Under a Watchful Eye(45)

Seb had also called and requested a comprehensive clean of the property for the coming afternoon. He’d dispose of the bed linen that Ewan had used while the cleaners were on site. Anything his uninvited guest had messed with in the kitchen would be recycled.

He was regaining control, at last.

Inside his hotel room, sat by the window and staring at the bay, he’d also begrudgingly contemplated the prospect of working again, something he’d not considered for a fortnight. Ewan’s disruption had been catastrophic, to his life and writing. But, as a man prone to anxiety over deadlines and contracted commitments, even in circumstances such as these, Seb ruefully mulled over the fact that only four months remained until his new book was expected at his publishers.

If he didn’t resume work on the novel soon, and he couldn’t see how that was possible, an extension would be needed. Perhaps a schedule change would be required and he knew how his publisher loathed those.

Nor could he guess how he’d find a way back into the problematic first draft, or how he’d recover the voice of the female narrator. Another impression formed: that the ideas, story and characters of his work in progress had been rendered thin and unconvincing by recent events.

At least he knew what his next story would be about. Maybe for that alone he owed Ewan.

Perhaps he should abandon the work in progress and just write the story of the past few weeks? After all, it was all that he could think about now. But in four months? It usually took him over a year to write a book. An extension would buy him some time, and he needed to find out how much time. He also had to know what his editor thought about him delivering a different book to the one contracted two years before.

A voice appeared inside the ear he’d pressed into the phone’s handset, and addressed him by name, ‘Mr Logan.’ The police officer was taking the call outdoors and introduced himself as Detective Chief Inspector Brian Leon, CID. In the background Seb heard the swish of traffic and two other people conducting an intense conversation nearby. A dog barked and was reprimanded by its owner. ‘You say this chap has been making a nuisance of himself?’

‘Yes.’ Seb was ready to repeat what he’d told the officer at the station, but didn’t have an opportunity.

‘Where are you now, sir?’

Because of nerves, his mind blanked and he couldn’t recall the name of the hotel. As each second passed, he also felt as if he was implicating himself in a police matter. He found the room service menu and gave the detective the name of the hotel.

‘I see, but you live locally?’

‘Yes, in Brixham. But it’s precisely because of Ewan Alexander that I’m staying here.’

‘Is that right?’ The detective took his time digesting the information, which increased Seb’s perturbation. ‘You told my colleague that you saw Mr Alexander yesterday?’

‘Yes.’

‘When was the last time you saw him yesterday?’

‘Between four and five a.m., I think. That was the last time I saw him, but not since.’

‘Bit early?’

‘Yes . . . he was, er, staying with me.’

‘Staying with you?’

‘Well, in a manner of speaking. But the circumstances were not entirely satisfactory. To me, that is. Which is why I am making a complaint.’

‘Can I ask you to stay where you are, sir? I’d like to ask you a few questions in person.’

‘Of course,’ Seb said, and suddenly wished that he could take a drink.

‘I’ll come and meet you.’

After he’d identified Ewan’s body at three in the afternoon, Seb knew he was incapable of saying much that would make sense to the police.

He was also at risk of making an absurd statement. So he remained silent during the drive from the hospital to the police station. And during the journey, he attempted to thaw his mind from shock, in order to process the enormity of Ewan now being dead, as well as the implications for him.

The detective then left him alone in an interview room to nurse a mug of instant coffee that went cold between his limp hands. He hadn’t been arrested and wasn’t in custody, but in the small region of his mind able to function, after seeing Ewan’s corpse in a hospital morgue, he couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t a suspect.

Even now, the police might be watching him via the camera fixed beneath the ceiling, in one corner of the room. Wouldn’t they be adept through mere observation alone, at determining guilt or innocence?

What he had been told, but still struggled to accept, was that Ewan had died sometime during the night before. He had died at a guest house in Paignton, near the seafront, and inside a locked room.

The front door to the guest house had been closed and mortise-locked at ten p.m. The proprietors, an elderly married couple, had seen no one enter the building after ten p.m. The detective had shared that much with Seb after arriving at his hotel, at noon. While Seb had lingered and shivered up on Berry Head, too scared to go home, Ewan must have collected his bags from the house and made his way to Paignton.

There had been a disagreement too, between Ewan and the proprietors of the guest house, about payment owed on a room, which Ewan promised to settle later. After that, Ewan had apparently locked himself inside the same room he’d occupied for the fortnight preceding his brief stay with Seb.

Inside the single room, which he never left, Ewan had begun drinking. The owners of the B&B had heard the clink of cans inside one of his bags as he’d come in that morning. He’d died in the night. Six empty cider cans were found in the morning. So Ewan had been getting his load on. As had Seb, but across the bay in Torquay, and in far more comfortable surroundings and without the assistance of cheap cider. He’d supped half a bottle of Courvoisier to get through his own night.