by Coles, Linda
“Nothing planned.”
It was the same answer every time, but Will tried to engage his passenger anyway. Conversation soon halted, however, with no sign of anything forthcoming from Sanjeev. Will eventually pulled up outside the therapy building and waited for him to go through his usual routine of closing the car door perfectly, several times, before finally being satisfied and heading inside.
Will found himself a parking space a little way over and made himself comfortable. Engine off, he relaxed back and sipped his coffee then let his thoughts drift to the previous night’s shenanigans. He was surprised to find a smile creeping across his lips as he relived the vision of the undertaker flying through the air after the coffin lid had blown off. It really was comical, and if it hadn’t been such a serious activity as an exhumation, he would have laughed out loud, he was sure of it. He wondered whether the undertaker had since recovered, emotionally and physically, and just how he was going to get the soil stains from his suit. Pity the dry-cleaner that found themselves with that particular bag of goodies this morning. He flicked his playlist on, more to keep himself awake and alert while he waited than anything else. It wouldn’t do to drop off and leave Sanjeev stranded. Even if the car was only a hundred metres away, he’d never find it, and Will didn’t want to think what would happen then. He checked the time on his phone; he had nearly fifty more minutes before Sanjeev returned. As another yawn, much stronger than the last one, escaped his mouth, he relented, set the alarm for 11.45 and pushed his seat right back for forty winks. He was asleep in an instant, the morning sun keeping him toasty warm as it bathed the car with its rays.
Will slept like a baby. For far too long.
Four
He awoke to his phone ringing and a hot car. As Will scrambled upright and tried to fathom what was going on, the caller rang off. He soon realised what had happened, and checking the alarm setting on his phone, groaned at his simple mistake. He’d set it for pm instead of am. At nearly 1 pm, he’d failed to pick Sanjeev up, and according to caller ID, his missed call was from Sanjeev’s father. Will knew the surgeon hated being disturbed at work, understandably, and that Sanjeev had likely called him in distress.
“Shit.” He pulled out from his parking space and headed for the front entrance, where he prayed Sanjeev would be waiting patiently, and was disappointed to find no one there. Where could he be? Should he call the father back? Maybe he knew where his son had gone? Or would that make matters worse? Worry filled his veins. He’d lost his charge, grown man or not. His eyes did a slow tour of the car park just in case he was out looking for Will’s car. After two passes round with no sighting of Sanjeev, he had no choice but to call Dr Kumar back and hope he’d not returned to surgery. He pressed the last incoming call number and waited for the man’s voice to boom out through the car’s speakers. He answered immediately.
“Mr Peters, it’s Dr Kumar here, Sanjeev’s father.” As if Will didn’t know that already since he’d called him, but he allowed the man his greeting, such as it was. “I’ll get straight to the point,” he said, carrying on so Will couldn’t get a word in of his own. “It seems Sanjeev is either confused or you failed to meet him after his session. Which is it?”
What could Will say? There was no point denying it, he had failed. And lost him.
“I’m afraid that it’s the latter, Dr Kumar. A mix-up at my end that I apologise profusely for. I’m trying to locate Sanjeev as we speak.” He cringed, hoping his words would be enough to pacify the man. The silence at the other end of the line concerned him and he refrained from filling it with his own explanatory waffle. He’d learned in the past that people like Dr Kumar appreciated only a few words in their communication but a useful set of words. Forget the superfluous ones, they didn’t have time for them. Will found himself responding in the same way. Maybe it was a surgeon thing? Scalpel. Clamp. Swab. He wondered how the man’s communication style affected his son, he couldn’t see him being particularly patient with Sanjeev – was he part of the problem? Will pulled onto the main road in an attempt to retrace Sanjeev’s steps if he’d headed home on foot. It would be quite a walk for him, and depending which way he’d turned from the hospital, he could be heading either north or south of the town centre. Will picked south and crossed his fingers while he drove. The surgeon finally asked, “Where are you now?”
“Retracing his steps in case he’s headed towards home. I’m assuming he’s been in contact with you. Did he say where he was going?”
“You are correct. He’s set off walking and I can see he’s on St Giles Street. Please pick him up and return him home. I don’t need any more calls today.” Will wondered about how he knew where his son was precisely. There was only one way he could know – he tracked him with an app. Did Sanjeev know? Was it for his own protection or was it a breach of the adult’s privacy?
“On my way there now, thank you. I’ll take him straight home.”
“Please do.” The line went dead.
St Giles Street was one-way so Will zigzagged across town to start at the hospital end and work his way along. He hoped Sanjeev wasn’t in the mood for shopping or eating, not until he’d located him at least. Turning onto Spencer Parade, Will slowed down to a crawl, searching as the road turned into St Giles. There was little time for a smile as he passed the funeral home, the very same undertakers that he’d had the strange pleasure of working with the night before, and he drove on slowly looking for the familiar dark shiny hair that belonged to Sanjeev. It was almost at the end of the street, by the gentleman outfitters, that he spotted him. It wasn’t the best place to park, but he pulled the vehicle onto the pavement and flicked his hazard lights on, praying there were no traffic wardens about to pounce. The guildhall loomed over him. He shot out of his seat in a flash, leaving the door to slam shut on its own.
“Sanjeev!” he shouted. He caught up with him easily and waited for him to turn and recognise him; he knew he couldn’t reach out – touching his arm, say, was a big no-no.
“Will. You weren’t there.” He sounded almost sad, worried.
“I know. My fault entirely, I’m sorry. It won’t happen again, promise.” Will waited to see what Sanjeev might do next and was relieved when he turned and started walking back in the direction of the car. He spotted a traffic warden making her way across to his vehicle and he called out to alert her of his return. She hadn’t started on the ticket as yet. Deciding to stick with Sanjeev rather than sprint off to state his case and appeal for clemency, he could only hope she would be satisfied with his return then move on. The uniformed woman diverted and walked towards them, and Will could tell he was in for a lecture. He wasn’t disappointed and he stuck it out while she did her worst. He deserved it all, apparently.
At least he had Sanjeev back with him.
Five
The day could only get better. With Sanjeev safely back home, Will dared to breathe a sigh of relief, though his stomach reminded him he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. As if to make a point, it gurgled again.
“I hear you,” he said as he headed up the A4500, destination Sainsbury’s and another regular customer. While he was too early to pick her up, the café was a welcome fixture when he was driving the streets, and since the last twenty-four hours had been somewhat eventful, he felt he deserved a treat. With the added Sanjeev debacle, he yearned for something to counteract the adrenalin that had spiked and since evaporated. Now Will had a hunger as sharp as a tack. He pulled onto Gambrel Road and found a parking space not too far from the store itself. Usually, he parked away from the masses and walked the short distance that most people preferred not to bother with. His legs usually needed stretching but he didn’t give them a second thought today, it was all about his stomach. Once inside, he followed the smell of hot food, ordered sausage and chips then grabbed last night’s paper off a nearby table before settling down to eat.
Will never rushed his food, quite the opposite in fact. Having lived on so little a quantity as a child, he’d soo
n learned the value of it. At age thirteen he’d found himself as caregiver and had worked hard to keep himself and his other six siblings fed while their parents spent their wages in the pub. Between them, the children had ‘stolen’ money from wallet or purse while the adults slept booze-filled evenings off, and saved it to buy their own bread and jam, which they kept hidden in the old outhouse at the bottom of the garden. Without their own place to hide and consume food, who knows what would have happened to them all. At the ripe old age of fifteen, Billy, as he was then known, had had enough and had left home for something better, leaving Kirsty, the next eldest, to take over the role of provider. Living on the street and fending for himself couldn’t have been any harder than what he’d been doing at home. And he doubted either of his parents had noticed him gone. He’d spent four years living on the streets before his luck turned, and during those years of self-sufficiency, he’d learned some valuable lessons.
He finished the last of his meal and then opened the paper in front of him while his pot of tea brewed stronger. It was the usual content: shoplifter caught on camera, the recent vandalism spike, but it was news on the upcoming mayoral election that dominated. None of it particularly interested him as he scanned the pages before flipping back through from the end. How he’d missed it the first time round he wasn’t sure, but the headline grabbed him now. A body had been found in the country park at Hunsbury Hill. Will read the few short paragraphs that informed the reader the police were investigating and there wasn’t much to report at this time. The elderly man that found the body had given a brief report to the paper insinuating that, by the way they were dressed, the person was perhaps homeless. Until a post-mortem had been carried out to determine the cause of death, the police would remain tight-lipped. He rested the paper down and poured a mug of dark tea while he thought about it. So, the man that had discovered the victim had simply made an assumption by the person’s appearance? There were plenty of homeless people in the town, he knew that for sure since he volunteered one night per week at the local shelter. Then there were those that only occasionally had a roof over their heads, the so-called ‘sofa-surfers’, an estimated four hundred that stole nights on friends’ sofas or slept in their car for shelter. They were marginally safer than those that slept on cardboard in doorways. The Refresh Centre served those that needed it most and it relied on volunteers like Will to function. He thought back to the garage he’d shared with a friend in Croydon some years ago. He’d only been a teenager back then, but the memories of living on the streets were as clear as if it were last week. That had been one cold winter. He’d been lucky to have had the protection of an empty building and a good mate to pass the time with. He wondered about her for a moment: they’d eventually gone their separate ways and, with no way of keeping in touch, he’d never seen her again.
He glanced at his phone for the time – he had ten more minutes until he needed to be out front for his next fare. He quickly re-read the short article again and made a mental note to try and find out who the homeless person was, if that’s what they turned out to be. It would be a bit of a detour, but he’d drop by Refresh on his way home. Maybe they would have more to tell him? He refolded the paper and cleared his tray away before heading back to get the car.
As a part-time gravedigger, exposed to death far more than the average person, the news of a body found still unnerved him somewhat. Was the lifestyle of a person the deciding factor in how much space would be given in the news should they be found dead? Dead sex workers were often headline news because their profession was scandalous, but a homeless person? Who cared? Had it been a more prominent member of society – the mayor himself, maybe – it’d be front page news, of that he was sure.
He pulled the car around to the main entrance and was right on time to see his next fare coming out of the store. She waved a wrinkled right hand, bright red lips smiling from ear to ear. Will couldn’t help but grin back and pinged the boot, ready to load her shopping. Birdie Fox was a woman guaranteed to brighten anyone’s day.
Six
“Hello Birdie,” Will said, and he leaned forward to plant a customary peck on the loose skin of her cheek. She smelled of lavender and made him wonder about the grandmother he’d never known but hoped he had somewhere in the world. He opened the rear door and waited while she shuffled herself across the seat. She preferred to ride in the back and often joked she was ‘Miss Daisy’, as in the movie, though that made him Morgan Freeman, and she was way off target with that one. Tall, slim and white, he was the polar opposite. Still, he enjoyed Birdie’s company and pointed the car in the direction of her home on Timken Way North.
“You look a little tired, Will.”
He smiled before debating whether to tell her the truth or not. He chose truth.
“I knew it!” she said, sitting forward in her seat so the seat belt strained a little. “Tell me more!”
“No, it was nothing like that, Birdie. Far from it actually. I spent the evening in a freezing cold graveyard, an exhumation. I wish I had been with Louise at home, let me tell you.”
“Well, that’s exciting too.” Her eyes twinkled with mischief when he glanced in his mirror. “Why an exhumation? Somebody think a relative had been buried alive? Or perhaps a different body in the box? What?” She steadied herself by holding the rear of Will’s seat like a child might. In her seventies, she wasn’t as strong as she’d once been.
“I don’t think I can tell you the details, not yet. But it was certainly eventful.”
He proceeded to fill her in on the assumed gas build-up and the flying undertaker. Birdie held her side as if she had a stitch then dabbed each corner of her watering eyes with a tissue. “You’ve made my day, Will. Astounding. That beats anything I’ve heard this year, I think, even when old Mr Sims’ leg fell off at the bowling club and three of us couldn’t re-attach it.”
The vision of three elderly people trying to put a human mannequin back together on the green was almost as funny as his own story and he laughed loudly. “What did you do with it, then?” enquired Will. “The leg, I mean?”
“Bob put it in the basket of old Sims’ mobility scooter, and he drove off with it sticking out sideways, it wouldn’t balance straight up.” Birdie spluttered and burst into a full laugh as she described the whole unfortunate incident. “He needed a ‘wide load’ sticker on his bumper!” she said, trying to bring herself under control and failing miserably. She dabbed at her eyes again and eventually calmed down. “I guess he put it back himself, once he got home,” she said by way of explanation. “There was no way any of us were going to take his trousers off to do the job.”
“You didn’t check in on him? Later, I mean.”
“I don’t know who would have been the most embarrassed, him or me, but no, I’m ashamed to say I didn’t. I figured he managed every morning, he’d manage again.”
“I bet that made for another interesting bowls meet?”
“I never saw the old boy again. Died of a heart attack the following week. Not related, I’m sure.” Talk of the man’s death sobered them both a little, but the frivolity had been fun while it lasted. It was always sad when a loved one passed and Will wondered about the exhumation again, and the brass nameplate found above ground, the reason they checked the coffin in the first place. It was puzzling, with no obvious answer.
The car pulled up outside Birdie’s red brick house that was bigger than Will’s own. Why she rattled around in there all by herself, he’d no idea, but since she’d only moved there a year ago, he assumed she must enjoy the space. He stepped out of the car and headed for the shopping bags in the boot. Birdie started for the front door and went inside, leaving it open for Will who eventually followed laden with all four bags together. He put them on the kitchen floor for her.
“Coffee? Or wine?”
Wine was definitely out. He checked his watch. “A quick coffee would be great, then I’ll dash. I’ve a detour to the shelter on my way back, thanks.”
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sp; Birdie flicked the switch on the kettle and started to put the groceries away. Stooping to reach the last in the bottom of one bag, she said, “I suppose that homeless person they found might be someone you know?” Their eyes met for a second. Birdie was no fool and had also seen the small piece in the paper.
“Maybe. I’m not sure. Details are few and far between at the moment. That’s why I’m detouring to the Refresh Centre on my way back.”
“Why do I detect you’re going to snoop around a little, find out more?”
“Perhaps I will.” The kettle boiled but neither of them poured the water. Birdie watched Will closely for a moment before adding, “Need some help? I did time for murder, remember; I know how a murderer’s mind works.”
Seven
Will knew some of Birdie’s story, she’d casually dropped it into the conversation one morning while they’d been in the car, though Will being Will, he hadn’t wanted to pry. That didn’t mean he hadn’t been curious for more, like why and how she’d come to murder someone, and just who that person had been. Her husband, he’d assumed, for no other reason than she now lived alone. It was a silly assumption, the man could easily have died just like old Mr Sims with his artificial leg, but since Birdie had casually thrown her criminal past back into the conversation, he couldn’t resist asking this time. He cleared his throat as if he was about to make an important announcement.