The righteous men

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Friday, 2.14pm, Brooklyn

'It must be a bluff.'

'Dad, you've said that three times. Tell me, what do you think we should do? Should we offer them money anyway?

What should we fucking do?'

'Will, I don't blame you at all, but you must calm down.

If we're to get Beth back we need to think as clearly as we can.'

That 'if stopped Will short.

They were in Will and Beth's apartment. There was no sign of a break-in; everything was how he had last seen it. Except now a chill seemed to be coming off the walls and ceilings: the absence of Beth.

'Let's think through what we know. We know that their first priority is that the police not be involved: they said it in their very first message. We also know that they say it's not about money. But if this is not about ransom, why else would they care so much about keeping the police out of it? They must be bluffing. Let's think about your email address. Who has it?'

'Everyone has it! It's the same pattern for the whole Times staff. Anyone could work it out.'

A phone rang; Will pounced on his, frantically pressing buttons, but the sound kept coming. Calmly, his father answered his own phone. Nothing to do with this, he mouthed silently, disappearing into another room for a hushed conversation.

His father was proving no help. The aid he was offering was defiantly of the masculine variety, practical rather than emotional, and even that was not getting anywhere. Suddenly Will realized how much he missed his mother. Ever since he had been with Beth, that sentiment had become rarer and rarer: his wife was his confidante now. But, for a long while, that role had belonged to his mother.

In England, they had been a team, united by what he suddenly thought of as their loneliness. In his mother's version of the story, at least, she and Will had been abandoned by his father, leaving the two of them to fend for themselves.

He knew there were alternative accounts, not that his father was in too much of a hurry to share his. The fate of his parents' marriage was a long-running puzzle to Will Monroe.

He was never completely sure what happened.

One version said Monroe Sr had chosen his career over his family: over-work broke the young marriage. Another theory cited geography: wife was desperate to return to England, husband was determined to advance through the US legal system and refused to leave America. Will's maternal grandmother, a silver-haired Hampshire lady with a severe expression that frightened the young boy the first time he saw her, and for years afterwards, once spoke darkly of 'the other great passion' in his father's life. When he was old enough to inquire further, his grandmother shrugged it off.

To this day, he did not know if that 'great passion' was another woman or the law.

Will's own memories offered little help; he was barely seven years old when his parents began to come apart. He remembered the atmosphere, the gloom that would descend after his father had stormed out, slamming the door. Or the shock of finding his mother, red-faced and hoarse after another fierce round of shouting. He once woke up from sleep to hear his father pleading, 'I just want to do what's right.' Will had tiptoed out of bed to find a place where he could watch his parents unseen. He could not understand the words they were saying but he could feel their force. It was at that moment, hearing his British mother and American father at full volume, that the seven year old boy developed a theory: his mummy and daddy could not love each other because they had different voices.

Once they were back in England, his mother gave few clues as to what had brought them there. Even raising the topic carried the risk of turning her into a bitter, ranting woman he hardly recognized and did not like. She would mutter about how her husband became 'a different man, utterly different'. Will remembered one Christmas, his mother speaking in a way which frightened him; he could not have been much older than thirteen. The detail had faded now, but one word still leapt out. It was all 'his' fault, she kept saying; 'he' had changed everything. The intonation made clear that this 'he' was a third party, not his father, but Will could never figure out who it was. His mother was coming off like a paranoid, raving in the streets. Will was relieved when the storm passed and he was not brave enough to mention it again.

Friends, and his grandmother for that matter, were quick to analyse Will's return to the United States after Oxford as a response to all this. He was 'choosing' his father over his mother, said some. He was trying to reconcile the two, in the manner of many children of divorce, with himself as the bridge; that was another pet explanation. If he subscribed to any theory, which he did not, it would have been the journalistic one: that Will Monroe Jr went to America to get to the truth of the story that had shaped his early life.

But if that had been the purpose of his American journey, he had failed. He knew little more now than he did when he first arrived, aged twenty-two. He knew his father better, that was true. He respected him; he was a hugely accomplished lawyer, now a judge, and seemed an essentially decent man. But as to the big mystery, Will had gained no great insights. They had talked about the divorce, of course, during a couple of moonlit evenings on the veranda of his father's summer house at Sag Harbor. But there had been no flash of revelation.

'Maybe that is the revelation,' Beth had said one night when he came back inside after one of these father-to-son chats. They were spending a long Labor Day weekend with Will's father and his 'partner', Linda. Beth was lying on the bed, reading, waiting for Will to come back in.

'What is?'

'That there is no big mystery. That's the revelation. They were two people whose marriage didn't work. It happens. It happens a lot. That's all there is.'

'But what about all that stuff my mother says? And that grandma used to say?'

'Maybe they needed to have some grand explanation. Maybe it helped to think that some other woman stole him-'

'Not necessarily another woman,' Will muttered. '"The other great passion" was the phrase. Could have been anything.'

'OK. My point is, I can see why a rejected wife and her very loving mother would need to invent a larger explanation for the departure of a husband. Otherwise it's a rejection, isn't it?'

She had not been his wife then, just the girlfriend he had met in his closing weeks at Columbia. He was in journalism school; she was doing a medical internship at the New York Presbyterian Hospital; they had met at a Memorial Day weekend softball game in the park. (He had left the message on her answering machine that same evening.) Those first few months were bathed in his mind in a permanent golden glow. He knew the memory could play tricks like that, but he was convinced the glow was a genuine, externally verifiable phenomenon. They had met in May, when New York was in the midst of a glorious spring. The days seemed to be lit by amber; each walk they took sparkled in the sun. It was not just their lovestruck imaginations; they had photographs to prove it.

Will realized he was smiling. This daydream was the first time he had thought of Beth, rather than Beth gone. Which was what he remembered now, with the jolt of a man who wakes up to realize that, yes, his leg has been amputated and, no, it was not all a horrible dream.

His father had come back into the room and was saying something about contacting the internet company, but Will was not listening. He had had enough. His father was not thinking straight: the moment they made any move like that, they risked alerting the police. The internet service provider would surely take a look at the kidnappers' emails and feel obliged to notify the authorities.

'Dad, I need some time to rest,' he said, gently shepherding his father to the door. 'I need some time alone.'

'Will, that's all very well, but I'm not sure rest is a luxury you can afford. You need to use every minute-'

Monroe Sr stopped. He could see his son was in no mood to negotiate; there was a steel in Will's eyes that was ordering his father to leave, no matter how polite the words coming out of his mouth.

When the door was closed, Will sighed deeply, slumped into a chair and stared at his feet. He allowed himself no more than thirty seconds like that, before he breathed deeply, pulled his back up straight and girded himself for his next move. Despite what he had just said, he was neither going to rest nor be alone. He knew exactly what he had to do.