Shuttlecock by Graham Swift Page B

another. Don’t we? Now supposing Z wasn’t being blackmailed by X – though X was out to make Z suffer nonetheless. Supposing, as you so rightly suggest, X wasn’t a fully-fledged blackmailer; he wasn’t after money, he was just a man with a massive chip on his shoulder who simply wanted to get his own back by hurting his betters and concocting groundless slanders. Look at him – an alcoholic, an incompetent, a dead-beat of a man.’ Quinn turned his eyes on me again – his face was pink and heated – almost as if he were inviting disagreement. ‘Supposing X merely informs Z of something he knows will shatter Z – so shattering, as it turns out, that Z commits suicide. That something relates toZ’s wife. The wife is the one with the guilty secret. After her husband’s death she herself is in danger of some unpleasant exposure. So, with the perfect cover of the distress of the moment – her grief quite genuine, who knows? – she invents some story about marital havoc, complete with candid and gruesome details. So candid and so intimate that no one dares doubt the truth of it and no one seeks another explanation. Well, isn’t it possible? And what do you think of this fellow Z? A perfectly normal man on the evidence of his own colleagues, more than that, successful, a fine career behind – and before him. Treating his wife like that? Attacking his own son? Is it credible?’
    Another attack of shivers. If Quinn had worked so long in our office, dealt with the things we dealt with, why was he asking me this? His own phrase: ‘lurid imagination’.
    ‘It sounds – if you’ll forgive me, sir – a little … speculative.’
    ‘Speculative! You saw all the evidence in the files.’
    ‘Sir? Which – ?’
    ‘You know about Z’s son?’
    ‘Z’s son?’
    ‘Yes. Are you telling me you didn’t chase that up too? Z’s son, Prentis, has been on hostile terms with his mother ever since his father’s death. Now why should that be? Think of it, Prentis.’ Quinn’s voice grew louder. He had got up and was pacing round the room as he spoke, one hand in his pocket, one hand gesturing in the air. ‘Think of it. Z was cleared professionally. But all that stuff was dragged out. And suicide. A man with a position and a reputation. You seem in some doubt, Prentis, about the reason for this investigation.’ He came right up close to me. ‘When your father commits suicide and hisname is slurred, isn’t that sufficient reason for investigation?’
    I felt as the suspect must feel when the hard lights are turned on his eyes. Quinn’s face was a mere foot from my own. The flush in his cheeks was matched by the flower in his lapel. Another rose; a small blood-red one.
    ‘I didn’t know – ’
    ‘It seems to me, Prentis, you don’t know quite a lot. Think I’m making this up?’
    He bent forwards, both hands in his pockets, like a cross-examining lawyer.
    ‘But if the widow’s evidence claimed that Z attacked his own son, it hardly seems – ’
    ‘Another of her fabrications – precisely to hide the fact that the son was on the father’s side. What’s true, Prentis, tell me: what really happens or what people will accept as true?’ He began to pace again. ‘In any case, even if father and son had once been enemies, it doesn’t mean that now – Stranger things happen. We know that. Don’t we?’
    The old bastard.
    He turned, moved back towards his desk but did not sit. I watched his limp – a slight drag of the right foot, a lean forward with the shoulder. Crippled body: warped mind? Each of his little probing questions was delivered in an odd, contorted way, as if aimed simultaneously to provoke and deter.
    ‘But – with respect, sir – I don’t see why this is an official inquiry. The interests of Z’s son aren’t an official matter. They don’t concern us.’
    ‘Oh you think that, do you? Don’t you think that’s a rather easy distinction, Prentis – the personal, the official? We upset