And of course I don’t have any problems of my own.
There was a rich smell of beeswax from the antique furniture as he went down the long, thickly carpeted hallway. From somewhere deeper in the house he could hear the murmur of Colin on the telephone. A door opened at the far end of the hall and Maggie came out. In the brown knee-length dress with its white lace collar she looked, as always, like she was caught in a 1980s Laura Ashley time warp. She faltered when she saw his hair, then, obviously deciding not to mention it, fixed her eyes on his face and smiled her stuck-on smile.
“We thought you weren’t coming,” she said, jovially, but Ben knew her well enough to detect irritation at his late arrival.
“Sorry. It ran on for longer than I expected.”
“Yes, so we gathered.”
The effusive offers of help that Maggie had made after Sarah had died were clearly wearing thin. He knew he would soon have to make other arrangements for the days when he was too busy to collect Jacob from school, and hoped it wouldn’t take him too long to adjust to the change in routine. Then the thought came to him that he might not have to worry about such things for much longer.
He couldn’t say how that made him feel.
“He’s in here,” Maggie said, going into what she called the ‘TV room’. Jacob was sitting cross-legged on the floor watching Tom and Jerry do violence to each other on the big colour screen. Scott was sitting next to his younger brother. Both of them sat apart from Jacob.
“Hi, Jake, had a good day?” Ben asked, doing his best to sound cheerful. Jacob looked at him blankly for a moment, then gave him a rare smile before turning back to the TV. Ben felt pierced by it.
Colin came into the room. He had already changed into his ‘at home’ outfit of jeans and a T-shirt, but his solicitor’s persona was so strong that the casual clothes looked unnatural on him.
“Hi, Ben, fancy a beer?”
Ben was about to decline when Colin gave him a look and jerked his head towards the door.
“Er, yeah, perhaps a quick one.”
Conscious of Maggie’s disapproval, he followed Colin into the kitchen. Colin glanced back to make sure no one else had followed them, then closed the door.
“I’ve got you the name of a detective.”
Chapter five
Ben couldn’t park near the address Colin had given him. The road, just off Kilburn High Street, was being dug up by workmen and was down to a single lane. The yammer of pneumatic drills vibrated through Ben’s skull as he walked past, each decibel a punishment for the beer, joints and finally vodka he had worked his way through the night before. The street was a rundown line of shuttered shop windows and disappearing small businesses. He slowed as he reached the number he was looking for. A disreputable-looking secondhand jeweller’s was on the ground floor, but the row of buzzers by the doorway at the top of the three cracked steps indicated the presence of other occupants in the building. The sun bore down on the top of Ben’s head like a Klieg light, making him squint. He shuddered as a clammy wave of nausea left him prickling with sweat. The air was full of diesel and dust from the roadworks. He took deep breaths of it anyway and went up the steps.
There was a small, clear plastic strip containing a name next to each of the buzzers. The one that said ‘I.Q. Investigations’ was right above the jeweller’s. Ben hoped that meant it was on the first floor. He didn’t think he could make it any higher than that. He pressed the buzzer and waited. There was a crackle of static and then a woman’s voice said simply, “Hello?”
“I’ve an appointment with Mr Quilley.” He waited for a response. After a second the door hummed as it was unlocked.
Ben pushed it open and went inside.
The hallway was lit with a flickering fluorescent strip light, redundant with the sunshine coming from windows on the stairway and at the far end. It added another notch to his headache as he passed underneath. Little fluff balls of dust were gathered in the angle of each linoleum-covered stair, and the banister wobbled beneath his hand. The first-floor landing was small, with only a single door. ‘I. Quilley Investigations’ was stencilled on it in scratched white paint, apparently put there before the introduction of the snappier abbreviation.
Ben tapped on the glass and heard a distant ‘Come in’.
The office was long, dark and narrow. A girl and a desk were crammed into an alcove to one side, together with a battered computer monitor and a fax machine that looked as though its owners had beaten their money’s worth out of it.
The girl glanced up from the computer screen, unsmiling.
“Hi,” Ben said. His head thudded. I’m Ben Murray. I spoke to Mr Quilley yesterday—” A door that Ben had assumed led into a cupboard opened and a man poked his head around it.
“Come in, Mr Murray.” The head disappeared. The girl went back to her typing.
Ben went through the door into the next room. The man was already sitting behind an old teacher’s desk.
He was in his fifties. His hair was brushed straight back, mostly dark but receding in two deep bays above his temples. It had the oily sheen of Brylcreem. He waved Ben to sit down in the chair opposite with a hand that held a half-smoked cigarette and continued to write on a notepad. Ben sat down, glancing around. It was smaller but brighter than where the receptionist sulked, with a large sash window overlooking the street. The window was closed, muting the rattle of the pneumatic drills from outside but doing little to air the cramped space. The room was sour with stale cigarette smoke. Ben watched a curl of it drifting up from the stub tucked between the man’s brown-stained fingers and felt queasy again.
The detective finished writing with an emphatic full stop and gave Ben a smile. “Sorry about that.”
He had a southern Irish accent. His teeth were small and the same yellow as his fingers. Rising half out of his seat he reached across the desk and offered the hand not gripping the cigarette. He was taller than Ben would have thought, with a heavy frame folded with office flab. His palm was damp and hot when Ben shook it.
“Don’t mind if I smoke, do you?” he asked, waving the cigarette with little inclination of putting it out.
“No, go ahead.”
Quilley was dragging on the filter before Ben finished speaking, the request clearly a formality. His cheeks hollowed as the tip of ash raced towards his fingers. He stubbed the cigarette out in a surprisingly elegant cut-glass ashtray that was already overflowing and let the smoke out through his nose and mouth.
“Now, Mr Murray,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
Ben took his eyes from the twin plumes of smoke issuing from the man’s nostrils. “I, er, I want you to locate somebody for me.” The detective took a blank form from a drawer. It looked like one he had typed up and photocopied himself. “What’s their name?”
“Kale. John and Jeanette Kale.”
“Man and wife or brother and sister?”
“They’re married. At least, they were, the last I heard of them.”
“And when was that?”
“Six years ago.” The detective wrote on the form without looking up. “Can you give me any more details?” Ben told him as much as he knew from the newspaper reports. Quilley didn’t interrupt, and broke off writing only to light up another cigarette. He dropped the match into the ashtray and picked up the Biro again.
“Why do you want them locating?”
“Why...?” Ben faltered.
Quilley looked up. He had a habit of half smiling that made him seem to be recalling some private joke.