Ben felt let down. Even if it were true, it wasn't the revelation he'd hoped for. 'Was there anything else?'

  He could see Paterson struggling with some decision.

  'There were stories about some trouble she'd been in,' he said at last. 'Other trouble. But I couldn't tell you what. I don't listen to that sort of thing.'

  'Do you know anybody who might know?'

  The other man considered, then shook his head.

  'How about the member's son you were talking about?'

  'The family moved away last year. Couldn't tell you where they are now.' He must have read the frustration in Ben's face. 'You thought I could tell you something to help get him back.'

  It wasn't a question. Ben hadn't mentioned anything about why he wanted to know, only that he was
worried about Jacob.

  'I've been told there's no chance.'

  Paterson took a pull from the pint. 'John Kale's not going to let him go. It won't matter what anybody tells him.'

  Ben didn't answer.

  'He was always possessive. Didn't like our Jeanette going out or doing anything without asking him. He was bad enough that way then. Now he's got his son back he won't let nobody take him again.' He tapped his finger on the table for emphasis. 'I mean nobody. And I wouldn't like to say what'll happen if anyone tries.'

  'You think I should just give him up?'

  A weariness seemed to come over the older man, then it was gone. 'I don't like to think of my grandson in that house any more than you do. But John's not going to deliberately hurt him. He's all he's got. Forget her, that tart…' He made a dismissive brushing-away gesture. 'She's just a bit of nothing. It's the boy he'd lay down his life for. If he thinks he's going to be taken away again, it'll be like losing everything twice. I don't think he'll care what he does then.'

  'I'll be careful,' Ben said.

  Paterson reached for his glass. 'It's not you I'm thinking about.'

  They had another drink at the club—which Ben bought, so obviously the protocol of guests not buying applied only to the first round—and then went back to the house. Paterson invited him to stay for lunch. 'I've done enough for two,' he said. 'Force of habit.'

  Afterwards they watched the football match on the small TV in the lounge. Ben felt drowsy and comfortable. The beer, the roast lunch and the coal fire popping in the grate combined to make him feel more relaxed than he had in ages. Whole swathes of the afternoon passed without them talking, but there was no awkwardness in the silences. When Paterson announced that he would have to get ready to visit his wife, Ben offered to go with him to the hospital. The decline came without fuss or self-consciousness.

  'She's not at her best just now. You can call round again when she's back at home.'

  Ben understood, without feeling offended, that it was time for him to go. Paterson saw him to the door, but they didn't shake hands. It wouldn't have felt right.

  'Don't push him too far,' the older man told him as he left.