by GJ Minett
Phil shifted his stance so that he could keep an eye on the other two as he tried to take stock of the situation. He looked around for something he might use if things turned nasty but realised, even as he did so, that this almost certainly wouldn’t be necessary. Whatever the reason for this intrusion, it didn’t seem likely that violence would be on the agenda. Unless he was foolish enough to throw his weight around. Cunningham’s lads, the same two as the other evening, appeared to be there for show more than anything else. If they were tooled up in any way there was nothing obvious to suggest it, and besides – if this was all about giving him a good kicking as payback for Wednesday evening, he was pretty sure they’d have jumped him as he came through the door or, even better, while he was fast asleep. They wouldn’t announce themselves and give up the element of surprise. Cunningham didn’t work with amateurs.
But neither was he here for no reason. Phil had never had to deal with him in all his years on the force but the name had always been out there. He’d been very much right-hand man to the Bellamy brothers for some time now and you didn’t get close to them without proving your worth. In confronting him the other evening Phil knew he’d thrust his hand into a hornet’s nest. It was one thing to do that when your blood was up, another thing altogether to have to deal with the consequences in the cold light of day. He had no idea what Cunningham had in mind and was more than unnerved at the prospect of finding out. But he was also damned if he was going to give him the satisfaction of showing it.
‘Taking a bit of a chance, aren’t we?’ he said, sitting down on the settee with a nonchalance he certainly did not feel and slipping his feet into his trainers. ‘Didn’t think we’d see you stooping to B&E.’
Cunningham smiled. ‘I think you’ll find that if it comes down to it – and we both know it won’t, incidentally – I started a round of golf about . . . three quarters of an hour ago? Foursomes, so plenty of witnesses there. I’m probably on the fourth green about now. Do hope my putting’s showing signs of improvement.’
He got up from the armchair and walked over to the shelf where he picked up the photo of Phil and Sally in Puerto Banus. ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘it’s hardly breaking and entering when you yourself invited me over here the other evening. Correct me if I’m wrong but you seemed to be eager enough then to hear any news I might have for you regarding your son. If I’ve misunderstood, just say the word and we’ll be on our way.’
‘You didn’t seem too interested in helping me out as I recall,’ said Phil, tugging the first of the laces tight. ‘So what’s changed since Wednesday?’
‘Well, let’s just say I found myself affected by your situation. You’re clearly under a great deal of stress at the moment and could probably do with a little TLC.’
‘And you don’t want a ticking time bomb turning up on your doorstep every five minutes, is that it? Might cramp your style a little?’
‘Pretty lady, by the way,’ said Cunningham, replacing the photo frame on the shelf. ‘Cramp my style? No, I don’t think I need to worry about that. Let’s just say I’ve never seen any point in going out of my way to antagonise people. If the choice is there, it makes far more sense to seek some sort of compromise.’
‘OK,’ said Phil. ‘I’m listening.’
And he did just that as Cunningham cleared his throat and took him through what one of his subordinates was supposed to have told him as recently as the previous evening. Much of what he had to say Phil was inclined to dismiss as self-serving nonsense, especially his explanation as to when he came by the information. If he knew Ezra Cunningham at all, there was nothing here that he hadn’t already known when they talked in the restaurant. He just hadn’t seen any advantage in passing it on at the time, and if he was doing so now, it was because he’d had a rethink. He reminded himself that this was Cunningham and that simply taking everything at face value would be a big mistake. There would be agendas hidden in every sentence.
But as things turned out, the tale he told hung together far better than might have been expected, and whatever levels of scepticism he was ready to bring to bear, he found to his surprise that once he stripped away all the flowery language and Cunningham’s theatrical delivery, what was left rang true somehow.
The essence was that just under a month ago – Saturday, 23RD August to be precise – Cunningham’s chauffeur had been sent to an address in Wick near Littlehampton to pick up an important guest at a dinner party that was being held there. As he arrived at the front door, Callum and an unidentified woman were just leaving. The chauffeur knew Callum from the Thursday night squash sessions and exchanged a few words with him before watching them drive off in a yellow sports car. Almost immediately, according to the chauffeur, a truck came out of a side road and set off in the same direction. He didn’t think anything of it at the time, apart from the fact that the driver seemed to be in a hurry.
Five minutes later, having collected his guest, the chauffeur set off for home and was surprised as he passed the Body Shop to see the same truck parked just inside the entrance to the petrol station with its lights turned off, which struck him as dangerous as anyone arriving at speed might not see him there until the last minute before turning into the forecourt. He drove on and a few minutes later the yellow sports car flew past him, followed moments after by the truck which seemed to be going flat out in an effort to keep up.
The chauffeur said it seemed pretty clear that the truck driver was following either Callum or the woman he was with. He toyed with the idea of staying with them to see if anything came of it but he was on a job and his number-one responsibility was to make sure the guest got home safely, so he’d turned off in Felpham and that was the last he saw of them.
He didn’t think any more of the incident until he heard, a few days later, that someone had beaten Callum to death in a field somewhere near South Mundham. At first he’d been worried in case it had happened that same evening that he’d picked up his customer in Wick and was relieved when he heard it was actually a couple of days later. Even so, he’d been reluctant to say anything to Cunningham, in the latter’s heavily sanitised version of events, because he was worried he might be blamed for not having said something earlier. He’d come forward reluctantly when Cunningham put the word out that he wanted to know of any little whisper that might be doing the rounds.
It could all be nonsense, of course. Cunningham was a master at distorting the real picture and he was quite capable of inventing something as fanciful as this if he wanted to get Phil off his back. But what held Phil’s attention more than anything else was the fact that when he asked for a description of the truck, Cunningham shrugged his shoulders and said there wasn’t a lot he could tell him. It was just an old truck, the chauffeur had said, with a load of equipment in the back. He was pretty sure there was writing on the side but he hadn’t taken it in. Looked like some sort of odd-jobber truck, was how he’d described it to Cunningham.
And that got Phil’s attention.
Cunningham and his minders left shortly afterwards. As he stepped through the front door, he made it clear that as far as he was concerned he’d now done more than enough to help Phil to move on. And moving on, he stressed, meant precisely that.
‘Much as I enjoy these little chats of ours,’ he said, ‘I don’t expect our paths to cross again in the near future. Please don’t disappoint me, Mr Green.’ And with that he walked off down the path, leaving Phil with thoughts of a red Mitsubishi truck he’d seen parked outside Abi’s just recently. And its owner who had made it clear that he didn’t like Callum.
And in particular he remembered the flash of temper and the instinctive grab for the heavy spanner.
Time for more phone calls, he thought to himself, stooping to take his trainers off again.
ABI
‘Are you OK?’
‘Mmm?’
She looked up from the coffee she’d been stirring, startled momentarily. How long had she drifted off for? She tried to remember what Mary
had been talking about last time she’d tuned in but the embarrassing truth was she had no idea.
‘You seem a bit preoccupied, dear.’
‘Sorry,’ she said, sitting bolt upright and offering an apologetic smile. ‘Miles away. What were you saying?’
Mary laughed. ‘Nothing important,’ she said. ‘Just droning on as usual about the book signing next week. I was just wondering if you’ll be able to pop in at some stage and offer moral support. I’ve got this nightmare vision of me sitting there, hidden behind a great big pile of books and no one turning up.’
Abi patted her hand to reassure her. That was not going to happen. Mary’s latest book was flying up the Amazon charts and her loyal army of devoted followers pretty much guaranteed a packed audience any time she appeared in public. No one knew this better than Mary but she was never averse to being reminded of how popular she was.
Abi promised she’d be there and smiled again.
Easing her fork into a cupcake, Mary launched into another anecdote about her agent, who had been making a bit of a mess of negotiations over the sale of foreign translation rights – at least, that was Mary’s take on things.
Abi sipped her coffee, eyes locked on to Mary’s over the rim of the cup, and tried to focus on what she was saying, but within seconds she found herself sneaking a glance at her watch. Eleven forty-five. She did the maths again in her head. Flight landing around 10.40, an hour or so to reclaim luggage and get back to the car, another hour from Gatwick back to Chichester. He probably wouldn’t say anything right away because it was a long flight and Freja would be worn out. Wouldn’t be fair to spring something like that on her when she’s travelled all this way just to see him. He’d even been making noises about saying nothing till the week was up and it was time for her to go back but she didn’t see how that could possibly work. Freja would know something was up. She’d have to.
Not your problem, she reminded herself. She and Adam had been talking this through for a while now and were both quite clear about where the boundaries lay. If he wanted to walk away from his relationship with Freja that didn’t mean he was looking to walk straight into another one. And just because she was now on her own and at a low ebb, that didn’t mean she was going to throw herself at the first available man. They were friends, had been for a while now. She liked the fact that he was able to listen to her without automatically trying to turn everything round to his own circumstances, and if he offered an opinion it was generally worth listening to. She hoped he appreciated the similar levels of support she was able to offer to him. That’s what friends are for, they’d told each other – so often it was practically a mantra. Just because Callum and Freja had been taken out of the equation that was no reason for anything in their own relationship to change.
She had no problem in rationalising it.
But she still found herself checking her watch every few minutes.
‘It all sounds a bit off to me,’ Mary was saying. ‘I mean, if you were in my shoes, you wouldn’t stand for it, would you?’
‘No,’ she said, a shot in the dark.
The smile on Mary’s face suggested she had guessed correctly.
PHIL
The Steam Packet was in River Road, just along from the Arun View which he’d always preferred back in the day when he’d been based in Littlehampton. Both pubs were tucked tight against the river, overlooking the harbour, but the Steam Packet had always seemed like the poor relation back in the eighties, dependent on a handful of loyal and committed regulars, while the Arun View attracted diners from a much wider area. About five or six years ago the Packet had actually gone out of business but had recently been taken over by enterprising new owners keen to draw on the history of the building, stretching back as it did to the mid-nineteenth century, when it was a favoured haunt of passengers waiting to take one of the steam-packet ships across the English Channel to Honfleur. As a result of the money and energy that had been poured into renovating and refurbishing it, the balance between the Packet and the Arun View had been redressed to a great extent.
It didn’t take Phil long to find Mick Hall. He was sitting on his own at a corner table, looking for all the world like the before photo in a public-health promotion. Phil suspected they were probably more or less the same age but in all honesty Hall looked anything up to twenty years older. His pockmarked face, scarred from what must have been a chronic case of juvenile acne, had the kind of pasty complexion that hasn’t seen enough of the sun in recent years. He was unshaven with greasy hair slicked back into a ponytail that rested on the stained collar of his leather jacket. Like its owner, the jacket had clearly seen better days.
He was flicking through a two-day-old copy of the Littlehampton Gazette and taking frequent gulps from the pint glass which, he’d made clear earlier, would need constant refilling if he was going to give up his valuable time to answer questions. Over the phone an hour or so ago, Phil had introduced himself as a freelance reporter hired to do background research for an article on the recent murder in South Mundham. He’d decided on this approach because he wanted Hall to be as open as possible and was concerned that identifying himself as Callum’s father might put him on his guard.
He needn’t have worried. Hall had made a point of turning down Phil’s request to begin with, making it sound like a major intrusion into his private life, as if re-opening wounds and exposing painful memories to the light of day might be too much for such a sensitive soul: ‘The boys in blue’ve already had their pound of flesh . . . not sure I can go through it all again.’ But Phil had dealt with the Mick Halls of this world for long enough to recognise an opening gambit when he saw one. Hall had been sniffing out the lie of the land, trying to gauge whether there might be easy money in this for him. The moment it became clear that wasn’t going to happen, he’d been quick enough to settle for having his bar bill taken care of for a couple of hours. Better than a kick in the teeth.
Phil bought a lager for himself and two pints of some obscure Real Ale for Hall to get things started. As it happened, he was already revved up and ready to go by the time the glasses were placed in front of him. It was difficult to escape the impression that talking about his family and the savage blows life had dealt him were a staple part of his conversational diet. All it took was a glass and a sympathetic ear and he was off. Phil knew that, as with Cunningham, he’d have to be careful not to take everything as gospel. Hall was a serial whinger; everything that had ever gone wrong in his life was down to some malevolent natural force or unseen, shadowy conspirators who naturally had it in for him. Nothing was ever his own fault, so the thumb was pressing too heavily on the scales for him to be a reliable witness.
For the first few minutes Phil was happy to let him talk as randomly as he liked. The looser his tongue became, the more likely he was to wander off script and offer glimpses of what really lay beyond the protective screens his self-esteem threw up . . . or what was left of it. It seemed like an eternity before he got around to talking about Owen. When he did, he made little effort at diplomacy.
‘The runt,’ he said, breaking off to rinse the bad taste out of his mouth with another swig from his glass. ‘Runt of the litter. Couldn’t hold a candle to his brother. I know you’re not supposed to have favourites when it’s your own kids, but it’s human nature, isn’t it? Can’t like everyone. Some kids you take to, some you don’t.’
‘I didn’t know Owen had a brother,’ Phil said.
‘William. His twin. Proud English name that. The wife kept calling him Willie – used to drive me up the sodding wall. It’s not Willie Shakespeare, I used to say to her. It’s not Willie Wordsworth. It’s William. I choose one name, she chooses the other – that’s what we agreed. Least she can do is respect my decision and call him by his proper name. How would she like it if I started calling her precious boy O? O-ee?’ He chuckled into his glass.
‘Not sure runt’s the word I’d have used,’ said Phil, tearing open a packet of crisps and push
ing them into the centre of the table. ‘When was the last time you saw him?’
Hall sniffed and helped himself to a handful of crisps since they were on offer. ‘Big bugger, isn’t he?’ he chuckled. ‘Bumped into him in town a couple of years ago. Hard to believe it was the same kid. If he gets it from his father, I’m fucked if I know who he is, cos it sure as hell isn’t me. But he was the runt back then all right. Came out about fifteen minutes after his brother. Struggling for breath, cord wrapped round his neck or something. Face all blue. Pity they didn’t just wrap it round a few more times and have done with it. Could have done us all a favour.’
Phil knew he was expected to react. He’d heard this kind of offhand cruelty many times before and recognised it for what it was. In some people the desire to shock and play up to a carefully cultivated image left them with no room for sensitivity or propriety. Nothing was ever going to hurt or even come close to getting to Mick Hall. And the more he tried to prove as much, the more he gave the lie to it.
‘William was your favourite, then?’ he asked.
Hall grabbed another handful of crisps from the pack and stuffed them into his mouth. ‘Cracking kid. Always laughing – that was the first thing anyone ever noticed about him. Cheeky grin, real sense of mischief, you know? More like me when I was a kid, I suppose. I mean, he used to overstep the mark a bit and you had to slap him down from time to time, just so he knew right from wrong – but it never bothered him, you know? Never sulked about it. Ten minutes later he’d be flying round the room like nothing had happened. You couldn’t help but like him.’
‘And Owen was different?’
Hall almost choked in mid-gulp. ‘Different?’ he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Yeah . . . that’s the word for it. He was different, all right. I always said they knew right from the start, the hospital people. They kept him in for a couple of weeks when he was born – ran all these tests. They said he might have problems with . . . fucked if I can remember what. All went straight over my head. Lots of long words. I left that side of things to the missus, to be honest. Not that she needed much persuading to look after him. I told her, it was twins she had. There was another kid who could do with a bit of attention as well if she could tear herself away for a couple of minutes. Just as well I was there or William wouldn’t have got a look in. She hardly left Owen’s side for the first few weeks.’