Hope to Die

‘And in any case, what’s any of this got to do with me? I haven’t seen either of them for months. In fact, it might well be years. If I could be fucked to work it out.’

‘The man who was shot was in his late teens or early twenties. According to your parents, he was a random intruder – a burglar.’

She shrugs. ‘Yeah, and?’

‘And, at first, we thought so too. Until, that is, we ran DNA tests on the victim.’

I pause again, scanning her face. Nothing. Her eyes are blank.

‘They were related. This man and your father.’

She swallows, frowns. ‘Related? How?’

‘He’s your son, Ms Rowan.’

Her eyelids flutter and she looks away, drawing a deep breath. Oxygen without benefit of nicotine.

All I can hear now is breathing. Hers and mine.

She swallows. ‘Is he OK?’

Because – as you might have noticed – I’ve made sure not to say. And if she wants to know, she’s going to have to work for it.

‘Who? Your father?’

A flicker of anger, but only a flicker. She’s on the defensive now. ‘No – the other –’

I leave a long pause. ‘No, Ms Rowan. I’m afraid he’s dead. He died at the scene.’

‘Tends to happen,’ snipes Quinn, ‘when you’ve had your fucking head blown off.’

She’s clearly getting under Quinn’s skin. I wouldn’t have said what he did, but now it’s out there I’m intrigued to see how she reacts. Shock, surely. Then what? Anger, sorrow, disbelief? But whatever she’s feeling, her face gives nothing away. She lifts one hand and starts gnawing at the skin around her thumb.

‘Is there anything you’d like to say?’

Her voice is stronger now. ‘When am I getting out?’

‘That’s not up to me. But we’ll need a whole lot more information first. Information I’m sure you’ll be able to give us.’

Her eyes narrow. ‘Like what, for fuck’s sake?’

‘Like where your son’s been for the last twenty years. You know, small details like that.’

‘Ha fucking ha,’ she says. ‘Think yourself quite the fucking comedian, don’t you.’

The sudden rash of expletives is telling.

I smile. ‘Not at all. I’m just doing my job: asking questions.’

‘I’ve answered a million fucking questions already. I told those goons at South Mercia I gave the kid to its father. I don’t know what the fuck happened to either of them after that, and I don’t know where the fuck the kid’s been since. Satisfied?’

‘Not by a long way. You still claim the father was Tim Baker? Despite what came out in that TV series?’

Her eyes narrow. ‘Yeah, well, none of that came from me, did it.’

‘You’re dissociating yourself from it? You never made any of those allegations?’

She smiles; the balance of power has evidently been restored. ‘No comment.’

But I’m not playing that game, not with her. Time to take back the initiative. ‘Do you know how we can contact Tim Baker?’

She gives me a withering look. ‘Don’t you think I’d have mentioned it before now if I did? Like fifteen fucking years ago? And in any case, you must know his name, right? You know, from a credit card or something.’

I play dumb. ‘I thought his name was Tim Baker?’

There’s colour in her cheeks now.

‘Not him. You know. My – son.’

I shake my head. ‘I’m afraid there was nothing to identify him. No cards, no wallet, no phone. Nothing.’

She frowns. ‘That’s crap. It doesn’t make any sense.’

‘I agree. Especially when we know for a fact that he had all those things with him when he arrived.’

It’s trick-bait, but she doesn’t take it. She doesn’t ask how I know that, she doesn’t ask anything at all. She just sits there, gnawing. The skin around her thumbnail is starting to bleed.

‘But you can rest assured we’ll get to the bottom of it, Ms Rowan. It may take a while, but we’ll work it out. We’ll find out what really happened to your baby all those years ago.’

She looks up, meets my gaze, and I smile.

‘It really is only a matter of time.’

‘Christ, she was a hard-faced cow,’ says Quinn, slamming the car door shut behind him.

‘Prison will do that to you.’

We sit for a moment in silence. It’s starting to rain. A fine drizzle misting the windscreen.

‘What do you think?’ he says after a long pause.

‘About what?’

‘Do you think she was surprised? That the kid was still alive, I mean.’

I’ve been asking myself the same question. Asking, and finding it startlingly hard to answer.

‘Not enough,’ I say eventually. ‘News like that, dropping from nowhere after all this time – she should have been reeling. And vindicated. Triumphant, even.’

Quinn laughs. ‘Right – she should have been rubbing our faces right in it. I would have, if it was me.’

‘Exactly. So it’s obviously not that simple. There’s something else in there too. Something muddying the waters.’

‘Like what?’

I turn to face him. ‘I have no idea.’

‘You all right, Rowan?’

She turns and looks back at the prison officer standing in the doorway, her hand on the bolt. She’s frowning. Behind her, people are moving past across the landing.

‘Bad news, was it?’

Rowan turns away. ‘You could say that.’ Her thumb is still bleeding and she lifts it to her mouth and starts to suck it.

The officer takes a step closer; in the bottom bunk, Rowan’s cellmate turns over and settles again.